Dedicated to Artichoke Ash Coin – get better, sister
A poem in honor of a friend, whose name is an anagram
TWO PRINCES OF TWO TWINS
& THE TWO-HEADED CAMEL
THERE WERE TWO BRANCHES OF THE BANU Ayyub & t
hey tried to distinguish themselves in a way that would signal to the people, those whom they protected – their people, their children, their subjects and wards; it was said that before the split, the line was born of a pair of twins;
Omar ibn Rushdi al Doo and his brother Harun al Rushd ibn Mazmadoon, one was the sun – the other the moon.
And they came upon twins such as they had not seen since the first man was cast in clay; The tradition was that, after the harvest, when the seeds had been sewn, the men who had cut their princely knot would take a wife.
The twins would come upon twins so lithe, so lovely and dreamy such paradise, such heaven and hell between their thighs, inside their warm welcoming hal’hah and when the moon came out they were each with child.
So were born the Banu Ayyub, sons of Job; were to spend their lives at the knee of a Rishi, a seer, and at the madrassa, they’d learn of God and coleander; the oases and the djinni the mirage in the sands; the Banu Ayyub were destined to find a land of that became the largest city in Tel’rane.
At the masjid in the center of town, by four minarets that touched the sky as it was shy and letting go of the wind. The two sides of the family divided would fight for the city and for their pride, and each would try to buy the love of the subjects they would yet rule; each morning at speakerbox tinned at noon,
You are loved and you are doomed
But in darkness there is truth
In sin there is penitence and there is grave;
In the silence of thought is the peace of the sage;
Seek god, seek love, and don’t be afraid
Of the Fire that Burns and the Fate that awaits
The Sinners and the People elect, selected before their birth that death, would convey them to a garden next to a bridge with a riddling troll standing guard. Straight out of Persia, Zarathurstra thought that upon our death each one of us walked across a bridge as wide as a knife as sharp as remorse as cold as a lie, as hard to cross as it was to lie to a two-headed camel who made it big, all the way to the Sheikh of the City of Sha’n Hal’al Balna’ri; ante-chamber of the womb.
From a young age they learned the ways of the world, from the doctor of medicine and of the Faith, pure as snowater true as the gasp of the blindman who sees the heavens at last.
4
The twins raised their children to rule and to be merciless if needs be, then needs be; while one dined the devil on choice cut meat, the other sat in the silence of Utz, in the sweating lodge as he took, in the breath of the soul and shook.
Prince Shi could tap on the wind and shatter it, peer through the other side and draw it closed, like a curtain to be drawn and pulled at will. The devil offered an imitation gift, to get what one wanted at the cost of not having what one needs; some philosophers argue that this is the best deal to make; others suggest that if it be necessary to deal with Satan himself, one should at least get a deal that doth please the heather that signed his soul out for lease.
When the time came for the Kheyn’ash, the counsil of eldars who would pick between the two princes, without knowing which family they represented; each walked in to the judgment den naked as a jaybird and waited until the accuser read the first of the scriptures they needs must interpret in a way as such it aligns with the orthodoxy of the Church, the sin-a-gogo Masjid, temple of Hate, altar to empty wastes, demons and Satan awake!
Now it must be said that the family has long been cursed for the deeds of their founding Fathers; the bargains with Satan they would default, leaving for the next round to pick up the cost, to burn off the karma of a holocaust and pay the price of an era just lost, to the fire of the beast that exhausts only at the instant lust is lost.
The dealer with the devil stood proud and firm, and the servant of god was meek and alert;
The council looked over their skin, bronze as a temple bell and broad, in the chest and of bearing regal, polished, washed; the servant of Satan was ever so suave; the penentant prince, whose knees were scabbed from hours long in patient t’yan, the beseeching of the Great Unnamed to draw you in, to see the Flame, the living God with the eyes of Shame.
the Rishi who could tap on the calm wind and peer through to the spirit world; and yae, said he they were Angels, and most lovely. And born unto the Angel Dinayal was Ben Ibn Ha-binyan al-Yom; he was darkly complected with coal black eyes, a heavy and thoughtful brow; his countenance was that of thought sincerity, and his ayyaba held his youthlock; it would be severed when he took over management of his father’s possesions; the fields, the crops, the mother and the camel.
And it was said that the camel gifted them by The Mercifulest of Merciful Lords bore unto them great dates, and oases amid desert wastes which, over eons would sculp them to blend in, to mix with the dust devils and the djinn, and blow away along a caravan route, a caravanserai and disappear, a name.
And so it was, the camel was of defect most perculiar; and the Philosophers, much learned though yet humbled by the Beneficent, Most Terrible Lord of Lords, made great speculation;
Could His Holiness, his Great Silent Guidance bring forth such deformity? Would a being of endless wisdom, endless reason and foresight, produce an animal incapable of reproduction, to spread the seed and gift of life? This vexed the faithful, and they despaired; they pulled out their youthful locks and there was much prayer.
