midnight at the wells of shahrazad

i dream myself awake of persian limes and tangerine tears that grow to shade with calligraphy grace a blue sahara lake. dessert dunes breathe and roll in gentle folds like a lovers sleeping flesh kissed by silver moonlight glow that woos the sands caress. here the palms call me on with gentle waves of bliss until at last i arrive upon the paradise that wiser men have always sought and missed. here the bedouin do not pass but instead give wide bearth and ride in thirst three days on in fear of the oasis curse. but i afflicted pay no heed and settle for the night and a thousand more or so as written on Shahrazad's final night. a night the stars refused their course and never seemed outworn like ressurection day of eternal length to he who waits for morn. oh shahrazad here yr body lies by a bottomless pool fed by infinite tributaries that drift through yr minds eye... oh shahrazad a thousand stories from yr lips told of djinns in bottles and beggar kings and cities of brass and gold... oh shahrazad you spin the threads that catches eternal breath delicate tales like spiderwebs that suspend the chasm of death and so trapped and snared like a fly in yr web i drift through a thousand lives the last one is you my dear and its end is not in sight. oh shahrazad, shahrazad, do i dream of you or you of me? is there some mortal soul tonight that now reads my history? if only you had another tale and so yr death decieve but infinity is not a thread for mortal souls to weave. and thus the dawn never comes and eternally i dream of gilded caves and emperor slaves that swim backwards against the graves. and here i lie my body decayed these words scratched upon a stone to give life again to my beloved and in this story find a home. midnight at the wells of shahrazad, i know no time but thee if you read these words and lose yr course may you share this dream with me... dedicated as always oXXXo, i dream forever and a night in the oasis of yr soul at the risk of diminishing my work, id like to add a note of explanation as it occurs to me that many people may not know of shahrazad. she is not a character of my imagination but rather the narrator and protaganist of the arabian nights or thousand and one nights. the story goes that a king, maddened by the adultery of his wife, kills his queen and declares that he will never let another woman betray him again. thus, every night he marries a virgin so that he may kill her in the morning before she can dishonour him. after many nights of this, his wazir's wise daughter shahrazad voulenteers herself to this fate despite her fathers protests. after the wedding, sharazad begins a story to ammuse the king. the story so enchants him he doesnt notice that the evening has passed and the time of execution has come and the story remains incomplete. being so enthralled by shahrazad's story, he decides to postpone her death untril she can finish her story. one story morphs into another and each night, shahrazad leaves a thread hanging so as to entice the mercy of her king. for me she is the ultimate symbol of poetic creation, an artist who must literally create each and every night as though her life and the life of all the women in her land literally depends on her art. her stories become symbols of infinity like those russian dolls inside of dolls or two mirrors set against each other. no story ever really ends. id also like to point out that the classic symbol of arabian culture and islamic art is a woman. muslim mysogyny was clearly not accepted by the poets and artists that brought shahrazads stories to the world. anyways, if youve never had a chance to read the thousand and one nights, i suggest you do so. there has never been a book quite like it...pat Written February 6th, 2002 © on Feb 06 2002 07:12 AM PST   0 • 13