Show me the places of your agony, O Christ, o spring
O first born harvest, show me where the scythe has cut through thee
My lips thirst for your wounds, my brother, my spouse
I long to feel your pain, immerse me, o Christ, o stormy wind
Nothing about me is true or sincere except my prayer to you
My longing for you, my brother, my spouse
Forgive me and come to me, o dark sea, my brother, my spouse
My heart has pined for you since I knew love, do not abandon me
Forget your just wrath to me, come to me
None but you can turn me towards the path of penitence and righteousness
Do not abandon me, my parents have abandoned me, my friends have left me
Do not leave me, my sweet brother, my spouse, let me tend to your wounds
Where the roman soldier pierced your chest with a spear, and the blood flew out
Of your fair chest, like doves from a cleft in the rocks
Your hair is matted with sweat and blood, let me brush your hair dry and clean
My brother, my spouse, do not abandon me
My lips are parched for your lips where the roman soldier wetted you with vinegar
Your lips are wine-red, how fair are you my brother, how emaciated like a soldier in a Hospital, if you leave, the candles will all be extinguished
Do not leave me, show me a sign that you still love me, my brother, my sweet spouse
How handsome is my brother as he rides to war
Beware o night, o evil, o solitude, my brother is with me
See the crimson sash he wears across his soldier, with the golden and purple cross
My brother is with me, and each day is a test where we fight against the forces
Of the world
The forces of life rise in torrent after torrent, o death where is your conquest?
O misery, where is your victory, the Cross rides triumphant

~

scio

I gaze at you with another’s eye
As you pass by the road
I borrow a pair of binoculars to look at you
My eyes have lost their sense of shame
This road could be a sea
And you could be bathing there

This moment belongs neither to time nor to eternity
Neither to desire nor to its absence.

~scio

Love is not enough

I don’t want to understand what you say
I only want to watch as you speak
The angry frown in your face
I want to kiss it away, and make you angry again
I don’t want to understand what you say
I only want you to make hate to me
Like a tiger mounts a calf
And then when I am under you
I want you to pour me a glass of wine
And make it all up again
Pretend anger, pretend love, I don’t want your love
Only understand me, love only suffocates
Make me dance, and I shall be yours for today
Put your hand on my shoulder, don’t look at me
I want to desire you today
Love is not enough, love is never enough,
I only want to dance today

~Scio

A piece of chocolate?
A cup of cappuccino?

Self-denial?
Renunciation? Refusal?
Of things cerebral?

How much?

How much does a bite of the heart cost?

- The Shepherdess

Some gods are so beautiful
That when you look at them
You will want to die
Your body will want to burst
When you look on their piercing eyes
For there is not even one organ in you
That can contain their beauty
You will masturbate and masturbate
Till every bone in your body
Will be sated and languid
But still your mind will know no rest
A nameless pain will bruise
The interior of your heart
And you will want to leave
The prison of your flesh
To become the soul
To become the twilight sky

~scio

Only in my sorrow I find you
You for whom I have no name
You are the bridegroom who comes
In the middle of the night
When I am asleep
You are the sorrow that has no name
When I speak of God, I speak of you
You for whom I have no name
And everyone thinks that I am a saint
I whose sin has no name
I see you everywhere
In every thing, that has no name
When I am naked I feel your gaze
And my body burns with a nameless shame
When two make love, there is always a third
You are that third which has no name
Never removing your eyes from mine
You make love to another man
My soul becomes a bird and leaves my body
To make love to you in the space between you
And the other man
You are the love that has no name



