“The Agni Verses: Two Ambiguous Words in Mid-Flight” is a monolithic prose poem and an esoteric manifesto exploring the thin, blurred line between existence and non-existence. Originally woven into the final fabric of my Turkish novel, Children of the Full Moon, this standalone English text is a syncretic journey through ontological doubt, sacred passion, and the subversion of ancient myths. Here, Agni—the Vedic deity of fire—descends into a dark, stormy night not as a distant god, but as a twin-souled lover, a ruthless mirror, and a sovereign of ancient altars. Enter a realm where a Hadith is read in Hades, where realities become illusions, and where two unknown words remain eternally suspended in mid-flight.
By: Hashem Khosroshahi (Haşim Hüsrevşahi)
It was the end of time in your prophecy. Your prayers, the tears of a forgotten corpse. The spice merchant’s rosary had snapped in your words; your voice tasted of bitter almond. How meek you were as you carried my corpse in your arms, kissing it and laying it upon your altar, upon the rug. How innocent you were when you leaned over my breast to recite your final verses. Sing to me, Agni; sing the song of your wind, of our hidden laughter, of the secrets we revealed within one another… Agni, we are twin drunken colts with broken wings. You are naked, galloping bareback upon the soil of my breast… And I, the defeated, murderous apostle riding pillion behind you. Sparks fly from your horse’s hooves. Tell me a tale. Agni, tell me a tale! The tale of our love buried alive on that dark, stormy night. I speak of the night when the rain scourged the streets of Istanbul. Tell of our beauty.
When I came to your door, I had brought all the beggars along my path. I had hooked upon my arm the folk songs I sang all my life. I had brought the taverns of all the lovesick drunks. I had brought the flagless squares of cities I never visited, the pride of mountains I never climbed. You were so arrogant, so drunk, so helpless… I understood this only when I kissed your lips. When I came to your door, how like a full moon your face was! You extended your hand… I kissed your lips that told the tale of the utterly impossible. You took the wicker basket from my back; you said, “come, step inside.” You had cooked soup, and some pasta too. How magnificently you had adorned that tiny table… You had arranged the plates with your own hands; just so I would come, so we could sit, drink dark-crimson wine, and die—and then, arm in arm, read a Hadith in Hades. The beggars had taught me too: the collapse of perfection is perfection itself… the collapse of death is love… Why could I know no other street? Why could I not become a dog to other scents? What was there in your voice, Agni? What was there in the embers of your fire? Do you remember the moments you ripped me from my mother’s womb? Do you remember your own descent from the embrace of the full moon onto this window sill? Ah, Agni! Come, let us fly together from this ledge; let us skip together across the rocks of the shore; let us beat the unique, blissful drums of being disgraced. Blow into the ney of my throat, just as you blew the spell of love. Let us fall silent when the dawn awakens! Then, let come what may… I told you that my mouth tasted no other wine after you. You believed me. And I believed you, Agni. Cover my face with your skirt now. Let time pass like this… I am weary. I shall rest within your blazing breaths.
What holy villainy it was! She, who is the daughter of the moon goddess! The wind had brought the whisper of yellow wheat to your hair! Your hands, newly returned from hell, had finally touched the soil; they were to bring fertility to the earth, to my face, and to this city, which had memorized the resonance of your footsteps patiently telling that ancient tale… Ah, my eternal holy whore, with whom I made love hundreds of times, for whose icon I lit candles, by the poison of whose tongue I went mad, and upon whose altar I was sacrificed every sunset when the fear of death plundered your breast! The moisture of your lips seeps into my lifespan… Your sweat, the water of life flowing from between your thighs, washes away my sins. The scent of wild thyme on your skin, like barbarian hordes, tramples my soul beneath its hooves. Now the moon, your mother, sits by the window, gazing at us and at this orphaned city! That moon-woman, whom you named Simla in your own lore, now wanders these streets. Now she sits within the shadows of this bright night, listening to the voices of the fishermen who sailed out to sea and the musicians. And those young girls, those boys dancing in colorful skirts under the moon’s tambourine, they are singing your songs… One side of you is Sadri Alışık, the other is Borges! Ah, my Red Scarf, until eternity! As I wander inside you, your hand leaves its tenderness upon my hair. I, who believed in you, will now sacrifice to you my poem, whose soul I distilled in blind wells. My first voice, my first poem… Listen now! At the end of this voice, you may drink my blood. For I have bled my blood into this poem of mine. Before the blind gaze and decayed flesh of Simla, I slit the throat of my first poem, my firstborn child. Now rub your wings against my blood and hear it for the very first time! When I was still a child, two cruel hands ripped the wings right from my shoulders. The soil of your shoulders is bitter. A mere touch of the tongue would burn. Inanna had told you that you could fly. Your wings will bloom with every single tear. Black tears and blue… She would journey into the underworlds by night. That is why the rivers of pain flow within your palms. Rub your newly blooming wings against my eyes. Rest your head upon my chest when night falls. On that first night, looking at your stars, I suck your fingers… You laugh… “I did not take you as a slave, my love!” We were born on a Sunday morning in Ankara. We got up and walked down together to buy bread.
