1.
I know the verdict. By God, it will kill me: the lover’s affliction.
Come, please, for the love of God, release my collar, physician.
Come, that I may lay my hand on your crystalline breast until flat jealousy blisters the stalker’s belly.
My face is jinxed. I fear the pain of separation will end me, that no day in the country of union is allotted me.
Those tempting eyes of yours -- enchantresses, witches:
a glance, a wink, and they turn an anchorite of a hundred years.
With you, being’s relief, far from the heart, that son of sorrow, it is east and west between enduring and the trial.
Without the pit, there is no pinnacle, that’s for sure, but on the path to your love, I’ve seen nothing, by God, but the pit.
A wisp of hair from your head is a shackle.
Vial, fragrance, adornment are tangled in your beauty.
A Sheikh, if his eyes fall on your hair, would change his robe and prayer beads for the gartel, crucifix, cross.
Bereft, my ration is rationed. I am without remedy.
Have mercy on Raza. It’s virtuous to be merciful to strangers.
2.
I remember Sulaimani as home and domain to the Babans, not judged by Persians, nor enduring Ottoman ridicule.
Before Sira's Gate, all gathered: sheikhs, mullahs, ascetics.
The masters of need circled Saywan Hill as pilgrims do the Ka’aba.
Soldiers in their multitudes hindered the gathering of kings. Music and the kettledrums’ voice rose to Kaywan’s balcony.
What nostalgia for that era, that time, that age, those days, when horses paraded in Kaniaskan Square.
With one assault, he struck Baghdad and tore it down.
Sulaimani, if time wants the truth, was the father of Sulaiman.
Arabs, I won’t ignore your ascendance, you are transcendent, but Saladin, who seized the world, was the best fruit of the Babans, may their luminous family graves be filled with mercy.
Just the mist of their magnanimity was as April clouds.
When Abdulla Pasha made ragged the armies of Sna, Raza was aged five, a student in primary school.
3.
The prince, as some great favor, sent this ass bare naked, his hooves spindly as spider legs, his innards rotted.
I won’t say the last owner never gave him grain mash.
Sure he did. Still, his undying strength is only a rumor to me.
Even after handfuls of King’s Clover, brittle grass is his halva:
he circles it, scoops it up, and gulps it down like a whale.
Even when he can’t be bothered to move, emaciated as he is, tempt him with a single barley grain and he’ll run ‘til Judgment Day.
His back is scarred, his shoulders scabbed, he is incurably useless.
What few coins I had, I spent on oil and anzaroot. I profit only if I send him back before he eats me up.
I live in fear that he will think me food and swallow me whole.
One day, Saiyid Fatih, my hostler, bowed, forcibly cut his tail at the root and, with difficulty, branded his ear.
If this jinn gets any fatter, he will defy man’s dominion unless a Rafa’i dervish invokes the words of Imam Ali.
This great beast is suitable only for Hajji Ahmad to plow until he keels over dead, his legs stacked.
He is not suited to my shoulders. He wasn’t worth your trouble.
My eyes, what can I say? There is no solution, but silence.
4.
She circles, seeking the pen of that famous asshole, the Director of Bureaucrats, whose pen orbits the inkwell.
Didn’t I tell you to beware my fluent blade?
My life is one tribulation among many.
For your abaya I set you apart, God’s wretch, but this is your abaya: my dick in your ass.
5.
If, in this state, I return to Kirkuk they will all know:
Not a single stalwart hair grows on my head.
Why should I return to Kirkuk, pimp city, when Its people froth and roil like the water in Hamamok?
I would rather live a hundred times foreign, broke, and wretched Than under my brother’s oppression, my peoples’ blame.
One day, time will revolve in my desire.
For now, This one is unsettled, at times apart from, at times a part of.
Without means, we celebrate humbly:
For the grateful, boiled wheat tastes better than long rice.
Since my father’s death six months ago, I Have been aggrieved, abject, jaded, depleted.
Then, I came to my Uncle Ghafoor’s Koye and, like Fa-Ghafoor, Thought my pockets would fill with gold, Lira, and minted coin,
But I can’t be controlled: by nature, I am not like others.
I am not lavish.
I am gentle, nomadic, and meek, A wanderer, free.
I embrace this world That ‘til now, hasn’t made me slave to master.
Earth has no poet like the Radiant One:
Articulate, satisfied, good-humored, and good-looking
6.
The sorrel mare, once her gait was a doe’s.
Now, rising from her manger, she calls, “Oh, God! Oh, God!”
I never give her a scant cup of black barley – still she’s scrawny.
Twelve months of the year I don’t ride her – still she’s worn-out.
The expanse of her asshole could hold castles.
At the crack of her cunt’s gate, wrinkles pile on wrinkles.