~scio

I think it was first in college that I became aware that it takes two to live. But I somehow convinced myself that what I wanted from my Other would be happiness. I yearned for happiness, more perhaps even for happiness than for love. Or rather I confused the two, I wanted the One who would make me happy. I dammed myself from everyone else, everyone who could hurt me, who could leave me. And for three years, I condemned myself to a long night waiting for the one who would never come. I still look for Him. I covered myself with images, to stop myself from feeling anything for anyone, to live without love, I lived like I was dead. I never let my desires get the better of me, or rather I controlled them almost perfectly. There were images to satisfy myself at a particular hour of the night. There were stories to satisfy myself when everyone slept. If the feeling of loneliness became too overwhelming, I would jerk off the feeling, there is no greater antidote to desire than a healthy round of masturbation. I think my flirting with others was also, partially, a form of masturbation, a need to remain in control, get hold of the thing, keep it. I genuinely care for each and every one I have ever flirted with, each has been a dear friend, and some of them have been ones for whom I would have done anything to help them. Yet I flirted with them knowing it might hurt them because I was not in control over myself at the moment I thought I was in the greatest power over myself. I needed to feel I was a part of them, that they were a part of me, that I was a leaf that had lost its individuality along with its selfhood, which by falling had joined a heap of red and golden dreams lying under a tree. One cannot be happy unless one dies, to live is to be drawn out of matter, a loneliness out of swirling clay. To get a form is to be alone, to live, to think, to feel, is to be unhappy. To live is to be exiled from the eternal and infinite harmony that animates gods and corpses, that utter contentment in which one becomes united to all that is, till nothing is left to desire. I had to jerk off this feeling. I had to live. I caged myself in fantasies. Anything bad would happen to me, and I would retreat into my fantasy, weave a story while crying in the pillow. Weave a story where He would make everything alright. If God did not exist, Voltaire has rightly said, it would be necessary to invent him. A theosexual who flirts with everyone, who cannot form normal friendships, who must flirt with every man and woman he meets, just to feel wanted, sufficient, who ends up hurting the ones he loves the most, such was the paradox I made myself. I flirt, therefore I am.

For sometime now, I have been changing again, I feel it. I feel like I want to be overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it all, without having to control that beauty by turning it into an object of masturbation, and jerking it off. Parallely, I feel a need to let the web of relationships I had formed to remove my loneliness; I am feeling a need to drown in that web. I don’t want anything from anyone anymore; I just need to feel that exquisite feeling which comes from self-abnegation. To perform one’s duty to others, expecting nothing, no love, in return, it is alike medieval and sensuous. I yearn to abandon myself, and abandon my desires; I want to flow out in the web because now I know that only by becoming a river can one purify oneself, cleanse myself of the guilt I have incurred in raising expectations I could not fulfil, in giving love yet poisoning it with selfishness. I want to lose my self. I want to be free from myself. I want to be one with the images, and look beyond them, beyond the dense layers of metaphors and promises, illusions of permanence and power in which I had bound myself, into Existence, bare existence, stretching like a smooth sheet in which I have lost myself. I felt a great desire today to kneel down. I don’t want to strip everything anymore, I don’t need to make everyone naked anymore, I don’t need to know myself anymore. Most of all, I want to be washed away by desire without wanting to control it, and especially by this desire to serve. I want my ego to die. To die is the greatest romance, that is why all true romances end in tragedy. When you have nothing more left to keep for yourself, are you not dead? When you love, are you not dead? When you make love, when you peak, is it not called the little death? And when you come alive again after the little death, or when you wake after sleep, is there not an overwhelming melancholy? Is it not the melancholy, the regret of being alive? But I am not talking of physical death when I speak of what I want, what I am, yearning to, experience, but the greater death, the spiritual death. The physical death, suicide as it is wrongly called, is not the death of the self, the literal meaning of suicide, but only the final, last and most successful, attempt to mark out one’s existence. Only those who desire life too well can commit suicide.

One cannot be active unless one surrenders. He who surrenders can do anything for he is freed from all rules, all confinements. One cannot experience desire unless one has abandoned oneself to the danger of desiring. Those who live in the world have never known desire, those who have left it feel it but cannot give it a name. To see something beautiful without wanting to f-ck it, to experience the glorious moment when everything becomes hued with beauty because at last one has let go of all hang-ups, to see a nipple exposed to the air and it brush one’s lips, without any urgent need to touch that, it feels as though I were tied to a bed, two hands and two feet tied to the bedposts, unable to take control, unable to possess, have you ever felt it? It is glorious. To orgasm again and again, but not allowing the body to intervene, to climax again and again while the flesh is rigidly confined so that the soul can take over, the body and the mind receives such pleasures then, they are washed away, it seems as though I were floating and tides were passing over me, as though I had become an ocean of bliss. To see beautiful creatures, to see creatures in love without wishing to possess them, till all creatures become beautiful because desires are robbed of their specificity, desire for this and not that, for this curve and not that, for this hardness and not that, desires fly away, run amok, desiring everything like little children who have not been taught that is beautiful and that is not, it is glorious. To sink in pleasure, it is glorious. To feel that pain is pleasure when it is incurred to serve others, it is glorious. To feel that death is the sweetest bliss when one dies for one’s beloved, it is glorious. To feel the pain of seeing something beautiful but not having it, it is glorious. To acknowledge that pain and not strive to possess that beauty, or to substitute that beauty by something which one has and can therefore control, it is glorious. To reject images and seek the Real, it is glorious. To drown in images wanting never to reach the surface, feeling the pain that images bring, it is glorious. To feel pain, it is glorious. To see beauty covered by a veil, knowing one can never penetrate, it is glorious.

