your body is my map

raise me more love… raise me
my prettiest fits of madness
O’ dagger’s journey… in my flesh
and knife’s plunge…
sink me further my lady…
the sea calls me
add to me more death …
perhaps as death slays me… I’m revived
your body is my map…
the world's map no longer concerns me…
I am the oldest capital of sadness…
and my wound a Pharaonic engraving
my pain…. extends like an oil patch
from Beirut… to China…
my pain… a caravan…dispatched
by the Caliphs of "A’Chaam"… to China…
in the seventh century of the "Birth"…
and lost in a dragon’s mouth…
bird of my heart… "naysani"
O’ sand of the sea, and forests of olives
O’ taste of snow, and taste of fire…
my heathen flavor, and insight
I feel scared of the unknown… shelter me
I feel scared of the darkness… embrace me
I feel cold… cover me up
tell me children stories…
rest beside me…
Chant to me…
since from the start of creation
I’ve been searching for a homeland to my forehead…
for a woman’s hair…
that writes me on the walls… then erases me…
for a woman’s love… to take me
to the borders of the sun… and throws me…
from a woman’s lip… as she makes me
like dust of powdered gold…
shine of my life. my fan
my lantern. declaration of my orchards
stretch me a bridge with the scent of oranges…
and place me like an ivory comb…
in the darkness of your hair… then forget me
I am a drop of water… ambivalent
remaining in the notebook of October
your love crushes me…
like a mad horse from the Caucasus throwing me under its hoofs…
and gargles with the water of my eyes…
add to me more fury… add to me
O’ prettiest fits of my madness
for your sake I set free my women
and effaced my birth certificate
and cut all my arteries…

Nizar Qabbani

colder than the cold of fairytales

The witch of the woods was tapping at her door…Snow-quiet, sleep-silent, only the fun-fire faraway song singing of children; and the room was blue with cold, colder than the cold of fairytales: lie down my heart among the igloo flowers of snow…why do you wait upon the threshold? Ah, do come inside, it is so cold out there.

Truman Capote – Master Misery

It Is March

In the upper leaves,
it is already next month.
I am still writing
yesterday’s poems, waiting for
clarity to come.
But yesterday is clotting,
next month won’t come down.
How do I live in the past
but write about tomorrow?

 Victoria Chang

people who actually worshipped the Devil

The demonic witch was in league with the Devil. This view of witchcraft saw it essentially as a religious crime, a type of heresy or false belief. The Christian church authorities had been concerned about heresy since the middle-ages; they had not usually thought of witchcraft as a heresy, but we shall see that they began to change their minds. Combining ideas from various sources, fifteenth-century theologians gradually became convinced that a new heresy had arisen, consisting not of people who worshipped God in the wrong way, but of people who actually worshipped the Devil. They formed a secret, underground sect, who renounced God and promised their souls to the Devil, and gathered at night to perform evil ceremonies in a witches sabbat.

Julian Goodare – The European Witch-Hunt