I was real. Reality itself. Unquestionable and undivided. Neither the sun could wear down my stones, nor the waves. The wind blowing from seven directions would pass through my perimeter, yet it never shed my leaves. I was real, Agni. This, I knew. The mirrors told the same tale, the song of the streets was the same, the murmur of the forest was the same. Until one day, the door to my room opened. You came and sat across from me. Far from me… First, I looked into your eyes. Then, at your teeth… When you opened your mouth and laughed as if singing a song, I saw your tongue, and my mind grew tangled. I fell into doubt. Agni, this was my first doubt. The first rift, the first abyss opened within my mind. This was my end. For if reality falls into doubt, it can no longer be counted as real. Now I ask you: Was I not real? Or was I a mere doubt from the very beginning? Was I an illusion where two shadows met and intertwined? Realities are not a shroud to cover doubts. Doubts slash the heart. They slash the mind. They slash the soul… splitting it in two, in three. What, then, was I before you? Explain me to myself now! On that day, what was that lukewarm thing flowing outside of me, from my soul into yours, and from your lips back into my soul? I ask this, accounting for the night. Accounting for your voice too… If there is a kingdom where doubt holds no dominion, this is my final word. I had bequeathed my mouth to you. I had knotted my breath into your breath. I had released my fire into your fire. When the rain came, you were supposed to leave. The rain was to erase the fire of your hair, the fire in your hair. The rain would wash away your wrath, extinguishing the lightnings within you. The rain would wash and wipe away the traces you left upon my hands, my lips, my tongue, and my soul. The rain never came. The mountains and green skirts raised a shroud of mist and smoke. You, enveloped in smoke—smoke enveloped within you—continued to come to me. You dragged me to the burning lines of the cosmos that bind night to day, and day to night. Descending from the eight thrones of the heavens, driven by the seven winds that sweep toward the seven holy directions, you were approaching, standing tall in your chariot drawn by seven crimson horses. You arrived. You sat across from me in my room. What was I to say? What did you wish to hear from me? When your seven tongues were hidden within my seven seas, my seven mountains, my seven rivers, my seven wells, my seven eyes, my seven wounds, and my seven tales, what did you wish to hear from me? When you had concealed yourself as a secret within me, what could I possibly say? I, the wretched gypsy sucking fire from your four hundred breasts that nurse the stars; the tongue-tied itinerant chronicler of the streets; the drunkard who has lost his home; the child by the wall whose dice are lost. I, that ambiguous word swaying in the isthmus of your two heads! You, the fire of my altar; I, the captive surrendered to your altar for eternity. Agni, read that poem once more. Burn that poem once more like incense. I told you, you were born once from the twin womb of a mother. That is why you have two hearts, two souls, two heads, and seven tongues. You were born once more from my mouth. That is why you are always silent, always smoke. You were born once more from your own palms. That is why your flames rise, slice by slice. Blood was the soul of your tale. As I was born from your final breath, Agni, you were the soul of blood’s own tale.