I knelt down today. It was glorious. If I ever meet Him someday, I would kneel down and forget myself. It would be glorious.

~scio

Is it a greater pleasure to watch you make love to others
Or to make love to you myself?
I carry a cross on my shoulder
You bear to the altar the perfume of wild flowers.
Is it better to have loved, and never to have spoken
Or is it better to have spoken, and watched that love droop with the years?
You say that I love you, I say I will always love you a little less
So that tomorrow I can love you a little more.

Man loves only once in his life, and he never recognizes it
And when he is past his prime he finds a name for it
And searches for it in others, but it never returns.

~scio

Mon café

It was winter, with rain clouds inside
Me, hovering over me,
I gave you a call

We met, we talked, and we saw each other
Over coffee…deep and dark, my coffee.
We sipped, we spoke, we smoked
Under the melting sun, in the darkening city,
I listened to your hopes, your desires
Shared your taste in movie and music.
The hours called us for another coffee
We talked, we laughed, remained silent
Sometimes with reason, sometimes without one
Over coffee…deep and dark, my coffee.
You listened to my French, my broken Spanish
Gave ears to my wings, my desires
Hours flew, seasons flew, making the way
For a song of the next December.

- The Shepherdess

The Music of Aulos

A storm in the fiery poppy field
Intoxicant-nymphs in chest’s left corner
And stimulating fancies
Like old Bacchus-days.
Gushes of blood running
In the veins…
The common phenomenon of
Not knowing and wanting to know –
If my shadow plays your body’s harp
Like the way you play with the child-woman.

- The Shepherdess

The night is one with the sea, the sea is one with me
Nothing exists except the flowering tree, you and me
Who do I desire but you?
Three walked, a fourth came, and I lost my sense in love for the fourth
Now all is me
What is this infinite happiness, what is this sea of immortality?

~scio amo

Close your eyes and see him
Why do you search for him here and there?
Why do you search for him in every face?
Why do you wander like a madman from forest to mountain?
Close your eyes and see him
Why do you search for him in every face? Why do you invite strangers to your bed?
He is the beauty of every face, though even the earth has not seen him
Love him who has no form
He is in your heart, the torches burn
The carriage runs, vanishing now and then
If the body burns, does the soul vanish?
I speak only in metaphors, his beauty is without form
Why do you seek him in man?

And if you cannot be satisfied with the one you love
The one you were betrothed to, then o unfortunate one, burn
The scriptures gave him to you, your heart chose him
If you cannot still be satisfied, then burn
I have seen the infinite and yet I long for the finite
Who can be more unfortunate than me?

What is this joy I feel? I sing of my joy
The sky is full, the kalbaishakhi comes,
I am in your heart, yet I delude myself you are not there
All is you, I have vanished
With your sword you have destroyed me, the sky sparkles with lightning
This sorrow is joy, this sea of absence that washes me away is joy
I have reached a state where I cannot be unhappy anymore
What ever you give me, gives me joy
I neither seek salvation, nor do I seek this world
You are all, what shall I seek?
How can I be wrong, when you keep me in your lap?

