The Living Mystics

I’m not the best poet. But I’ve been doing it for a long time. Where others seem lit by flashes of inspiration, I’ve relied on quiet persistence — like slowly rubbing flint together, hoping for a spark. It can be disheartening. Years of work and still nothing that shines the way I want it to.

I just finished my undergrad in English Literature, and now I’m deep into a PhD. My thesis is on religious poetry — the metaphysical, the devotional, the ecstatic — but lately I’ve found myself less interested in research than in writing poems of my own. I tell myself it’s all connected, but I know I’ve been slipping.

This afternoon, I took a break from the wordless staring match I’ve been having with my laptop and wandered down to the university library. I drifted toward the poetry section, hoping something might catch my eye. Rimbaud. Rumi. Eliot. All familiar.

Then I heard it — a voice, soft and oddly musical, coming from behind one of the shelves.

“Azure castles of burnished hue burn brightly in the mellifluous ocean of light.

My heart bleeds effervescent and my soul expands as I consider the golden wisdom from the lofty heights.”

I froze, unsure whether I was overhearing a reading or someone's private rehearsal. Carefully, I stepped around the shelf and saw a small group gathered at a long wooden table tucked into the corner alcove. Five people sat listening as a sixth — a gaunt young man with sunken cheeks and wild blond hair — recited from a handwritten sheet.

A woman in the group caught my eye and gave a silent nod, as though I were expected.

“I fly on wistful columns of air,” the speaker continued, “rising into the glow of pure, ascendant unity with the Highest One.”

He stopped. A reverent hush followed. Then, without breaking the silence, the group shifted slightly to make room for me. The woman gestured: come sit.

Tentatively, I did.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice soft but firm.

“Daniel,” I said. “What is this?”

“We’re the Living Mystics Poetry Club,” said a man beside her — black hair, thick glasses, a wiry goatee. His cheekbones jutted beneath pale skin like he hadn’t eaten properly in days.

“All of us are believers,” the woman added. “Christians, though from different walks. I’m Pentecostal.”

The others chimed in one by one — Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian. The group was eclectic, but something unified them. Something behind the eyes.

“That’s... surprising,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m doing a PhD on religious poetry, actually. This is kind of incredible.”

The goateed man peered at me, smiling as though he’d seen something.

“You write?” he asked.

I nodded. “I do. How did you know?”

“Just intuition.”

There was a warmth in his voice, but something about the way he looked at me — like he was measuring me from the inside out — left me a little unsteady.

“I’d love to come again,” I said. “How do I join?”

“Simple,” said the woman. “Come next Saturday. Same place. Noon. Bring your poems. If you’re willing to hear ours, we’d love to hear yours.”

As I left the library, a strange energy buzzed beneath my skin — nervous, electric. I’d always wanted to share my poetry, but never found the right people. And now, maybe I had.

That week, I barely touched my thesis. Instead, I wrote — obsessively. Three poems in four days. Not polished, but intense. Something about that group had opened a door.

Saturday came. At 11:55, I stood outside the library doors, my heart hammering. I hadn’t felt this exposed in years. My shoulder bag carried my printed poems like fragile offerings.

At the corner table, Darius — the goateed man — was already waiting with the woman from last time. I found myself glancing at his hands, the way his shirt hung loose off his frame. He looked thinner than before. Hollowed.

“Daniel,” he said, rising slightly.

“Hi,” I replied. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name last time.”

“Darius,” he said. “The others should be along shortly.”

I hesitated. Then, maybe too bluntly, I asked, “Are you... fasting?”

He smiled, not offended.

“A true mystic welcomes a measure of self-denial. I eat as much as I need to live. No more.”

“So, this is part of your practice?”

He nodded. “Those who fast with purpose may receive visions. Inspiration. A reward.”

“What reward?” I asked.

He looked at me steadily. “Union with the divine. A glimpse of the heavenly courts. It’s where my poetry comes from.”

My mind flashed to the other members — all of them with that same drawn look, that same strange intensity. Was it dangerous? Was it delusional? Yet I’d heard — medically, psychologically — that fasting could induce altered states. Were their visions real? Did it matter?

The others arrived in silence, and without formalities, the reading began.

What I heard startled me. Their poetry was fevered, luminous, wild. Soaring metaphors, kaleidoscopic images, strange symmetries. Not just religious — mystical. Not polished in a technical sense, but alive with something unfiltered, unlearned. The kind of thing I could never write. The kind of thing I wanted to write.

Then it was my turn.

I read slowly, steadily, from printed sheets. My voice echoed a little too loudly in the quiet space.

When I finished, the group sat in a stillness that stretched long enough to make me uncomfortable.

Finally, Darius spoke.

“You have talent,” he said. “There’s wisdom in your work. Symbol, tension, restraint. But—”

He looked at me with something like pity.

“But you haven’t given yourself over. Not fully. The divine can’t be glimpsed from a place of comfort. If you want the fire, Daniel, you’ll need to step into it.”

I stayed for the rest of the meeting, letting their intense, untethered lyricism wash over me like a dream I didn’t quite believe in. Their words shimmered with conviction, but as I listened, a quiet certainty settled in me. Whatever it was they were chasing — that trembling thread between ecstasy and self-erasure — I couldn’t follow. I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted. There was something magnetic about their hunger, their faith, their willingness to suffer for beauty. But the path they walked asked for too much. To flirt so closely with the edge of life, to starve the body in pursuit of visions — no. That wasn’t mine to walk.

In the weeks that followed, I returned to my PhD work with a strange new clarity. The passion I thought had dulled sparked back to life. Something in that encounter — their wildness, their risk — had stirred something vital in me. I didn’t need to walk their path to understand the power of what they were seeking. Seeing it was enough.