Excavations: The Found Literary Objects of Valerie Lynn Stephens

 

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©2023 Valerie Lynn Stephens

ISBN#: 978-1-312-75208-5 

EXCAVATIONS:

The Found Literary Objects of Valerie Lynn Stephens

A PRIORI: 

ECCE ANIMA

To ask the questions or to live them?

To receive the answers or to give them?

To feud with Day and ally by Night?

Or steer 'round the way from all Sorrow & Plight?

To preserve Innocence at the potential cost of Survival?

Or make Life your Lover & no longer your rival?

To love to hate for mere Hate's sake?

Or love only to love stunning Hate right at the gate?

To lose to win or to win to lose?

Or see only "good" or "bad" in whatever ye choose?

To live whilst ye are forever young?

Or to remain tragically unsung?

To mate like the swan or flit to & fro like the honeybee?

To fully commit to the Dawn?

Or cavort in the Gloaming for all Eternity?

To speak only with words sparing & true?

Or let loose at every turn with a loquacious slew?

To jump impudently into impartial affusion?

Thus riddling the Soul with such hasty conclusion?

Which will we each choose, of these ways to go?

Which noose, the Devil's or our own, will we sow?

A RIDDLE FOR THE SOUL

This is a riddle:

At first I scream

Then I am reduced to a whisper.

Soon, I bear but the faint echo of that whisper.

Furthermore, upon you still not heeding my call, I am reduced to the faintest echo of the faintest echo of a whisper, wrapping you in a warm, luxurious, satin-sanguinity.

What am I in all three of my phases?

1.The conscience amour-propre.

2.The conscience vagabond.

3.The conscience lost...

A WINNING FILIBUSTER

A ravenous desire,

And a broken will,

Walking on barbed wire,

Another vetoed Bill-

In the House where Discretion caddy-corners 

the Senate of the Id,

Now, falling over the edge within a dream 

within a dream,

I awaken to the maniacal laughter

of the Spin-Doctor to the Politician of Pain-

a winning filibuster, indeed.

ALL SEEKS MERELY TO BE

Still, choking upon the bittersweet juices

of this Life's fruit.

Yet what is to be fully savored,

of the delectably flavoured,

Must first through all drought and frost take root.

Still, are the Soul's hands bled & sore

from the thorny stamens of Love's ever-receding rose,

Although its anointing, mollifying memory still, 

in plenitude grows.

Still, in the Garden Of Omniscience,

the Seraph lies mauled & jaded.

Yet in proximity too, lies the Beast, irreconcilably invaded.

AND ALL THEY GIVE YOU IS THE DAMN ANSWER

The lines of fragmented ardour

pierce as crazy rays-

this way & that-

as I am left bereft of much to say,

but anything that will bring

this geometrically inept Mind

to Incalculate Understanding.

But it all keeps coming to 360 degrees,

a full circle of Mundanity, Transience, & Redundancy,

quite moot in its points, configurations & convictions,

for the variables may alternate but 

the solution remains the same-

one which never ceases to allude your figuring 

as to how you got there.

So, you go to the back of the book-any old book-

and all they give you is the damn answer, 

on yet another 'why' axis-

an elusive coordinate, this life, and the living of it.

AND I DRANK OF THE FOAMING INK OF THE TEXT:

ODE TO ALIGHIERI

Better than a glass of Merlot,

To bask in a Dantean glow,

Each word a morsel, choice & sublime,

Each verse a holy flame,

To kindle from within, a heavenly clime,

Smith a soul, all the same.

AND THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT IN ME SHALL EVERMORE RIPEN

Dear God, bear fruit within this rancid, barren Soul.

Do Your work in me, Your unworthy servant.

Perform Your miracles of metaphysical Parthenogenesis.

Utterly scourge me, if You must.

Wring me out, turning me, again & again,

Inside & out, outside & in,

That I may someday come to dwell in incorruptible skin. 

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 towards me, 

trying to capture my truest essence

with its cold, hard, round 4-dimensional eye,

winking mere pseudo-adulation.

I would often wonder aloud what Father 

was really seeking to capture-

yet he would merely casually reply, "Negatives.

Father never let me touch his face, 

which he kept locked away

within a hard, metal, silver flip-top case,

in which he also sometimes kept his "recreational smoke."

Sometimes Father would suspend his mechanical face

from a sturdily-woven Southwestern-motifed strap

to play upon his chest.

After awhile, I could recognize Father 

within the guise of no other face, 

finding my melancholic little self peering longingly 

into the eye of this reliably attentive machine 

wherever it prevailed,

perhaps never quite receiving the mirroring

which I truly sought thereupon its other side-

yet with the keen, naturalistic Intuition of a Child,

still somehow finding Father's 'eye' to be

very revealing of him, nevertheless.

BORNE

And He formed You from the dust of my Earth

where You roamed my fecund loam for days

searching for Sky where only solid ground lay,

reticent and rumbling-

hot and quick beneath your feet.

Yet your nubile and nescient Mind had grown 

a thickened skin,

where the shock of something you had named 'longing'

in some quixotic tongue 

whetted the parched matters

of Your flesh at my sight, drinking you in,

split-shifting Your sense into one numinous revelation:

that truly, nothing did fill the space between 

Sky & Substrata,

breaking You thus, into One.

BY ANY OTHER NAME

He had to fall

to see the fallen.

His senses reeled,

 and wind whipped

and rain ripped 

through an infinite field,

where the fruits of man's labour and toil

hung high, hung low,

some yes, some no-

yet all, neither friend nor foe.

He sensed the earth subtly twitch and turn

beneath his feet,

and for once wondered 

where Heaven and Hell would meet,

upon the dawning of the realization

that the answers bore 

more weight than the questions.

And he wondered how such gravitas 

had ever been transcended

by all of humankind who had managed 

to hold on,

and who now remained.

A celestial entity,

in mortal's clothing-

having a name Cassiel,

by which to be called-

the only thing linking him to it all,

yet, the one thing in the way-

the missing link.

