A MIND UNIVERSAL

Overwhelmed by Joy's sanguine mass,
knowing all is well that begins well-
yet the peevish prospect of Joy's inevitable annihilation
time & again, throttles the Mind full-force-forth
unto the cold, void cosmos
of Pessimistic Ponderance,
this rocket-tank always either full-full or full-on-empty,
as the discontinuity yet uniformity of time-space happenings
bids to keep the Universe ever so slightly yet intractably titled
at an adjacent angle to Fate, Infinity,
the centrifuge of Reason holding the innards intact,
Time bidding to keep secret the outcome of Felicity,
whirling within its own realm,
inviting all who care & all who dare,
to embrace its yellow-hole pull
with expansive Soul & Arms,
as its Quantum mass plunders all within its enthrall,
into the divinely deviant depths of Oblivion-
Until the time has come again to bid reverence
to that universal constant Melancholia:
The voyage is complete.
We have landed from infinite light years away,
to kiss the terra firma of Mortality & its lachrymose constancies,
bidding the cycle of Life keep turning,
so that one day, all may be brought, to Eternal Transcendence.

COMMUNION

The choicest wafer of his flesh, crumbles & dissolves
beneath my hands & upon my tongue,
as I revel in the salty, sweet salinity of such earthly divinity.

Such unabashedly sappy & sanguine sensations stirred by this tryst-
very much nigh to Theophany I surmise,
yet those quaintly probing questions still arise-
Is this a communion led by the Spirit or the flesh, or by Spirit and flesh?

I conclude that whatever it may seem to be, according to the dictates
of all legalistic theological debate, the celestial body politic, if you will
the thing-in-itself still sustains, essence always preceding existence,
for what is a human soul without its corporeality anyway?
We are all both psyche and soma, and this is the highest dwelling for us,
here on low, being as it is our truest denomination.

So come, & take communion with thyself.

AWOKEN BY SLUMBER (Published in Dream International Quarterly)

Dreamtime is when
the conscience screams
asserts its need & right to be heard-
our dreams, our ally
keeping us straight,
never sparing our Soul their introspective rod,
bringing us up in the admonition of inner Truth & outer Justice.

I rise, kiss & embrace
the newfound consciousness of this day-
Will I stray?
When again, down I lay
Dreamtime will tell,
as I attend the nightly Mass of sweet Somnolence,
confessing it all to the Subliminal Priest,
who keeps vigilant watch
deep down within the Mind's abysmal well,
where the water is so bitter & cold,
Lucidity grips me time & again,
and I always discover the absurdity
inherent within concepts such as unconsciousness-
and find the so-called fully conscious world
to seem evermore surreal & illusory,
for only when we sleep, are we truly fully awake.

LEPT

Hope & Love are symptoms of the same wellness.
Slowly, we remember our deficiency.
It is very soon felt, not so benign, idiopathic.
Slowly, we begin to feel again-hence, to be, & hence, to live.

We all wish a gentle, gradual coaxing to bloom,
like that of a Rose which knows only of its own splendid Design,
and how it is best nurtured within Sunlight.

Yet we, too, no matter how rough-hewn our Journey may be,
are always a part of that Rose,
which has so patiently slept by the nearness of that endless reservoir
of the tears
the fears
& so many years
no longer wept,
for we had always already, learned to accept. 

WALKING DOWN THE DARK, MISTY ALLEY OF APATHY

Death is light on her feet again tonight, and so is God,
as I am irretrievably seduced & lured down the dark, misty alley of Apathy,
which is littered with teeming possibilities for Illusion-fix.

My senses are wonderfully assaulted with the mingling scent-sations
of fresh, crisp bills, patchouli incense, vinyl shower-liners, lilac fields, fringed suede jackets, Snuggle fabric softener ( Original scent), gasoline (courtesy of Xelco), and the light, musky emmolience which earth & air lovingly emanate after a fresh summer rain.

