Our words are precise
Our work is the translation
of primordial senses and mind
I’ve been altering my 
native words for others 
since I was a young girl 
who spoke too clearly
too surely
a girl who angered at
performing invisibility 
just to escape harm.
Now sometimes it’s hard to tell
which languages I’m transmuting:
the ones that carry wisdom and deserve
all the energy I have
to aid understanding
or translations coughed up
for those who only want
me smaller than
I am.
Are these the invisibilities 
I yearn for 
slipping between the strings of time
or the relentless erasures 
you demand?

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

We each encounter experiences that pierce us and then settle into our lives like beacons or touchstones or wounds or just stones.

For decades now, I’ve been trying to write about a brief moment during a single evening in Brooklyn and the lone voice of a human in mortal danger.

My problem has always been that there is no way to capture the specific cadence and timbre of his voice, no way to make you feel what I felt then and still feel whenever I remember or am reminded of it.

There is no way to convey the intersection of intoxication and utter clarity, panic and toneless factuality, the grain of his voice.

But during each of the 923 days since October 7, 2023, I have been reminded of this man while experiencing the lives and unaliving of Palestinians in Gaza.

I’ve concluded that my effort is a failure and will always be a failure.

But as one of my most beloved teachers once said, “Mistaking, mistaking, I travel the unmistaken path … forgetting, forgetting, I remember the unforgettable expanse.”1

I hope you find something of value here.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Subscribe now

A Winter Night in Brooklyn

One winter night in Brooklyn
with streets icy and black
and the wind cutting through 
below zero degree cold,
my mother and I rode in a taxi 
to the Brooklyn Academy of Music
looking forward to something new 
and possibly atonal.

We stopped at a light and
there, shadowed in the dark 
against a frozen building of faceless stone,
a man huddled. 
His face was bright red from drink and cold. 
His swollen hands jammed in his jeans. 
He had no hat or winter clothes.

We were warm and waiting for the light to change.
I heard him speak only four quiet words:

“I’m freezing. I’m freezing.”

His words, both fact and plea
so nakedly close to death 
were not just for me, but for all the unseen 
who might be listening.
The grain of his voice held 
what remained of hope 
that help might come.
And now for 923 days since October 7th,
that same human need
that same human hope, 
always on the edge of collapsing
that same address to us, the ghostly listeners
cuts through my bones. 

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing, or even offering a paid subscription. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

This Merciful Path

Even if I berate myself for wantonly missing opportunities while indulging my karmas, this confidence in the path that has chosen me remains unbroken.

Even if I wander onto detours and squander my energy,
I never doubt I am somehow moving in the right direction.

Even if I avoid following clear instructions out of sheer brattiness or inertia,
I am certain that the instructions are infallible.

Even if I complain a lot, and enjoy doing that, 
never for a moment is the flow of devotion interrupted.

Even if I ask my Teacher the most outlandish questions 
and dream up preposterous objections, 
When She arrived, I know the game ended. 

Even if I turn a hair’s breadth away from what She showed me, turning back, that always appears to me again. 

Even if thousands of teachers abuse tens of thousands of students, 
the reality She showed me remains, and the way to realize that is still open.

Even if millions of students take tens of millions of years to realize, what of it?  It just means we can relax and continue together. 

No matter how badly I feel or how many times I am mistaken, I don’t care. 
I know I’ll continue always. That’s all I need. 

No matter how others feel, whether they praise or reproach, stay or leave, 
I am not deviating from this human way, 
one foot then the next on this merciful path. 



~ Shambhavi Sarasvati

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Sweetness of my own self,
my constant companion
and you who I’ve searched for
since my eyes opened
this time around,

I am old now
and having met the Friend 
I yearned for so ardently
when I was
full of loneliness 
knowing and 
despair
I find your sweetness everywhere
emanating from my skin
from my teachers
from the air
and all that is.

