The Poet's Battle With Himself:

(The Poet:) I am Majnun I have no fear of Eva's
curse, a love that is born of hands that are clean
is surely beyond all sins grasp
i would await her accession outside the gates
of Eden for all eternity; for i have loved Laila
since flesh and Bride were first conceived 

(The Devil:) i have known the kiss of Laila
and have no fear of the serpents caress

(The Poet:) i am now in the shade of Laila
i have no fear of prison and the grave

(The Devil:) is it so strange she bears the name
of the queen of our undoing?

(The Poet:) is it so strange i choose the wilderness
as the place to hide from my soul
that my dreams are poisoned by visions of the end
that in her absence hell is but a shrine for the beasts
and heaven a garden i may not enter unless guided
by she

Was she a phoenix who soared from the ashes
of a splintered heart. she is both the nay in duet
with the haunting desert breeze and the thunderous
heavens vigil and the fast broken only by the dying
of the khamsin. she is the cool mountain haven
she is the vast oppressive sun at full zenith
a fire in the heavens, the veil between life
and the life to come. she is the Bride and
the Beloved companion of my flesh
she is the ghost to my clear sight
she is all things except here with me...

(The Devil:) did i not converse with the beasts
who all warded me from granting thought to
our Love? did not the lioness hint of the
eternal shadow, her robe which waits to
clothe the bones of all dead lovders?

There are no stars, there is but one star
long dead before it may ever reach me in this
godly construct the void of endless plains
the night an endless weave which bares her name
Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrina, Jasmine
the night which consumes utterly
life she makes a suffering only a fool or martyr
would endure
the four pillars of your being have been crucified
for love of this woman, your heart, your mind,
your body and soul.
only the madman or poet would drivel such
blaspemy.

(The Poet:) For she is the rain and sun and winter moon to me
the vast remorseless unfolding universe which stretches
beyond even the smallest death of so slight a thing
such as a man, i am a drop of blood shed in the endless
wastes of the desert, this woman if she has a name
is everything.

(The Devil:) Then why speak so foul of the thing
that you love. the bearer of all your sufferings?

(The Poet:) Does not the monk in his loneliness
compare his pain only to that of one who truly loves
God, in returning to his earthly snare, the sweetest
all engulfing sorrow merely the slightest of which
may exist in the confines of this crude thumbnail
form.

Surely only that which divides the continent of
your heart, preparing a chamber for the
destiny of this thing we have named love
the first tears which remain forever
footprints in the sand of your eternal being
surely only that which draws blood is real.

All poets have knowing of Laila
all lovers were once Majnun
then of her wrongs surely enoough
has been said...