Yet these olfactory titillations, with melancholic bliss will soon altogether elude me,
for soon enough, the only thing left to intuit will be the seething envy of the Devil as his obsession becomes my bribe.

I am a being likened to sentience & skin, but these roots run much deeper than old money or any anti-enviro-bureaucracy.
I am an anachronism-out of my time, going out of my mind-so much for the dwindling of adolescent Rage & Angst, huh?
For if there is one thing I have learned it is the indisputable fact that there is Angst & Rage, at any age.
Ha! I know-such Outrage! you cry! But what else is Rage supposed to be-Inrage?
For here, is where it becomes something totally estranged from its former purity-and even innocence of incarnation.
Yes, here is where Rage Kafka-esquely transmogrifies into slow & measured, but nevertheless insidious self-annihilation.
And worse yet, it is also reduced to a corny spin-off of its former glory-for Rage is & forevermore will be, a Classic, baby.
And Blake was right on the mark when he realized imitation to be not one of the sincerest forms of flattery, but to be an insult.
For it seems to get to the point in this human existence, where even what we think of as "me" begins to feel contrived, as the inevitability of cognitive sophistication goads us ever nearer the rough-shodden tombs of its Indignities.
For we all may indeed be seekers of Truth, but the part of ourselves we seem to lose grasp of first, feeds most nourishingly upon the manna of Oblivion-of which, by a rather tender age, there is, a famine-legitimate lack.

Yes, I know my consciousness of all of this in a very tangible, real sense is that which condemns me to my own slow but sure demise, but as I cry out to the Fate which mocks me with both Despair & Hope, my voice echoesechoesechoes-Yessss! It echoes! Only to find my ears all-too-eagerly upturned to merely loathe & cringe at what I hear.

And so here I have let myself be led down this Alley of Apathy, over which lurks the air-
"To care or not to care?"

Neither is a piteous state nor is it a question, for there is only one thing:
The Answer there, so tightly ensconced within The Choice.
And, my fellow Melancholic friends, that is all that there is.

KING OF THE THINK TANK

Extreme conservative goldfish faking left-
then looping right,
to feed on stale flakes of stodgy logic
as they swim in a breeding tank
of libertarian piranhas,
now eating the goldfish alive-
soon to excrete the constipated matter of them both
in one volcanic dysentery of shallow sophistry,
as the muddied aquariums of public debate
fill to overflowing with polluted politics
and the bloated, rotting remnants
of toxic rhetoric & staid conviction.

The piranhas open up now once more
to consume their own shit,
a last tank effort at survival,
before those red-mutant-far-right-finned sharks,
smelling the foul air & bleeding hearts of them all,
move in for the love of blue blood-
led by the instinct of pure polemic predation-
blind obedience to the thought-for-food chain.

APERTURE

I remember when I would sit down by Lake Erie,
another photo-op for Father,
who hid behind his metal, plastic & glass face
which shot rays of light towards us, trying to capture our truest essences
with its cold, round, 4-dimensional eye,
as it winked mere pseudo-adulation.
I would often wonder aloud what Father was really seeking to capture,
although he only casually replied- "Negatives."
Father rarely let me touch his face,
which he kept locked away within a metal, silver flip-top case,
where he also sometimes stored away his "recreational smoke."

Sometimes Father would suspend his mechanical face
from a sturdily woven Southwestern-motifed strap, to play upon his chest.
And, after while, I could recognize no other face in relation to Father,
and would find my melancholic little self peering longingly into the eye
of this reliably attentive machine whereever it prevailed,
perhaps never quite receiving the mirroring which I truly sought thereupon its other side,
yet with the keen, inherent Intuition of a Child,
would always find Father's third eye quite revealing of him, nevertheless.

BROTHER OF SLEEP

An alarm screams out a warning, but it is too late.
I am reluctantly stolen from my slumber,
Body & Mind heavy-laden already from the insurmountable weight
of wakeful consciousness, as, brooding, groggy & sullen,
I am hurled back unto the barren, unmerciful landscape
of that world which insidiously creeps, & toxically seeps beneath the thickened skin
and its many dark, hidden crevices, an all-too-deluminant light
of encumbrant expediency & sense-ability.