CA IRA

Traveling at the speed of Now,

Out of the corner of my Eye,

Infinity leaps out, passing all-too-quickly by,

As the deemed rhetoric of the

Where, What, When, How, & Why

transforms the Forthwith and the Erstwhile,

both faithfully crafted and molded

by the callused, primordial hands of Antiquity

into a striking likeness

of the Eternal Temporal, keeping vigil

with a Mona Lisa smile.

COMMUNION: BETWEEN SOMA & PSYCHE

The choicest wafer of his flesh

crumbles & dissolves beneath fingertips, upon the tongue...

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 still those faintly probing questions arise-

Is this particular sort of Communion led by Spirit or flesh,

or by both 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 always sustains, essence preceding existence,

for what is a human being without its corporeality anyway?

We are all both Psyche & Soma,

and this is the highest dwelling for us, here on low,

being as it is, our sincerest denomination & dominion.

So come, & take communion... with thyself.

COMPASS 

The heart has a hand,

Which reaches out for fertile land,

So the seeds of its fruit may be sown,

Until it can say-"I have grown,"

"Enough to be sufficiently bland."

DESIDERATA: AMOUR-PROPRE

I will not let another walk all over me.

I will not let another walk beneath me.

But will let another walk with me.

I will not offend.

I will not even defend.

Yet I will work to amend.

I will not live with pious revelation.

I will not even live with strong conviction.

But I will live with quiet faith & understanding.

I will speak my Mind with circumspect reservation.

I will speak my Heart with dignified preservation.

I will not examine my folly with a condemning eye.

But I will confess it with a redemptive will.

I will judge not only on my own percipience.

But I will intuit with the Soul's eye of acquiescent sentience.

But most of all today, of my desiderata:

I will make the sincerest effort to extend myself in love to others.

But first & foremost, will I love myself.

For this is the deep, eternal well from which all true sustenance flows.

DREAMPLATE #?

Evoking the shocking, evocative silence

of red balloons billowing across

a blindingly black on white landscape,

Eternity whisps on a tangent

down the rough strewn alley of Apathy,

boisterous, looking for a riot-

Shhhh, quiet!

the lazy creeping haze commands,

for Mona Lisa sits nearby

upon a Priest's velvet box ready not

for a confession-

but a Kodak moment.

Red light sun resurrects

the Ultimate Psychiatrist from a huge pile

of spent cigar ashes-

he does a perfect three-sixty,

now vomiting Jungian dream theory,

and Nietzsche's anamnesis all over his

ill-fitting suit & his ten thousand dollar

Moroccan carpet, which undulates like

the North sea screaming Envy at the Moon.

I remain transfixed, & utterly enthralled

by the keen lucidity of The Absurd,

and ever astounded at how so many people

instead choose to commit themselves

to sanctified 'insanity'-

a diagnosis whose prognosis only

predicts eventual & true psychopathology.

It now rains fire & brimstone,

as I alight upon the revelation

of the irreality of it all.

A lizard leaps into the third eye

of Primordial Sentience,

creeping its way back to rest upon

the quivering, permeable membrane

of that old Amygdala,

and I awaken to discover myself

falling from a building-

a dream within a dream within a dream,

heading straight into the Event Horizon

of endless worlds to come.

EPEKTASIS (POEM FORM)

We are whole when the suffering has ceased,

and we can see it for what it was all along-

Mercy, Absolution, Transcendence.

For when Love has been neglected,

and is felt once more-

is let into the Soul,

this experience carries with it,

its own paradoxical pangs of Loss & Grief.

For the past is no more,

and now a new eulogy must be composed

& sung, to gently coax with ambient lullaby,

the demons to sleep,

until they, too have forgotten their

cause for Lamentation & Rage.

And now may we see ourselves

as the prodigal Sons & Daughters

of our true Father & Master above,

no longer prostrated as we were,

before the altar of the Dark One,

the pulse quickening

with each new barricade erected,

our blood running ever arsenic beneath

thickened skin.

Yet though the afflictions of past worlds

leave their indelible imprints

upon both Psyche & Soma,

we must come to believe that they

can no longer destroy,

as the grace of God's Love now embraced,

may flow militantly unkempt.

And all of a sudden,

we find ourselves indescribably changed,

in the twinkling of an eye

we find ourselves reborn,

from the acidic yet nutrient-rich

Womb of Epektasis,

Mother to the Soul's gradual ascension

towards that of its ultimate perfection.

For we must remember,

that all beings Divine must first descend

to each their own Hades.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Voltaire once said,

Thereupon his death bed,

"I would renounce The Devil,

And eagerly bring level,

The heart of every rebel,

But I must refrain,

From such disdain,

For a man weak in death,

In life I was keen to see,

Now is no time to make a new enemy."

FIRE, THE MOTHER WOMB

Come out, my Stoic friends!

Enter the womb of fire & force,

all ye born from the friction of matter

which hath sought & succeeded in realizing your form!

Heat! The giver of all Life!

The catalyst for all Harmony & Strife!

Convertible to emotive-atomic passion, zeal, fervour!

Yes! The incandescence within!

The flaming pit you toil & tarry within-

the World Womb of hot, pulsating energy!

This great sphere of burning vitality is your world

and thus is thee!

For we are all essential elements

of the divine principles of our Universe!

We must move it! Mold it!

Weld it to the Highest Ideals, my Stoic friends!

Come, let us tame the flame of the World Womb!

Let us consume it! Make it ours!

Let us strike it all up with the highly flammable fluid

of Divine Essence to then let it Rage!

Let it burn, wild, shimmying & free!

We must work to incinerate & evaporate all components

which seek to smother us!

We must let not the icy armour of Conformity

seize & freeze our will-our most authentic Seal Of Selfdom!

For we are all a part of that Eternal flame which dances in time

to the indefatigable rhythms & flickering scintillations

of the Essence Universal!

For in due time will we all be ravaged to dust,

and whole worlds, meet their demise in apocalyptic rapture,

as the searing wind carries the core embers of those

whose flames burned truest & brightest,

away from all inferno, to languidly ebb & absolve

into the next fiery world to come.

GNOSIS, AN EMERGENCE

It is oftentimes easier to believe in the devil than it is to believe in God. For such a thing is so easy to fall prey to when the sentient organs of mortal human experience, by Truth's indiscriminate hand, are dealt the first blows of the profane. 