The two-headed camel was the childhood pet of the oldest son of the oldest twin; and the starboard head – an arbitrary marker, was more inclined to do as the female line of the House Ayyub; they demanded to know what justice was this, that the Lord, though perfect, could cause such distress, a defect in being that bespoke his Wonder; the sun burns bright as a thousand fires some unimagined distance off; but the camel with two heads, Lilah and Na’hr, each ran half a day, the other not far; they would run to the shadow line, where the Senior line of the Ayyubid family plotted with a most queer riddle; in a Kingdom of God – dar al-harb, the submission is to the Living God; yet it seemed that the once Great being had fled and so came such a thing, a two headed camel that ran one way for an hour and ran the opposite then, from one corner to the other end. Despite the trodden path of some thousand or more miles, they had never left the tiny stretch of dust and desert running through the seedy town of Hon’lah’ul. The biggest dwelling in the city was that of a Harem famous for miles; there were four floors and business was swift; a marriage license on the first floor, a romantic encounter above, on the second floor of a castle, that, once held the collective wisdom of the Banu Ishmael, son of Hagar – [the Stranger]; though the two branches of the family were descended from the union of a twin on twin conception; the children closed their eyes and rode on the two-headed camel and they lo’d, and lolled and laughed until they passed the shadow lines. Night rolled in over the valley, the dunes and the caverns, and within lights sparked in the night and smells of onions and goat boiled in garlic spice drifted down the pathway, and the inn did a swift trade.
When it was decided that one line of the family should be more luxurious in status and wealth, it was agreed as a matter of course, but in time they would attempt to make it fair; to alternate the Caliphate between the senior line and the Matri’line. Sometimes the passing of status and land goes smooth as a avalanche of restless sand.
At the time that camel was gifted to the Prince, Prince of the Incumbent line had an interesting life, so far; he had studied with the mystigogues of the Soma and of Brahma; the Al-jibra & al’Kamy; tactics and strategy; manners, to be a gentlemen and how to properly address women; the varying marks that a household could carry based on trade and tax; the Caliph said the morning Prayer through a megaphone, and blind roosters at the House of the Outgoing Prince, who looked at a crown not to be, he had thoughts on his mind unpure to recite, of selling his soul to Satan that he could take the throne from Ben Ali.
And it was so that the Prince would go to the forests of fire, by the cove; a walkway rested just beneath the water and one had to be careful, as there were drops that were said to never end; God help us if it is to never end, Inshallah, and in the forest he said, Shai’tan, mighty being of handheld sun; thy tricksters and bugger of all. I need your help,
“So say they all.”
2
The Small Print in the Deal with the Devil
The Great Evil himself was as lovely as summer, as a meadow a van Gogh or Monet an echo of life is not as pure, as beautiful as the sun in its place, beset by an all-knowing Loving and late being who made the camel’s gait, one of painful circuits by the shadow lands on the outskirts of Tin’ver’diy, the lands where djinni took the form of the image that forms in the Oasis of the thirstiest soul, lost in the city that never holds, a city of formlessness, a city which rolled, ephermeral as the touch of Gold, as the touch of Lust and Denari as such one could shit on gold; life is more than mystic ore, the sinful trinkets of this war, the danar, the kopex, the dollar and pound, the coefficient of need and factor of doubt; the blemish of shame on the family’s name would exist for a generation if, one were to sell their soul and for hell get all one wants in the World; but this world is brief and Eternity, sheesh, it would take all day to show; so when the smokeless fire rose the would be King was breathless. The Prince froze, but the devil is an icebreaker of great renown, and soon they had a tumbler of the finest date-wine, the finest tablewear, earthen pots cast on a kiln and fired and rough; a city rose out of mirage and took the form as substantive as taxes and death as late-fees and the mess that is promised by the meal and yet we sigh and look at the used plate and think to wash it and think but it’s lake, but the soul is renewable, and each time, you sin you only need to lie and tell that Unebelievable God above that sadist and silent father who bodes ill for his children and must go.
The Devil himself had called on the Lord, to show himself a being of sound mind and planning, in light of a camel that ran so many miles but went no where but back and forth between the canal and the fort, the accounting office in between the breathing delusion and the endless dream;
“Satan, you vex, and torture and yet,
think to put on the Lord to test!
To question a being with two lovely heads!
Who runs and runs but is home all the while!