And who is the keeper of this House?
Neither Mother, Father nor Lover nor any of our earth-woed kin,
but the Brother of Sleep, avaricious & ever-omnipresent,
as we weigh the costs of Survival while Life itself extorts without us.

The work gets neglected & we soon come to see,
that there is no tenable way to stop the accounting without expending all
of the red ink to remind us our debits.
Yet the Overseer has still kept us intact, and we are at least reassured
that as long as there is blood running hot & quick beneath the skin,
the books shall remain in balance, & we, fatally noble & upright in our figurings,
until the costs of Survival reach their final recompense,
and the keeper of the House decides that he can live in indigence with us no longer,
sending the Brother of Sleep to keep us-
that mortal friend, enemy & forbidden lover of the Life we had so carelessly spent,
trying to preserve.

PRAYER FOR THE POET

God, do you forgive even the heart of a Poet in all of its eccentricities & excess?
Do you forgive even the mind of a Poet despite all of the endless torment & internal questioning in which they often luxuriate?
Do you forgive them their covetousness of the black of night, preferring as they often do, to roam the bleakest, most desolate landscape of the Peripatetic, as they tending each succint & absolute answer granted by Thee, with yet another slew of questioning?
Do you forgive the Poet their inherently ravenous inquisitiveness, their restless heart, and their endless, ruminant mind?
Are these sins for which they should continually repent, or perhaps virtues in disguise which they should deem just as sacred as Thee & thus honour so?

Yet most of all God, do You forgive the Poet, the Artiste & the natural-born Philosophers their high-mindedness, hyper-sensitivity & self-righteousness?
Do You forgive them their bristle & woe at every low-minded offense to their high-minded Ideals?
Do You, Oh Lord, forgive them their preference for Lamentation & Complexity over that of Sanguinity & Simplicity?
Do You forgive us also, most of all, our transgressions of Apodicticism & Agnostic preference, as we seek to honour Thee more with what we do not know than what we can have faith in?
Do You forgive the The Deep One their complacency in an acute sense of Solipsism & for how they remain ever convicted, often over that of Thine holy Doctrine, that there must for this human condition, never be fully embraced, a cure, transcendence, absolution?
For, Oh Lord, it is in our inconsistency, that we do most humbly bow before Thee.

WHERE IS MY SOUL, WHERE HAS IT GONE? (Originally published in Dream International Quarterly)

Where is my Soul, where has it gone?
Hyper-vigilance daily premeditating its vexatious slaughter of visceral acuity-
Psyche & Soma to soon no longer pulsate to the indefatigable rhythms of Unsubstantiated Fate.
Dreams haunt me with their cruel evasion during my somnolent stupor-
Where is my Soul, where has it gone?

Politics & practical persuasion probe & invade my Mind, abducting Essence-
for I am out-of-their-world, to be studied & examined endlessly as Insurance meets his quota,
the Mother Ship taking me on a round-trip to Mundanity-
of such banal profanity are such fruitless searches-
Where is my Soul, where has it gone?
Or, better still: What is my Soul, and where does it belong?

Internal conceptions collide catastrophically with external projections,
birthing a Big Bang of Perplexity and a black hole with infinite density-the lost light of Reason.
I open my mouth once more to emit the sound frequencies of this mortal human pining:
Where is my Soul, where has it gone?
yet instead what resonates is this: What is Reality?
And I come face to face with the insurmountable gravity of the matter of Metaphysics,
the low ground of common-sense splitting wide open-
I, now falling into a great chasm of rapturous agony, my Soul fleeing me, leaving me behind-
Cruel to be kind?
Now: Who am I?
For although I know by now where my Soul is and where it has gone-
and even what my Soul is and where it belongs, I still cannot help but think to myself
that I was perhaps better off, in question.