O you who wear the moon in your hair, o destroyer of passion
O terrible fear, o you from whom I seek escape
O lord of fear, o lord of nightmare, o lord of the infinitely cruel and infinitely returning
I seek nothing, o death, what shall death do to me when I have you
The greater fear chases away the less
O thirst, o lord of elements, you are the fear and loneliness at the heart of things
You give sorrow to the world, you smear it with ashes
You destroy love, you make all men orphans
You take them back into yourself again
What death shall I fear? What fear shall I fear? What lack of love shall I fear? What failing of duty shall I fear? What ill-repute shall I fear?
I strike my hands on your unyielding chest, you keep your doors closed
O fear that lies at the heart of things, o insecurity
In my fear I saw you, in my fear I asked you to rescue me
Now my fear has become my saviour, my fear showed you to me
I do not want this fear to leave me, fear is my dearest friend
In my fear I saw the sky, I saw the sun in the eclipse
One moment I am unconscious, the next I preach consciousness to the world
I sought you in form, now I see you in everything
Who is as fortunate as me?
I asked you to become finite for me, now the infinite washes me away
Who is as fortunate as me?
The night is one with the sea, the night is one with me
Nothing exists except the flowering tree, you and me
Who do I desire but you?
Three walked, a fourth came, and I lost my sense in lust for the fourth
Now all is me
What is this infinite happiness, what is this sea of immortality?
I am numb, yet my senses have multiplied
I feel as though the world has become a thousand worlds
And I am living a thousand lives
I am a corpse on whom a thousand sensations wash away
I have stopped living as a metaphor, I describe my own sensations
I can do no wrong, for God works through me

Your body is as lightning, your face is the moon
I shiver, yet my bones are full with satisfaction
Let others receive wealth and glory, you alone are enough for me
And this marrow-deep satisfaction, this ache of being well-spent
Night and dawn have met in my body and become one
Let others seek freedom, even death sings to me and singes me with pleasure
For you make love to me when I die even as you did during my lifeThe serpent that coils around your neck enters me
I become the starless night
I cannot share, so I chose as my betrothed him who has no part
Now he has made me partless
My bones ache, my marrow sings in ecstasy



~~the wolf

Tale of a threesome

There is a me. Let us call him X. X is a lover of pleasure of all sorts, but the more kinkier and dangerous, the better. He loves freedom more than anything, flirts with everyone, is reckless, narcissist, grey, vicious at times, and plays games without a twinge of morality, dark and cruel, loves being on top, is fun, witty, charming and definitely attractive, all sun and light, but totally amoral. He is a wine that goes well with both women and men. He is promiscuous and delights in infidelity, for promiscuity prevents him from becoming the slave of any one person, and because like a mad drunkard, he seeks to behold every form in which the beauty of the divine beloved is manifested. He knows the hearts of men, and knows how to give them pleasure, but he always withholds the supreme pleasure. He never loses.

There is a me. Let us call him Y. He loves games too much to leave them, but he is moral at heart, more or less, as far as possible, is responsible to those he loves, dreads hurting them, helps people. He is the sweetness that keeps things simmering and intense, he loves and is loved. Those he loves, whether they are related to him by blood or not, he calls family. Y can give his life for the ones he loves, but not the freedom of his body and mind, his inner sovereignty. In return, he can give all freedom to the ones he loves, and yet love them fully.

There is a me. Let us call him Z. No man or woman has access to him. He is dark and brooding, light and cheerful, he is always faithful and never in word or deed will he ever betray the one he loves. His heart is narrow, for with the maniac, possessive and majestic love he can give, he can have space for only one person in his core, his base, his everything, he can make the one person of his dreams fly. Infidelity, physical or mental, infidelity that lasts even for the winking of an eye, in a stolen and quickly buried-into-the-subconscious glance at a stranger, is the one thing he cannot tolerate, and since all men and women he has met are partially or fully unfaithful to him and to others, he has allowed till now, no one access to him. To love Z, to be loved by Z, you must forsake desire for everything and everyone except him, become a monk, and then he shall initiate you into a dangerous and cruel love, the grandest love the world can see. He will surrender completely and unreservedly to that one, and will receive complete and willing surrender. Z sees his love in everything, and his love shall see Z in everything, in every meaning and beauty and form, and all directionless metaphors shall lose their power and collapse into the spring dust. Their love shall last till death and beyond. He craves a love that is divine, whether the divine be manifested in form or not. He has tasted of ecstasy already, and will settle for nothing less. For the one he loves, Z can give not only his life, but his everything.