If I dissect her thoracic cage, rib to rib, this side to that, she’d not even twitch to tell me if she is alive or dead.
Even the previous owner doesn’t know her history or years:
interminable.
I have heard the ancients say when Nadir Shah attacked Rome this mare was fresh from her mother’s cunt.
7.
Soldiers of despair, hammer-handed, surround me.
At your arrival, they begin to beat me, but oh, God, your departure is the mercenary.
Blood spills unnoticed, undue.
Do not ask why I have not died from departure when I dog death and my heartless soul hangs on.
When they saddled his carmine mare for him to leave, my eyes rolled, I went yellow, wide-eyed.
In your light, even the rooster spoke like Mansour Hallaj, “I am Truth.”
In the feast of Khosrawan, in that one era, I was an absolute constitution, well-governed.
Now, my temper is short. I am laid low.
My voice does not crow. I am fitful.
On the mosque’s veranda, searching, as if a crane, I perch and take flight.
I beg God to sustain your age and adoration, to stymie your enemies and hold you triumphant.
The mustache of Sheikh Star is strong rope.
The words of Sheikh Raza are sacred and sure.
8.
When my dick got hard, it didn’t ask, “Relative or stranger?”
It slugged away at whatever it had, from the front or the back.
Though large, I have fit it into so many tight holes that Its face is bruised, its ribs are cracked,
Its neck has sunk into leather, like the Mullah’s siwak,
Its hair is loose and flowing down its neck, like a dervish.
It was a hero, wrestling with strong biceps.
The beard at its roots was set as the horns of a wild bull.
9.
If I am Sheikh Raza, I must curse the village Judge.
Look what Raza would do to him: once lazy, he would begin to make klash.
Because he cheated the Radiant One, I vow to fuck the judge so harshly that his intestines will shoot out whatever shit rots inside.
10.
My uncle, his wife is a whore though he rules the kingdom of Shaddad.
He has a leader’s luck and God-given fortune.
To nourish him, the Sultan gave him two or three villages.
Each one holds as many goods as storage can.
What carpet, what china, what fields, what estates:
Of each, he has a hundred and eighty, yet With all these stores and accounts, he remains a scoundrel.
No breeze of liberty, no generous tendency runs through him.
The image of his forefathers is in scraps, but the shame Does not belong to his father and grandfathers.
His profile and beard may look manly, but don’t believe it:
He has only the appearance of devotion.
Underneath, he is Jew.
Some way, somehow, I still hope for generosity from him, but I abjure Rashid, the son, the pimp:
Color of an ass, voice of a cow, face of a dog, habits of a jackal,
With unseeing eyes, cock storage, and a seat full of wind.
In prayer, he calls only to cock.
Look at that cock-sucking pimp, what recitations he has.
I spit in his mother’s cunt: she thinks she has brought out a son.
I shit in his father’s beard: he, too, thinks this is a child.
For all Rashid does, he was trained by his father:
He isn’t an independent peripatetic, he has a master.
In his dwelling, he has maidservants, a mother, sisters:
Fatim, Asm, Aman, and Parizad.
Night and day, their cunts clap and dance hilperke.
Their pussies are fiery as the blacksmith’s forge.
All of them are brazen in bulk, especially his wife, the whore.
She has the manners of a bitch and a Baghdadi slut.
I was brought from Kirkuk to sit beside this slut-wife.
This hostile universe has unjust intentions toward me.
An ass-fucker and a bitch:
Rashid, a failed replica of Raza,
Who, after the abuses of the universe, is forsaken and unhappy.
11.
Why shouldn’t the liver burn, why not skewer the heart?
Why shouldn’t the upright soul depart matter like a shooting star?
Why shouldn’t the headwaters behind the eyes roil in fine bloody mists?
Why shouldn’t the eyelid’s miser-spigot let the water drip, drop by drop?
For all its wailing, why won’t my round throat become a hymn?
For all its weeping, why won’t the source of sources waver?
He caused peace in my heart, day and night, the sorrow-remover.
He is gone.
Grief for him is my ocean of agony.
Qadri Wasta Khadeer fell into the final journey.
Destructive cosmos, you embitter my space, my days.
Singer, don’t play the harp and ney.
Separation from him makes even the rabab’s melody a keening soul in my ears.
Bartender, don’t pour wine.
Separation from him makes even the sweetest wine biting, venomous poison.
What happened shouldn’t have, but the universe is frail: it did.
His face has gone black as my luck and the crow’s feather.
Ay, Raza, perhaps, separated from the sorrow-remover, you will never be empty as the furnace of pity’s fevered heat.
12.
Sweet like Khosrau, the son of Jupiter: Jaff.