Yet without first, recognition of Tragedy, even Comedy turns tragic and then there would be no evident or immediate cause for redeeming ourselves. But perhaps Tragedy is overrated and we do not need it as much as we think that we do. Perhaps the true Tragedy is in how we continually seem to compulsively create something out of what is essentially, nothing of true substance or importance. 

But now, once the acknowledgment has been made, how exactly do we let go of it all in order to better our species? For as anyone beyond a certain age of cognizance is all too sentiently made aware, nothing can truly be held onto or even let go of for long in this life of transience. 

And the very act of surrender requires an inscience of self-sense which we do not even naturally possess and that probably would not be in our best interests to coddle anyway.

In continuum, perhaps however it is within human nature to still wonder if it is necessary for life to be so consumed and potentially jeopardized by this existential juggling act which we must perform with such exactitude every day. Yet this is where the Metaphysical comes into play: the matter behind Mind vs. Matter, Good vs. Evil, the Material vs. the Intangible, the Logical vs. the Intuitive, and, last but certainly no least, the Self vs. Others. 

Although many believe these struggles to be the very meaning of this human life journey itself. And this philosophy indeed does not betray legitimacy, as more than half of a human life is expended upon the pursuit of some higher knowledge as to how this life can best be lived. And indeed, perhaps it would not be hyperbole to state that every moment of human consciousness is wrought with the weight of choice. For no matter how seemingly large or small, the energy expended for the seeming mundane minutiae of this life seems to interfere with the fullest actualization of our higher selves and faculties.

In finale, I suppose the philosophical theme of Survival vs. Thrivance will always play itself out no matter how we may attempt to ignore it. Yet it cannot be wholly denied, that no matter how much we attempt to attribute a factor of nihility to each our own existences or fates, we all nevertheless feel a pull towards something far from arbitrary, nor worthy of our feigned Apathy or Indifference. For every organism throughout Nature possesses an undying instinctual drive towards the pursuit of Life over Death, or Production over Destruction. 

And no matter how melancholic or even ambivalent we may feel, there is always a faint murmur of Exultation and Life-Force felt within us, striving to potentiate itself. And even in those moments of human extreme, such as with suicidal ideation or inclination, there is never a true desire for Death, but rather, a fear of facing Life and what this might further exact from us beyond what we, in these moments, already feel we have had stolen from us or has been ravaged within us.

And indeed, whatever we choose to call this invisible yet dynamic force guiding us all towards our transcendence or our demise, we all feel and sense it. We all sense that there must be a greater purpose to our existence, and not merely because it is comforting to think so. As a matter of discourse, I personally find it much more trying to believe in a God or a Higher Power behind all things. Life is in truth, not so much easier to adopt an atheistic attitude towards, all things as many deistic skeptics may believe. Life is actually not only more challenging to believe in things like a God whom I must honour and revere in word, action and even intent, but it is also much more complicated as such. 

Nevertheless, I have always believed such concepts to be inherent within humankind anyway. To clarify, even the self-professed atheist cannot truly and fully disbelief in higher spiritual realities because I believe these things are a part of our design. I suppose this is in tandem with St. Augustine's ontological argument for the existence of a higher spiritual being. But in closing, is not humankind's ability to imagine and to conceptualize the very foundation upon which all of our greatest achievements are solidly built? And if we could continue working to synthesize the Metaphysical with the so-called Practical, or rather, the Platonian weltanschauung with the Aristotelian one, there is no telling what we might achieve.

INTEGER, NEGATIVE

If only we could lose control of that most unnatural selection, which barricades the earthen church of all that is forbidden yet sacred from our grasp & sustenance would life no longer need be lived in masked revolt against those dark principalities unseen yet nevertheless excruciatingly felt, as so-called "Survival" enacts its slow but assured slaughter of true Life.

Perhaps what this world deems Madness is after all, the last but certainly not least of redeeming graces & causes.

KING OF THE THINK TANK

Extremist 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 excreting 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 and conviction.

The piranhas open up once more to consume

their own shit,

a last tank effort at survival,

before the red-mutant far-right-finned sharks

smell the foul air and bleeding hearts of them all,

now moving in for the love of blue blood,

allured by the instinct of polemic predation-

blind obedience to the thought-for-food chain.

KRONOS & KYROS

Sometimes Eternity

is weighed in

most measurably

upon the wings

of a singular moment,

finding its

most poignant expression

in the wake

of all Ecclesiastical realization:

That we are never so alone

as when we are

stricken deaf, dumb & mute

in our most common coherence,

That we are never so rejuvenated

as when tended

by the metaphysicians

of Disease & Despair.

Yes, sometimes the

ever immanent sense

of one's own nihility,

in a world of negligence

& broken dreams

is the one thing, in the end,

which spurs a Soul

ever onward towards Epektasis-

towards that of its

truest & fullest actualization,

wholeness & perfection.

How then can an entity

as enriched as a Soul

feel thus so vacuous,

so futile,

so impoverished?

Perhaps this feeling then,

is what we have come to call

“Time”,

for most things seems to equate

more to a “feeling”

or an ephemeral glimpse

of experience,

both external & internal,

rather than to concrete,

“actual” objects & subjects

that we can have hold-

even fleetingly.

Perhaps all which truly exists

is best classified

into the taxonomy

of thought alone?

Perhaps all we are-

perhaps all that is,

is an infinite & glorious

manifestation of

the mind of God,

dreaming in perpetuity?

For what is declared

& sanctified as “real”

by the clean-shaven bards

of Positivism,

in all of its actual

cynical negativism,

housed as they are

within the flaccid skin

of the Body Politic,

is ultimately what begs

all of these question concerning

the “immaterial”.

Ah! So then, have we

always known all along,

that there is no such thing

as “meaninglessness”-

and even Despair?

That there is no Rosetta Stone

that will not be bled

with an ever-flowing

spring of Truth & Life Eternal,

so long as it is struck squarest & resonant

upon its most fracturable fissures?

LAUGH THEN BE STILL

The bigger the leaf lost,

The higher the tree's grief cost,

Now drudging?

