marbles

Blues, greens, yellows and oranges
With dollops of the bubble-kisses
But she liked black the best, knitting
Little dreams in her little marbles.

Mirror, mirror, where’s the dreambox?
Lost in the galaxy like her grandma?

- The Shepherdess

This night this emptiness
This silence at the heart
Young paddy fields, fresh dew
The buffaloes shaking the flies with their tails
Leaves fall swirling the water
The window catches the first drop of light
This womb of joy this silence in every soul
Freshly cooked rice, the milk oozes over
From this light this emptiness
You rise, o prince, o god
There is a mystery where words fail
Only the warm blush hints it, and yet even it fails
We work all day thinking of you
You are the king of this nation
You are the saviour of this people
You are a stranger and yet welcome at every door
Have you seen a sorrowful man that had not within him a strange joy?
There is happiness at the heart of grief
Where all are lost there are the marks of your feet
Asking nothing of you let me behold you in all creation
The devotee’s longing is his song of praise
He sees you in all, yet he longs
You are his desire, for your sake he renounces all desire
The sleep of sorrow passes away

scio amo

And we the children of destiny
Caught in the hive of bees;
Sugary nights, future’s memories.

- The Shepherdess

But if we want to be wild
And was born to be wilder,
Dear, why not the latter?

-The Shepherdess

Mutter…
Whisper…
Speak softly…
Pour some words
In my ear,
Revive it by your voice dear…

2.30am…still the phone lies in silence.

-The Shepherdess

should i call it 'poor poem'?

Is an A4 size paper liable
To only a single poem?
Otherwise why this poem
(Call it a scribble,
Abandon it as trash,
I don’t mind)
Was afraid of not
Finding a place in the page
Flashing a poem already?
Was it apprehensive of not
Getting the touch of
My fingertips on the keyboard?
Was it anxious meeting a half-hearted
Poetic(you joking right?) soul
(As if this poem was wrong in thinking so)?

Cigarette in one hand, another
Following the Alert mind
Pressing the keys…
Ears filtering in some strange words
Used by the Nazis once…
Poor little poem of mine
What a fateful day you have chosen
To be born,
By a surrogate mother.

-The Shepherdess

nameless

Just hug me tight
Save me from being lost
In the abysmal darkness.

Hold me in all might
Shelter me from wolves,
Eyes blazing from coldness.

What’s wrong? What’s right?
The world is a maze offering
Cold shoulder to tenderness.

Missing you Solitude, badly.

-The Shepherdess

HOMELESS

Sometimes it rains ceaselessly
And droplets race down my body
Like some slippery moments
I spent with you on long wet nights.
Sometimes the sun scorches my body
And I miss the silhouette of your body
Against the warm rays of the sun
While I lay in bed feeling blissful
Screened from the rest of the world
Finding a sanctuary in the shadow of your eyelashes
The incandescence of your form
Mellowed the cruelty of the sun
And I’d come alive under the shade of your presence
Sometimes it gets really cold out here
I hold my body tight
And clasp my knees with my arms
And rub my forehead against the inner arc of my elbows
Yet I shiver and shake
And when I search for your reassuring eyes
I find myself squinting in the dark
I miss the blanket of your body
The fire of your touch
I miss burning in your caresses
I yearn for the fever of pleasure
My frozen body wants to melt into yours
Sometimes the streets get breathlessly crowded
And strangers brush past me like I don’t exist
They stare blankly as though I’m just another thing
Some stares longer than the other,
Suddenly becoming aware that there must have been beauty
Residing in me somewhere
I miss being held by your piercing gaze
I remember holding your hands
I remember walking with pride
Knowing in this over brimmed cup of life
You were mine
Secure that I belonged
I had a home.
And I had believed its walls won’t give away.

A home is all I had ever wanted
To be myself with you.
To let the masks slip
To be vulnerable
To give in
To let go
To merge
To disappear
To be free
To be found
To love
To be loved.
My home
Your body,
Your mind,
Your heart
Your soul
My only home.

Then came the tempests
Then shook the earth
The walls couldn’t contain you
Your illicit needs made cracks on the walls
Your indifference took up the entire place.
Yet I endured
My home
Was all I had?
Till it was no more

I’m homeless
A waif
Available now
Vacant
Should I advertise?
They touch me
They promise me shelter
They grope me
They say it’ll last
Just that I don’t live here anymore
Who is it inside me I wonder?
There isn’t me inside of me
Sometimes I miss my home.
Sometimes I really do.
BY
ZAID AL BASET

.......................................

Do not make promises that will disappoint,
Don’t make me search for eternity in your sparkling eyes

Just let this moment be
Let no past taint its sheen
Let no future mar its gleam,
Just take a snapshot of this moment in your mind
Cause sooner than you think ill be out of your sight
Cause sooner than you wish ill be out of your mind.

I have rummaged for love in this cluttered world,
I have gathered bits and morsels of love,
But let me not forget that love cannot hold me tight
For I’m not what, with which is love defined
No you can’t marry and take me home,
No you can’t hold my hand and feel bold

Don’t tell me you want this to last forever
Don’t be so sure that you will never go away.

I have heard these words so many times before.
I have seen such eyes admire me before
But trust me there a thin line between poetry and abuse
Please believe when I say you won’t stay forever seduced

I’m a magician and I can cast spells
But let me tell you a secret - these illusions will betray
And then you shall run, run for your precious life
And you shall make every moment a beautiful lie

Don’t insist you can love no one but me
Don’t say you are attracted to just me

Love, that fleeting, ephemeral high
Lust, that desperate unbearable sigh
So you felt both with me in your arms
Yet your eyes were closed,
Your senses were numbed with pleasure
You did not realize what I was, did you?
Not a man that in daylight you could abhor
Not a woman who you’d desire in some wet dream
I was just an essence
A promise of love
A soul searching for some permanence
In this temporary world
You neither lusted nor did you love

Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you the dream would break,
Don’t tell you didn’t know that you will wake up and leave.

For I was simply an essence
A promise of love
A soul searching for permanence
In this temporary world.

by ZAID AL BASET

Watch there, the day coming
Watch the shepherd leading
His brown hair in the wind
Watch there, opens the door
Of the house of love
He comes as gentle as the wind
That plucks the apples from their boughs


Scio amo

Watch there, the day coming
Watch the shepherd leading
His brown hair in the wind
Watch there, opens the door
Of the house of love
He comes as gentle as the wind
That plucks the apples from their boughs


Scio amo

The rose fades, only its memory remains
The friends have all gone, the Friend remains



~~Scio Amo

What if I offer you the blue sky?
Will you return then, I have nothing to offer you but my breath
And the blue sky
O friend, will you return?