Who has ran for miles but never moved,
Who is the symbol of balance, and truth;
The camel with two heads is the course,
Put before the faithful who,
Ponder the mysteries of the Room
That awaits us at closing time when the dust piles on
And the bagpipes fade and fade into yawns;
What makes a man or better yet, a woman or indeterminate sex,
Is the degree to which their love results in actions that help the poor and the orphan whose back
Is burdened by the karmic film,
The sticky samsara that restarts the cart and thus the wheel
Of Dharma goes flailing off the hill;
The Dance of Shiva on the Hill
The Dance of Tondala and that eye
That sees the space between you and I
That sees that twins both men and women when they connect recreate themselves in a form they can correct and better, else
They end up scattered with the city and lost in a desert unseen by man, and lost
If atlantis were true and it fell from a height
That was equal to our pride
It needs to have fallen, and it must
Remain a relic, collecting dust;
It would be of no real use to us.
A mirror that says what we all know true;
The window be brief and so is the view
And brief is the counting that we must do
When weighed by the Judge of Life and Death, the angel of Silence the mender of breath; the weaver of faith and a silence so great the deaf can hear it in their sleep.
The footsteps of the formless shepherd, whose sheep
Have praised their own creations, and,
Fallen asleep mid-task;
They thought that if Christ Died for This
We’d value life and fight for it
But if he died for nothing and we’re still waiting now
The plan was a camel that can’t get out;
Running with all its will and might
It stands in place but moves all night; and is in a much different place in the morn, when the roosters blind crow on their horn, shake their fist at the solar storm, and stomp back in to their silent cove,
The antechamber of the womb,
Where the prince who sold his soul
To the devil waits with a kim’bos’ko;
as the Madhi is to come through,
To be reborn what does he do?
But fulfill his debt to Satan due;
to kill the redeemer, and end it there
No second coming, no refunds there;
No conversions in Israel or warfare;
Just the same silence that’s always there,
That always speaks if we listen and deep
Think in ways that break our sleep
And listen to the whispers and contemplate the space between the doorway and the space unseen
Between me and you and the Great Unseen
The Devil is always at your call
Because he’s not so chic at all;
Father has never left, not once,
And we do not find nor discover such
The fire at the crucible,
The force
That brought for the sun and stars and whores and Kings and judges tangerines
sultans Kar’ka karma and lust sin and shame the pains of a slut.
The dirty prince was raised and rushed
To anointed the Time and Place where he was put upon the throne of Beelzebub; “Praise he who allows what is forbidden and now, praise be to he who forged
The ocean out of air and blew into the current and made blue, the endless ocean
The bounteous view
Was made for no one,
And for you
There’s no center of the world
And we’re not there if it was;
But at the center of what we remember is that which hurt and helped
When we needed a boost or a beating
That put us upon the path
That led us to hold with strength and stay
A glass that held and did not break.
A product of the glazier’s waste
On the same pile as the face
That goes on the double-head
Of the camel that can stand
And travel from one place across the land
It is said that if one knows
The truth of where such a camel goes
Will find a path, an obscure road
To sneak into Jinah and enjoy the view
Of a paradise lost renewed
Wouldn’t it be great if what we told
Ourselves at the edge of the unknown
Was true in the least, would we be whole?
Or would the hole be bigger still
And take more than the silence speaker
box to fill and make us full?
Or was there never a hole at all
And the search was long and though
You found the doorway it was
Closed.
Say what you will of the devil,
He’s a cad;
He’s a hustler, a pool-shark a cardsharp and used car salesman without a lot;
Selling the space for the body to rot
To the desperate who have forgot
The devil is greed and, as such,
Can give but what is taken from us
For a soul we might get luck
At the cost of peace, of love
Of her smile, the fragrant ouerve
Of exotic fragrant that endures
When she passes and demures
The oasis takes her shapes and plays
In the artificial shade
Where birds without form take baths and squirm
To pull the garden free of worms.
8
The garden of Eden wasn’t what’s needed
It sounds the dream of a child
Where there
Are but the vines of nature and time is divided by sunrise and sunset and thyme
Crops and solstice and to kneel ‘for the sun
Is to worship the mother
whose credit has gone
To the other hangers-on;
Spirits neutral, spirits wild,
Some that possess some that beguile
Some that enchant and others that dance
In rigadoon beneath a moon as bright as neon underoos
Do not regret what you have left
The sum total of the experience of life
Is a shopping spree without items that we must by
Only to cast aside when out
Of the time and must make our way out.
Go peaceful, quiet, let silence be
The anteroom of the womb for the.
8
Took the throne and gave the key
To the temple to the Priest
Whose speakerbox shook out and shot when words garbled tin like through
Fell in a way that the spell went away and the dust turned to brick and coalesced to stay
The valley of the sons of Love who died in search of the lever of the lurch
To redeem them in the way that frees
Them from the sadist who it please
To create a maze without such clues
Without a purpose without use
And make it so easy to lose.