But to this day
the world's anger and brokenness 
confound me
and for nearly 70 years
I’ve never stopped trying to
infuse it 
defuse it
with the good,
praying hard
to the all-encompassing mother
may the pain never 
cause me to defend myself
in such a way
that the giving ends. 

Kindred 108 is 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Because the Earth is round, 
whether I gaze East or West,
I am looking toward my Teacher

Because She births
the elements
from earth to space,
any direction and all
phenomena are She 

Because wisdom is the
nature of all the worlds,
She reveals her grace
everywhere I might walk
and in everything I might touch, smell,
feel, and see

If you haven’t yet discovered this 
for yourself,
it might sound intellectual or unreal
But even writing these simple words,
and even in these painful times,
my heart still moves 
in unstoppable waves
the profound intimacy prevails
and tears of gratitude
fall

~ Shambhavi Sarasvati, November 3, 2025

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Mercy

My home has not been stolen
My home has not been bombed
I don't sleep in a tattered tent
I'm not thirsting while the whole world drinks 
I'm not starving while governments profit on death

My children are not covered in boils, sick
and wasting
Armies have not ripped them from their schools and friends
or thrown them in prisons to be tortured and raped

I am not grieving the murder of my beloveds
No one I know lies rotting under the bombed rubble of their lives
I don't walk down bloodied streets piled with mangled bodies of the dead

My libraries, hospitals, galleries, and schools are not in ruins
My lands and crops, my trees and even my seeds 
have not been crushed by colonizer insanities
The constant whine of drones does not disrupt my sleep
and I do not cling to my companions, wiping their tears
as bombs fall in the middle of the night

But by some ordinary miracle 
of life and death and the shuffling of rebirth
I have experienced all of this 
and this indelible experiencing is a remembering
woken from every cell in my body
and the heart
And I can't find the words
but we are together 
our cries for mercy 
searching for ears
circling round and round this world


with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Getting food and supplies to Palestinians in Gaza is of the most urgent concern. I encourage you to donate to these grassroots, Palestinian-led groups that, at great danger to their volunteers, continue to deliver food, water, tents, and loving words to the people of Gaza.
The Sameer Project
Ele Elna Elak

Kindred 108 is 99% free and 100% supported by readers like you. If you benefit from the offerings here, please consider subscribing. Thank you!

Subscribe to K108 >>

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

an offering

Love, Shambhavi

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Heart Mist

My heart explodes 
again and again 
each day until 
it turns to mist 
sweeter than nectar 
more powerful 
than drones
a free and present 
wanderer
obeying no checkpoints 
no borders 
of any kind 
made of grief 
tenderness
and the amazement we share 
subtle 
yet the strongest weapon
in any world 
it gives proof 
there is no other 
and our different lives 
are just what shine 
like variegated jewels 
suspended here.

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Abrahamic gods,
I demand a miracle! 
You’ve done it before, and 
we need you to do it again.

Drop manna on Palestine!
Send clear water streaming 
through disconnected taps! 
Make olive trees grow back in a day!

Keep up the miracles until
Palestinians can return home. 
The whole world is crying out—
show us what you got. 
We need to see the sun again. 

If you don’t do as I demand,
I’ll ask my god
as backup, just in case.
The one who is all time, times, space and spaces. 
And then who will you be? 

I’m asking you first
to be polite. 
You won’t get another chance. 

~Shambhavi Sarasvati, May 2, 2025

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletterto get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

I cannot stop looking at this photograph. Every story, every feeling I’ve experienced since October 7, 2023 seems to be written in it. An archeology of genocide, grief, and valor.

But know that I have chosen this photo in place of so many others more difficult to look at, including the photos that moved me to write the poem below.

This week’s post honors multiple expressions emerging from Gaza and in response to the genocide in Gaza. A photograph. A poem. The testimony of a 16 year old Gazan girl learning to speak herself and her world.