O heart, what has happened to you?
Without a lover, you have fallen in love

Does the grape wait before fermenting?
You may ask the moth not to sink in fire

I have spent my life gazing at the road
One more day, my heart will not break

Was Ayaz the most beautiful of slaves?
Yet he was acceptable to you

I had a thousand wishes, none could I satisfy
Beauty teased Adam with the curse of mortality

A few sparks were enough to turn my nights to sleepless day
If creation was so beautiful, how beautiful must the creator be?

Four men take me to a bed of flame
An evening of regret for an eternity of ecstasy

The rose fades, only its memory remains
The friends have all gone, the Friend remains
Naked in Eden you saw me,
Now it is you who have removed the veil

Fading summer leaves a warmth on my cheek
When you shall draw away the night, what shall protect me
From your gaze, my friend?

I whirl, all is you, I whirl, I am you
The sun has sent out its light and veiled itself
But all is light, all is you

O gazelle, the perfume is in you, stop your mad longing
The fire you run from, Man, is in you

When the candle is extinguished can you see anymore the burnt moth?
Where I am, you are not, let me die, all will be you

If a beautiful face can leave behind such peace, my heart what will happen to you
When you see the beauty of souls?
Your beloved in flesh has veiled beauty, yet a bird sings of emptiness

I leave the tavern
True drunkards make their house in the street

I have spent my days in dreaming, and my nights in searching for you
Does the victor ever return to what he has won?

Heaven has given us wings, and a lifetime of sorrow
So what? Shall we blame God?

All cry for the martyr except he himself who in death has met God
Never does love find so beautiful a nest as in the executioner’s axe

When the Companion comes you will offer your neck and cease to exist
Why worry what will happen after? Will the pot complain if the potter breaks it?

Sing like the swan and cease to be
You have lived and loved, that is all you are,
Now be silent and let Him love


Scio Amo

who does Scio love? who does he desire?

A re-affirmation of the love of God

As we met this evening and Zaid made some rather revealing comments while reading tarot cards for me, a question that inevitably arose was on my rather elusive carnal life…it is a pity that Zaid, and less surely, Swastika raised some interesting questions but could not find the answers to. Neither did I have the time to answer them fully and clearly. Here then is a reply addressed to them.

Do I feel carnal attraction? Yes. To whom? To God, and in a particular way. Why?

We feel, I think, carnal attraction when someone sends us certain signals, and we are aroused by them, and respond to a certain way. The question next arises as to why, consciously or unconsciously, we get aroused.

One major unconscious reason is of course reproductive. Evolution dictates that such genes shall survive and be able to propagate themselves as ensure attraction to reproductively compatible beings, females for males, and males for females. The large majority of the gene-pool therefore dictates us to be attracted to human beings of the opposite sex. As women with a certain hourglass shaped waist hip ratio, and milk-giving large breasts, and tall and muscular men who could hunt the best would be most able to ensure the survival of their offspring, therefore evolution again dictated that those genes would survive which ensure our attraction to women or men of these body structures. Other evolution-dependent factors such as facial and bodily symmetry, estrogen or testosterone induced secondary sexual characteristics are also important factors in inducing carnal attraction.

Genes are obviously not the only determinants. Cultural factors (which are as socially produced as the biological ones) have produced their own influence. Fair skin is prized, for example, in both an Aryan-dominated and later colonial-dominated society. A liking for some talent like music or a social characteristic like wildness or rebelliousness or power might all be attractive, not necessarily for merely reproductive reasons, but for the other desires too that we feel.

What I mean to say by this is that carnal desire is nothing spontaneous or natural or some such thing but produced because we desire something and someone makes us feel that they have that something.

The question next arises as to what do I desire.

I desire love.

Perfect love.

I desire safety, security, comfort, redemption, climax, perpetual unending pleasure and everything else that love implies.

Who arouses me and sends me signals that I will get this from that person?

Not human beings. I love my parents, I love my grandparents, I love a very few friends, but not in the carnal way because when I love them I do not put my desire at the forefront of relationship with them. I can’t say I leave my ego completely behind when I deal with them, it would be too saintly, but the desires of the ego, its tensions, angsts, madnesses, passions, crazinesses, everything that one associates not with love, but with one specific form of love, carnal attraction.

With the rest of the world, there are (as for everyone else) fluid hierarchies of affection moving on from liking to dislike, and in a few cases of people who hurt me a lot, hatred.
But I do not feel attracted to them either because I do not think they can give me what I desire.

In short, what I desire is not satisfied by human beings I know. Therefore I do not desire human beings.

Perhaps there is also an element of semi-conscious power involved in this also. The body is very important to me. I like to maintain it as an inviolable sanctuary. All the people who have hurt me have, maximum, hurt me mentally through abusing, jealousy etc. my mind may have been bruised and hurt but never my body. I hate losing control of my body, so I don’t get alcoholic or drunk or engage in sex I don’t desire. My body is a room into which I can always retire into, withdraw into, safe from hurts, safe from the world, the one place where I am sovereign. Hence perhaps there is an element of semi-conscious policy in never being carnally infatuated with anyone because that would mean losing control of my senses, i.e., my flesh to someone else, of surrendering to someone, of becoming someone’s servant, if only from the point of view of the senses. It would mean defeat if that other person did not equally desire me.

Also, with respect to human beings, I am always a top or an equal. I hate to be a bottom, to be passive, to surrender, to lose control to the point that the other person willingly or unwillingly may hurt me. Maybe it is because of the hurt people have caused me, in school, college and university, maybe it has got to do with my ego, possibly with both. Zaid invokes society’s patriarchal power equation to suggest that masculinity lies in being top, active, penetrator. In society’s language then, I am a man with respect to human beings.

Why do I flirt?

With the people I love or care for a lot, and I am excepting my relatives eeeeeeeeeks, flirting is like poetry, a way of reveling in intimacy, of affirming non-physically the bonds we share, the places where our souls cares each other, linger …… you don’t do it in a utilitarian way to attract someone to you, that would be crass and materialistic…..its like how monkeys often scratch each other’s fur or women braid each other’s hair….