THE SPEAR & THE WARHEAD (Penned in my 20's)

     I, with Primal Intuition declare myself definitively sane, in the face of all salacious intensity & licentious delirium which this flesh may visit upon me, discharging my wanton Shadow from its ghost asylum of Doubt, the puritanical tyranny of such lilbidinous restraint & the false pretenses of all forms of austere "nobility". For we are all achingly aware of the true apostasy which we all must commit daily beneath the ecumenical altars of Social Order & Industry. Yet not unlike the true nature which we must shun, nothing truly is just either-or, but is always all of the above and at the same time. It is the Infinite Quantum Void, ever teeming with mere probability, possibility, and until we decide & act, thereby "collapsing the wave function", as quantum physicists call it, all remains in mere ontological suspension.

     Furthermore, one individual's "Civility & Order", is another's utter Savagery & Chaos, just as the depraved Anarchy & portentous Damnation often smugly & sententiously predicted by the former kind, is actually experienced by this latter "other", as their only true Reason & Redemption. It is often touted that resistance of that which is natural is, more often than not, rewarding in its preventive effects. But, we must examine, preventive of what, exactly? All was created to possess a particular perfection of design & nature, and perhaps Essence should always be honoured as preceding Existence, even in the face of those dictates of revision so militantly urged by that of each "thing's" Architect. Now, I  merely refer to those Architects of the earthly & substitutionary kind, and not to The Ultimate Architect. Yet still, so many pay heed only to the stifling dogmas of Doctrine & Denomination, merely seeking to bring about a diffusion of Ipseity & Integrity, thus furthermore reducing the Human Essence to gross & unorthodox uniformity. For to become "One" in a grander sense of communal altruism & goodwill, we must first cultivate a sense of "oneness" & wholeness within each ourselves. For we are only as "divinely human" or "evolved" as we are so thought of by others, but mostly, as we are so sincerely felt to be within ourselves. We become that which we believe that we are, to a large extent. I think, therefore I am, whatever I think that I am.

     Percipience & the monitoring thereof could be the most adept & powerful tool which the human species has always had at our employ. And in a sense, how we think, is a life force in & of itself, as it seems to determine so much. Hence, perhaps the most pertinent question to ask of each ourselves is not the age old: How should I live? but How should I think? The verdict is in. How we think or that which we believe determines in the most tantamount of cases how we will then live & even how we will die. And this then begs the issue that perhaps we should first seek a cultivation or refinement of Mind, in order that we may best cultivate the fruits of The Spirit. And indeed, most major world religions embrace this philosophy of Mind including what ultimately matters, rather than that of the Western model which usually dictates a kind of Mind over all-even & often especially at the expense of what ultimately matters. Most notably of these major world religions, is of course most of those of The East, namely that of Buddhism & Hinduism, which place meditation & contemplation tantamount to the primary means towards achieving true spiritual enlightenment & personal enrichment. As many Eastern mystics have been touted as saying: "Consciousness is the ground of all Being."

      Moreover, within much of the orthodox Judaist tradition, intellectuality as the means towards deeper & higher spiritual understanding is also adhered to as a long-standing tradition. The most commonly alluded to adage embraced by most Judaist scholars is best embodied by the latin: Amor intellectualis Dei. To translate roughly, using a quote by yet another Rabbinic scholar & theologian, "A truly devout man cannot be ignorant." I would translate, using my own words, that this concept means that to love God, is to love the mind of God and to seek to cultivate this same mind within oneself. Also, this concept extends even to Judeo-Christianity, in the doctrine that an individual is saved not by works, but by faith. Or, to use a more politically neutral term, a person is saved through belief, or by their attitudes. For the mind is the genesis of all subsequent action, i.e. : I think & believe & therefore this is how I end up living & being.

