The Persians by Rumi

By Brandon Brown Brandon Brown

If you’re love’s lover and look for love

cold smoke the dog called bashfulness

beware for your conversation is a hindrancy

this poem isn’t interested I’ll bill you

Why’d the mad one make madness in a thousand works

that wild one make a thousand wild works of wiles?

now he disrobes, now he’s so fast

now he likes intoxicating substances and wants to die

Since a spider spies and eats a whole deer

behold what the web of Zoroastrianism will do!

Since the love of nighties had positive market outlook,

how will it be with “He took His servant in nighties?”

Have you not seen the book of Waisa and Ramin?

Have you not heard the tales of Wamiq and ‘Adra?

You hike your denim so you don’t wear water

do you have to pull that bridge stunt over & over?

The way of love is filth and I’m drunk

the storm storms—how should a storm calm?

you’ll be the jewel in the ring of lovers

If you’re insistent on assuming the consequence of jewelry

so, say it, how does the earth hurt if we fuck?

what gifts would be unreasonable?

it’s not cool to beat a drum when yr. in bed, son,

and put your erection in the middle of the desert

Listen to the sounds of fucking and coming,

under the sky, which “Orientals, perhaps owing

to some optical peculiarity, see as green.”

When you’re drunk take your clothes off

Heaven is great, Orion is confused

how the world is high and killed

by love which is high and killed!

When the sun comes out, where do nighties hide?

When the come comes, where does the pent go?

I’m done. Speak to me, soul’s soul’s soul

From desire of whom from whose desire every throat was cut

Source: The Persians By Aeschylus (Displaced Press, 2011)

Biography

Brandon Brown is the author of The Persians By Aeschylus, The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, and Flowering Mall. In 2012, his debut play Charles Baudelaire the Vampire Slayer was staged at Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theater. He publishes small press materials under the imprint OMG! and lives in Oakland.

In November 2012, Brown was a featured writer for Harriet.

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