With the people I do not care for so much, I flirt to get attention, to make people desire me…..i hate to be ignored, I want to attract others not because I want to engage in any carnal relation with these people, but because I desire their friendship, decrease my loneliness, and because flirting is one way I feel will make them intimate enough to me to the extent that they will not hurt me as the people did to me earlier. It’s a mixture of friendship, of desperate solitude and the depression engendered by it and a natural defence-mechanism…….but it is not, it is never, carnal…

Who am I attracted to then? To the one who gives me what I desire. God. Or the idea of God, if God does not exist.

Why?

I imagine God to be a rock, a saviour, someone who has always been with me, protected me, shielded me, anointed me, and will finally come to me, fold me in the divine arms, and give me peace and rest. God is what I hope for, what I carnally love, the one I think of as the source of every pleasure, every meaning, the source of strength and the remover of loneliness, the meaning behind all metaphors, the beauty behind all beauty, the rewarder and the punisher, even whose punishments give pain only to chastise us and take us to good, to be one with the Good, which is ultimate pleasure. I imagine salvation to be an unending sexual act, an unending love, the way indeed in which our religions generally describe it, Hinduism and Buddhism directly, and Christianity more indirectly.

Adopting the language of a patriarchal society, my seeking for God is in some senses akin to a woman’s seeking a man. Is this abnormal? Yes, from the point of view of secular atheistic or agnostic modernity, no, from the point of view of eternity. Tagore, chaitanya and the vaishnava poets, tantra, the song of songs in the bible and the psalms, bhakti and sufi songs, the Upanishads, the Christian mystics, all speak often of the devotee as a female longing for God the male. Here man and woman are metaphors for the beloved and the lover, the strong and the weak. Chaitanya speaks of feeling Radha-bhav in him, the feeling of being Radha. But gender here is only a metaphor. And it is an unstable metaphor. In vajrayana Buddhism, God is imagined as at rest, as a woman, while the restless devotee is male and seeking union. in Hinduism, it is the female Shakti that is seen as active, and the male Shiva as passive. In medieval troubadour songs, the strong is the woman lady while the weak is the male knight lover. Therefore one cannot on the basis of a narrow 21st c. experience claim that to desire to be passive is to be feminine. In Bengali hindu poems, Shiva is the repeatedly seen as passive, while the active Kali is the one standing on top. It is a poor colonial hangover that makes us ignore these crucial issues.

I desire God. But do I love God? I do not know. My desire for God is in some ways egotistic, I desire God because god has and will save me, protect me etc. this obsession with God is narcissistic then. But that is not the only thing. When I love people or try to do good to them, it is only then that I truly love God for God’s only commandment to us is to love the Other as my Self. I love God when I help my fellow beings.

Why do I help and try in my own small ways to help my fellow beings? I love loving people and being loved in return. Also, I genuinely try to be good to others coz I feel that in those moments God is closest to me, I can feel God………. I feel alive when I am good….i feel rewarded too…..like that night when I was emotionally climaxing while the wind caressed my thighs and I felt one with the universe, alive, alive….

I don’t want to bring desire into the picture with people I love coz desire starts games of power, of seeking attention and so on that often ruins relationships….i have messed up a lot of relationships coz I wanted ppl to not only desire me but give me the love that is fulfilling

Desire and ego and hence carnality are things that for me are directed to God who alone can satisfy them….i try to love God too……perhaps because I want god to protect me in return, to reward me, but that is only partly….i do love, not perfectly of course, but I love…..a few human beings, and God

So why should it wrong that I do not carnally pursue any human being? Why should it be abnormal?

I have had and have some extremely intimate and enriching relationships that by God’s grace I think has allowed me to become in some small ways a better person. Is that not true love? Why should love always be about carnality and desire? Why can’t it be about friendship? Of living everyday? Of feeling the breeze between one’s thighs? Of having some indescribable moments when you feel you have reached the stars? I have had all this..and you still mean to tell me, that I have not loved and been loved in return?


Scio Amo

when words can't express the paroxysms of my heart, the eyes say it all..and the silence in them speaks for itself, yet you look not, you turn your eyes away.....

by zaid..

confessions of a broken hearted mind part 2; the night

18: 20: I wish I could bang the phone really hard and throw it away. Alas it’s a mobile phone. I want to squeeze the life out of it. Can’t do that either. Words, your words are creating a pandemonium in my mind, like a thousand bees buzzing inside my head. I can’t whisk them away. (Your words whip the heart)

18:25: Yes. Tying your shoelaces is more important, and that’s just one among the zillion other things that are more important than me. Yes I have incarcerated you, imprisoned you, yes, I must have been a disease which sequestered you from the exhilarating and seductive world. Yes, I’m the shadow that you have been trying to run away from but couldn’t out of mortal fear!!!! Yes I’m must be a monster eating you away. (Strangely though I could never make you stay)

18:45: Sigh! Lying in bed silently, doing nothing. Feeling a little numb, are these things really happening to me? I feel detached, its like a nightmare, where terrible things are happening to me, Im falling, tumbling, breaking, drowning, exploding, arrows are hitting me, knives are cutting me, rocks are bruising me, fire is burning me and yet im placidly asleep. That’s how I feel now. It’s a nightmare all rite, but then again I have the assurance that I would wake up and things would be like they always were. Wouldn’t they? (Things would never be the same again. Never ever, ever!!!)

18:46: I stare at the clock blankly, the minute hand doesn’t work, time seems to have stopped, I stare at it harder, hoping time would move on, hoping that this too shall pass. If only the minute hand showed some sign of movement, it won’t budge. (Three years of living a lie, such a waste)

18; 01; my aquarium looks filthy with overgrown fishes, they stare at me, beseeching me for food, they are perennially hungry it seems, like the hunger of the entire African continent has united inside their bellies. I go n drop some dry pellets which they gobble up with much enthusiasm, they depend on me for food, and I resolve to alleviate their hunger, how American eh? See I could try American, you kept saying we are great losers, that Americans break up on a fast track, like breaking a kit kat I guess….but I can’t, I have a mawkish Indian heart.( I’m sure Americans cry too for love, all humans do,u don’t!! get the point?)

19; 02: spick and span, prim and polished, now your highness has deigned to give me a missed call, such royalty makes me cringe, like the sight of an artistic mix of garbage in front of the slums adjacent to my house, perfect in its repugnance.