The deal with the devil fell through in the end
When the funds came up marked un-available and the wish
For the leadership as he risked
His immortal soul for the leadership
Of the Banu Ayyub caliphate
Their kingdom of shifting sand and grace
Where the faithful underwent such trials, as the labors of Job and Iphigenia, each by their beloved set upon the pyre they’re to die upon
But it’s just a test, unless one fails
And in to water goes the child
And arrives in the Fire of Jahannan, sad
He calls out to God in Jinah; the Garden of Honey and of Love;
If thou art just why take me at such an age after I cracked? A year ago I had not sinned; why not take me before I did? You could have pulled me from the fire, had you let me die in time, but instead I will burn and when
the candle dies in the wind
They will tell us in the end
We chose to come and we chose the end
Of a life we could not agree to be a part of save for you;
Had we not been we shant have sinned nor felt the fire thou intend for the sinner who thou make a guarantee when one can die before they see the proof, the sound or image that calls to them in the empty vat where their hole was formed in childhood at and full they sing the psalms and say, God is Good and Job went astray; he had no right to say what he would say;
Justice is the fact that life is given to us at all
We did not pay for the equipment nor tech
To see or eat or love and inspect
That is the gift, that is the speck
Of the silence in the speakerbox
The reuniting of the lost
Would take two twins and undo each
Into the antechamber of the breach
The dim waiting room inside the womb
While the Lord of Lords shakes and rolls
The die that casts your fortune, lo!
Death from an accidental blow,
In his fourth little Leonard would;
And up in Heaven he would speak
With force in his voice to the Fire of Deep
Eternity that burns to bring
The form of galaxies into being
To stand before the creative force that brought us life and ask for more
Is to go in one direction on a camel with two heads;
One must cross the shadow that veers
One into one lane one into tears
one to the garden, one to the fire
The great sadist loves to play with die
It’s the value that sets the rest of the price
That we bargain when we lie
When we steal
And when we try
To deal with a puff of smoke and fire
Who would not help if he wasn’t a lie
The counsil which judged each prince would pick the godly man but the
The butterfly would flap its portentious wings again
A thousand miles away it starts
The ripple that transforms into a storm and covers the eastern seaboard and when the storm receeds we praise and sing the songs for the rain that brought us such pain and praise the God who made it this way.
Handheld sunshine is the gift
The moonshit and the treble clef
The rainbow twisted in on itself
A camel with two heads is life
And it
Has turned against itself and hit
The threshold of futility and that’s it
6
They will join the dodos yet
Who thrived on Maritious once upon a time
Before the disease came with the tribe;
Before the beasts of a different land
Collapsed the pillar and the dome
of each species on its own
And another one bites the dust, the song
We sing must be sang at least ten ways
Every ten minute every single day
There is more empty in the way than
There is anything, I must say
I think I will rest a bit today,
The devil will always be there, and will wait,
But for the Lord one must be on time
Or risk a canceled appointment and such a line
You’ll end up dead before you find
The angel to direct you up ahead
To the garden of the dead
Who bloomed again in the end when they resurrected and their skin
Glowed anew as Prince Adh’u who scorched the land as Genghis Khan,
Wiped out the House of Wisdom and long
Has the age of ignorance stayed on the land
of Glass;
One crack and the shattering line will run
Along a pressured edge and turn
into pieces holding on with inner strength to outer bonds hoping to remain in tact lest they break, and lest they crack,
The glazier was drunk when he cast the sand
And has not updated the design
Since the day of rest expired.
7
Pain is the price we pay for the chance to see the view of the Catalan of the Canyon Grand of Mesas and the Jungles of Tenotchtitlan;
The House of Wisdom might have fallen
in the midst of war;
Yet we have such knowledge that we can choose what we will have
The hole or the silence that fills that gap
Make friends with the space between or ask
The devil to take a check;
But it if should bounce – one strike
You’re out
Cast into fires, never put out.
A futile waste of a spark of the divine
That coalesced in a being sublime
That came for a time and made its mark
Passed through the sunshine and into the dark
To sleep as they slept before their start.
God loves the orphans, and the hard
Working simple beggar’s hand
That works but for his fellow man,
we can but lean on our fellows and see
If we make real the common dream
To have some purpose, whatever we need
To look at the sun and take heed
Of the Master who conjured such warmth, such heat
Or ignore this sadistic bore who toys with the whole of time
And put your faith in your fellows and hate less and there you will find
If you can’t find God you can find love and love is enough to make
The candle re-light and spark in the night
To tame the sun and hold the light.
That we’ll make real the common dream
5
The problems that come of our own design,
as they account of the butterfly,
who miles away can flap his wings
And destroy Mumbai in great waves,
Without a thought of the flutter nor grave,
Nor the moon that beckons the wise to let their minds drift and, in time, they get to see the fire that burns at the center of throne of Sha’haral, the Great Unknowable whose very form is the empty spaces ‘midst the space – the crack in the door the width of the vase, the bloom of the rose the ding of prose, the sting of poetry, the handheld light,
A pale imitation of the Living Eye, the transient figure as firm as the thread of a broken spider web by the bed.