If and when Z were to meet the right one, X would cease to be promiscuous, for in the one Z loves, X, Y and Z shall see the world, see the all. Z shall have no problem in being faithful, for the world shall be metaphors for the one he loves.

every step you take with me, i shall take with you

love me more than anyone else in the world, i shall love you more than all creation

love me and let me be your everything, everything you love, everything you hate, everything you are mad about, love me only, i shall love you only, and every person i shall love, i shall love in you, through you, and for your sake only



~~~the Wolf

Homecoming

Travelling amidst swarm of bees,
Blue seats bluer than the Robin;
From one city to another,
Eyes weaving villages and villes
In-between.

Little kisses running wild
On my neck,
Dreams to evade
Another heart-break.

- The Shepherdess

To the Poledancer...on his special day

For the one who reminded me that the pen's not just for words.
Love,
The Polestar

Holmes and Watson

Was jus thinking, of nuffin, of everyfin, and how much she has come to mean in my life. We never talked about it, we didnt discuss it, and yet, somehow, i dunno how, she filled up so many of the missing pieces in my soul. She found me, though she didnt know that back then, a lonely wreck. She never talked about it, we never talked about it, she made me Scio. Days passed, months passed, years passed, i dunno how, she became my companion. And slowly all those darknesses, shadows, monsters under the bed and behind the wall, we never talked about them, she never knew about them till that night we spoke, they crept away, slowly receding. Nowadays they reappear only as sharp, momentary pangs after a fleeting, i dunno why am doing this, flirtation with some unknown person i dont care about, in the bried realization that i am giving them pleasure, they are giving me pleasure, but there is no happiness here, just a mild amusing friendship. I dont even desire those i flirt with. Who do i desire? Honestly, i dunno. Confused, maybe. Dunno. Flirting's fun, as long as you know it's jus about friendship. Love? Does it exist? Who knows? I certainly don't. I jus know i like her. And yes, in my own weird way, I love her. Never thought i would say this bout anybody. It's weird, and the feeling, when i admit it, leaves me shaken. But i love her, and its exhilarating.

Like suddenly someone has messed about with a heap of red and brown leaves that had been carefully collected, and now, are flying once more in the air.

i dont expect stuff from her. And that also makes things great fun. It's always new with us. And it's awesome when suddenly, in a precious moment of soppy heart-to-heart talk, we don't generally do that sort of thing, its awefully hard, she suddenly admits she likes me back. Dunno what happiness is really. The sort of thing you read in books, dunno bout that, never had that kind of unalloyed joy and all that. i dunno what happiness is, mayb i'll never have it, mayb its not meant for people like me. But i like it when she leans on me, and i lean on her, it sure feels like what you read about it in the books, and all that sort of crap.

Hell, am talking too much, and talking's not our style of dealing with things, not mine at any rate. But i think i owe her an explanation bout what i meant when i sent her that sms in the middle of the night. Talking so much leaves me drained, and a little doubtful, luck is not meant for people like me, mayb she'll leave me one day. Hell, who cares? I love her, that should be enough for now. And everyone agrees we are a great pair, better than Laurel and Hardy, better than Holmes and Watson, better than Superman and Lex Luthor. God willing, we'll be a legend someday.


image captions: dont analyse it to death, watson
huh! easy for you to say, holmes, its not you who will havta put this all in words

Ca ne va pas, ca ne va pas

If you ask me to cry you a river,
lemme tell you I can't;
I am a strong woman
behind the veil of shyness
sipping the cup of strength
every other minute,
driving the car called Life.

- The Shepherdess

5.40 am: an SMS flew over the Atlantic

How does one traverse
Ten thousand light years
Between two souls?
Between two bodies?
How long does it take exactly?
Ten thousand light years-
The distance printed in the pages of Physics...
Or does the barrier mocks at you...
Forever?

- The Shepherdess

I live at the edge of your scimitar
The wind rushes through my hair
As though I were reeds on the Shatt-el-Arab
And you a debauched river god

I paint you naked, telling you art is for art’s sake
Then I wash the painting away when you ain’t looking.
Life is only an excuse
To get you to strip
And spread my legs.
.
You score me as though you were the hand of God,
Virginity is a small price to pay to be able to laugh
Jesters can bring kings down on their knees.
(Though I can’t tell you what happens afterwards

Horses ride, winds blow
Why should I care for nature
When you can do better than both?


~scio amo

When the sultan’s daughter had asked for a doll
You, lord of Srirangam, came to Delhi and played the flute for her
