verses: a contest
This weekend I got the brand new Daniel Higgs (he’s Daniel “belteShazzar” Higgs this time around) record, Metempsychotic Melodies, as well as last year’s Ancestral Songs (credited to Daniel (Arcus Incus Ululat) Higgs, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress). In lieu of a traditional review, I present to you a contest:
Following are ten excerpts of verse. Some are from Daniel Higgs; the remainder are from Rumi. Your job is to guess which are which. The contest will begin at the moment this post is published, and will end Wednesday (November 21, 2007) at 2:00 PM 4:00 PM EST whenever I say it’s over. Present your answers to me via email (see sidebar). Closest to 100% gets a special yet-undecided handmade gift compliments of the Andybot. If there are multiple winners, I’ll somehow randomly draw from the top names to determine who recieves the prize. Obviously since you’re sitting at a computer you could pretty easily cheat but that wouldn’t be fair NOR fun. Right? Live by the golden rule: Don’t be a jagoff.
Good luck!
1.
You’re song,
a wished-for song.
Go through the ear to the center
where sky is, where wind,
where silent knowing.
Put seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout
where you do your work.
2.
Love is the way messengers
from the mystery tell us things.
Love is the mother. We are her children.
She shines inside us, visible-invisible,
as we lose trust or feel it start to grow again.
3.
If I were many I would circle around You
If I were few I would mimic You
If we were but one never to divide
If I divide yet half destroyed
Am I not Thy faithful steward?
4.
Opposites are drawn into your presence but
not to be resolved. You are not whole
or ever complete. You are the wonder
without willpower going where you want.
5.
On the scalp of the sun
We will find a sign inscribed
Of the triple genitalia
As if to remind us
That we will be mated.
6.
I take a pilgrim’s shape steadfast and true
Searching for the burning beacon of you
And though I circle wide and wander drear
Drawn forever on through your pervading nearness
Love is a gravity that bows us down
7.
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
8.
My Love, these living rags I wear
My Beloved, the daughter of the Sea and the Air
The reflecting Sea beneath the invisible Air
The conjunction of everything with everywhere
9.
You are the well-spring of untamed light
You are a song-form forming at night
You are the primitive and universal alphabet
You are a chain of worlds bound in time.
10.
If the beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
But when living itself
becomes the Friend,
lovers disappear.