Doe eyes, crimson lips, faithless: Jaff.
Eyes, black and seductive, nocturnal, flaunting.
He has stolen my religion and heart and belief, a thief: Jaff.
The proof of his true ability is in these good verses.
For inviting the demonstration of God: the miracle is Jaff.
Chaos of the world, their glance disrupts creation.
A single soul, the world is powerless in their hands: Jaff.
The cause of struggle and bad habits: the black eyelashes.
The forces of Timur and military of Genghis: Jaff.
Raza alone has not become subject to him.
His commands, king and servant perform: Jaff.
13.
The news reached the Red Prince:
My liege, Sheikh Salih has been wronged.
Such happiness fell upon the Prince, so he said,
This red fire is far from me.
Those who have no fortune,
If they have a fault, it appears.
Those who own money
May hide a hundred faults.
If their house catches fire,
They say, What fire? It’s light.
“It’s nothing but light I gave to the boy,
A torch for his dark passage,”
As the Jews are known to say
14.
A thousand fantasies and spells entwine in this beard.
If it has a cure, it is either a fart or the razor, this beard.
One hair’s motion is a thousand death sentences.
The master of deception, the king of gambling: this beard.
Even in the winds of God it rigidly stands its ground.
It has its reasons, when, from time to time, it shakes, this beard.
On the surface, smooth as white silver,
but beneath blackened, filthy, grimy as the bottom of cast iron, this beard.
Flirting, it shakes me off, caring only for the path from here to Mukri81.
God shelter me from the know-it-all, the owner of this beard.
Seeing the Sheikh, I know whether he is pleased or disappointed:
Hama Wasta Fatah, a scale that weighs my situation, this beard.
A thousand tethers and handcuffs and towlines can be made from it.
A hundred cotton batmans in hand is still too little to buy this beard
15.
There came a rapid knock.
“Who are you, boy?”
“It is I, Sheikh Homer.”
“What Sheikh? Let your dead die.
Why didn’t you say, ‘It is I, a young ass’?”
This Sheikh was gripped by sudden, terminal illness: convicted.
He has a cocksucker’s height and a hyena’s build.
A peach caused him this.
In place of a peach, he should have eaten shit.
The Sheikh:
serpentine mouth, a sagging lip, frowning chops,
A Kurd without honor, a barbarian among pimps,
The faithless cock-sucker whose father is a disgraceful donkey.
16.
Separation chokes my heart with its hands
As the trap grips the testicles of the fox.
Faith erupts like birds of prey from the crown of my head,
like His ass erupts when he bends to walk through an archway.
Singer, adoring an Iraqi lover, I sigh.
For me, you rise, note by note, from the tapestry of Iraq.
17.
It’s not enough to say Baghdad is more delightful than paradise.
It is the resting place of Ghaos and Karghi and Imam Azam.
My brother, the city of Baghdad is without envy, without distress.
Know: this verdict I give is short and insufficient.
In this country, in no country, none is like Baghdad:
The Judge is just and justice, secure and somber.
18.
Here, one after another, they fucked the wife of Masty Efendi.
Now, he must go to Basra, though Basra is ruined.
What a pimp.
If they fucked his children before his eyes,
He would offer them his beard,
Here!, wipe your cocks clean.
He is like a Baghdadi, drowning in lust-water:
His bench an ocean, his balls a boat, his cock a bridge.
19.
My people, by He Who rules over oceans and lands,
Any shepherd who won’t send me a male lamb
I will get in his face, tear him up,
even if he roars like a lion,
But may all know:
this shame and hostility is not
Over some lame slink, a thin yearling, a mangy goat.
20.
Raza needs a rooster from Kermanshah
With a monster cock’s comb and a hot mouth,
wild
And belligerent,
a rooster who, lunging at another’s ear,
Fills his mouth and rips it off,
like a dog from Hawraman,
A rooster who, embattled with the roaring lion,
Scares it off, kicking like a smuggler’s donkey.
I know what I must send that person to get into his anus.
That rooster must have balls big as two Laylani jugs,
The height of Mawlan Beg, the prince of tribes,
The severity of Biban’s great village chief.
His manhood must endure the assault of two chickens.
He mustn’t ache with no one to fuck.
Oh, descendants of the Colonel, send a rooster like that
For Raza, the dog at Gaylani’s door.
21.
My life is tied to Sulaimani and its land.
I wish I were the dog at the door of Ahmadi Kaki,
He, the power of the powerful:
heavens’ inhabitants fight for his prayer rug, for his sainted shrine,
That elevated shrine:
the exalted throne
Lightened by angelic hosts that throng the window.
My soul pains after his hands, his cherished crutch.
I sacrifice myself for his staff, his shoes, his sewak.