TWO PRINCES OF TWO TWINS
& THE TWO-HEADED CAMEL
THERE WERE TWO BRANCHES OF THE BANU Ayyub & they tried to distinguish themselves in a way that would signal to the people, those whom they protected – their people, their children, their subjects and wards; it was said that before the split, the line was born of a pair of twins;
Omar ibn Rushdi al Doo and his brother Harun al Rushd ibn Mazmadoon, one was the sun – the other the moon.
And they came upon twins such as they had not seen since the first man was cast in clay; The tradition was that, after the harvest, when the seeds had been sewn, the men who had cut their princely knot would take a wife.
The twins would come upon twins so lithe, so lovely and dreamy such paradise, such heaven and hell between their thighs, inside their warm welcoming hal’hah and when the moon came out they were each with child.
So were born the Banu Ayyub, sons of Job; were to spend their lives at the knee of a Rishi, a seer, and at the madrassa, they’d learn of God and coleander; the oases and the djinni the mirage in the sands; the Banu Ayyub were destined to find a land of that became the largest city in Tel’rane.
At the masjid in the center of town, by four minarets that touched the sky as it was shy and letting go of the wind. The two sides of the family divided would fight for the city and for their pride, and each would try to buy the love of the subjects they would yet rule; each morning at speakerbox tinned at noon,
You are loved and you are doomed
But in darkness there is truth
In sin there is penitence and there is grave;
In the silence of thought is the peace of the sage;
Seek god, seek love, and don’t be afraid
Of the Fire that Burns and the Fate that awaits
The Sinners and the People elect, selected before their birth that death, would convey them to a garden next to a bridge with a riddling troll standing guard. Straight out of Persia, Zarathurstra thought that upon our death each one of us walked across a bridge as wide as a knife as sharp as remorse as cold as a lie, as hard to cross as it was to lie to a two-headed camel who made it big, all the way to the Sheikh of the City of Sha’n Hal’al Balna’ri; ante-chamber of the womb.
From a young age they learned the ways of the world, from the doctor of medicine and of the Faith, pure as snowater true as the gasp of the blindman who sees the heavens at last.
4
The twins raised their children to rule and to be merciless if needs be, then needs be; while one dined the devil on choice cut meat, the other sat in the silence of Utz, in the sweating lodge as he took, in the breath of the soul and shook.
Prince Shi could tap on the wind and shatter it, peer through the other side and draw it closed, like a curtain to be drawn and pulled at will. The devil offered an imitation gift, to get what one wanted at the cost of not having what one needs; some philosophers argue that this is the best deal to make; others suggest that if it be necessary to deal with Satan himself, one should at least get a deal that doth please the heather that signed his soul out for lease.
When the time came for the Kheyn’ash, the counsil of eldars who would pick between the two princes, without knowing which family they represented; each walked in to the judgment den naked as a jaybird and waited until the accuser read the first of the scriptures they needs must interpret in a way as such it aligns with the orthodoxy of the Church, the sin-a-gogo Masjid, temple of Hate, altar to empty wastes, demons and Satan awake!
Now it must be said that the family has long been cursed for the deeds of their founding Fathers; the bargains with Satan they would default, leaving for the next round to pick up the cost, to burn off the karma of a holocaust and pay the price of an era just lost, to the fire of the beast that exhausts only at the instant lust is lost.
The dealer with the devil stood proud and firm, and the servant of god was meek and alert;
The council looked over their skin, bronze as a temple bell and broad, in the chest and of bearing regal, polished, washed; the servant of Satan was ever so suave; the penentant prince, whose knees were scabbed from hours long in patient t’yan, the beseeching of the Great Unnamed to draw you in, to see the Flame, the living God with the eyes of Shame.
the Rishi who could tap on the calm wind and peer through to the spirit world; and yae, said he they were Angels, and most lovely. And born unto the Angel Dinayal was Ben Ibn Ha-binyan al-Yom; he was darkly complected with coal black eyes, a heavy and thoughtful brow; his countenance was that of thought sincerity, and his ayyaba held his youthlock; it would be severed when he took over management of his father’s possesions; the fields, the crops, the mother and the camel.
And it was said that the camel gifted them by The Mercifulest of Merciful Lords bore unto them great dates, and oases amid desert wastes which, over eons would sculp them to blend in, to mix with the dust devils and the djinn, and blow away along a caravan route, a caravanserai and disappear, a name.