Subscribe now

A poem

This is What I'll See When I See You

Today I saw
a fetus child charred and 
blown from its mother’s womb  
Today I saw 
a fetus child skinless and shiny red
heart a shrapnel hole
blown from its mother’s womb 
If you tell me you cannot look
If your equanimity looks like 
turning away
If you’d rather read books and pray
If you tell me nothing at all
these babies are what I’ll see
when I see you.
And all you haven’t said
And all you’ve shared when I 
wasn’t around
And all that’s  
waiting to be blown 
like shrapnel from the womb of my heart
will testify to
this burned and torn flesh
And those babies will rise up
in realness between us
and speak
the truest words

~Shambhavi Sarasvati, April 2025

Testimony

We are not numbers

We Are Not Numbers is a decade-long project that is cultivating, recording, and disseminating the words of young Gazans. The young writers are paired with mentors from around the world, creating connections and building expressive skills.

We Are Not Numbers is also a newly published book documenting the voices of Gazan Youth. It is available in the U.K. as of April 24th and can be pre-ordered in the U.S.

This writing-speaking about the reality of growing up in Gaza is by Yara Jouda at the age of 16. It was filmed in 2017.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Dear Friends,

My new book of poetry is nearly born! It’s actually two groups of poems related by turmoil, chaos, and the tenderness that arises in times of destruction.

I began writing Mother Poems during a turbulent period in my spiritual life. But on October 7, 2023, a larger turbulence erupted. My poetry and other writings took a sharp turn toward documenting my responses to the first live-streamed genocide in human history.

A Crack in Time is an outpouring of tenderness and admiration, of horror and grief. It enumerates crimes and speaks innumerable pleas.

These two groups of poems contain much of what could be called prayer. They each attempt to bring disruption, doubt, cruelty, clarity, and chaos onto our paths of awakening. I gathered them together in one book as a modest demonstration that all aspects of life are connected, and so are we.

The cover is finished. The interior layout process will get started in a couple of weeks. As soon as the book is available for pre-order, I’ll let you know!

Those Who Cannot Tolerate Beauty is a single poem that speaks of intimacies between our everyday lives and what is happening in Gaza.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

Those Who Cannot Tolerate Beauty

Our god is an enjoyer of 
the beauty of all beings and things. 
Our god’s rapture is
a falling 
for the glamorousness 
of the creation. 
Feeling abandoned,
those who fall too far from god
learn to hate god’s 
magical ornamentation.

I know this from
the sad ones who have 
tried to kill 
the sweetness 
the freedom in me. 
They painfully exist
tortured by desires 
to destroy what they want 
and what they love.

I know this from the
sapphire sky
aqua sea
and dusty green of 
newly-planted
olive trees
that frame more 
fragile scenes of
Gaza's decimation.

I know this from  
exquisite Gazan faces
old and young
mourning and dead 
alive and dancing
and the rage of those who
over and over again
fail to extinguish 
their light.

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time, forthcoming from Jaya Kula Press

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

for Mosab Abu Toha

Your tears are the jewels of God.
Your anger is God’s sword.
Your patience is a miracle and
among the great proofs of the
value of a human incarnation.

Your grief is shredding the fabric of the world
to reveal the real world.
The fact that you keep on
pleading is an austerity beyond all austerities
and a mercy beyond all mercies.
God’s mirror is
ablaze in you.
The clarity with which it reflects
is hard to bear.

Since childhood, I have marched around
chanted and danced to
songs of liberation.
Argued this or that point
and built sand castle solutions
out of enthusiasm, books, and air.

We were having fun
pumping ourselves up with
music and solidarity.
Now I’m heavy with
the sadness of these
late-stage revelations.
Now I seriously consider that
we may not
survive and that
we are not winning in
that easier way with our
delusions left
undestroyed.

Now I see that
if we want even
ordinary victory
we must call this
destruction and
descent by its real names
and bear thoroughly the
horror and
humanity of it all.