In the world empty of his presence, gold is gone to dust,
Like the King’s crown, Jam’s magic mirror, Zuhak’s luck.
By right, his descendants require respect.
Be aware.
I sacrifice myself for them, for their parents.
In this misery, I bear true witness to God:
Your poems are delightful, Raza, as are you.
22.
Oh, loved ones, don’t lay a finger on the Jaff Clan.
Insects should steer clear of great summits.
Who among the clan heroes has not been run through
By the spearhead of Jaff: the arrow of destiny?
These unyielding blood-shedders, brawlers, and subduers,
The lowest among them is a lion at the front lines.
They are indigenous, the tiniest of the tiny:
a warrior
Whose wine flowers and flows, pure and impure.
They fly to the battlefield’s wedding
As you wish you went to your wedding’s bed.
They rise at command:
children and elders
Surge to war, whether heavy or light combat.
Their amir is Wasman Beg.
When he calls, Charge!,
They come whirling as pilgrims in tawaf.
Oh, God, I pray You punish he who antagonizes Jaff:
Hands shackled, hands behind neck, neck against rope.
Let the secret kindness of God fill you,
so Raza may speak again:
What a sorrow to sheathe a spear, diamond-sharp.
23.
My courtyard is the size of my palm.
I prop it up by day.
It collapses by night.
Gates, cracks, leaks,
no matter how I grab or beat it with my hands and feet
When night comes, it froths, rabid,
A dog that barks at me.
My beard
Is dusty with lime and gypsum,
an old rag
Infested with lice and weevils.
The workers concern me.
The Big Man may yet be great,
but
The hands and feet are damned.
The Master’s wife,
why don’t I just fuck her,
For God’s sake?
Her with her smooth legs
And soft ass,
a meaty cunt filling her panties.
24.
Last night, for a vital expulsion,
I visited the Ghafoor Bathhouse.
A smooth-faced boy stood there,
ass and calves of crystal.
Instantly, as if an engineer,
my eyes measured him
From the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.
Like a wolf salivates over the fat-tailed sheep,
desire-hungry,
I grabbed an ass cheek with my eyes,
I held him in my mind.
So, the curtain, barrier to longing, blazed and tore.
I sprang, as if mad,
to follow him to his room.
The moment he said,
“I’m from Sna and beloved,”
It rose, constant,
as a colossal column.
We understood each other,
the chance the toilet gave.
I pounded, I gave and I took,
until I put poison in him.
Well done, Master Shefe,
you and your descendants.
Sna, may your people be always plentiful and protected.
25.
He appears a rooster, but in a fight, he’s a lion.
You’ve been generous, I have heard, so send him.
Send two chickens, too,
so his palate won’t fall:
A ram, he learned ladies at an early age.
God bless Hassan Agha, the son of Mahmud Agha:
His palm overflows, his heart is wide, his eyes are satisfied.
Unlike the city of Sulaimani,
Koye is generous,
Unlike Tawuq and Kirkuk, even Erbil,
But all this poetry I’ve sent,
and not one rooster I’ve received.
The Colonel’s ancestors are exalted,
but his sons are worthless.
Friends, the rooster is as described
And Raza needs this chief, this man.
If a gift comes from a friend,
I will thank him.
I will accept him even blind in one eye.
Poet, don’t try to grasp a rhyme scheme this thick.
Let go the one word to finish it:
dick.
26.
Koye is lips within lips,
statues of budding lips,
If the cosmos allows,
a source of life and singing.
Its heart thieves are paragons,
like my poems.
Whichever one you catch,
you say, this is the one.
My mind is dominated by this stunning idol.
The moon envies their faces.
Their height?
The date tree’s.
Their character?
Fareidun’s, Nawaz’s.
Their etiquette:
Salam’s.
They are lionesses,
darkly touching,
famous as Khosrau.
The cheek, near-neck, face, cleft chin, and lips
Are fresh, throbbing, pretty,
unexpectedly endearing.
The heart-thieves, with polished gold belts,
sell they’re coy.
With their silvery cedar bodies:
lovely and famous as Shirin.
Heartless and heartbreaking,
they kill friends and charm enemies:
Christians, Zoroastrians, diverse doctrines.
There is an apple under these lips,
an arcing chin.
She molds silver into spheres,
like this under-chin.
He wished a kiss,
Raza, godless,
she withheld, saying,
“God, this descendent of Sheikhs,
what few manners he has.”
27.
God, keep us from trouble with the mayor.
We lack capacity for war,
the Pasha’s forceful dick.
Whoever fucks him,
he says,
“Well done, well done.”
Enemy of the mighty,
he doesn’t discriminate between
Doing it and giving it.
2000 dicks tried.
His ass is unchanged.