19: 10; I call, all I hear is a cacophony of horns and voices and the wind howling like it has nothing better to do, like an eternal bully, howling like its laughing at my misery. Then u tell me all I know, then you confess with a voice so rueful that I could imagine you sitting in a confessional of a beautiful church in the French countryside, such a dulcet voice, and such harsh words. I know you don’t love me anymore, u never really did, I know you aren’t attracted to me anymore, were you ever? We just groped each other for some time and it was fun, but then you realized you were caressing all the wrong things, oops! Wrong number. You never really made love to me; you just sought carnal pleasure (unwittingly I was making love to you)

19; 30: I take out my tarot cards, shuffle them and lay them in a fan spread, like a violet Chinese fan, I choose a card, it’s the reversed knight of cups, which means love is going away, and there is an impending heartbreak. True, so what’s next I ask my cards, and I pick up the devil, of all cards the devil, which means discontentment and depression and all things dark, it also means shackled existence, I’m fettered by my feelings for you, true again, what’s the ultimate outcome? I reshuffle the cards, I choose one, it’s the fool, the first card of the major arcane, symbolizing the air, the freedom of new beginnings, the spirit of hope, strange the fool is the first stage of realization, yup I feel like a fool, a fool of the highest most profound order. (You fooled me with false promises and fake reassurances)

20;00 SILENCE

20;30: well couldn’t help it, tears roll down my cheeks, tried not to but just couldn’t stop myself, I want to heal, I don’t want to hurt, not for a worthless liar, but the truth is I loved, I loved with all my heart, my soul and my body, I loved every moment, I loved every inch of you, I loved like there was no tomorrow, I loved like it would last forever, I loved like ill never love again, I loved like you are my breath, I loved like id never let go, I loved like ill be you, I loved like crazy, I loved you like my life, I loved you like my most precious, I loved you for all that you are, I loved you for all that you couldn’t be, I loved you. I really did love (and I lost)

20;45 kept crying, popped a sleeping pill, want to die, no! no not for a moron like you, but I just don’t want this life, u give it your best and it gives you a kick in the butt!!! I don’t want myself someone who could love so much and is still shamelessly in love….. (Fuckity fuck, I love you)

20;46; feeling inadequate, like I lack something, I’m a little scared how would I walk down the streets seeing the things you desire and covet and realizing I don’t have them( but they’ll never have what I could offer just that you didn’t need it)

21;00 I go to the mirror to look at myself, it’s a habit really, took a hard long look at my face, tiny rivulets of tears on my cheeks, such expressive eyes, so ancient, such pain, such beauty, what the hell? with a face like that, who needs you honey!!!!!!!!!

by zaid al baset

Ode to Nothing

“Nothing! Nothing can save us from parting ways!” exclaimed my ex-boyfriend. He accused, “You want nothing but a boyfriend, and when you have one, you want everything.” I protested, “I want nothing. I wanted nothing. Period.” He answered my words with a sarcastic smile that was enough to set the fire in me. I yelled, “You are in love with Impeccability. But remember that the maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled PARALYSIS.”

To my agony, my forte in quoting and deconstructing quotes did not work wonders that time. My ex dumped me.

A shroud of gloom enveloped me from that fateful day. I ate nothing. I did nothing. Nothing lured me. Gradually my days and nights were entwined with Nothing. In my reveries, I could think of nothing but of Nothing. At night, I dreamt of Nothing. I searched for the etymology of the word. I explored the thesaurus. A plethora of synonyms greeted me…Non-existence, Non-life, Non-being, Nihility, Nullity…what was that? My eyes caught hold of the word encore. Nihility. Sounds cool. But what does it mean? The internet played my saviour. “Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position which argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.”

“I too believe in Nothing. I too think nothing is superior to Nothing.” My thoughts became profound and elevated. “My existence is attached to Nothing. I am in love with Nothing. I lust after Nothing. Yippee! That makes me a believer in Nothing!”
So you see guys, what Nothing has made out of me! A nihilist, a PoMo in the same league of Derrida!

Nowadays I have nothing to declare but my genius. At social gathering, at addas, people look at me with awe. However, none but I can see at times a lady resembling me cocking a snook at me! Illusion! I bury it instantly. Still her wicked words linger in the air…”Cherie, you are a mere nothing.”

-The Shepherdess

The Sociobiology of BITCH

The word ‘bitch’ has had a long history to traverse, and on its way across cultures and epochs has taken new meanings, discarded old ones, turned over a new leaf, has been embraced by some, derided by others, some have shied away from using it while others have used it as their takiya kalam, it has instilled a sense of pride in some and some have been shamed by the very label. Bitch is undoubtedly one of the most versatile words in the English dictionary for it exhibits reptilian tendencies of changing its meaning and usage with varying contexts, the word dangerously oscillates between the derogatory and the complimentary and consequently humble recipients of this word are never too sure of how to deal with it.
I use the word regularly being unabashedly fond of it. Infact so enamored I am by this word that I have seldom shirked to advertise myself as one, and have used the label lovingly for my near and dear ones. (Except my parents of course, lines have to be drawn somewhere isn’t it?) bitch for me means everything in general and nothing in particular, if you would ask me to define a bitch, id be rather tautological and contend that a bitch is a bitch is a bitch !!!! But then again what is a bitch and why do I use the word when I love something that someone has done, when it’s nasty and exciting, or when I hate something and its equally nasty and exciting? Why do I use the word to denote a person, an act or simply as a full throated exclamation BITCH!!!! A loud thump of a noise is created from my mouth with my tiny eyes bulging out of its socket and I feel like it’s a job well done, I breathe easy and I feel lighter as if the pressure of the word against my chest has been eased, like I have excreted what refused to metabolize inside me and was desperate to come out and declare itself. Yes bitch is such a word, a word that’s powerful and finds itself being uttered in the most inappropriate situations without any precision of meaning. We all use it, most of us don’t know why we use it and are rather vague about what it means, and to put it philosophically it bridges important gaps between thought and speech.