How begrudging?

Is thine Fate being to Thee?

Move still,

Rest nil,

Turn your season of all or none pain,

Into Laughter's reason to thrall or shun bane.

The more the mind thinks,

The less the heart hears,

For as your blind Soul blinks-

Unrest, with glee, with impart fears,

How obnoxious?

Now toxious?

Are thine thoughts being to Thee?

Be in riot,

Of quiet,

Turn the voice of violent Illusion's demented fruition,

Into the choice of silent fusion's cemented Intuition.

LEGACY

Before I became human, I was a Poet.

I would swim the streets at night, scavenging for treasure in those places most low which most nevertheless exalted on High-which most called Home, finding satiety & fullness of enrichment only after I had completely emptied myself of all that I had to give.

Yet there were no true vows of poverty taken in this noble endeavor, as it felt to me, all rich & full beyond measure in & of itself.

For I was a Poet, one of an elite classification of species, who possessed the power to speak for those who could not or would not dare, speak so vociferously or eloquently for themselves.

For we Poets were interpreters of The Wind & The Rain, keepers of The Elusive but Ultimate, the soothsayers through which the Cryptic & the Intangible could be evenly & justly measured & deciphered.

And yet, we still remained ever sentient to the fact that we would never truly belong to the world as it felt to us, but our nascent preference for Solitude & Introspective Immersion evened those scales just right.

Yes, we Poets were adaptable to any Landscape or Climate, Inward or Outward in its blueprint, however alone we might have been in our unusual expansiveness of Mind & Heart.

For The Poet is often romanticized & even mythologized, but we are also demonized & shunned just as much if not more by a world which only rewards those who wade in the shallow end.

And the words which often came to me in the Night would greet their Beatification immediately upon entrance into the temples of both the minds and the Spirits of my listeners, as both angel and demon cavorted about in Dionysian Unification & Dynamism at last.

And as for those much more renowned than I, of my fellow Wordsmiths, I often amused myself with the zeal & adoration so unabashedly expressed by their idolaters, who would recite their legacies from a dormitory rooftop or a coffee-house dais, hoping to someday reach an equally refined level of artful Idealism & Heroism in their actual lives.

Yet, despite all of its glories, a Poet must spend only the first quarter of their life in this fashion at most, as we cannot in good conscience succeed at being both Human and Poet.

For many Poets throughout history have attempted this Sisyphean feat, merely to bring about their early demise in the process.

And though it might be that the Poet is seen to be enabled to best speak for Humankind, we, ourselves, cannot either survive or thrive being just Human.

Thus did it come to be that eventually my words, upon dispersement out into whatever Atmosphere needed them, began to merely evanesce, and, on one cool Night, I knew I must take my last verbose breath.

Yes, it was time to pass on The Legacy to someone else-someone of younger mind who could better withstand the cycle of Existential Extremism which is The Poet's deepest & truest nature.

Yet most of all I thought that perhaps the mastery of that finest & most exalted of Arts-that much coveted yet elusive of all refineries, even above that of wordsmithing could be attained during my next incarnation:

The Art of Being Human, no more, no less.

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,

& 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 patiently sleeps

by the nearness of that endless reservoir of

the tears

the fears

& so many years-

no longer wept,

for we have always already learned, to accept.

LESSONS IN INDIVIDUATION

The apple that doesn't fall far from the tree,

One little squished apple it will be,

When the Lumberjack comes 'round,

And cuts that tree down.

LIVES NOT ON BREAD ALONE

Like water to lightning

a seismic jolt of Frisson

rattles and French-kisses the sentience

of full cognition,

and I am, all at once made both

Whole & Fragmented

within the scatter-sighted Eye of Lust's

suspension of burgeoning.

What is its mystery, Desire?

Does it covet only Beauty?

For not all the Soul's Eye sees, does it desire,

and not all the Soul's Eye longs to take in, can it see-

Or is mere believing, seeing?

Is anything truly seen as it is?

And thus along with food, sheltering, hydration and love

lies Longing, an essential of costly omission.

And truly, is it a matter of what we want, or what wants us

which determines the course of our procurements?

Yet sadly enough, the latter often diametrically opposes

and mutually excludes the former.

Yet you see, the thing we come to realize about Desire,

is that the lusted-after is merely a more object-oriented Gestalt

of a more subjective need for need itself.

But by far, the thing we must heed,

is that decline which begins at the very moment

we ask ourselves what we want form this life,

and can no longer answer, for ourselves.

MATRIX: A UNITARY TRANSFORMATION

Love floods the dessicated crevices of the atrophic heart,

and the whole Being is saturated with the superencumbrant,

almost unbearable weight & bliss of true Freedom & Life once more.

And we feel so foolish when we realize just how much we have

deprived ourselves of by shutting it out.

But most significantly, we can now see, just how much it has missed us-for this is a raison d'etre and symbiosis intractably interdependent.

And it often feels as if, all the times we felt without Love, never really existed at all-were perhaps mere spurious projections to keep us preoccupied until our next prodigal return Home.

Perhaps there is no other home for us outside the Matrix of Love.

Perhaps the "other" worlds which omnipresently and imminently vie for our attention are mere illusion-

and in ways more literal than we often assume.

Yet it seems that this clash of worlds persists only when we resist them-or when we are attempting to inhabit them all with equal fervour and devotion.

Hence, the age old enquiry of the ancient philosophers rears its cantankerous head again: What is Reality?

Should we seek it within an embrace of that consensually shared world of strictly demarcated Logic & Linearity?

Or should we seek it in that world perceived through the sentient organs of the Subjective, and the Intuitive?

For despite the fact that we know the answer to be: 

Both, each according to their context, we are still nevertheless conditioned to believe that only one or the other is relevant-is truly respectable or valid.

Yet it seems to me that the state in which we most deeply and authentically connect with Love and all things transcendental and redemptive is anything but linear, logical and crudely disaffective or impersonal.

And perhaps the mystics are right, that our Universe does not have any ontological bearing in the absence of consciousness itself.

For if but one lone, proverbial Soul stood in a forest where no tree fell, would that someone still feel something, nevertheless?