We’re dying,
but his hammer is not heavy as stone.
Kill him, cocksucker,
he stole the honor of Kurds.
Don’t you say we have brave men among Kurds.
28.
The day I spurned Kirkuk,
I journeyed,
Avoiding my relatives like scorpions.
The universe dragged me,
leashed tight,
to Koye
As the guest of Uncle Ghafoor,
where I faded.
I wanted to tour the Ottoman lands.
He forbid it and heaped
Hundreds of white-haired mullahs on my head.
“Let him sit,” he said,
“I will give him my daughter in marriage.
I will attach him to this world,
make him respectable.”
My jubba is worn down to its threads,
my fez gone.
He has given me no fez,
nor dressed me in jubba.
Six months this fantasy kept me beside him.
I didn’t know,
break my neck,
I’d annihilate myself in failure.
By God, I will do to him even more
Than I did to his son, Rashid.
I told myself,
Work well.
Uncle will be kind.
Ay, good work,
suitable beard,
by God,
The hardworking, even authorized, shouldn’t copy.
I am hardworking,
yet I came and copied the donkey.
I shit on the kindness he gave me.
I forsake this mercy and kindness.
Seeing the arrogance of his heart,
a hundred times I said,
“Oh, God,
why did I fight with Sheikh Ali?”
I must return to his side,
though he will say,
“Back again,
After I kicked him out,
the shiftless rat,
Raza,
the cause of our infamy.”
Returning
In disgrace and shame?
I will look elsewhere.
29.
God, when He wants to make His servant happy
He comes to him on His own feet,
witness intended.
From Hinudstan to Kurdistan,
a six months’ journey,
God sent Sheikh Ahmad Hndy to Mullah Mahmood,
Mullah Mahmood of Zangna,
the axis of the circle of guidance.
Around his shrine only the sound of,
“Oh, God,”
and “Oh, Master,”
After him,
the eldest of Sheikh Ahmad’s children followed,
Like Sulaiman,
the successor of the honorable David.
Oh, God,
a hundred thousand mercies find the graves of father and sons.
They went with mercy.
Let us return to speaking of Abdulrahman,
The result of Ahmad and Mahmood’s lineage,
a result I would die for.
The result was the purpose;
the first and next,
only conditions of that gain.
God brought them into existence so this could exist:
The great bearer of guidance whose son is Sheikh Ali.
He, like his father and grandfather
is counted among the first.
Raza also is from that lineage,
God forgive him.
There can’t be flower without thorn,
ocean without mist,
fire without smoke.
30.
I faced my dear nephew’s good situation
Tonight,
with generosity and faithfulness and shame.
Through the crack of the door I saw him and his followers
Seated in two lines around Khal,
Kazi’s son.
You would have said the guard had been advised.
He puffed himself up like a Turk,
saying,
“And who knows you?”
I told him,
“It’s me,
you so-and-so,
Uncle Sheikh Raza,
As if you don’t know me,
Hamiz Efendi.
If this door is closed to me,
I should go,
but
Have pity,
you fag,
you slut.
My nads are iced over.”
Then, in Kurdish, he spoke,
and said,
“Oh, yes,
You’re the sheikh of fraud,
gambling,
and donkey thieving.”
At this treatment,
I understood the intention
and
Slunk back home,
stranded and stung.
31.
Enough, Auntie Shukri. Don’t make me rip your ass up.
Don’t post your mom, cockgobbler, to my bald red head.
I thought at one time to lay into you myself.
Then again,
It’s a waste for a model like me to listen as each ass brays.
I, the one they call falcon hunter to the King.
It’s a shame to celebrate the fight of the crow and the flamingo.
All at once, you have become a whore, heels raised.
No, I said, it’s no good if one eye doesn’t intumesce.
Bitch, grab hold of yourself.
I am coming for you.
I promise silence until I breed you under your stones.
You old Baghdad bitch,
poetry be forbidden to me
If I don’t crack your sister’s cunt wide as Kasra’s arch.
God take my soul if, as I did Masty with a single stanza,
I don’t lay you, you godless heresy, out.
I know who turned you,
but what’s the use?
He’s a Said, a Said, not to be insulted.
Tell him, be aware,
and you,
stop eating my foul shit.
Don’t make me condemn Sulaimani as an absolute infidel.
A promise I make in honor of Sheikh Raza:
blind bear,
I won’t go to your mother’s lap until I’m limp against you.
32.
Shukri, this year or two, you sadden me.
My cock is ill:
heartsick, fallen.
Just once, ask your faithful man how he is or isn’t.
Ask your old friend—
it’s amazing if he remains—
is he dead?
He’ll die for your absence unless you heal him.
Scourge the neck thin as parsley roots
Intentionally, to save your feelings, I say he’s sick.