What made me think so profoundly about this commonplace word??? Well let me narrate an incident that transpired in our beloved orkut, a rather favorite friend of mine, who got married recently and was honeymooning with her spouse had chosen to forget my existence on earth( mind you the debate that prancing around in the arms of a lover in the Swiss alps is heaven achieved doesn’t console me much). Much to my dismay she refused to answer my scraps for sometime which resulted in a large fonted entry in her scrapbook with the ever elusive word BITCH!!!! To which she still didn’t bother to respond, such is the power of newfound love and sex. To add to my woes her hubby saw the scrap, didn’t take it kindly and it culminated into their first fight, wherein the hubby insisted that no friend of hers had the RIGHT to call her wife a bitch, particularly someone who goes by the name witch in orkut!!!!( and is a man). Guess it pricked him at all the wrong places and I was asked to abstain from addressing my beloved friend in the same loving manner again. At a loss of my favorite word bitch I felt grossly inadequate; it took me less than a nanosecond to label the hubby himself a bitch!!!!

The word literally means a she dog. On googling the word I came upon an interesting site which provides clear cut distinctions between the male and female dogs. Male dogs are affectionate, exuberant, food motivated, attentive and aggressive. Cut to the human scene, men are affectionate too (of others wives), exuberant (in displaying their powers and prowess) food motivated (yes food for the stomach n libido!) attentive (to work and female anatomy no doubt) and aggressive (hyperactive balls!). Analogies like this fit well, and are ignored or taken for granted. The problem arises when we consider the bitch. Bitches are independent, stubborn, and territorial, reserved and have mood swings. Clearly in a patriarchal system such qualities have to be suppressed, rendered unnatural for being a woman entails being submissive, pliable, allowing men to treat them as their property, caring and displaying melodramatic emotions, (name it and they feel it). Thus a woman cannot and should not be a bitch. Lo behold if she ends up being one its bad news!!! No wonder the word bitch has been generously used alongside words like ‘slut’ ‘whore’ ‘easy lay’. Society commended that the women bitches had to be condemned. Not surprisingly today’s bitches were yesteryear’s witches and they met with terrible fates, burnt for being perverse for trying to create a place for themselves other than their man’s sacrosanct feet.

Clearly then when it came to the question of finding a voice and an identity in this unequal world, women especially the bra burning, chest thumping brigade decided to elevate the status of the bitch, they embraced the identity, they reveled in it, they united through it. Finally bitching and gossiping received it due status in the scheme of affairs. Obviously there are the puritans who still regard a bitch- woman as a bitch-dog and that is understood as not a very nice thing to aspire for.

Palpably bitch and bitching were emerging as female hegemonic traits challenging the hegemonic masculinity and its consort, the emphasized femininity. Obviously men had to save their balls, had to penetrate (the desire doesn’t expire till death) and encroach by subverting the power that was being associated with the feminist acceptance of the word bitch. What did they do? They gave birth to the male bitch, gay, effete and rather low in the masculine hierarchy, it all began in prisons, where prison bitch were men who were passive recipients (polite way of saying they were sodomised) of the desire of the more powerful or senior inmates, men are horny by nature, if they don’t get women, men of certain kinds would suffice, so carpe diem it was. So men didn’t even allow a women to be a bitch peacefully, such tyrannical usurpers of identity were never born. Even this did not satiate them so then emerged the trend of male gossip reputed to be as pernicious as its female counterpart and clearly the word bitch lost its sexual exclusivity, and since then the word has taken a plethora of meanings and can be used for everything and anything under the sun. so now there are male bitches , female bitches, sexy bitches, gay bitches, lovable bitches, sweet bitches, bitchy bitches, bitch bitches ( I mean the she dog) infact even life has become a bitch !!!! It’s fascinating, the uniqueness and adaptability this word is capable of, I won’t be surprised if a new bitch cult emerged worshipping the word bitch.

Well I think I have bitched enough, wagged my tail enough its time I bitch off!!!!
But before I do that id love to raise a toast or let’s just say a tail to all the self confessed bitches of the world. Stay a bitch and keep bitching!!!!!!

BY
ZAID AL BASET
© 2008 by Zaid

I come to your tent,
Grapes trail my hair.
The best wine you have left
Till the end,
When the sun set, we were two,
The rising sun sees us one.
O wind of Jerusalem,
O wind of Beirut,
Tell my mother not to look for a bridegroom anymore.

April 30- may 1, 2008.

Scio Amo

What is this night when the ecstasy a thousand saints
Got by a thousand years of piety
I got by getting drunk
And offering my head to the executioner’s axe?

April 27th, 2008

Scio Amo

For the love of God


I do not seek a lover
To settle down,
But to quench my thirst before
I move to another.
My heart is an empty mihrab
Lusting for the sun as he throws off his night clothes
And rises to hear the muezzin’s prayer.
I steal my way to the mosque not to pray
But to watch him in whose beauty
I am lost.
I hold the book, with jasmines among its pages
Pressed, to smell his fragrance.
Light laughs among the branches, even his mocking
Makes me shiver.
What is this pain that only increases my desire?
Satan wants me, and I want God
What is this desire where no one gets what he loves?
I slept one night with darkness, and darkness now wants as her cost
My soul.
Let her wait in the tavern, I shall not come.
What was that night when I made love to darkness as a man on his bridal night
But saw in her eyes only my absconding God?
Who shall love me and not be scalded?
Who shall marry me and not have to share me with another?
What is this wedding when I give vows to one, and am faithful to another?
What is this Faith that has made me an infidel?
Tell me, Fire, before whom I walk seven times
What is this wedding when I am married to one and betrothed to another?
What is this love where I have broken all idols to worship an idol in a mosque?
People say I am a kafir, let them say what they want.
I am an infidel for God, let them say what they want.
If they stone me it will not be so pleasing as when they cut to pieces
A better man than me.
Mansur met his lover at the executioner’s axe
Let me at least get an ill reputation for the sake of God.

April 27th, 2008

Scio Amo

I dive into pools of fire
Your eyes are cool green pools of flame
If hell can bring so much pleasure
Where turtle doves make their nests
What need have I of heaven?
Even the sun blushes when you rise from bed,
And night flees like a girl who has seen too much
Your looks are as harsh as Judgment day,
I uncover my neck to the executioner’s axe.
The muezzin calls you the compassionate one.
Either he knows nothing or he lies to win your favor.
You have set fire to my senses,
When I saw you I lit mine own funeral pyre.
I know nothing, only I feel a pain I cannot explain
Even when I am in the company of my friend.
I am a prisoner of my pain, the evening breeze
Holds me captive by a broken heart
To the hell you made only for me and you.
I am a fool, so I take pleasure in the marks on my wrist
And come as you fan the wounds on my neck
You bit yourself to stifle my cry.
You closed my mouth, so I speak.
You save me, I die (perverse me),
From a surfeit of pleasure.