For we all know very well by now, that even one consciousness alone is capable of a wondrous-and often horrific-infinitude of Imagination & Dynamism with which to construct any world of its choosing.

And indeed, many believe this to be the Ultimate act of Love or Hate-the act of Creation.

Yet even simpler and more basic than that, is the age old debate of essence preceding existence-the thing-in-itself-and the desire of all life to revelate in the mere joy of Being.

Physicists refer to what they call "unitary transformations" in their own manner of ontology, or the study of being and consciousness, and how what we often call "chaos" or "entropy" is an illusion inherent in our human finitude and myopia.

They posit that perhaps their is an underlying perfection and "order" to all of Creation-but that it is "order of an infinite complexity," at least on a microcosmic or subatomic level.

Nothing can arise out of that which did not have antecedence, or pre-existence or actuality-unitary transformations, the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and the list goes on...

The implications not just for the technological or industrial advancement of humankind-but indeed the spiritual ones, are sacredly contained within these so-called purely "scientific" discoveries.

Science & Religion, can they be reconciled?

Ah! In actuality, they already are.

For in truth, no matter what limitations may be inherent within us-the so-called creation, the Creator remains largely mysterious, transcendent and sovereign.

And no matter what terminology or language we use in order to better fathom the mysteries and complexities of this existence, some realities and truths do transcend human understanding or consciousness.

Until we each individually come more and more to terms with our utter finitude and impotence in the face of God's creation, we must contend with the classically bifurcate Mind & Heart.

But as we continue on our Journey, we will become more competent in navigating the labyrinthine laboratory of an existential kind of "quantum mechanics", which follows its own Heisenbergian principles of uncertainty, while keeping lucidly within our Soul's Eye, both a prescience and a sentience for our highest, noblest human goals and objectives.

And perhaps one fine day, there will no longer be any more "collapses of the wave function" to anticipate, or matter/matters to let "propagate in isolation"-thereby merely isolating in vacuous propagation, no more Schrodinger's cats to care for beyond their care of us, no more hypotheses to perplex and dizzy ourselves with, no more "constants" or "proofs" to establish.

Yes, perhaps some fine day, we will have finally learned how to fully inhabit the Universe which have already inherited, and thus will see how our endless litanies of inquiry were and always had been, fully answered.

ODE TO JOHN FREDERICK NIMS

Early twentieth century North American poets,

poignantly familiar voices preen my weary heart,

an obsolete orphan of post-modern day,

out of its anachronistic agony,

into a time where people resided

within the unadorned, earthen Church

of Tradition and Integrity,

a time where we walked and talked

with such purity of insight, redeeming reflection

of only those verities both thought and felt,

a time where we bowed in reverent acknowledgment

to the knowledge from on high,

that all worth saying, was all that was worth knowing,

and that all worth knowing, was all worth saying.

POEM FOR THE SELF

There is no "me" that you can ever pin down.

I variate & fluctuate with the tides of each precious moment, 

each breath, each and every heartbeat.

And it is only in these ordinary yet transcendent moments that I am at my most true, my most exultant.

Force a rigid mask of disingenuity onto me and you may never see me again.

To oppress a true Self is an unheeded crime of which we are all guilty.

Yet this is why we must allow our truest selves to be & to actualize to the best of our ability.

For this world needs those who are pursuing those skills & talents which most naturally align with who they are & what they can offer others within the world.

For contrary to popular sentiment, this is a task of utmost Courage & Nobility in a world where the majority of "selves" have not yet enlightened themselves to the virtues of Authenticity.

And the authentic Self, in its freest, most exuberant state, will take the most blows, but pretense is an art only of the lowest form.

The world of Grande Facade will tell the perfectly contented, freed Self that it must learn how to hide, how to inveigle, how to distort its truest visage & inhabitancy.

Yet be not so easily deceived. 

Take a stand for the only meritorious cause & inherent human right which we all possess:

The right to share of all of the gifts which only you, uniquely, have to offer the world.

Yet bearing in mind those moments when the Self must somewhat ebb & flow to the tides of petty protocol & social necessity, the Self can always still find one principle in every forced situation that it agrees with & can thereby act in accordant congruence with.

And the Self must also allow for those times when it does not feel so strong or assured of its direction, for no Self, no matter how individuated or enlightened never tells a lie.

And although each Self will wax & it will wane not unlike the Moon, it will ever remain intangibly yet very dynamically constant, nevertheless.

Trust it.

It is the only righteous & natural guide.

What Western cultural sentiment deems "the Self" is nobody's true Self-it is a completely false imago.

It is that Mask of Creeping Death-Before-Dying which the World tells the truest, most deeply abiding, perfectly, fearfully & wonderfully crafted Self that it must pretend to be .

And yet the more something is mocked & condemned by the World, the more evidently we may trust in its true worth, beauty & redeeming value.

Be not swayed, for the World spouts a slew of lies & distortions which only the truest Self can properly discern & conquer.

So, stay connected with Authentic Self.

For out of sound Self-Awareness & Acceptance all good things flow.

The true Self must remain in synchrony with all of the laws which hath been writ & hermetically branded upon this here human experience & its incarnants.

Authentic Self is The Compass.

You cannot go wrong with it.

And do not fret too long over all of the other 'false selves' which you know you will have to battle in order to maintain your truest visage & path.

For they, too, merely wish to be freed from their inner tyranny of disingenuity & pretense.

That is merely the protective shield which we all sometimes must bear in order to preserve our deepest, truest selves.

Yet the truest essence can never 'be lost'.

It is immutable, and as eternal as the life-force which dreams it into Being.

And remember, along our Journey we will meet many selves, some true, some feigned, yet each and every Self is invaluable & equally splendid in its design.

Yet it is also everyone's right & moral imperative to look after only one's own Self-soundness & fulfillment first & foremost, as one cannot give to the world without what one does not have to give first from within.

And most of all do not not let anyone thoroughly convince you that you must feign a false self in order to serve or placate their false self. This is a trap of utmost self-debasement & ontological malignancy.

Therefore, in staying true to oneself, we are indeed also serving & honouring the dignity & humanity within others.