And so it was, the camel was of defect most perculiar; and the Philosophers, much learned though yet humbled by the Beneficent, Most Terrible Lord of Lords, made great speculation;
Could His Holiness, his Great Silent Guidance bring forth such deformity? Would a being of endless wisdom, endless reason and foresight, produce an animal incapable of reproduction, to spread the seed and gift of life? This vexed the faithful, and they despaired; they pulled out their youthful locks and there was much prayer.
The two-headed camel was the childhood pet of the oldest son of the oldest twin; and the starboard head – an arbitrary marker, was more inclined to do as the female line of the House Ayyub; they demanded to know what justice was this, that the Lord, though perfect, could cause such distress, a defect in being that bespoke his Wonder; the sun burns bright as a thousand fires some unimagined distance off; but the camel with two heads, Lilah and Na’hr, each ran half a day, the other not far; they would run to the shadow line, where the Senior line of the Ayyubid family plotted with a most queer riddle; in a Kingdom of God – dar al-harb, the submission is to the Living God; yet it seemed that the once Great being had fled and so came such a thing, a two headed camel that ran one way for an hour and ran the opposite then, from one corner to the other end. Despite the trodden path of some thousand or more miles, they had never left the tiny stretch of dust and desert running through the seedy town of Hon’lah’ul. The biggest dwelling in the city was that of a Harem famous for miles; there were four floors and business was swift; a marriage license on the first floor, a romantic encounter above, on the second floor of a castle, that, once held the collective wisdom of the Banu Ishmael, son of Hagar – [the Stranger]; though the two branches of the family were descended from the union of a twin on twin conception; the children closed their eyes and rode on the two-headed camel and they lo’d, and lolled and laughed until they passed the shadow lines. Night rolled in over the valley, the dunes and the caverns, and within lights sparked in the night and smells of onions and goat boiled in garlic spice drifted down the pathway, and the inn did a swift trade.
When it was decided that one line of the family should be more luxurious in status and wealth, it was agreed as a matter of course, but in time they would attempt to make it fair; to alternate the Caliphate between the senior line and the Matri’line. Sometimes the passing of status and land goes smooth as a avalanche of restless sand.
At the time that camel was gifted to the Prince, Prince of the Incumbent line had an interesting life, so far; he had studied with the mystigogues of the Soma and of Brahma; the Al-jibra & al’Kamy; tactics and strategy; manners, to be a gentlemen and how to properly address women; the varying marks that a household could carry based on trade and tax; the Caliph said the morning Prayer through a megaphone, and blind roosters at the House of the Outgoing Prince, who looked at a crown not to be, he had thoughts on his mind unpure to recite, of selling his soul to Satan that he could take the throne from Ben Ali.
And it was so that the Prince would go to the forests of fire, by the cove; a walkway rested just beneath the water and one had to be careful, as there were drops that were said to never end; God help us if it is to never end, Inshallah, and in the forest he said, Shai’tan, mighty being of handheld sun; thy tricksters and bugger of all. I need your help,
“So say they all.”
2
The Small Print in the Deal with the Devil
The Great Evil himself was as lovely as summer, as a meadow a van Gogh or Monet an echo of life is not as pure, as beautiful as the sun in its place, beset by an all-knowing Loving and late being who made the camel’s gait, one of painful circuits by the shadow lands on the outskirts of Tin’ver’diy, the lands where djinni took the form of the image that forms in the Oasis of the thirstiest soul, lost in the city that never holds, a city of formlessness, a city which rolled, ephermeral as the touch of Gold, as the touch of Lust and Denari as such one could shit on gold; life is more than mystic ore, the sinful trinkets of this war, the danar, the kopex, the dollar and pound, the coefficient of need and factor of doubt; the blemish of shame on the family’s name would exist for a generation if, one were to sell their soul and for hell get all one wants in the World; but this world is brief and Eternity, sheesh, it would take all day to show; so when the smokeless fire rose the would be King was breathless. The Prince froze, but the devil is an icebreaker of great renown, and soon they had a tumbler of the finest date-wine, the finest tablewear, earthen pots cast on a kiln and fired and rough; a city rose out of mirage and took the form as substantive as taxes and death as late-fees and the mess that is promised by the meal and yet we sigh and look at the used plate and think to wash it and think but it’s lake, but the soul is renewable, and each time, you sin you only need to lie and tell that Unebelievable God above that sadist and silent father who bodes ill for his children and must go.
The Devil himself had called on the Lord, to show himself a being of sound mind and planning, in light of a camel that ran so many miles but went no where but back and forth between the canal and the fort, the accounting office in between the breathing delusion and the endless dream;
“Satan, you vex, and torture and yet,
think to put on the Lord to test!
To question a being with two lovely heads!
Who runs and runs but is home all the while!