Really, he long ago gave his soul to heaven.
Ask your mom if I lie.
That gracious lady buried him with her own hands
and forbid herself comb, henna, and bath.
For the dearly departed,
she swore herself forbidden.
Even now, her clothes are dirty,
her crotch hairy.
Like a dwarf beard,
her pubes span a hand’s breadth.
That gracious lady,
if Sagrma penetrated her son
she’d dismiss it as a bird’s claw.
That gracious lady,
her anal avenue gives the army parading ground,
her alley cunt gives degenerates a bed.
A poem you call good is manure.
A verse you recite is foul shit,
a sneaky fart whose essence emerges in a wind.
You threw your honor after your foolish poems.
With these lackluster words,
you won’t become Sheikh Raza.
Don’t bother to mirror the work of Aristotle.
33.
A bitch who ties on lies about Raza
Was no doubt a bastard as a fetus in his mother’s cunt.
His poems are without wisdom, worth, manners,
His life from beginning to end threadbare.
Shukri, Sulaimani’s guzzler of stink and shit,
I used to say.
Every time I saw him,
the hooker,
he was back for more.
34.
A big name with no sense,
you shat in the beginning.
What can I say, pimp?
I laid both balls on your mom.
She cares for my cock and balls,
which were martyred by a fart.
I thank my love,
my heart’s caretaker,
with complaint.
If you seek to hear the notes of love,
listen well to this song.
A big name,
a bitch like him,
can’t originate with Adam.
He was a pain in the ass,
but for me laid face down.
How I died to mount up,
how I killed myself striking him.
Each service I did
was without payment or gratitude.
Oh, God,
don’t make anyone serve unappreciated.
Weeds sprouted around his asshole
like hydra heads.
My balls wouldn’t go.
My dick has passed through a hundred hazards,
but got stuck in the wool behind his balls.
Don’t search torture’s lush hair, oh, heart.
There, you will see heads severed without accusation or crime.
I turned my face to his hips,
his ass,
I mean the promised place:
a completely filthy ground,
a plain of carnal addiction.
I rode left and right
but that mare would accept no destination.
As I rode,
on every side,
horror increased.
Beware this endless desert,
this endless path.
The backside is a cure,
soft as the palm of your hand.
My cock journeys into that cure freely,
always.
Each home is a hundred miles away
and every mile is 360.
The end of this road,
can it be imagined?
There are a hundred thousand homes more than at the beginning.
His father was a good man,
his mother, too –
so holy.
A backsider,
he’d fuck his own mother until God cried,
“Enough!”
Lacking the water of lust,
his lover is charred.
A libertine with thirsty lip
won’t give anyone water.
It appears those who know the heart
have left this wilayet.
[He broke the head]
He broke the head of the crown,
the Iranian Kasra,
He exposed Jam’s veins and roots
to the wind of annihilation.
He brought night’s blood
from Medina to Mada’in
He seized the crown and flag
from the kings of the Iranians.
This shrieking at the descendants of Omar
is not for Ali;
The enmity against the descendants of Omar
is ancient among Iranians.
35.
When I departed Shahrazur for the Ottoman region,
I crossed down into the region of Brifkan.
On that path,
there is a mountain of lofty foundation
Burnt from the heat of incarnation like Horeb.
The ecstasy of that magnificent mount
left me open mouthed.
The bird of understanding
flew from my head.
Suddenly,
an invisible messenger called to me,
The secret will be disclosed to you in a second.
As I topped the auspicious peak
It appeared in the distance:
a dome,
a cosmic cloister.
I asked,
To whom does this illumined cloister belong?
Ah! Ah!
This heaven and palace blessed by God.
Like the bright gold disc of the sun
It shone from its roof to its doors,
gleaming.
It is said this is the shrine of a zenith of saints.
The cupbearer has gulped pure wine from his lips.
This is the tomb of God’s beloved,
Sheikh Nuri.
His body sleeps in the soil.
His spirit is gone to His Presence.
To meet him,
they come in regiments,
regiments
From the sky,
angels shaped as birds.
An ant who passes under the shadow of Nuri’s palace
will be raised higher by God than Jamshid’s eminence.
Oh, God,
in reverence for this zenith of saints,
Forgive Raza.
You have said,
“I am the Forgiver.”
Don’t sustain agony and hardship in his journey.
Bring him again to happiness and comfort and delight.
36.
Even the merging waters of the Tigris and Oxus won’t wash it away,
The slick of Lady Fairuza’s dirty sex.
Wander the alleys of her vulva
and you’ll find Sam’s column,
Rostam’s Raksh,
and Faraidun’s mace!
If you want a free fuck,
go to the Mufti’s house.