April 27th

Scio Amo

Men are metaphors.
You alone are real.
We exchange our lovers
As a dirty moneylender his coins.
You alone, beneath the slapping of sweating palms
And sweating flesh,
Endure.
You are the hollow after every unfinished coitus,
The unclean feeling, the soiled sheets
Fanned by the spring breeze.
You are that breeze,
The mango tree in the courtyard while an alien
Destroys my body and destroys my house
Like a storm ripping through thatched huts.
You are the lazy black buffalo
Among the lotuses,
The rest.
You are the law.
And the lazy lad who breaks it
While coming home from school
One afternoon.


27th april, 2008.

Scio Amo

Every pore of your body breathes of violets and lilies,
Roses bloom when I smile at you.
What need have I of spring
When you are there by my side?

You brush the kaash from my hair,
I lie down on the grass.
You burn me, my palms cool,
What need have I of monsoon
When you are there by my side?

Why do they bow down before nameless stone
When in the play of sun among the mango leaves
In the tree I planted in my grandma’s yard
And on this waving grass and the billowing clouds
In this waiting, and the joy of seeing you again
You are always by my side.
I once was lost, but you found me out.

April 29, 2008.

~~Scio Amo

pour Milou

Under a star-lit sky
In a room corner
She sat quiet
With Champs-Elysees
Twinkling in her eyes;
While spreading wit and charm
Bringing the sun
From the dark outside,
You stepped forward
“Comment vous apelez vous, Mademoiselle?”
Since then thousand little dreams are dreamt
Dancing with the white gardenia
Rushing on the wind of bohemia…

Merci Milou, pour m’ apporter les reves du vent.
Bises.

Swastika

godless'ness'

I saw a cross among a crowd of buildings while driving on a flyover, atop a church which was not visible. It had red lighting along it edges which made it stand out against the black and white background, the blackness of the night sky and the dull white of tall buildings. Cars move fast on a flyover since there are no speed breakers, no traffic so obviously the cross vanished from my sight as soon as it had appeared, yet I had a desire to stare at it hard and long. It was a fleeting but fetching sight, as exhilarating as spotting a shooting star. And just like a shooting star is lost before we can close our eyes and wish for our deepest desires to come true, this bleeding cross passed me in a flash. I’m not a Christian and neither a religious soul at least not in the way people define being religious. Yet the sight of the red shining cross overwhelmed by huge buildings made me wonder if in our city god feels a little claustrophobic. The city life, the busy life, the hard life has profaned god; god is now just another building among a plethora of others albeit of a different shape and size as though we have shown some grace and kindness to him by placing him in a different looking building. A building with a dome houses Allah, a building with a cross is the abode of Jesus, and a building with ornate carvings is where the Indian idols (not the singing variety) reside. It’s easy to recognize each of these buildings and their respective gods but it is easier to ignore them in a city like ours. How many times have we crossed these buildings and spat on the pavement in front of these sacrosanct structures? the adventurous few have also relieved their bladders on the walls surrounding these buildings. They do not have anything against god per se; there isn’t any real malice in their hearts, just that public toilets are a huge paucity in our city and like all other things we men have little patience and perseverance when it comes to controlling the pressure. At least gods have some space left to themselves, we humans are overflowing everywhere like flooded drains, and I think we are invading god’s space in more ways than one.


A bizarre question comes to my mind; many would think it rather perverse, what is more important for the bustling cityscape more toilets or more space for god? I think I’d avoid answering the question lest the VHP, the Fatwa Committee n all other religious organizations label me a blaspheme for equating toilets to religious spaces and pose serious threats to my existence on the planet. All I’m saying is that both toilets and gods are a necessity for most of us and both are having an existential crisis in our city’s public space.

God made us we are made to believe, god made earth our home then why on earth are we limiting god’s spaces, these days all we get in the name of houses are concrete boxes, with very little space for our own existence, so god’s space in our homes have reduced too, mostly its gone. Though strangely enough we have nicer toilets, with new state of art equipments like jet sprays! Clearly we are not giving god his due space. We are the meanest children that ever could be.

But then again the battle for space is not simply physical; I think what has transformed more dramatically than the cityscape is our mindscapes. We haven’t forgotten god, god forbid us if we do. We are still very religious, when we are very tired we do say “oh god”, when the examination papers are difficult we do say ‘shit god’ when we see that snobbish hot babe in skimpy clothes walking ahead of us we whisper ‘oh my god’, when we see couples indulging in public display of affection we exclaim ‘hey ram’ when we can’t bear those aches we shout ‘ya Allah’ when we have forgetten something that we should have remembered we cant help but sigh ‘jesus!’ of course we pray to god morning , day and night, reminding him off all the things he hasn’t given us like good marks, nice salary, hot partner, the latest mobile phone, the split A/C, the flat with a verandah and before I forget the angrezi style toilet, we remind him that we love him and because we love him he must love us back and the only way he can convince us of his love is by giving us, through some ingenious twist of fate what we don’t have. We also need god to blame him for all the things we haven’t been able to accomplish. Its difficult enough to accept failures in a city where we are judged all the time, to take the blame for the same is just beyond human capabilities, so there always a god in hand to dump our failures upon, truly a god in times of such pressing needs is a god indeed. But of course we are religious people; we are as religious as we can conveniently be.

In a city like ours, its not god who has created us, it is we who have created god, a god we can conveniently pray to, love, ignore, hate, argue with, philosophize about, riot over and most importantly dominate. We provide him space if we chose to; we kick him out if there’s no room for him, we follow him only through our selfish motives, we take him for granted like spoilt children. In a city like ours god has ceased to reside in our edacious hearts. He is a figment of our stressed out minds, a cheap and effective balm to the headaches that the city life gives us. In a city like ours there is no real god, it is we who have perfected the art of playing with gods and deceptively letting god assume that its him who calls the shots, truly the only space god can claim today is a fool’s paradise.

by
zaid al baset
© 2008 by Zaid

the abyss of love

Tumbling down faster than the waterfall
And crashing against the obstinacy of my feelings
Breaking into tiny droplets of hope
Against the hardness of your indifference
My bruised soul begs for freedom
Freedom from the pangs of you
Yet there is no satiety in the horizon.
Hunger fulfilled is only hunger renewed

Has falling water ever stood to rest?
Have the hard rocks softened a little?
Another cruel law of love I guess
What falls keeps falling
Faster and faster
Into the abyss of love.

