Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

"White noise" is "a random signal with a constant power spectral density," says Google. "Such a signal is heard as a hissing sound, resembling the 'sh' sound in 'ash'. In music and acoustics, the term 'white noise' may be used for any signal that has a similar hissing sound." After chemo and radiation my oncologist asked if I heard a hissing sound in my ears. I said no, having always thought of it as the Music of the Spheres. It's the background silence that is pure, whose purity is expressed as a "hissing sound." Not of snakes, but of bliss. Or the whoosh of the sacred perveyors of bliss. And in the Unseen Next World that's an inconceivable state, herein called "silvery." TAKE ONE STEP FORWARD / it all turns to light // But to pour from one bottle to another / step back // At just the right balance / it pours itself...

THE ENIGMA OF IT ALL The enigma of it all stood up and spread out its feathery arms All the doubts and gnarly creatures disappeared from around it fleeing into scarlet woods and back into weeping trees The resplendent enigma straddling the two worlds and all the others intersecting them in the tiniest details of our lives the true enigma in puzzling feathers the one of heavy tread and light repartee who holds conversations in our heads yet contains the golden knot of perfect explanation in its core...

These Poems written within the limits of 6X4 inch pocket-sized pieces of paper (one poem per piece) in Istanbul, Turkey, visiting dervish friends, listening to long-night spiritual talks (sohbets) in (for me) incomprehensible Turkish, in November of 2013. Translations of the ineffable, on cloud strands floating in air? Words out of nowhere? "Sometimes the dawn comes/up so silently you don't notice/that its tissues of gold have/slid over everything with the/just-as-it-is-ness of everything/placid in its light...

A Hundred Little 3D Pictures started out from those once-popular computer generated images a certain stare, unfocused or crosseyed, could render in layered three dimensions, with some really astonishing results... Recall the excitement in childhood when we looked into a diorama and saw back and back past whatever was being portrayed, not very far back really, perhaps, maybe only a shoebox length back, but peering through the front hole with the little flashlight or christmas bulb illuminating it, we saw a wee world that gave us shivers of delight.

Here's the classic tale of Ala-udeen (Arabic pronunciation, meaning The Glory of the Way) and the well-known genie (or jinn) in the magic lamp, with all its smoke-blasts of wondrous mystery, swift mind-boggling transformations, heartfelt love-longing for the princess of the sultan, innocent good versus evil (with good triumphant against black magicky dark forces), and in modern, narrative rhyming couplets for today's readers. Everyone's invited for this new version of the ancient Muslim wisdom story from The Arabian Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla), or A Thousand Nights and a Night, so well-known as part of global consciousness that all you have to do is say "the magic lamp," and everyone knows what you're talking about, blue smoke-emerging genies and "Your wish is my command!" - but presented here in a sparkling new rendition.