Smart Fon Not Quite Smart Enough? [sorta sonnet]

My fon displays the moon-phase
  & instructs me where to drive
how manifold this boon! praise
  it earns each day I'm alive
My fon brings me my friends' news
   & the global news as well
it can sound out Johnson's blues
   & GPS Dante's hell
My fon spans seven planes &
   fathoms Brahma-Vishna-Shiv
it submits to Allah's plan
   in its heart (I so believe)

Yet it dumbly refuses to spiel
Baba's silence-breaking! what's the deal?

Certain Late Questions For Margaret Miller (a sonnet)

Is it only because we use words   to get at meaning
that our words may become   the medium of our tale?
what if grief is a kind of inverted awe?   is keening
laughter inside-out? whereas when we allow   words fail

do we mean   our feelings exceed   our frame of reference?
or do we but vaguely confess   verbal inability?
words of saints & masters   stealthily win our deference
do they hold   a secret of subtlety   & fragility?

or a thing more weighty than gold   more shining than flame?
and what of the Silent Master?   who will explain how
even he packs words?   there's gunpowder in that name!
if an A-bomb blasts   does one-fourth really remain   while

in a trice   three-fourths of a never-was world   are gone?
could a novel horizon   limn  unambiguous dawn?

Quatrain after Max Babi

While my grief is tongueless & unjawed
yet is your aloofness a facade?
must be time   to turn the eyes inward!
life itself pantomimes Marat-Sade

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मेरा ग़म बेज़ुबान है
तेरी बेखुदी बद-गुमान है
घूमा तो ले दीदा अन्दर
ज़ीस्त तक लहू-लुहान है.
(c) Max Babi

Transliteration :
Mera gham bezubaan hai
teri bekhudi budd-gumaan hai
ghoomaa to le deeda andar
zeest tak lahu-luhaan hai.

And Max's "transcreation" (rendering):
My grief is tongueless
Your detachment is illusory
Turn your eyeballs inward
Even life itself seems gored.


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Alternatively:
Here was an earlier version I tried -- before noticing how Max's poem follows the rubai rhyme-scheme (hence I retooled this into the top-most & finalized version seen above, mirroring the rhyme stucture of the original Urdu/Hindi quatrain).

While my despair remains tongueless
is your aloofness a facade?
it's time to turn the eyes inward
when life resembles Marat-Sade

God is the great existentialist! [rubai]

God is the great     existentialist!
he who is both     a potentialist
& realizes     his own existence
if one is but        an eventualist!


============
"God, the Great Existentialist!"
line borrowed from Max Reif [Facebook status update], with thanks

Sunyata

"Who are you?"    one might wonder?

such a question proves    quite insoluble!

for how might    someone sunder

an opacity    so inviolable

darkly curtaining    the veiled center

wherein nothing    could ever enter?

is there something    indeed installed there?

or is pure emptiness    what is walled there?