For there is a distinction between healthy self-appeasement & toxic self-absorption.

So, walk with quiet Dignity & gentle yet firm assertion.

All is already and always perfect & whole as is.

Trust in the perfection inherent in the Design of the Creator, and in the Authentic Self He hath bestowed upon you and everyone else, & the whole Universe is yours within which to dream-within which, to transcend.

THE POET'S ATONEMENT

Like the serpent was for forbidden fruit,

the Devil's advocate I've become,

bearing a countenance of lachrymose seduction,

having taken a vow of infernal luxuriance,

the devil's advocate I've become.

And I am such a poor, poor dear,

for there is far too much adherence here.

Like the Fall was for mortal Man,

the Saviour's Cause I have shunned,

bearing a Soul of Eternal Pilgrimage,

having taken a vow of Apostasy,

the Devil's advocate I've become.

And I am such a blind, blind seeker-

Ah! But what an eloquent speaker!

ODE TO EL PESSIMIST

Sensations of Pain seize far more than those of Pleasure,

For the mortal human mind,

Rarely ceases to find,

The Seaweed before the Treasure.

ODE TO NIGHT

As Night's corrective ink spills across the burgeoning sky,

It makes right,

All of Day's wrongs-

The Spirit's wings quiver in delight,

For now may they fly,

And the Heart gaily sings,

It medley of victory songs,

For in having escaped another Day's web & stings,

To the hospice of Night it now belongs.

ODE TO JOHN FREDERICK NIMS (Original Draft)

Early twentieth century North American poets,

poignantly familiar voices preen my weary heart,

an obsolete orphan of post-modern day,

out of its anachronistic agony,

into a time where people resided

within the unadorned, earthen Church

of Tradition and Integrity,

a time where we walked and talked

with such purity of insight, redeeming reflection

of only those verities both thought and felt,

a time where we bowed in reverent acknowledgment

to the knowledge from on high,

that all worth saying, was all that was worth knowing,

and that all worth knowing, was all worth saying.

PAINT ROOFS BLACK, LET MOON SHINE

Perhaps if it is dark enough,

they will not see us here.

And how I long to tell them that we all have in some way unleashed the inevitable wrath of our collective and individual sins, without all of this hiding.

We used to have the devoted company of our shadows,

which lept and danced about the house,

waltzing in perfect time to the symphonic cacophony

of our Fear.

Yet when at last we were forced to look-

the Cause of all of this epic struggle-

our shadows hung so pallid and so low.

For truly, all wars are incited first from within the compounds

of every mortal human Soul-

from implosion to explosion-

a continually perverse reverse nuclear chain

of Shame and Blame.

Yet silence and inertia only worsen the creeping agony

which clenches us further-

deeper into the Darkness which keeps us so dead alive.

And oh, yes, how safely hidden we are-unsure targets-

but hidden from whom, from what?

And at last, when our bodies are strong

and our minds and spirits, no longer broken

and beyond waging, can we busy ourselves with the

oft incongruent, coarse and tedious

tasks of imminent Mourning & Conciliation.

It just makes us think, if only as many lives got to be fully lived

as deaths died in the name of "preservation"-

preservation of country,

preservation of liberty,

preservation of family, honour, dignity...

then perhaps we would all come to know

and finally grasp the higher Logic & purpose of all things:

the living to die, instead of all this

dying to live.

PHOENIX, I CLIPPED YOUR WING

To tread untrodden earth,

'Tis the price of rebirth,

A journey unmeasured but true,

To the victory being won in you.

PLATO'S SONNET (Original Draft)

Oh Demiurge of my world & desire,

In a time of fertile Ideas & irrelevant matter,

You are constant & unchanging as brushfire,

A Master Sculptor, working diligently,

Never failing to bring this defective mass to shatter,

At your blessed feet, pungent with wine & attar.

Yet I, longing to create yet succeeding only to destroy,

That which I feel has become all too real then scatter,

As the potential Masterpiece again feigns coy,

Refusing to surrender its form as more than a mere toy,

To You, the Creator who knows & sees all,

As I wander aimlessly ever still, for unbridled Joy,

Always taking yet another Fall,

Finding Perfection,

Only in Complex Dissection.

PSALM FOR THE DECONTRUCTIONIST

Words tumble out so rest assured

that there is some Light there to catch them.

But is this instead, that kind of Light cloaked in misty obscurity, bringing with it, a darkness all its own, so indescribably dense & cumbersome, the Soul can't shake and the Mind can't unwind, for want of a less transformative scourging.

For in the painfully raw, dys-cryptic codex of common communication, the only thing important to comprehend, is that which speaks beneath it all-the incommunicable, the bearer of that dark illumination which propels us ever onward through this time-space miasma.

For we truly live for such things-the Intangibles, the unutterable, and for the Mystery of that glorious, redemptive kind of Inscience, that which speaks of those things whose prescience exists for us by and through their imponderability and unfathomability.

For this is that absence of evidence which serves as the most irrefutable evidence of unshakeable, undeniable, mute-strickening Presence.

PRINCIPIA THEOLOGICA

The more gainfully we walk towards the Light,

With equal & opposite force, the darkness doth beckon,

For the faster our hearts in Him, quicken & take flight,

How masterfully, with the Beast now stricken, we must reckon.

EX TENEBRIS, LUX

 Sometimes the Darkness is there to lead us to the Light. 

I have come to believe in Good, because of the intractable presence of Evil. 

I have arrived upon a faith in a higher power, because of those principalities which reside below. 

I have  managed to cultivate Virtue, only through the refiningly dark graces of Turpitude. 

I have gained priceless Wisdom in the face of abject Inscience. 

I have come to know of the infinitude & omnipotence of Love only while seized by the terminable torpidity & inconsolable despair & anguish, of Hate. 

I have only truly glimpsed of Heaven only after a descent into Madness & Hell. 

I have found Salvation only on my way towards Damnation. 

I have learned of Surrender &  Serenity only in the face of futile Resistance & Dissonance. 

I have  found common ground with Communal Solidarity only while walking alone the full distance, in Stoic Solitude. 