Mosab Abu Toha is a Gazan poet, teacher, and activist who managed to leave Gaza after being abducted by Israeli occupation forces in 2023. He now lives and teaches in the United States. He has published two books of poetry: Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear and Forest of Noise.

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time, poems by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

I am one in the form of the endless travel, and I manifest in many forms as well. ~ Anandamayi Ma

You might be happier if 
you immediately turn in
your attachments 
to endings and beginnings
origins and destinations.

God is a recycler.  
Everything perpetually turns into everything else. 
Call that one the plane of becoming or
the absolute.
No difference.
Just toss your beginnings and endings 
anywhere into space.
Nothing is ever truly lost.

We are all always on the move— 
travelers with
so many arrivals and departures
they amount only to
the beauty of traveling
and the tenderness of sharing 
stories of traveling. 

Various travelers however
have not learned these simple facts
We call them colonizers or
conquerors or collectors.
If we all learned the art of traveling
of hosting and guesting
we could live anywhere
in a borderless land.

Our bodies do not end at our skin.
Our streets and lands have no names that remain.
The host and the guest are inseparable.
All plants are native, along with all that appears here.

I want to grow kindness 
instead of timelines.
I want to live among gardeners and servants and friends
not landlords or conquerers.

C’mon! 
Let’s rename this place Café Earth and
just laze around 
without contrivances or
convictions.
If we just relax a little more 
we’ll discover we belong 
everywhere. 

from Crack in Time, poems by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Want more? Please join me and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

I had to put dawn jasmine
on my crown.
I had to put night jasmine
on my brow and heart and wrists.
I had to remember the
sweet wealth
of life's cascade.

I see the richness here,
but sometimes the poetry
the scent
eludes me.

Each day brings
fresh revelations of our genius
for inflicting
horrors on ourselves
and our world.

This grief drowns us all.

Still the jasmine flows
and the truth is
we are all eventually
swept away
in the river of that
infinite perfume.

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Want more? Please join me and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

So sick of spiritual biz
spiritual clothes
spiritual bling.
Sick of spiritual bios
and exaggerated claims.
Tired of spiritual promises
with high price tags.
Sick of spiritual poses, gazes, and tattoos.
Sick of spiritual selfies
on social media feeds.
Tired of everyone’s a teacher 
and humble equals brag.
Sick of unearned teachings 
confidently mouthed.
Over certifications, revelations
secrets and ah-maz-ing.
Completely over “enlightenment experiences” that are one-off things.
I’m sick of my own name and my spiritual supplies. 
I’m also sick of websites, workshops, Instagrams, and Zoom. 
I just want to float in the river of come what may
in the Mother’s lap
in the natural ease
in the living unnamed, untamed and
unadvertised.

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Want more? Please join me and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

I didn’t see it coming
but in the midst of all this
I kissed a fresh tortilla
and whispered close
into its fragrant skin
“Thank you for still being
simple and sweet.”

I know that confusion and rage
helplessness
and desperation
don’t go away until
their end times
naturally arrive.
But by filling
our mouths
with any name of God
we give these
a smaller place
and don’t feel completely
inadequate and fucked.
Om namah shivaya

Likewise
offering small
services to others daily is
a medicine
that reaches deep into our
tissues with messages
of who we are
and who we will be
when the smoke
scatters and the sky is
easier to see.

If we keep kissing tortillas
roll mantras in our mouths
and offer ourselves 
to each other as gifts
we can survive any confusions,
smoke, and fires
not necessarily intact
but who asked for that anyway?

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Petrichor : a distinctive, earthy odor that arises with rainfall from a combination of volatile plant oils released into the air and ozone. The word derives from ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) 'rock’ and ἰχώρ (ikhṓr), the sanctified blood of the gods.

I wrote Petrichor just after the devastating two-week siege of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. I had taken some time off from my usual duties to rest and do sadhana. The heartbreak flowed, inseparable from the tender communion.