     In finale, as has been the custom in much of Western thought, a rigid Cartesian duality is often blindly embraced at the expense of The Ultimates. Rene Descartes, the philosopher & mathematician credited with the doctrine of Mind/Body Duality, to paraphrase, posited that "the mind cannot live without the body, and the body cannot live without a/or the mind." However, some would add to this, that neither the mind nor the body can truly or most fully live or have existence or substance without the inhabitancy of a Soul or a Spirit. This is, however, fodder for an even more extensive essay to be explored at length later.  Yet sometimes it is hard to tell which we should place more emphasis upon. But perhaps if we continue that noblest of human quest's to mold & shape our intellects into that which we envisage our inmost personages to become, then perhaps we will reach our goal nevertheless, despite all human folly & fumblings to get there. If indeed the nouminous substance of Idea molds each Actuality of whatever any individual destiny is to become, then perhaps it begins more in the mind than we can fully imagine. In the end, there is no difference between war with a spear & war with a nuclear warhead. Evil is evil or havoc & destruction are havoc & destruction no matter what clever guises or intelligence of form they manifest themselves with. If any true "civility" is to be breached, it must first be Talmudically-schooled within the sacred inner sactum of every individual's Mind & Spirit, before it can be manifest properly & effectively through each individual's outward actions. Again, everything begins with one seed within the inmost core of the fruit. We all must take heed of which seeds we cultivate & nourish, for not all kinds of fruit both nourish and sustain.

THE WRITING'S ON THE CEILING

Wasteland of bodies strewn & writhing
upon shag-carpeted plains
of shattered & splattered Vice-
beer, sweat, semen, blood & tears, unassuaged fears
misread in the screaming head as blurred words
once so clear, now absurd.

Ashtrays are overrun with lipstick-kissed remnants
of cigarettes & roaches,
butts once aflame with the frenzied zeal
of surrogate Motherhood/Fatherhood,
now burnt clean down to each grubby stub.

The Godfather of Reason stands idly by,
bemusing in all of this-
although his seed is no longer in season,
given way to Malcontent-
his Heaven-sent so Hell-bent on eluding the grasp
as the mundane senses taunt & mock
stopping at the drop of anything, everything & nothing all at once.

Hope lounges lackadaisically upon the divan,
dreaming of a world where everything is as it seems.
A world where everyone's drug of choice is the Rolls Royce
of True Freedom's voice,
which always inquires of each its own:
Why seek to atone merely through more of the same sin Thou hast known?

Intuition hovers above, waxing & waning in ghastly, glassy whisper:
Be ever Maternal to that which lies Internal.
For it is Intuition which sings most clearly in Morse code pitch & meter,
of the body's impending inferno,
and the Mind's perpetual betrayal,
wrought of that harrowing narrowing to get straight,
in the name of the safeguarding of all Pandoraean floodgates.

A hot eclipse of desperation descends like a depraved moon
in slicing, adept, devious crescent,
burning out the eyes of the all-too-eagerly effervescent-
those who mock with subtle yet smug, squinty grin,
others not so akin to more than Despair & Chagrin,
whose hearts are ever on gross display-
ever shifting, disassembling in kaleidoscopic disarray-
the role of Scapegoat they must master to play.

Raw nakedness dances with maladroit front upon the sleeves of these.
And what is the reward for such stoic exposure
to be granted these out-of-their-elements devotees?
Perhaps, they console themselves, it lies within the unacknowledged protection
which such ontological congruency & lucidity of clairvoyance can offer-
Their societally-condemned weaknesses mercifully revealing their greatest strengths.
For those of the "sui generis" breed read the writing on the ceiling
like the thunder reads the storm ever nigh,
with such sure, scientific measures of displeasure-
as yet another kind of that "knowledge best forgotten" stacks up
like fool's treasure.

