“The Veiled Secret” by Umar Abubakar Sidi

The Veiled Secret of the Kama Sutra or the Way a Certain Poet interprets the Surrealist Manifesto at Night

goddess, as we sit at night on a carpet of clouds, as i unveil you, as i survey your curves, your grace, your sacredness as i map out the regions of your navel, as our lips seek and touch

i forget avant-garde, meta-fictional devices, hyper text & the half-opened e-books on the lost treasures of Timbuktu on my broken Ipad

i forget Borges & the half written Borgesian story titled: A Treatise on the Permissibility of Marriage Between Mankind & Djinn

i forget ‘golden mean’, the stoics , Nicomachean Ethics, Bentham and the felicific calculus; a philosophical method of calculating practical happiness and bliss

i forget closed-quadrants, poetic-cubism, theory of forms, wheel of dharma, circle of suffering, seven stations of the dervish, sea power & territorial extent of the sweetened margarine & moisture between thighs

i forget poetic policy, dead poets society, the ‘big poem’ or is it a short essay thinly disguised as a poem which in my delusional state of being i dream will make me immortal, or an inimitable idol like Hubal of the Arabs, Karl Max; prophet of matter or Adonis; idol and god to all those who place high premium on poetry and the metaphysical necessities of being

i forget Committee on Poetry and our silly policy: make every stupid citizen poem-literate before the next elections in the planet of Jut

i forget phones ( oh, how i hate smart phones), broken ATM cards, unpaid bills, unfulfilled promises, stagnated investments, the kettle of Sufi tea on my desk, hallucinations and all those strange visions that haunt gentle souls as they navigate through the landscapes of sand

i forget grand concepts like: ‘The Great Woman’, ‘Jewel of the Savannah’ and the tormenting images of the ‘Mermaid of Sand’

goddess, as i let go the strap of your bra & let my tongue examine the dark areola of your nipple, as you moan & cry: bite me! bite me hard!

i fade, everything in this goddamned crammed up, stupid poet-brain of mine fades, i think, i am, i am because i am, perhaps Descartes is right, (i abhor Cartesian dualism), i perceive from a distance of septillion-million miles, echoes from the fragrance of my all-time favourite philosopher; the Andalusian existentialist and prophet of unity:

“He says heartsickness causes the lover to melt, and is the most grievous sadness of the heart, He says torment is a fire that blazes up in the hearts of the lovers, burning everything it finds there except the lovers and love, He says that burning desire is the flame of desire and passion is the expansive stage of love because it is derived from air, He says intoxication is an abandonment of reason and the fourth stage of love, He says mad love is intoxication of reason, He says sadness is the most difficult manifestation of love and the hardest to bear

And he says that love blinds and deafens”

Quoted from al- Sufiyyah wal Surriyaliyya by Ali Ahmad Sa’id popularly known as Adonis

goddess, as you twirl & twist, as i grasp the ungraspable magic of your curves, as i feel the fullness of your buttocks and their grace, as you disrobe me, embrace me, anoint me ‘poet of the goddess’ & admit me into the Temple of Thighs, i transcend ink & pen, i perceive grace, i connect to the super highway of sub-consciousness, i submerge below the subliminal sublime subways of consciousness, i thirst, i lick, i suck, i inhale the effusing gasses of the Surrealist Manifesto in a dream, in the same dream i become a mad dream, i gather strength, i thrust, i permeate through the lost pages of the Kama Sutra, at the infinite revelation of the eagle pose, i explore the poetry of your navel & the metaphysics of your thighs, as you moan : do it slowly, do it gently, i vanish, i fade, i seek the hidden mystery of life, i choke, i gasp for breath and moisture, i see light, i gain knowledge, i explode, i scatter into bits of bliss and dream, in a state of non-being; i gather the salacious quills of my tongue and i scribble a verse on the inner lobe of your clitoris: Vagina is the Gateway of Being.

.
Note: The andalusian philosopher mentioned above is ibn Arabi the Sufi mystic and exponent of wahda’tul wujud, ‘Unity or Oneness of Being’.

Umar Sidi is a helicopter pilot with the Nigerian Navy. He is the author of ‘ Striking the Strings’ (Origami) and the chapbook ‘ The Poet of Sand’, (Saraba Magazine). He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.