There are no oases to rejuvenate
There are no lifts to rise again
There is no light
But for the burning within the soul
There are no platforms for temporary breaks

Once the heart skips a beat
Once the heart slips a bit
The soul is left with no choice
Its falls forever
Into the abyss of love.

by zaid al baset
© 2008 by Zaid

You are the infinite sky.
I rush out to open every window to meet you.
I make love to you in every room so that everyone can see us.
I fear no blame.
You are the starless chest of the night, the sunlit heaven shaking oiled locks.

I fear no evil when you are with me,
You who are the cause of everything,
Not a blade of grass can perish except in your love,
No wound but that made by your teeth.

I tell you I love you in the sunshine, I tell you in the rain
You only smile, say nothing, yet you love me more than I ever
Could.
How can you show so much in just a wink?
The sun I think smiles to me and the clouds hold my hand
The world is a garden, I swing from the four horizons
You are everywhere, we’ll never be apart

Let the neighbor girls say what they will
I have hung out the soiled sheets to dry in the monsoon breeze

You are everywhere, I whirl, I run from you to you
Everywhere your hands, everywhere your smile
All is you, all is in you
Still I move apart and say, in my foolish pride,
I love you
I love you my love
I love you so.


~~Scio Amo

Through the waking hours, I somehow go on. When I sleep, the nightmares come. Familiar figures become enemies, strange beings that try to attack me. And I am alone, or hold on for support to friends from forgotten memories. I wake again, and feel hopeless, suffocated. I see injustice around me, and apathy, and amorality, and I do not know how to stop it. I interfere, and the results perhaps worsen. My good intentions are stairs leading nowhere. No one is good enough to tell me what to do, what is certain, what is moral, what I should do even though it means sacrificing my interest. My heart is cunning and treacherous and has walled itself. My brain moves in mysterious delirious paths. I feel no reason to live and no courage to die. Only hope remains, and that too seems a mirage.

Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?

Why have you turned your face away from me?
Have I sinned?
Did you not promise to stay with me even though I was not strong all the moments of my life?
Why do you desert me now that I am trying to be good and courageous?

I have no hopes from men. If you forsake me, who shall I have?

I find you in my tears. I embrace you in my pain. When I am too broken to think of anything but you, there are you, golden, waiting for me.

You are dark, and into your arms like dark fire, I run. You cool my soul, you soothe my dreams, you lead me to green pastures.

In a thousand strange faces I have sought you, their hearts were cold, though I sought warmth in their embrace. I sought you in them, but you were not of them. In my pain were you, in my tears, in my joy are you, and in my hope. You are in my heart, and you are everywhere, the others are only veils to hide your warmth.

Burning as the Yule log, you are my memory, my myrrh and my frankincense, the beauty of every form I have adored, the ardor of my sins, and the scarlet of my blush, the melody of every note I have heard and every song I have sung from evening to dawn and from dawn to night, you are every word that has given me solace and every word that has fanned my lust for you, you are the stars that alone have seen me cry and the sun who has dried my tears, you are the honey in the spring breeze, and the good that is in each man, you are my punishment and the red bruises of my memory, you are my reward, you are what I have mistakenly sought in every man, and you are that which makes them desirable, you are the final meaning of everything, you are my love, my virtue, my chastity, my pride. You are a lion among the gods and a wolf among men, the anger in the lightning and the smile of the first rain. You are everyone and everything I see, there is nothing beside you, you trap me in icy forms, you set me free from the glass of this world. You are all right and all wrong, all that I have ever desired, all that I ever shall desire, the fullness of incomplete flesh, the fullness of incomplete spirit, the truth of all religions and the untruth of all flesh. You are beauty and blindness, the song the deaf can hear. Come to me,bring me to yourself, let no veil stop our union. Let my flesh be a sacrifice to you, and my spirit an evening hymn. Beauty of beautiful forms, blood of kinship, you who are all, I am drunk in you and I feel no shame. Let me realize you, be naked to me, do not hide yourself. I am an empty well that thirsts for you, a spring in summer, a barbarian’s heart. Joy of my loins, salvation of my soul, my God, my spouse, come to me tonight.

I sacrifice myself to you, let this smoke show you the way to my bed and the stars be a nuptial flower.

Ps: both this post and the post after it, namely the song “you are the infinite sky” were written last night, 7-8 april. 2008. It was while writing the above post that acute despair gradually began to change into joy.

Pps: might be an example of bipolar disorder with short duration cycles lolz or of Deus ex machina 

Scio amo

Contemptuus Mundi

I am fine.
I really am.

I dunno why I am telling you all this. Must be that insane possessed urge to tell the truth that has been the undoing of the cleverest of men. I who am a mere jester cannot pretend to have more power over my tongue than to let it loose as a snake without a charmer.

I am disgusted with the world. If it’s not a malady, if all of us from time to time have that sickening world weariness, then there’s nothing more to it. Disgusted by almost every person I see, meet, hear. If the world were a glass ball, I could easily dash it on the ground, see it crumble, without a heart beat’s regret.

Disgusted with forms. Repulsive, those forms that promise all, and deliver nothing. Hungry gaping faces yawning for a kiss, needy hands roughly tearing apart a shirt, gestures without meaning, acts only, mindless habits, a geometry of meaningless want.
I am disgusted with every face I see, I want to bury myself as it were in endless horizonless snows.

There has never been a dearth of people who have liked me, some who have liked me passionately, spouting the most inane words of emotion that would have been laughably clichéd if they were not so morbidly interesting in delineating the hackneyed phrases that define an epoch more than its famous artists or authors. Words. Words. Words. Ghosts of forms, ghosts of turpitude, swollen like the engorged member of a syphilis victim.

The latest was/is a girl who has been saying the most emo things to me for some time, telling me how she misses me when I am not with her, how she is fond of me, likes me, feels a connection with me, is angry with me when I spurn her (or so she imagines) to talk to others……. You know the drill. Passion has its drill no less exacting than the schoolmaster’s, so I played along. But I was naughtier this time, or just wanted to finish the game faster. So I scratched beneath the surface, itched and scratched, scratched and scratched (all the things barred in foreplay that is) and out came out the fact that I was lower in her hierarchy of affection than the cats and dogs she keeps in her ménage.