Long gone are those days
But even now the storm comes, and memories rise like swirled sand dunes
Even now in the messed up courtyard the girls come out to drench themselves
Though they are not allowed to leave the house
It is monsoon, and you are not here,
And nothing has any meaning.

I may not have virtue but I can give my life for you
Surely that should count for something.

I was sad all evening, now I realize I can give up my life for you
I think the evening was worth it.

A squall has come in the ocean, and the boatmen, instead of chasing the waves
Want to sink the ship.

Through wind and rain and reefs and rocks I have steered my boat
Then the fog came, the images vanished, I became a moth that has left the shadows

I don’t care who tells me what
Tonight I make love thinking of God

When all the stars have blown out, and the poor man in his hovel
Has no money to light a candle in the freezing cold and gloom
You still shine, you still shine, you still shine
And the rich man in his palace fears

The day we shall meet, whether you greet me with a sword
Or a caress on my cheek, whether I am young and innocent as greenwood
Or old as a thousand unspent desires,
I shall tell you, I love you

A thousand more lives I may live
A thousand and more loves I may love
Bless me with this memory that I may never forget
It is none but you that I love
I am you, you are me, you are all this creation
Let us meet where you are all
And I am lost.




~~scio amo

Happy 30, Swas

I assume some of you, like me, have the habit of taking a warm shower after a harrowing quarrel with someone…you could take a shower, or you could sleep with her…………

I never thought I would like abstract art before I met her. Michelangelo or Caravaggio for me please, no thanks, I don’t understand a few lines and broken faces masquerading as great art. Les fauves, wild beasts……

Have you seen horses run?I imagine part of the reason men go to her is the same as why they like amphitheatres…You might as well tell her you fancy her as wave a red rag in front of a bull…

Have you ever stood at crossroads and wanted to make no choice, but blow away in all directions, like the winds, like a trail of smoke from an incense-bearer…you must swirl her in your tongue for a long time before you taste her…..she needs to be kissed, long, hard, and by someone who knows how

Her eyes dance like mountains of light. And she sees.. As Toulouse-Lautrec would see his ballerinas, his Moulin Rouge, the bare lines, the drawn faces, the shadows behind the eyes and glittering lights. Abstract art, the skeleton of a man, the bare self……She saw me, I saw her, and the rest didn’t matter…….

Have you ever drawn a picture and then watched rain fudge all the colours? Watched the canvas draining out, flowing like so many rainbow rivers, molten pieces of the blue and gold sky, have you ever held someone and broken down…old wine, even when it turns 30, only ripens…..isn’t Kilimanjaro old?

Have you seen the light of the Impressionist painters? You would know her then. That light, that light which doesn’t just serve as a backdrop to a picture, a kind of convenient companion to the chef d’oeuvre, but is the picture itself, pouring out like passion from every branch en plein air, from every pore of the skin, from every picnic basket, till finally the whole painting becomes light itself, the light walks, not caring if it is wrong or it is right, it gambols, escapes the museum…..can light be dark, can we even think straight when we meet her?.........you must watch her when she think you aren’t, and you will notice how her eyes darken with passion every time she loses control when you say something that was nice…oh, and don’t forget to play with her foot, its one of the most erogenous things around, lickability second only to a ferrero rocher…

Its okay if she broke a bed while making love. You really cant hold it against her, can you? When she is 40, buy her a new bed, and break it again.

Just sit down with her. Watch the world and all its cares vanish away as the smoking waves ripple over your muscles, teasing, stretching, warming and cooling you in turns, whispering: all your cares are gone, you are safe now, you are safe…..and you are back to the bush beyond which the forests begin…….

Play her like a Spanish guitar, she loves all things espagnol. Make a mean tequila for her, get her drunk, and take advantage….trust me, she’s the most precious thing you can bring back from a pub. (and she doesn’t have a shred of modesty, so I don’t think she’ll mind)

You make me laugh like no one can, that’s enough reason why I call you home

With her you have all the world to gain, and she has nothing to lose except her virginity….Voila, c’est la revolution quand elle aime! Don’t let her think or she’ll start thinking you feel she is ugly (blame some stupid upbringing antics), just f--- her senseless before she can think. Then tell her to play rannabati with you…..

……..


You feel like you are the luckiest man in the world because you love her and she loves you

It’s the simplest thing in life


scio amo