The Curious Sufi

A penchant for poetic obscurities

[thecurioussufi]

My quiet detonation

I think of you in the hush between midnight’s breath and dawn’s soft sigh, that empty, trembling moment when the world forgets its noise and leaves hearts to tremble in the dark. I breathe your name there, quietly, as though the letters might shatter glass if spoken too loud. When I close my eyes, I carry you: you are the skin beneath my fingertips, the tremor on my tongue when I whisper your…

[thecurioussufi]

in praise of my destroyer

to my palimpsest life – know that I take you with me everywhere. you are the skin beneath my fingertips, the song on the wind on its way to me. like a box of matches you, my muse lies in wait for the fire that will come. my muse, you is the singe upon the tongue, the burn inside the dark of the throat, the molten amber tumbling downward. my honey, my nectar lisp – your fingers are salty for…

[thecurioussufi]

Shy girl, you are the one that I want.

Hiding where only the shy can find me. What shy eyes say that words can’t. Those are the words she longs for. Words like “stay”. Words like “yes, I do.” Words that mean, “You’re beautiful”, without ever needing to say so. Those words. Words that hide in a cup of peppermint tea, a glass of red wine. Words that even silence can’t bear to touch. I found my words curled up behind your ear, nesting…

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[thecurioussufi]

Your body over mine nullifies all things.

Helen, I miss you with the intensity of all things blinding and comforting, searing and hypnotic at once and I impatiently await your return. Will you take me within you again? Will you allow me the retreat of your arms? Will you allow me room in the apartments of your heart where you treasure all you will never let go? Come home. Give me the knowing of you here. Give me another morning to wake…

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[thecurioussufi]

Absence is a living thing

I spoke to somebody about you today. I said your name out loud after months. Those letters in my mouth… and my tongue slipped and sought greedily at the familiar shapes. Betrayed by my own mouth, my own tongue a traitor. And that set of sounds which make your name reminded me of what it was to cry for a last thing.  When does it stop? Make it stop.

[thecurioussufi]

Absence is a living thing

I write this on a Friday night and my mind tells me she will be beautiful. Beauty that so disconcerted me I had to look away. She will be among people. They will look at her and want to be her. They will look at her and adore her. They will look at her when I cannot.  Another Friday. Another night. Another week. I have become my grief. My ink feels like fire. Every time I open my eyes I learn the…

[thecurioussufi]

Please read Orbital

“One day in the next five hundred billion years, while the probes complete one full circuit of the Milky Way, maybe they’ll stumble upon intelligent life. In forty thousand years or so, when the two probes sail close enough to a planetary system, maybe just maybe one of these plants will be home to some life form which will spy the probe with whatever it has that passes for eyes, stay its…

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[thecurioussufi]

Choose a different violence

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[thecurioussufi]

Choke

Too much love and too much pain – both are corrosive. Rust engulfs my bones. Like a tuberculosis, it runs its clammy hands over my shoulders and ribs, greedy fingers reaching for the things that keep me alive. Liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, you. And now, the same things I am willing to die. Please die. Just go. I am so done with this life. It was not easy to occupy the space in your life. It’s an…

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[thecurioussufi]

To Mama

Mama, you went like a hurricane. Sudden and swept off your feet. Died the way you wanted – far from supine and dumb on a bed wasting away. Mama, you were a blaze of lightning. You couldn’t be ignored. Rooms lit up when you entered. And when you left for the last time, you took the music with you. Mama, you keep coming back at night, in places I can’t reach you, in places I don’t belong. It’s…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Liars by Sarah Manguso

This book reads so convincingly like an autobiography but surprisingly, it’s not. It is a story of a woman, an artist married to a gaslighting emotionally abusive/unavailable man. It’s a trope we are all familiar with but Sara Manguso manages very successfully to entice, incite, and provoke reactions that you felt you were well above and beyond. Liars is a chronicle of a bad marriage. Told in…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Conquistador: Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy

This is a chronicle of the adventure of grand conquistador Hernan Cortes of Spain and his successful mission to conquer the Aztec kingdom in the 16th century. An area we know today as modern-day Mexico. Cortes, through a series of brilliant (if not guile-ridden, bloody, and manipulative) political and military tactics, managed to overthrow a grand 200 year old Kingdom of the Aztecs, dethrone the…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Just for context setting, I am going to begin my review with Goodreads’ Eric Anderson’s (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2…) succinct outline of the plot: “The novel “Kintu” by debut novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has been frequently compared to Yaa Gyasi’s hugely popular “Homegoing” because of its structure as an African family epic. However, “Homegoing” begins in the Gold Coast of…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Lion's Honey - The Myth of Samson by David Grossman

Having read other books in the Canongate myths series I expected this also to be a fictionalised retelling of the myth of Samson. To be sure, I was disappointed when the first few pages of the book was essentially the biblical script of the story of Samson. This was followed by a critical assessment of the text and a perspective into the character of Samson and what he represented. All extremely…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

This turned out to be a stunner of a novel; something I did not expect, frankly, and was incredibly grateful for. One looks to end a year of mostly average reading with something stupendous, and this met that bar for me. The historical novel is unapologetically my favourite genre. Cultivating and procuring an intelligent list of titles is one of my less favourite activities. There simply doesn’t…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

What an odd book. Historical fiction or magical realism? Myth or mystique?This is less novel and more an essay of the extremes of human behaviour and what we are capable of when our backs are pushed against the wall. Lapvona is a fictional town in what seems to be Eastern Europe, in the Medieval era. It focuses on a brood of impoverished peasants working to support their greedy noble lord and…

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[thecurioussufi]

Book Review: Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

**spoiler alert** Ridiculous. Repelling. Repugnant. And yet, tender, simple, and touching. In Wetlands, you come across an appalling smorgasbord of sexual forays into everything that can be deemed immodest and deviant (at best) and morbidly grotesque (at worst). If at first glance it reads like a dirty book, it is because that’s what it is. Halitosis. Haemorrhoids. Nasal mucous ingestion.…

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