There, heaps of pussy and ass
haven’t the value of a single grain.
Thrown into the wide hole of his sister,
The Hamun Sea would seem smaller than a mustard seed.
Between his sisters’ thighs
is the jungle of jungles:
you can see bears and monkeys slumbering in multitudes.
I praise the slit below Lady Fairuza’s navel:
a quarter of the inhabited world is under its seal.
The libertines behind her number triple the Russian army.
If she wanted,
she could easily conquer the country of Japan.
When his itchy ass won’t be quieted,
even by a rhinoceros horn,
What will he do with his battered backside,
Jamil?
If they took a cent from each libertine,
in no time,
they’d gather a hundred of Qarun’s treasures.
37.
Zephyr, from your servant, the Victor of Poets,
Take my greetings to Shukri,
“You, wife of poets,
Your yellow face is evidence:
you are pregnant,
But tell us, from which penman among poets?
If God grants you a son from my semen,
Nickname him the Destructive Spirit of Poets.
Do not be amazed when that child of grand genes
Becomes in a week or two the lion-slayer of poets.
I praise your strong, tough waist
Which withstood the half-ton maces of poets.
Your head, like a scale’s pan, rests on the ground;
Your legs lean up against the necks of poets.
There is no artistic reserve in your silo
Apart from what you cull from the harvest of poets.
The breach of your ass bag has split so
It can’t be sutured by the needle of poets.
Shrew, I will knock you up again unless you fling
Your hands, begging intervention, at the hem of poets.”
The eloquent and the evaluators of rhymes are unanimous:
There is none eminent as Raza in the techniques of poets.
38.
Hitting, slapping, punching,
they pushed me to the Pasha’s house,
Hussein Efendi, whore-wife,
and the ass-partial Hafiz.
Who among the Bagchi, Qapchi, and Torumpachi
Hasn’t stuck a finger in the ass of Hafiz Efendi?
He is such a sodomite
that always,
like the Baghdad Bridge,
Water runs beneath him
and people fill his back.
It’s not surprising if,
at the hands of that damned pair,
I die.
Didn’t Yazid and Shimr kill Ali’s Hussein?
We take refuge in God.
If this is being a Muslim,
The right answer is Judaism or Zoroastrianism.
39.
If, for one breath,
the nightingale, lovelorn, desires the flower,
With the heart’s desire not yet taken,
a separating thorn will manifest.
The King wants to pay subsistence to the deserving.
This Haji tries to prevent him from this manifest.
Between Malik and Rizwan,
as Judgment Day dawns,
An uproar over Haji Mustafa’s beard manifests.
Malik calls to Rizwan,
“You, Rizwan, don’t let
This Jew-beard manifest inside the Garden of Retreat.”
Rizwan replies,
“No—he is an old man, a haji.
When did God say that hajis should manifest in Hell?”
Malik retorts,
“Hajis are abundant among the Jews.
A pilgrim to the holy house manifests as their haji.”
When the talk arrives here,
Rizwan is left with no reason.
The beard in this quarrel
is Malik’s great proof manifested.
Despite Rizwan’s severity,
they put him in Hell:
among friends and enemies,
an infamous warning made manifest.
Haji Baba,
find a solution for this beard today
Or tomorrow temptations will manifest from that beard.
Rip it out from the stump and lower.
Even if you do so a hundred times,
Not one week past,
the seed of this blight will once again manifest.
Before you take this dirty beard to Hell,
Tithe it so toilet paper manifests for the people.
A profaner like Raza
and a pilgrim like you
Take centuries and God’s kindness to manifest.
40.
Your company is lovely
and your cadence is sweet.
Your mouth is a coffer
decorated with jewels.
Your virgin idea,
between me and God,
Is a tender girl,
elegant.
The throne and shining carpet of Belqis
In truth is the least of dowries.
This is not poetry;
it is a thread of honey.
This is not verse;
it is stringing the Pleiades.
If I bring a hemistich from Attar’s talent—
So juicy and colorful—
As a one-liner,
what’s the surprise?
One technique of poetry is one-liners.
Meaning-heavy,
word-light.
If there is any “simple and impossible,”
this is one.
Even as a proverb they say,
“Prayer is for the Amen.”
May your mind be cheerful,
Amin Faizy:
You are the sea of knowledge and faith.
May your enemy fall to the ground
and roll over.
They deserve damnation and insult.
Virtue he knows from God,
Raza
Is not one of those selfish poets.
41.
Oh, your face,
like the Third Caliph’s,
Oh, pleasant character,
benign qualities.
No poet is like me,
no writer
Like you in technique.
Ambergris fills my nose—
Ambergris scented tobacco.
From my throat to my chest,
each inhale
As it descends,
prolongs life.
