While Barks's stamp on this collection is clear, it in no way interferes with the poems themselves; Rumi's voice leaps off these pages with an ecstatic energy that leaves readers breathless. There are poems of love, rage, sadness, pleading, and longing; passionate outbursts about the torture of longing for his beloved and the sweet pleasure that comes from their union; amusing stories of sexual exploits or human weakness; and quiet truths about the beauty and variety of human emotion. More than anything, Rumi makes plain the unbridled joy that comes from living life fully, urging us always to put aside our fears and take the risk to do so. As he says: "The way of love is not / a subtle argument. / The door there is devastation. / Birds make great sky-circles / of their freedom. / How do they learn it? / They fall, and falling, / they're given wings." --Uma Kukathas
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Drunks fear the police, but the police are drunk too.
People in this town love them both like different chess pieces.
Don't try to keep me from asking!
Listen, when I'm this out of control!
But don't put anything breakable in my way!








Cole Barkman is a master of the Rumi energy and lives it. (catch him if he is in yr town) The Rumi poems are like sparklers in my heart - they light me up and reconnect me to the Divine when i lose my way. Hafiz does the same thing to me. I have yet to find their contemporary equals.