Agni! You are that absolute river of fire, ascending from my seas and flowing back into my seas. Your wind taught my serpents how to whistle, my wheat ears how to sway, my instruments their melody, my agonies their groan, and my ears their murmurs! You taught me how to climb the stairs. In a distant room, of a distant building, in a distant neighborhood of a distant city… You, an utterly impossible legend, a reality of pure pain! When the nights fall silent, sing the song of our souls, which resemble the stray waves upon the shore! This song has flowed from the lips of one woman to the lips of another. This song has flowed from one of those twin women who bore you as the nectar of life, to the other. From the tongue of Inanna… Ah, my holy sage… How you melt the lead of my torso, scoop it in your palms, and pour it down from your hair! Why did we always open dark-crimson wine? Why, whenever we passed through that bazaar, would your soul detach from your flesh? Why, as I listened to your poems, would the window open on its own, the curtain sway, and the damp, salty air of the sea rush into the room? Your eyes flashing like flint, your cheeks ablaze, our tongues like venomous serpents falling mute… Why dark wine, dark nail polish, dark hair, and dark dreams upon snow-white beds? You were the final mystery of the ultimate spell! You, the secret of the immortal fire! The bond between earth and sky! In our earliest ages, you were the lightning descending upon our caves—the terrifying, blinding illumination. Ah, you, mounted upon your crimson mare, my white colt whose ashes are scattered, my white-smiling, white-skinned, white-veiled one of black destiny! You were neither a female Prometheus, nor Phlegethon, flowing among the five brothers in the dark depths of the underworld… Neither the Phoenix, burning to ashes and rising from its own embers, nor that scorched spirit, the salamander… You were neither the virgin guardian of the holy fire, nor Armida, burning her own enchanted gardens! You, my female Agni, the two-headed messenger offering life within death and death within life! The twin-souled flame that burns my life away, yet locks me back to this existence with your teeth as you burn it! Now, whose smoke is it that billows from your hair? Who was it that gathered the wind with their bare palms? Who was it that wrapped and shrouded the water within their garment? Who was it that attacked our bed with colossal waves, blinding our eyes with blazing hair? Ah, Agni… The serpent curling up beside me even in my grave; the fiend pouring into my ears like lovesick songs, saying “Arise! Arise, you defeated of the earth, arise and hold fast to my arms!”; my love, my first defeat, my final death, who releases the blue milk from one breast and the crimson milk from the other into my mouth!
It was as if there were always halting clouds. Always incomplete rains… That tinsmith gypsy had said: “Your story will end before it even begins!” And you taught me how to lie. The lies with which I vanished my fears to the other side of the door… But with every lie, I diminished a little more, like temple candles on the verge of losing their flames. When you came to destroy yourself within me with your fire-breathing dragon’s mouth, you would enter me by ripping open my chest; with the fire you spewed, you would turn yourself and me to ashes, and then we would lie within our ashes, closing our eyes to the stars, to the trees, to the thieves on the street, and to the beggar children. Our tears would flow back into our deepest depths. We were a legend repeated within one another. We were two orphaned serpents writhing and gliding among scorched stubble; lonely serpents driving our venom-dripping fangs into our own flesh, sheltering in each other’s briars… Mute scorpions in their wrath, encircled by a ring of fire! You committed a murder within me. You knew this as you poured the final glass of wine. You would stand in my seas, upon my shore, and wait for the sunset. Dead fish do not dance. You knew this, Agni. You would smile. How far does a murderer stalk their victim? How far do they kiss them? You burned the clues one by one. You tied rocks to the feet of your witnesses and cast them into your seas. I was your corpse, your accomplice, the shameless witness to your madness, your dreaming left eye, and your weeping right eye. I, the final Judas who betrayed you!
Before I came to you, I was a rogue adventurer of the mountains, of the seas, of the caves… Being inside the adventure itself gave me pleasure. There was no summit I wished to conquer, no depth I wished to plunge into, no darkness I wished to touch. What mattered was the adventure itself. Not the path, but the transition itself. Until I heard a voice—a voice resembling white mist… Out of nowhere… A voice that shattered the light, shattered the water, shattered the smoke, and summoned the wind only to be shattered itself… Following that very voice, I approached you. First, I touched your voice with my pupils. Then with my eyelashes, then with my tongue… Then, expecting no light, I entered your naked hollows, your caves. My ears remained suspended within your voice. The ecstasy of getting lost in your caves lingered at the root of my teeth. This pleasure was not lust. It was something like the thirst of a butterfly. It was something like a bee passing through a petal to nestle into the heart of the flower. I still remember the damp, warm, dark shudder of your caves. The echoing sound of drop… drop… drop… And I walked. For years, I walked. My eyes were blind. And I walked within that absolute blindness. I walked as if you were breathing the entire universe into my mouth. Yet, you were not Shiva, and I was not Krishna. My dance was not Tandava, nor was yours Lasya. Our dance was the dance of flame and wind. The dance of two lovesick serpents. Our embraces were an impossible intertwining on the line between existence and non-existence, Agni. We hung like a pair of crimson inverted tulips, like the black tulip of Mount Qaf, upon that magical, faint border that makes both being and nothingness questionable at the same exact time. So that the ancient bats sleeping in the depths of your caves would not awaken, my bare feet would advance, haltingly, upon your moss. When the serpents of your tongue coiled around my throat, a song would pour over me. A song the color of blood. Before I believed in you, before I stepped into the cave where your verses descended… But what is done is done. “Open your palms,” you said. I opened them. Then, with the fire of your fingertips, you drew lines upon my palm. “Stand tall,” you said. I stood. With the fire of your fingertips, you drew lines upon my forehead. The sound of a wing was always mingled with your voice. The mother of the wind was born from between these two wings. You passed into me, and I into you. The wind had turned to fire, the fire to wind. Ah, my wild smoke! I began to believe in you when your nails carved my flesh. Ah, my blind prophet! My mute David! Ah, my John the Baptist with severed arms!
