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
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
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 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
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
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
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
Friday, April 18, 2008
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
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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
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
Thursday, April 10, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
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
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
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
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