I most gaily danced with Destiny whilst languishing within an unshakeable sense of Meaninglessness. 

I courted Canonical  Consummation & Existential Bliss while being savagely spurned by Godlessness & Nihility. 

Within the rapacious arms of Terror, I found myself indescribably comforted & delivered by the indomitable presence & sovereign power of Grace. 

In my perpetual Affliction & Exile, do I continue to find Healing & Hearth.

 Through the blindingly harsh glare of lights which seek to brand upon me, an imago false & unjust, have I always found my Truest Self & Actualization.

 Through the simplest of Life's Joys, have I also always briefly touched upon the least mundane revelations & Inward Transformations. 

Whilst enthralled by the illusions of the Flesh, have I learned of that true Freedom found only, in Bondage to the Spirit.

ENTERPRISE

Everything drops like a leaden weight to the epicenter of all Perplexity, as any potentially exonerative expurgation of sublimation is once more rendered naught.

Even my own dreams are foreign to me. I awaken in some solemn stratosphere where Reason becomes the Loathsome Lie, the Figurehead of the Raging's vast enterprise.

For such sapience & existential impartiality have required of the human heart, far more than they have to compensate with.

The human Essentia, which can neither survive nor fully thrive without the safeguarding of such Damnable & Damning Dialectics.

How will Humankind keep its Spirit alive?

Or will the Spirit, too, be subject to the gross rigors of Artificial Sustenance & Respiration?

Will we also, or have we already, sacrificed the Sanctified & the Sublime at the Altars of Secular Science & its ever-multiplicating Gods? 

Artificial intelligence. Artificial life support, indeed.

And this is just it! The sanctified hypocrisy which the mortal heart is forced daily to commit! And what a tall order indeed-to be all & anything other than what one unalterably & inescapably is.

This, the most profound & omnipresent multi-lemma the human entity must decipher-must reduce to just one or the other, right or wrong, black or white, at the pricey cost of the righteous actualization of all other possibilities teeming throughout the Infinite Void, for a fully enriched & truly potentiated existence.

Thus, we reason, if only we could find a feasible way to reconcile & synthesize the Primitive Hunger with the more Neoteric Thirst, would we no longer continue to mistake one for the other & so finally breach that True Sublimity which will lead us to our noblest and most authentic raison d'être, and further and further away from that whispering apprehension we all cohabit with daily, as it tickles at the soft, pink underbelly of the animalian heart, rousing those icy-hot huffs of ragged respiration, enlivening that dually-instinctual, pulsating organic engine of merely human animation and circumnambulation, relaying to that creeping old lizard, the Amygdala in superluminous circuitry, that old familiar feeling-that dark, hovering cloud which we so often commonly allude to, always brewing up its toxic rain & persistent hum-drumming thunder.

But first! Yes! First! That fine flash of electric light so indescribably pure & white, illuminating all neuronal pathways if but even for a femtosecond-yet more than enough for the ever-eidetically nuanced soul to be branded with the imprinting of yet another enticingly facile, painfully dys-cryptic codex, those things easiest to access seemingly the hardest to cease & desist.

Thus at some point along the way we were forced to ask: What price, progress? Or will we just continue to digress in infinite regress? Have to continually confess in excess, for those issues we painstakingly fail to efficiently address?

Or for how we too often than not exist & depend on much less than a mere guess, born of what faux-noblesse, which we daily acquiesce before the shrine of egoistic obsess & a false sense of success, which we caress with far too much careless aggress, in a dawning new age where we are more & more taught how to overdress beneath the tedium of specious politesse?

And what of the blatant disregard for all other forms of communal largess? How much longer will we escape the dire consequences of our sins?

We must let the ailing present pass, before we are to ever become ready to be born again to renewed health & vigour. For this mortal incarnation is not a test of the Reasoning Intellect, but of the Earthbound Spirit.

QUANTUM IV

Father forgive us, for we haven't yet recovered from that last Fall.

There is a point where Hope & Exultation merely converge to meet their utmost peak of synthesis within the cruelly fixed lines and blunt curves of an unorthodox, Gothic architecture of Despair & Ambivalence.

In the beginning, God looked out upon his Creation and declared it all Good-and yet...

then Evil entered into the picture, and Good became yet another something to kill for-the hands of neither Martyr nor Saint coming clean.

Father forgive us, for we may never fully recover from any Fall.

We confesseth ye with our mouths and Yea! We are saved!

But must we endure every other moment as if we are damned?

Heavenly Father, we wish to no longer bear the weight of this faltering-the shock of this trembling.

Nihilo sanctum estne?

Where is our Soul?

Where has it gone?

We are Your open vessels.

We only pray that the wrong Spirit does not enter into us.

Fighting it has come to naught.

But must we lie with the Devil to bear the seeds of our own Redemption?

Our own Rebirth?

Which came into being first: 

Heaven or Hell?

Or is their only the Void, teeming with infinite possibility?

Is it, indeed, our free will & choice?

If this is so, Heavenly Father, help us to believe in ourselves

as You so evidently believe in us. Amen.

QUEST

"In my soul rages a battle without victor; faith without proof & reason without charm." 

-Rene Sully-Prudhomme, La Justice

Heaven or Hell held precariously in the hand,

Treading with such caution upon this here land,

Yet this is a creation of thine own design,

How, dear Mortal, canst thou be so blind?

To the path so here well-trodden and well-lit,

Thy steed no longer chomping at the bit-

Heaven & Hell on earth must be, no longer split.

WINGS OF DESIRE

They say that angels gather on the shores at sunrise, and that they hear music we cannot, and that they dress in flowing robes of black or white, and that only they know distinctly wrong from right.

It has also been said that the one thing angels cannot understand is how mortalkind often seeks just as much solace in hate as in love.

They say that angles walk the earth yet seldom feel it beneath their feet, cool, firm and inviting, feeling instead the "gravitas" of the world only within their hearts.

They say that when angels are near we rarely even know it.

It has also been said that, as we speak, there are angels among us, secretly wishing they were us.

REINCARNATIONS

New skins,

Not yet broken in.

