I called her Witch-Mouse, for the dawn-glimmer
hung on her heels and the keen-eared, sassy
bat knew her by name. “Call me your mother,”
she said, parting her robes. “Call me Ommy.”
Her dark legs straddled me, guiding myself
inside; so deep that our pubes touched. Witch-Mouse
raised her hips and thrust down. She was part-elf
and part-prophetess. In the tiled bathhouse
all that she told me then came true. Outside
her small Bedouin daughter kneaded bread
dough by the wood-fired stove. But Witch-Mouse cried
and grabbed my ass and bit me until red
mixed with our cum. “Ibni,” she moaned, “my son.
I love you even more for what we’ve done.”
][][
Note: In Egyptian Arabic “Ibni” or “Ebni” means “my son” and “Ommy” translates as “my mother.”
In Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (ii,i) Puck explains that Oberon, king of fairyland, and Queen Titania are keeping rival courts as the aftermath of a quarrel about Titania taking a human boy as a lover:
The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy …
And, as we all know, all is fair in otherworldly love and war.
* * *
Night is over. Dawn will end our affair.
Once more the sun creeps over Oberon’s
Hill. My sweet changeling with cumin hair,
sleep, sleep, sleep. Dream …
…. of ruttish nymphs and fawns.
Dream of your aroused mother who snuggles
you tight between her breasts. Your mother’s milk
is still sticky on your lips. My nipples
ache …
…. Dream, dream, dream. Under buttercup silk
and the sighing grass dream of another
night of pleasure. Little prince. Little joy.
I prayed to the gods for a new lover
and they sent me a lovely human boy.
Dream of fairy lechery as you lie
with me. Dream …
In certain Dead Sea Scrolls, namely, “The War of the Sons of Light Against the Daughters of Darkness,” also known as “Bellum Fabula” (the War Scroll), there is a tale which describes “an eschatological war in heaven,” one which pitted the male elements of the heavenly army against the female elements. Led on one side by the usurper,Yahweh of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and on the other by a Semitic war goddess, know as either Lux Ferous, Morning Star or Light Bringer (the literal translations of the gender-neutral name Lucifer), who was eventually defeated by Yahweh and cast down. Unlike in the “Book of Revelation” and the “Book of Isaiah,” where a very male Lucifer becomes ruler of Hell, the “Bellum Fabula” talks of a return of the female element to heaven, bringing equilibrium and order to a world that views Eve and all mortal women as “the mothers of all sin.”
* * *
In the “Book of Lux Ferous” we extol
Madam General of the seraphic
army. In Yahweh’s “Mein Kampf,” his war scroll,
though, the old man warred against all sapphic
wisdom the heavens had to offer. Sin,
he now claimed, was female. We’re told his sons
dimmed the sky as they flew, beating bat-skin
wings and rattling their sabers. In Milton’s
tale we took up arms against tyranny
but we were cast down, our flesh torn by claws
and blood-soaked maws. But that’s just one story.
The Light Bringer follows older laws
than what is found in these testaments.
I sing of Lady Lucifer’s vengeance.
“There are love dogs
no one knows the names
of” — Jalal al-Din Rumi
Can you read saffron? Can you make sex charms?
Do you know the name of night rain? Glamor
clamors at my backdoor. A shadow swarms
against the glass. Go and find me ginger
root and hemlock, mandrake and Hecate’s bane,
yarrow and Balm of Gilead. I’ll teach
you what Sycorax taught me; how night rain
needs to be seduced; how shameless the beach
is at low tide, the only spot for sex
magic; how to bind cheating dogs to you
through your own cum. I will teach you that hex,
taboo for my kith and kin, that voodoo
curse to enslave love dogs. The big payback.
A hex from which there is no going back.
Passing through the door, I drift nearby you,
spoon your sleeping body. I love your queer
hunger. You said your mother was Zulu,
taught you how to wield a boar-hunting spear. “But there’s more than one way to catch a boar,”
you said, sucking my cock deep down your throat.
You were my babysitter, took much more
than my virginity that night. “Devote
your soul to pleasure, call upon shadows
to be your lovers,” you instructed me
as I, on my tip toes, released rainbows
deep in your cunt and across your belly.
Playing with death, you said, “cum in my bum.”
You said, “dead boy cum, I love dead boy cum.”
“I’m not a good lay/ I’m a straight razor,”
Judy Grahn, “Edward the Dyke”
There was no grief. The summer radio
played “you can have my husband/ but don’t mess
with my woman” all day long. Your afro
gleamed as we cruised in your Austin Princess
downtown. Playtime approached. After playtime
came dawn. Dusk and dawn. But you, drunk on spunk,
the first exile, loved love during wartime,
with your kerosene myth, junk in your trunk
and duck’s arse cut. Girls called you Liliti;
I called you my “mama-jan;” my surreal
strap-on sister. My roots and the orgy
where I was conceived. One hand on the wheel
while your other played with my head between
your thighs, licking your clit stiff and obscene.
I can sense your scent in the wind’s distress,
in tastes that ravish — the grape and anise
that grow on your grave. I wear the headdress
of my mistress. I carry her chalice
and her stone knife. In the mist of slumming
flowers and wet earth you have hung over
my bed, a silent silver thing, shining
through tree branches. I have pulled you closer,
sucked long at your foggy breast, played with your
wet and hazy clit. If sadness can haunt,
so can need, so can greed. You are cocksure
with what you are holding. With what you want.
joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been,
joining your dead lust with my living sin.
Actually, all Rumi’s love poems are tragic and bittersweet. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (September 30, 1207 – December 17, 1273) was a 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic and quiet possibly the greatest poet the world has ever produced. Legend has it that one day while in the market place he heard a goldsmith tapping on a golden bowl and the music so astounded him he began to slowly turn about in wonder. From this he founded the Order of the Whirling Dervishes.
None of that matters in understanding this poem. What matters is that for all his talent and understanding of love and God and poetry, Rumi had one great love: Shams.
Shams-e Tabrizi was a wandering Sunni Muslim searching and praying for someone who could “endure my company.” From November 1244 to December 1248 the two men were inseparable and then, on the night of December 5, they heard a knock on the door. Shams went to answer it and was never seen again. It is rumored that it was Rumi’s own son (or some jealous followers) who killed Shams, but of course we’ll never know.
What we do know is that Rumi spent the rest of his life looking for Shams, never to find him. He wrote thousands of poems and through them all he constantly talks of Shams returning, “When Shams comes back from Tabriz,/ he’ll put just his head around the edge/ of the door to surprise us, just like this.” Except Shams will never come back and Rumi knows it and this is why this poem breaks me every time I read it. I have no patience for certain modern Persian scholars whose own homophobia tries to explain away Rumi’s and Shams’ love as simply platonic. This is one of the greatest love stories ever told and they do a disservice to both Rumi and lovers everywhere by derogating it.
We are all haunted by the ghosts of past loves that will never return. I draw my inspiration from Rumi and his beloved Shams.
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.
If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
to “die for love,” point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.
The soul sometimes leaves the body, the returns.
When someone doesn’t believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.
How did Joseph’s scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.
How did Jacob’s sight return?
Huuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us
