Steve Barfield, best known as an established poet of the Immanentist approach to poetry, is also a playwright and screenwriter. His poetry has appeared internationally and has been translated into Spanish for various journals and anthologies. His books of poetry include Festival of Stone and Skullgrin, with Refugee Road and Flamenco Café forthcoming. He has published extensively in anthologies such as New Generation: Poetry, The Living Underground, La Adelfa Amarga:Seis Poetas Norteamericanos de Hoy, The Immanentist Anthology, Mantras: Anthology of Immanentist Poetry, Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places, plus magazines and journals: Ann Arbor Review, The Bitter Oleander, Black Moon, The Cultural Journal, Ghost Dance, Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Intermission Magazine: The Chicago Magazine of Drama and Literary Arts, Leaf Garden, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet Lore, Poetry Review, South Florida Review and University of Tampa Review. Author of several plays his play Asteroid was produced at Towson University in Maryland. He is currently at work on his third screenplay. He makes his living as a Medical Journalist and Editor working out of his Tampa, Florida home. As President of the Iron Overload Diseases Association (IOD), his expertise is in the nutrient iron’s role in human health. He is an active member of the art and poetry collective We Are You Project International ( weareyouproject.org).

Read the poems by Steve Barfield

A Prayer for the Sufi Poet Rumi

I wish for you many gardens in your afterlife.

I wish you a Persian garden.
Look for a location that is walled
with trellised grapes and wisteria.
This is a place for serenity.

I wish for you a pleasure garden.
Here in a hidden cave
with just enough oil light
to see the beauty.
This is a place for passion.

I wish for you a Bedouin garden.
The desert is without detail
and is undecorated.
Yet, a lone nomad can see the night sky
awash with the stars.
Here is found the symmetry
carved from Arabian math.
This is a place for the intellect.

I wish for you what the stars have promised:
a garden of abundance
with gushing water.

Rumi at the Pillar

A timid oil lamp interprets this evening,
shadows are a reality also.
Attentive scribes lean forward to listen.
The Persian poet, with his hand to the pillar,
is circling counter clockwise.
His head is canted to the outside with eyes closed.
He constantly tells all that he sees.
His path is a quest for clarity.
His left hand is centered on the everyday world
while maintaining equilibrium.
His right hand investigates momentum and inertia.
He treads a path that seeks information from constant motion.
Circling a well of information is a pivoting search for spiritual physics.
Centrifugal force is an elliptical bridge
that sorts the essential from the ordinary.
His sandals scrape rhythmic patterns
through the space-time foam.
Echoing on cool stone walls
is a pursuit of elemental truths
and a thread from the fabric of time.
Rumi’s face is brighter than the ambient light.

Whirling Dervish

Is there a spirit in the spin?

With clockwise logic,
are you turning away from the world?

Are your arms outstretched
to embrace some cosmic balance?

What are you seeing?
Chaos?
Light?
Or do you seek the dark?

There must be a sloughing
of space and time.
You may find transport to the truth.
But, be careful with what is found.
Truth is despised
and so its proponents.

The world in contemplation offers:
no nostalgia for the past
no liking of the present
and no hope for the future.

Your robes are immaculate
with circular perfection.
These are clothes fit
to take you before your God.

Can you hear the poet Rumi
telling a philosophy of love?

Future Poetry

Rhyme will become more necessary
as man loses the ability to read.
Rhyme will be the antique crutch
to replace the withered leg of language.

The urban whine of rap foreshadows
this great loss to poetry.

All past freedoms that were won
are being ignored.

Man has not yet fully evolved
from his base predatory state.
Until he is evolved,
he will not deserve poetry.

Poetry Blues

After writing a poem,

I feel completion.

Yet I also feel a disquieting emptiness,

a vague loneliness.

Who knows where a poem comes from?

There is always the terror

that this may be the last.

What if I lose my chance

for observation,
for complaint

and for celebration?

[wpdevart_facebook_comment curent_url=”http://ashvamegh.net/2017-issues/xxix-june/poems/steve-barfield/”
title_text=”What do you say on Steve’s poems?” order_type=”social” title_text_color=”#1e73be” title_text_font_size=”18″ title_text_font_famely=”monospace” title_text_position=”left” width=”100%” bg_color=”#d4d4d4″ animation_effect=”random” count_of_comments=”5″ ]