I showed a draft to a group of Jaya Kula community folks who often share feelings and resources related to the genocide. They were inspired to add their own words to the poem.

Here you will find all of our words. The authors are named at the end of each section. We invite you to continue the collaboration in the comments!

With love,

Shambhavi and the Leve-Leve collective

Petrichor

Heartbroken like Mount St. Helens 
when the thistle grows again from
burnt soil.
Heartbroken like an infinity sky after
a category five storm.
Heartbroken like animal sounds 
from the smoking remains
of careless forest fires.
Heartbroken like the sleep that comes 
when you’ve seen everything
you desperately did not want to see.
Heartbroken like when the worst arrives
and there is nothing left to fear.
Heartbroken like the raw intimacy of grief shared.
Heartbroken like the heart harshly broken open.
Heartbroken like millions of hearts broken together.
Heartbroken like God’s petrichor after
a drowning rain.

........................................ Shambhavi

Heartbroken like Gods fresh breath of truth
Heartbroken like knowing I die over and over
Heartbroken like knowing this is all Ma
Heartbroken like Heart breaking open through my brother's and sister's torture and suffering
Somehow finding God
Heartbroken like He is Risen
Heart broke like Joe Biden
........................................ Sahaji

Heartbroken like the first scream and cry of a newborn child
........................................ Ana

Heartbroken like finding out what they can steal (it's a lot) and what they can't steal (also a lot)
Heartbroken like tears that fall unbidden day in and out
Heartbroken like the cracking open that's required to ache with humanity
Heartbroken like the scope of the unfathomable shrinking on a daily basis
........................................ Vidhra

Heartbroken like the bird after the oil spill and the whale suffocating on the beach
Heartbroken like an incarcerated boy calling for a sign
Heartbroken like the unending insistence of your insanity and dead God
Heartbroken like your cold drill
Heartbroken like the choke before the first tear when you’ve forgotten how to cry
........................................ Tania

Heartbroken like the man who is dead with terror on his face, not peace or a smile
Heartbroken like an aid delivery person who wished to help but could not for too long
Heartbroken like a parent who had their dream living situation for their children dismantled
Heartbroken like a kid who dreams of play but instead needs to forage, only to find scraps
Heartbroken like mothers, sisters and their male folk who experience the unsightly horrors of toxic masculinity
Heartbroken like those of faith who wish God's voice be heard by those with closed hearts and inner eyes shut
Heartbroken like those who knew their land through a direct relationship and now see it destroyed
Heartbroken like all the young ones who grow up in lands not their own, without parents or support
........................................ Charandas

Heartbroken like when watering the plants after coming home from a funeral
Heartbroken like lichen growing on rock after a landslide
........................................ Nirmana

Heartbroken like birdsong after a monsoon that wipes away the coastline.
Heartbroken like disappearing kindness.
Heartbroken like baby's stolen future.
Heartbroken like a million voices of people, animals, trees, laughter, tears, and prayers suddenly gone silent.
Heartbroken like seeing the friend you thought was open-hearted who's now crying for more war.
........................................ Leela

Heartbroken like lost sleep
Heartbroken like dust settling on no road home
Heartbroken like the tough stems of unharvested wild herbs
Heartbroken like the earth shaking across the world, a planetary shudder
Heartbroken like the wind smoothing over a razed ground
Heartbroken like the glittering sea which still hosts the color of the sky
Heartbroken like the spring, the sprouting, offering up, and being new in this world
....................................... Tess

Heartbroken like words aching to describe
....................................... Daniella

Please do share your heartbroken words with us in the comments.

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Navigation by Scent

These late days
my skin smells of roses
when nothing in me is constrained or
out of place.
So different from the
fenugreek, sea, sugar
skin of youth.

I’ve navigated life
by the scent of every house and room
smells of illness or an open heart
of disappointment
nervousness 
and rage.