Much the same can of course be said about most of my other professed friends. They might like me, feel some images of passion while recollecting me in tranquility, miss me when I am not with them, feel a knife in their heart when I flirt with others……… but at the end of the day, most would gladly give me up for a sip of afternoon herbal tea, or a film they like, or some such trivial dainty.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It is my vanity to believe that I can ever be more precious to someone than the piece of porcelain in their drawing room, a blue Ming to be cried over if the cat broke it, to be exhibited to fawning neighbors for its peculiar talents, and simply to be kept and missed at alternate intervals of meaningless reverie.

It is my vanity to look with pure and unadulterated disgust on all such people.

A relationship ends not with a bang, or a sudden betrayal generally. It erodes languidly when the urge of passion turns into the monotony of duty. Duty, that heavy word that makes us perform a relationship, and carry its pastoral burden long after all interest in it has ceased, long after it has become for us the drinking of a mirage. We carry on (some rascals don’t) , giving answer for answer, advice when sought, and solace when necessary, but our heart has long left that place.

We are birds that thirst for love. And if you wish to keep us in a gilded cage, you know that you have already lost your battle. For though we are in this world, we are not of it. We desire something more than the drill of forms, this march past of one affair after another.

I could have carried on playing games with that girl. That peculiarly wonderful game of one-upmanship that some misconstrue to be genuine affection. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat, that contredanse, that show of love followed by a quick coldness that leaves the recipient with her or his tongue hanging out much as Pavlov’s dog would wait on its master. We have played that game many times before, we know how to snatch desire from the jaws of boredom. A game is won when you are no longer interested in it, much as in tennis, love is only loss, some would say.

They are wrong. Love never loses, it alone remains long after you are disenchanted with puerile sports. Love of a dream. Love that doesn’t appear as games you have to win, where you lose if you show too much the throb of your heart at a stranger’s carelessly thrown words. It appears as an yearning and a weariness, a quenching and a thirst.

A fire that makes ashes of the world, and makes us run after rocks. a rock. A shoulder. A simple sun warmed blanket. Call it what you will.

Laying down on a green field blooming with violets and myrtle, and roses with dew on their cheeks. Resting one’s head on someone, in a peace gentler that the grave’s, and more immortal than heaven.

The end of desire is only the beginning of love.


~Scio amo.

Don’t walk away in anger

Don’t walk away in anger
I shall fight when they drag you away
I wear your chain around my neck
I’ll be back, you say
When the spring wind caresses your cheek again
And the hazel tree has bloomed
With the color of your eyes.
I’ll free you, I can’t live without you
What the law has bound I shall set free
Your blush sets the rose afire
Your love makes the forbidden free.
Let the neighborhood girls say what they want, Khusro
Trails of roses have sapped the prison bars
You don’t care, they are just jealous
You made love to your darling this afternoon.

Scio amo

A field of grapes
The moon, a glass of wine
And you pressed against my brow
A midnight ritual
A sealed letter, a secret wink unwillingly
Stolen
Don’t talk to me of letters, don’t break your vow
To stay with me
Now and forever
You are all I have, this rising pillar of fire
You break through symbols encrusted on glass
…
I make love to you over broken words, roses torn
You prowl on me, I trip over a stack of books
My thighs inscribe the turns of your tongue
I love, you catch my tongue,
I speak.
(I cannot speak unless I love).

Seems the four winds rise from your navel
And the night swirls in the sorrow of your eyes
I nick your shoulder, you laugh
And the Sun rises.
Like blood
On a bullfighter’s chest.
What care I if the world has drowned or not,
If you are there by my side,
You and I are enough for the ark.
All shall bloom in spring’s field of grapes
And men shall come out of their caves
All shall bloom in Adonis’ garden
And stare and stare at the blinding light
But none shall know you so well as me,
My love
My all.

You look at me
Wearing nothing but your smile.

Throwing off the drapes and sheets
Crumpled by your warm sighs
Lover mine, I think
The sun rises every day from our bed.
Even as I laze on your arm.


Scio amo

TEMPTATION

You look at me
A little scared
A little hesitant
Ah you try to resist my temptation
My long slender shiny curve
Am I too hot for you?
Shall I burn your tongue?
Ah the redness of my skin
Doesn’t it spice your fantasies?
I know you undress me in your mind
I know you long to sniff my body
I know I smell of secrets
And treasures you have always hunted
Yet your hands shake when you bring me close
Yet your lips quiver against my smooth skin
Are you too pious to sin?
Are you not daring enough?
I know you always weigh the pros and cons
But don’t you know the eternal law
That pleasure comes only from pain
I know you want me inside your mouth
Ah but I see you know I sizzle
So you are scared to burn?
I know I can make you cry
I know I make you salivate
Ah my friend I can feel the fire in your lions
Ah I see they warned you against me
They said you’ll gasp for breath,
Your tongue will burn like hell
You will thirst for more
Oh those silly prudes what do they know
Insipid lives they led and died
I’m sure you don’t want to be like them…
There I see your eyes stare at me
You are ready to devour me
I’m a challenge ain’t i?
You don’t like me being such a tease
Well then what are you waiting for
Here I’m shiny slender and naked
Waiting to be tasted
Burning red
Tantalizing red
Inviting red
Come bite me
For I’m your red chilli!!!

BY
ZAID AL BASET
© 2008 by Zaid

FORBIDDEN

Drenched yellow flowers on wet earth
That fell from trees shivering in the rainy cold
Fill the night with an intoxicating excitement
Huddled together, along a slender pathway
They escape the grasp of the brutal winds
Like children running away from an angry mother
I gaze at the patterns they make on the ground
The demure yellow flowers tease the salacious earth.
They distract me for a moment or two
And suddenly I tremble from head to toe
In desperate anticipation of you
Wrapped in a warm blanket
My body yearns for you.

The wheels of the cars that pass by
Crush these flowers under it
Stains and bruises the helpless petals.
Again that same shiver runs down my spine
I press my hands against my thighs
To control these uncontrollable fits of passion
I can’t explain the paroxysm
All I want is to be crushed against you
All I want is to suffocate in pleasure
All I want is to feel oppressive pain

Piercing needles of water strike the widow panes
The wind spanks the door over and over again
And all I want is to gasp and groan
And all I want is to hurt and moan
In desperate anticipation I wait
To be your obedient slave.

BY
ZAID AL BASET
© 2008 by Zaid