Who has ran for miles but never moved,
Who is the symbol of balance, and truth;
The camel with two heads is the course,
Put before the faithful who,
Ponder the mysteries of the Room
That awaits us at closing time when the dust piles on
And the bagpipes fade and fade into yawns;
What makes a man or better yet, a woman or indeterminate sex,
Is the degree to which their love results in actions that help the poor and the orphan whose back
Is burdened by the karmic film,
The sticky samsara that restarts the cart and thus the wheel
Of Dharma goes flailing off the hill;
The Dance of Shiva on the Hill
The Dance of Tondala and that eye
That sees the space between you and I
That sees that twins both men and women when they connect recreate themselves in a form they can correct and better, else
They end up scattered with the city and lost in a desert unseen by man, and lost
If atlantis were true and it fell from a height
That was equal to our pride
It needs to have fallen, and it must
Remain a relic, collecting dust;
It would be of no real use to us.
A mirror that says what we all know true;
The window be brief and so is the view
And brief is the counting that we must do
When weighed by the Judge of Life and Death, the angel of Silence the mender of breath; the weaver of faith and a silence so great the deaf can hear it in their sleep.
The footsteps of the formless shepherd, whose sheep
Have praised their own creations, and,
Fallen asleep mid-task;
They thought that if Christ Died for This
We’d value life and fight for it
But if he died for nothing and we’re still waiting now
The plan was a camel that can’t get out;
Running with all its will and might
It stands in place but moves all night; and is in a much different place in the morn, when the roosters blind crow on their horn, shake their fist at the solar storm, and stomp back in to their silent cove,
The antechamber of the womb,
Where the prince who sold his soul
To the devil waits with a kim’bos’ko;
as the Madhi is to come through,
To be reborn what does he do?
But fulfill his debt to Satan due;
to kill the redeemer, and end it there
No second coming, no refunds there;
No conversions in Israel or warfare;
Just the same silence that’s always there,
That always speaks if we listen and deep
Think in ways that break our sleep
And listen to the whispers and contemplate the space between the doorway and the space unseen
Between me and you and the Great Unseen
The Devil is always at your call
Because he’s not so chic at all;
Father has never left, not once,
And we do not find nor discover such
The fire at the crucible,
The force
That brought for the sun and stars and whores and Kings and judges tangerines
sultans Kar’ka karma and lust sin and shame the pains of a slut.
The dirty prince was raised and rushed
To anointed the Time and Place where he was put upon the throne of Beelzebub; “Praise he who allows what is forbidden and now, praise be to he who forged
The ocean out of air and blew into the current and made blue, the endless ocean
The bounteous view
Was made for no one,
And for you
There’s no center of the world
And we’re not there if it was;
But at the center of what we remember is that which hurt and helped
When we needed a boost or a beating
That put us upon the path
That led us to hold with strength and stay
A glass that held and did not break.
A product of the glazier’s waste
On the same pile as the face
That goes on the double-head
Of the camel that can stand
And travel from one place across the land
It is said that if one knows
The truth of where such a camel goes
Will find a path, an obscure road
To sneak into Jinah and enjoy the view
Of a paradise lost renewed
Wouldn’t it be great if what we told
Ourselves at the edge of the unknown
Was true in the least, would we be whole?
Or would the hole be bigger still
And take more than the silence speaker
box to fill and make us full?
Or was there never a hole at all
And the search was long and though
You found the doorway it was
Closed.
Say what you will of the devil,
He’s a cad;
He’s a hustler, a pool-shark a cardsharp and used car salesman without a lot;
Selling the space for the body to rot
To the desperate who have forgot
The devil is greed and, as such,
Can give but what is taken from us
For a soul we might get luck
At the cost of peace, of love
Of her smile, the fragrant ouerve
Of exotic fragrant that endures
When she passes and demures
The oasis takes her shapes and plays
In the artificial shade
Where birds without form take baths and squirm
To pull the garden free of worms.
8
The garden of Eden wasn’t what’s needed
It sounds the dream of a child
Where there
Are but the vines of nature and time is divided by sunrise and sunset and thyme
Crops and solstice and to kneel ‘for the sun
Is to worship the mother
whose credit has gone
To the other hangers-on;
Spirits neutral, spirits wild,
Some that possess some that beguile
Some that enchant and others that dance
In rigadoon beneath a moon as bright as neon underoos
Do not regret what you have left
The sum total of the experience of life
Is a shopping spree without items that we must by
Only to cast aside when out
Of the time and must make our way out.
Go peaceful, quiet, let silence be
The anteroom of the womb for the.
8
Took the throne and gave the key
To the temple to the Priest
Whose speakerbox shook out and shot when words garbled tin like through
Fell in a way that the spell went away and the dust turned to brick and coalesced to stay
The valley of the sons of Love who died in search of the lever of the lurch
To redeem them in the way that frees
Them from the sadist who it please
To create a maze without such clues
Without a purpose without use
And make it so easy to lose.