The banquet of morning and wet pine
layered scents in a crowded place
perfumes of life that spread
or clear or sit heavy on the mind
or like cannabis
that cling and coerce

I told my landlord:
The cedar in the yard smells like California.
The kitchen's reclaimed wood
smells clean and like
a magically bigger space.

These scents are memorialized:
people pretending to be someone else
drips of gasoline
East Bay golden hills in summer
eucalyptus trees baking in the sun
mugwort
saffron
agar
cardamom, freshly ground
helichrysum
jasmine
all the smells of God

Also airports
baby hair
distant musk
deep inside the spines of books
old art deco roadside motels 
unwashed sheep's wool
the purest milk
and transmission fluid leaked
in the manifold
and burning

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Things Worshippers Must See and Hear

Blue-lipped children shaking with shock and fear.
A hand rescued, torn from the wrist. Tendons dangling.
Shot by strutting soldiers. A man in the street on his knees.
Neighbors run toward bombs to recover their dead.

A newborn swaddled in brown dust.
Head askew. Neck partially severed.
Shouts and cries in the chasms
between detonations.
Phosphorous-burned limbs. 
Bodies made small by shredding.

They bleed on muddy hospital floors.
Sheets of copy paper cover their wounds.
Children seize. Tonic hands and feet curled.
Heads back. Eyes rolling.
Fresh blood glistens on the street.

Still alive, a face flashes from the ruins.
Neighbors dig with bare hands and reassuring words.
At every age, they call for God and their mothers.

The brave young journalist Bisan
cries for the loss of relics, libraries and
painless gatherings.
All of our tears are being written
in the blood and bones of the world.
Even those who turn away will not soon be forgetting.

Worship is the eyes meeting
what offers itself to be seen.
Worship is the ears meeting
what offers itself to be heard.
Worship is also the embrace
of what arrives and demands speaking.
 

from Mother Poems and A Crack in Time by Shambhavi Sarasvati

Listen to Shambhavi reading the poem

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Dareen Tatour

“I regret being sent to prison for a poem, but it will be impossible to stop my writing.”

“Dareen Tatour is a Palestinean poet, playwright, photographer and political, feminist and social media activist. Tatour was born in the village of Al-Rina, Nazareth, and considers the Arab town of Reineh her home. She completed studies in engineering, programming, media, and film direction. Through her writing and photography, Tatour has sought to highlight the injustices Palestineans face and in particular encourage Palestinean women to speak of their experiences facing and overcoming abuse and human rights violations.”

Read “Resist, My People, Resist Them,” the poem that led to Dareen’s two years in jail and under house arrest.

A Female Cry

O my life, nestled in the heart of paper
Look here:
Our sorrows have slammed shut the door of hope
Their ghosts embracing our color
Until we appeared like them
The ink in poems of worry.

Look at them, how they sink their teeth
In my side
Wolfing down my blossoms and sweet scents.

They killed my spring in its entirety
Stole my very life from the world
Unleashed the season of sleeplessness.

O my life, I have grown tired.
Let me depart to live out my life
Secluded forever in the silence of my land
Let me, for I cannot overpower them
Charged as they are by rays of daylight and twilight alike

My chains won’t be broken by you, O Fate,
While the trees of my oppression go unwatered by hope
I will go on living by withdrawing inwards
I feed off the fires of time, and burn up
So long as I am imprisoned by silence
So long as I am occupied by sadness.
How long have I lived on the ground of hope
Beset by the flowers of life
I water them from the spring of struggle
Raise them up through the resolve of youth
I play… sing for existence itself,
Look forward to the birth of peace.
I reveal every light with my eyes

Yet these sorrows, O life of mine,
Follow me like my own name in the heart of this place
Like echoes.

O my silent letters in the drowning sea:
Let me struggle on in nothingness
Alone with these sorrows, with tears of regret
I will always be inhabited by pain
As long as I accept being silenced.