From liver to windpipe,
Each exhale I bring up
enlivens being.
My friends in speech only,
let them be
Sacrificed,
one by one,
for your promise and loyalty.
This many prayers I say for you:
As many as all the multitudes do.
42.
The day God gave the rope of existence to mankind,
He didn’t give sustenance according to artistry.
My life failed until the universe gave me subsistence.
No matter the hundreds of struggles,
the liver-blood I gave,
Heaven saw a penny as too great for the artist.
Any ass was given gems in a hundredweight.
A wise man is a fertile tree:
He eats a hundred stones to the head
and gives up fruit.
With such small fortune
and such bitter taste,
Many thanks that my poems savor of rock and grain sugar.
It is not only this delicious poetry
and sweet words.
I am indebted to God who gave me another bounty:
This also is from His generosity,
if not,
why blindly would the governor give me a gold watch.
43.
The cosmos doesn’t turn its head
from serving the Great Sheikh.
At your waist,
like Gemini,
fasten the belt of serving the Sheikh.
Whoever has his heart’s eyes open will see:
The fourth firmament’s throne
is under the sublime foot of the Sheikh.
The universe’s shell lacked the magnitude of the pearl’s expanse:
So, he departed this world,
the Sheikh.
From the first day,
he has been robed in sainthood.
Until the last day,
kingdom and glory remains to the Sheikh.
As an angel once again,
they will call him to the gate,
accepting
The Fallen Angel if the glance of mercy falls from the Sheikh.
The lion-men of God—
Shibli and Ma’roof and Junayd—
Guard the boundary of the Sheikh’s sanctuary.
You, Lami’,
strangers’ stories are not for your
Tongue—
no words should pass apart from praise of the Sheikh.
44.
If I don’t send the Zephyr as my messenger
to the Sword of the Country,
the Nation,
then for pity’s sake,
who among the intimates of the Khan
will be our intermediary?
Who will deliver this message
to the Sultan’s attendants?
Gratitude be for your reign;
do not take beggars from your sight.
If I am an indigent,
you are the King’s minister.
If I am the nadir,
you are the sun and moon’s zenith.
The distance between us
is greater than from moon to fish.
All night I keep the hope
that morning’s gentle breeze
Will touch this acquaintance
with a message of acquaintance.
If destiny’s command settled me
in the Ottoman Empire
I wish to draw near the Shah
and the country Iran.
The Ottoman authorities stalk me
at every turn,
they bar the road.
Give me refuge from the stalker,
a beast by nature,
oh my God,
The meteor who assists the faint star.
You, you are the morning sun,
your goblet light to the lip.
For insignificant atoms
your generosity provides a medium.
In the morning,
pour a crust of bread
into your Raza’s mouth.
For God’s sake,
give a sip to Hafiz,
the early riser,
For at dawn prayer works.
45.
I’m not an alcoholic
that you should bring me wine.
I worship the smooth.
Bring a smooth-faced boy.
I don’t take much pleasure
from a kid who gives up his ass.
If there is one kid who hasn’t been fucked,
bring him.
No, no,
I’m wrong.
There isn’t a kid un-fucked in this town
To be found.
Bring a child who’s given away his ass.
Contentment cannot be made
with a single round ass.
By cable car,
by limber,
bring ass.
The source of ass
is that military school.
Bring a few Chabuks
and Bagzadas.
I have no patience
to take his legs from his pants.
Tuck his hems in at his waist.
Bring him ready.
If the delivery-man does not arrive
with what was sent,
Bring the sender for punishment.
My only desire
is to bank the fire of lust.
Old or young,
male or female,
bring someone.
If—
my malevolent fortune—
nothing is available,
Just bring someone
90 years old and falling.
If someone 90 years old
is not available either,
Bring a feeble servant
of the prayer mat.
46.
Two meters of turban,
three meters of aba
and one meter of beard,
Two hundred disciples walking before,
escorting from behind,
Worldly people are cheated by appearance.
If one claims to be a prophet,
he is.
What tricks,
what magic,
what artifice
I have seen from those infidel Sufis.
They have crowned themselves with
A hat,
tall as the heights of Udj,
Claiming,
“I am a Mawlawi Sheikh.
Our path is
The flute,
hand-drum,
dance,
sama’,
hash
and opium.”
One has palmed a weapon
long as my dick
to say,
“I am a Raffa’i Sheikh
who skewers and self-punishes.”
Sheikhs who consume the world
with this conspiracy
Are the equal to the pubes of the indigent.
God,
give Raza refuge
from these sly sheikhs
Who appear to pray,
but keep the creed of hash.
The translations are by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse. In a few instances, I have made minor adjustments to the wording of her translations, but full credit for translating the collection belongs to her.
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