The deal with the devil fell through in the end
When the funds came up marked un-available and the wish
For the leadership as he risked
His immortal soul for the leadership
Of the Banu Ayyub caliphate
Their kingdom of shifting sand and grace
Where the faithful underwent such trials, as the labors of Job and Iphigenia, each by their beloved set upon the pyre they’re to die upon
But it’s just a test, unless one fails
And in to water goes the child
And arrives in the Fire of Jahannan, sad
He calls out to God in Jinah; the Garden of Honey and of Love;
If thou art just why take me at such an age after I cracked? A year ago I had not sinned; why not take me before I did? You could have pulled me from the fire, had you let me die in time, but instead I will burn and when
the candle dies in the wind
They will tell us in the end
We chose to come and we chose the end
Of a life we could not agree to be a part of save for you;
Had we not been we shant have sinned nor felt the fire thou intend for the sinner who thou make a guarantee when one can die before they see the proof, the sound or image that calls to them in the empty vat where their hole was formed in childhood at and full they sing the psalms and say, God is Good and Job went astray; he had no right to say what he would say;
Justice is the fact that life is given to us at all
We did not pay for the equipment nor tech
To see or eat or love and inspect
That is the gift, that is the speck
Of the silence in the speakerbox
The reuniting of the lost
Would take two twins and undo each
Into the antechamber of the breach
The dim waiting room inside the womb
While the Lord of Lords shakes and rolls
The die that casts your fortune, lo!
Death from an accidental blow,
In his fourth little Leonard would;
And up in Heaven he would speak
With force in his voice to the Fire of Deep
Eternity that burns to bring
The form of galaxies into being
To stand before the creative force that brought us life and ask for more
Is to go in one direction on a camel with two heads;
One must cross the shadow that veers
One into one lane one into tears
one to the garden, one to the fire
The great sadist loves to play with die
It’s the value that sets the rest of the price
That we bargain when we lie
When we steal
And when we try
To deal with a puff of smoke and fire
Who would not help if he wasn’t a lie
The counsil which judged each prince would pick the godly man but the
The butterfly would flap its portentious wings again
A thousand miles away it starts
The ripple that transforms into a storm and covers the eastern seaboard and when the storm receeds we praise and sing the songs for the rain that brought us such pain and praise the God who made it this way.
Handheld sunshine is the gift
The moonshit and the treble clef
The rainbow twisted in on itself
A camel with two heads is life
And it
Has turned against itself and hit
The threshold of futility and that’s it
6
They will join the dodos yet
Who thrived on Maritious once upon a time
Before the disease came with the tribe;
Before the beasts of a different land
Collapsed the pillar and the dome
of each species on its own
And another one bites the dust, the song
We sing must be sang at least ten ways
Every ten minute every single day
There is more empty in the way than
There is anything, I must say
I think I will rest a bit today,
The devil will always be there, and will wait,
But for the Lord one must be on time
Or risk a canceled appointment and such a line
You’ll end up dead before you find
The angel to direct you up ahead
To the garden of the dead
Who bloomed again in the end when they resurrected and their skin
Glowed anew as Prince Adh’u who scorched the land as Genghis Khan,
Wiped out the House of Wisdom and long
Has the age of ignorance stayed on the land
of Glass;
One crack and the shattering line will run
Along a pressured edge and turn
into pieces holding on with inner strength to outer bonds hoping to remain in tact lest they break, and lest they crack,
The glazier was drunk when he cast the sand
And has not updated the design
Since the day of rest expired.
7
Pain is the price we pay for the chance to see the view of the Catalan of the Canyon Grand of Mesas and the Jungles of Tenotchtitlan;
The House of Wisdom might have fallen
in the midst of war;
Yet we have such knowledge that we can choose what we will have
The hole or the silence that fills that gap
Make friends with the space between or ask
The devil to take a check;
But it if should bounce – one strike
You’re out
Cast into fires, never put out.
A futile waste of a spark of the divine
That coalesced in a being sublime
That came for a time and made its mark
Passed through the sunshine and into the dark
To sleep as they slept before their start.
God loves the orphans, and the hard
Working simple beggar’s hand
That works but for his fellow man,
we can but lean on our fellows and see
If we make real the common dream
To have some purpose, whatever we need
To look at the sun and take heed
Of the Master who conjured such warmth, such heat
Or ignore this sadistic bore who toys with the whole of time
And put your faith in your fellows and hate less and there you will find
If you can’t find God you can find love and love is enough to make
The candle re-light and spark in the night
To tame the sun and hold the light.
That we’ll make real the common dream
It’s there – yes there, in those spaces
Those spaces in-between!
— unfinished, 1st draft
brandon the writer | author & staff writer for sir swag 