We were not the heads of the two-headed fire god that negated one another, yet could not exist without the other, Agni. I am your abandoned other half. I, the clown swinging back and forth between humanity and divinity. You, the burning tale of life and immortality. We, the deceived victims within our own childlike pleasures, our innocent joys! When you arrived on that summer night, the full moon had illuminated the room. You came, you blew out the candles, and you lit the endless fire within my seven places: my forehead, my mouth, my heart, my belly, my thighs, my feet, and my soul. I understood then that you were my female Agni—the one who lights these seven fires whose prophecy was never told to me, the one who embraces and circumambulates seven times upon my burning bed, dragging me into the illusions of her lovemaking. The extinguished sun flowing through the veins of death, the ruthless lightning that cracks through my clouds every single time you look into my eyes! The lightning that flashes and fades in the eyes of my ancestors within their sanctuaries… The fire you left at my feet was my flint, burning and extinguishing my hooves. This is why I always galloped headlong across the rocks. Your wind passed through my soil; it passed through my sky, through my sea! The ashes I spewed from my mouth were the final memories left to me from you. You, the sovereign of the altars in the well where I fell; my one and only murderer whom I took pride in, whom I praised! Now you lean over, gazing into the hell fading within my eyes, and that ancient blue smoke billows from between your strands of graying hair!
You and I are not even born yet! I am that river whose mere name makes your eyes gleam and weep. The river formed from your tears… Gather your skirts in your palms. Enter me with your white, bare feet. My tongue recognizes your fingers; it knows your feet. Your heels are familiar to my tongue. When my cool words rise up to your kneecaps, lean over me! Lean. Black and wild. Lean and hide me in the darkness your hair borrowed from the night. Take me into your own darkness. Into your absolute kingdom… I shall ascend from your hair. Your agonies will billow like blue smoke from your hair. Lean! Lean over me with the very beauty your eyes possess at the moment they witness terror! Never tell what you see now! When your tongue finds peace within my tongue, fall silent! Do not reveal the secret of our unborn state! Lean! Take my words between your teeth. Bite my words just as I bit your breasts and your thighs. I will not die. Nor will you die. Unborn realities are immortal realities. Lean! Bury your eyes into my eyes! Do you not see the mountains within my eyes? Do you see the wooden house upon the green skirt of those mountains? Do you see that book upon the bed in the only room of that house? Open and read that book upon the lectern of our eyes! Read it as if reading the prayer of blood flowing from ancient altars! Whisper it only into our ears! Your whisper will teach the roar to the wind running across those misty mountains. Remember our rebellious hours upon the rocks where you struck your hooves at a gallop. “Among horses, I am the horse of Indria; among men, I am the king,” I had said. And you, like a mare releasing her mane to the final wind, had carried us through the night. When we arrived at the edge of the abyss at the end of those green mountains, you had spurred your mare; “Fly!” you had said. And now, for centuries in that bottomless abyss, you and I are suspended—you and I are two unknown, ambiguous words in mid-flight! Lean over me! I will teach you how to lie! I will offer you the sweet lethargy of lies as well. Just like the lies you told me, believing them yourself! Innocent and murderous! I will tell you to lie in this bed. Lie upon the crimson velvet of oblivion. You will fall into such a deep sleep that awakening will taste of bitterness. You will take my tales along with you. “Kiss my breasts!” you said. Three times… And I began with your fingers. Remember all of this now. For by remembering, your soul will ache, and you will attempt to look into my eyes once more. You will see that we still live within our own innocent Purgatory; you will believe that we exist!
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