A young girl slowly stirs herself into noncommittant motion,
rambling about in fumbling, mumbling, quizzical gait towards the bathroom door-
as if this affectation of "holding it all in",
was not twin brother to her sin.
She claps her hand to her head, which glows red, still unfed.
In feigned, strained sing-songy cadence she speaks her thoughts aloud:
"Now what is it I'm looooking foooooooor?"
as if anyone but she has the Answer.
She lights up a Salem menthol, breathing hungrily in again,
this living-life-for-death-supporting poison with the classic Cheshire grin,
of one who only knows how to lose to win.

The young girl now throws herself with willful abandon
into the ever-open yet rigid arms of the Arabesque chair,
peering out over the others now who lie so toilsomely inert,
as they are heavy with the blasphemous irreverence of such casual prayer-
spawned by a Despair which has also grown lukewarm-
another misplacement of care.

The young girl now sighs a sigh of labored indifference.
convincing herself that she is "out of her element"-
even here, where it is most assured that noone cares whom or what
one is trying to be or not to be.
She rises up from her abstract yet very well-delineated position in space-time,
a raging tiger in her own Rorshach blot,
leaving the others to find their own way back to the sanctified insanity
of the so-called "real world",
as one by one, they will lose Truth again within the dazzling psychonography
of star-spangled banners yet waving against the grimly prim backdrop
of ostentatiously understated suburban landscapes.

She walks on, the flags lining this particular North American street
unfurling & contracting like the eloquent yet livid tongue of God,
as the Sons & Daughters of the so-called "bourgeoisie"
go on regaling their tall tales of worldy conquest,
always seeming to fall so short of the mark of their proclaimed Cause.
For this is that green-backed kind of venom for the masses,
so bumptiously hissed in keeping with the lower art of Projection-
so seemingly well-conditioned within most of their "high-class",
as they come to hate themselves for sins which never were sins to begin with-
namely, the natural need & birthright for & of freedom from such subversive conformity-
which is then projected onto those which they see not so finely-dressed-
nor as nearly stressed, repressed & underly confessed.
Yet these mocked & sneered at by most of society,
are most secretly envied & idolized for their redeeming insight
into how to really bleed, gathering at the feet of the Ultimate
like the soporific, intoxicating sweetness of agape Love given & returned
with unsurpassed, unfettered Joy.

For this destitute life has bestowed upon those of this so-called "lower" class,
an endless wealth of that true, deep & abiding enrichment
which is wrought only by what can be gotten out of that which has been denied.
The writing may be "on the ceiling" & not "on the chalkboard" for some,
but how it has schooled so many so well, nevertheless,
in the priceless wisdom that it is always better to be declared eternally indigent
for voluntary Truth, than to become filthy rich from the pandering & pushing of Lies.

And we all would be wise to judge not so hastily or haughtily-
take a deep look around you:

Heroes come in many 'a guise.

THE LOST BOYS (Penned in 20's)

Asleep in clouds of smoke
& mellifluous jazz,
the sweet vices that bind all
in free-spirited Unity,
and that frenzied zeal
which could be borne only from the fecund Womb
of Melancholia & Regret,
thundering from the saxophones
and the mouths of Poets,
swimming their way back to sanctified Insanity,
seeking prodigal return to the earthen churches
of sanctified Insanity,
as they gather upon these shores night after night,
like the zealous disciples of the last saving Religion.

Their heads hang and sway like sinking suns,
and their faces glow like many majestic moons-
soon to eclipse each wayward son,
as they spew forth their own redemption,
broken but sharp attempts at some kind of re-deification
through street talk and rough ostentation.

Bound together by the gravitas
of ordained and prolonged Grief, they sing,
to fool themselves that their kind could also be saved
through the feigning of those lies which spare some from Truth-
but Truths which they know all too well and nobly accept-
And this is where the losers dwell?

For they are found in this so-called "lost" world,
vice guys finishing first,
by way of nothing more than an infinite thirst
to just stay "good and high",
'til the end draws nigh,
recognizing their truest reflection only within
the glistening, winking spirits which haunt their glasses,
as their gazes lingering longingly into them-
these, corners they can navigate, circles they can join-
without compromise.