O my dream, kidnapped from my younger years
Silence has ravaged us
Our tears have become a sea
Our patience has bored of us
Together, we rise up for sure
Whatever it was we wanted to be.

So let’s go
Raise up a cry
In the face of those shadowy ghosts.
For how long, O fire within,
Will you scorch my breast with tears?
And how long, O scream,
Will you remain in the hearts of women!1

Mosab Abu Toha

“No one chooses one’s birthplace; once born, one does have the right to decide whether one belongs there or not.”

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer from Gaza. He is the author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022, City Lights), which won a 2022 Palestine Book Award. Abu Toha is the founder of the Edward Said Library, and from 2019 to 2020, he was a visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University. In 2023, he received the Derek Walcott Prize for poetry.

Along with some 200 other men, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was arrested by Israeli forces on November 19, 2023 while attempting to cross the border at the Rafa gate into Egypt with his family. He was subsequently released after being interrogated and beaten. Read about it here.

Untitled

A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four year old son.
But he’s dead after an airstrike.

The colors are about 4 feet high.
Next year, they would be 5 or 6.
But the painter is dead and the
museum has no new
paintings to show.2

What a Gazan Should Do During an Israeli Air Strike

Turn off the lights in every room / sit in the inner hallway of the house / away from the windows / stay away from the stove / stop thinking about making black tea / have a bottle of water nearby / big enough to cool down / children's fear / get a child's kindergarten backpack and stuff / tiny toys and whatever amount of money there is / and the ID cards / and photos of late grandparents, aunts, or uncles / and the grandparents' wedding invitation that's been kept for a long time / and if you are a farmer, you should put some strawberry seeds / in one pocket / and some soil from / the balcony flowerpot in the other / and hold on tight / to whatever number there was / on the cake / from the last birthday.3

Hend Jouda

Hend Jouda is a Palestinian poet and short story writer from the al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. She is an award-winning songwriter and short story writer who is gaining in recognition internationally. Hend has published four collections of poetry: Someone Always Leaves (2013), No Sugar in the City (2017), and A Finger That Managed to Survive (2024), and Gaza: Ô Ma Joie (2025 French)..
More poems by Hind Joudeh

What does it mean to be a poet in war time?

What does it mean to be a poet
in war time? It means that you
apologize. You apologize
excessively to the burned-out
trees to the birds without nests
to the flattened houses to the
long cracks in the road's
midsection to the children, pallid
in death and before it and to the
face of every grieving or
murdered mother

What does it mean to be safe in
a time of war? It means you are
ashamed of your smile of your
warmth of your clean clothes of
your yawning of your cup of
coffee of your undisturbed sleep
of your beloveds alive of your
satiety of accessible water of
clean water of your ability to
bathe and of the coincidence that
you are still alive!

Oh God I do not wish to be this poet in a time of war!4

Hind also has a beautiful voice. Visit her on Instagram to hear her reading her own poems, singing, and sharing her videos and photographs of her beloved homeland under siege.

Samih al-Qasim

Samih al-Qasim (1939-2014) was a Palestinian poet and journalist with Israeli citizenship. He refused to join the Israeli military and was jailed and lived under house arrest several times for his advocacy for a Palestinian state.

Listen to this beautiful reading of al-Qasim’s poem “Enemy of the Sun.” It was recorded by Mariam, owner of a now closed Instagram account called @whatmreads_. Used with permission. (Mariam chose not to read the entire poem. See the words below for the full poem.)

I wanted to narrate this poem for so long as a tribute to the Palestinian people and their brave spirit. ✊🏼🍉 ~ Mariam

This image is from Enemy of the Sun: poetry of Palestinian resistance, January 1970. A new version is being published in 2025.

George Jackson, an activist and revolutionary writer, was incarcerated in California for more than a decade until he was killed in 1971 by prison guards during an escape attempt. This book was among the books Jackson had in his cell. Since that time, this poem has served as one of the bridges between U.S. Black and Palestinian liberation movements.

Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.