Oh how easy it would be to slip back 

into the familiar, well-worn one,

where one could encloak oneself 

within the velveteen illusion,

that the world fits us as we 'fit' ourselves.

But the cloth of Identity becomes thread-bare,

allowing the Soul to seep too freely 

through the merely 'seems' suitable.

Thus, what shall we wear?

More of neither-here-nor-there?

What shall we don?

The Erstwhile or the Bygone?

REVELATION I

Swaggering before the Shrine

of the Mortal Subjective Mind,

the gods come to know only remorse.

For if these humans had been fashioned with no sight of mind,

perhaps would they then,

just begin trusting in,

the obsolescence of Sin-

take gaily for granted, proof of The Divine.

SECTOR

Beaches and once barren Earth,

desiccated and desolate

but if in the Womb Of God,

surrogate Father of a Humankind

so plagued by bias and the insidious Bigotry

of Subjectivity/Relativity,

so transparently veiled in corrosive Cynicism.

Do not get me wrong,

there are just as many occasions for song,

as there are for weeping,

but if we never dream while awake,

we are always, sleeping.

A SIN OF OMISSION

The Ecclesiastical Eye

of lachrymose reasoning

evenly takes in the full measure of this Life,

never stopping at Nothing,

even where the Ideal is relentlessly fallen short of.

Although it seems that Despair

has become an all-too-familiar bedfellow,

as voids ring with a resonance

tuning the Essence to taut tremor

while the Mind struggles to escape the Song Unsung,

and the heart's rhythm fumbles to keep the beat

of an ever-meandering pentameter.

Thus it always comes to this:

Between Being & Nothingness lies Longing,

a sin of costly omission.

THE FRUIT OF THY TOMB

An overripe fruit falls to the ground

as rusted pages of coffee-stained Sanskrit

loosened from a fig tree, whirl wild, 

reckless, shimmying and free

up to the blackening skies

after knocking the fallen fruit into a barren cave

a snake pit that long ago served as a tomb

where only the living dwelt,

waiting to give death to birth.

A black crow nearby with a broken wing

descends upon the tiny, broken carcass

of a decomposing dove

as lightning flashes above, 

frightening the crow away

where it seeks shelter beneath 

a weather-beaten bench

that was crafted by the callused hands

of a bearded man with the flogged flesh 

of an ancient tree which stood,

bleeding sap near a plantation many storms ago.

Another rancid fruit falls to the ground

as a peal of thunder shakes the earth

and the dove, unravaged by the crow,

suddenly trembles and composes back to its state

of former animation,

as a rattlesnake winds its scaly body 

against a mossy rock

outside the barren cave,

shedding its skin in one shiver.

Suddenly the rusted pages of coffee-stained Sanskrit

emerge from the pit in the beak of the dove

as the snake, now strangulating the branch of the fig tree,

hisses and strikes at the wind

which has taken the form of a woman,

welded into the air by the smoking ashes 

of now incinerated pages,

feathers of a crow, and resurrected seeds

swirling up to the sky wild, joyous, shimmying and free.

The cores of the barren fruits hurl themselves

into the dark, moist womb of the tomb,

which still serves as a sanctuary where withering serpents

gestate and dwell,

waiting to give birth to death.

THE LEPER'S LEDGE

The sky lets out a warning

as the ground shivers

in apocalyptic suspense.

The faint form of a man appears

just beyond the vertical horizon of mountain splitting sea.

Rock and Rain,

the things of which Man

is so fearfully and wonderfully made,

a constant duelling of Infinite Dualities,

their fires kept stoked by the endlessly incendiary

two-fold doctrinary dictums

of Existential Liberation and Blissful Vindication

vs. that of all forms of micromacrocosmic management.

Like Water to Stone,

the things of which Man is so fearfully and wonderfully made,

Psyche to Soma,

Soma to Psyche,

Spirit to Flesh,

Flesh to Spirit-

a Baptism to continual Impurification,

cycles of being-states dynamically and concentrically

charged and omnipotent,

like an endless barrage of stones skipped

over the surface tensions

of an infinite continuum of perfectly still waters.

We watch all of this from up here

upon the Leper's Ledge-

which is quite homey for supposedly being

the loneliest place on Earth.

For the Leper sees, reflected here in his surroundings,

only his true image-

beautific, majestic and noble.

And so we let him be,

and do not burden him with our prejudiced presence.

THE GIVING TREE

Come to me,

The giving tree,

Ripe with fruits bitter and sweet,

Pluck my limbs but be discreet,

Lest word of mouth decree,

And what was once fruitful, barren will be.

THE LOST & FOUND BOYS

Asleep on clouds of smoke

& mellifluous Jazz,

the bittersweet vices that bind all

in free-spirited Unity and that frenzied zeal

borne only from the fecund Womb

of Melancholia & Regret,

thundering from the saxophones

and the mouths of Poets,

seeking prodigal return to the earthen churches

of sanctifed Insanity,

as they gather upon these shores night after night,

like 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,

who spews forth his own redemption

as if to achieve some sort of unorthodox re-deification

through the broken but devout intonations

of street talk and rough ostentation.

Bound together by the gravitas

of ordained and for-too-long protracted Grief, they sing,

as if to fool themselves that their kind could

ever be saved through the feigning of those lies

which spare the rest from Truth-

yet harsh 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 at last,

even if by way of nothing more than an infinite thirst

to just "stay good and high" 'til the End draws nigh,

recognizing their truest reflections only within

the winking, glistening spirits which haunt their glasses,

their gazes lingering longingly into corners they can navigate,

circles they can join, without compromise.

THE LUCIDITY OF THE SOUL'S EYE

Just for once to truly throw caution to the wind,

to let the heart beat at its own pace-

thundering, rumbling, and prestissimo-

in perfect syncopation.

Just for once, to cut oneself completely open at the core,

letting the lifeblood rush out to every sea,

where the Soul is free to roam beyond all reasonable bounds,

girded no longer by the snares it knows all-too-well

to be lying in ravenous wait within the overgrown jungles

of Fear's vast wilderness.

If only Courage and Desire could reign equally commensurate

to the Fear & Despair which cling with such merciless tenacity

to the Achilles' heel of the human Spirit,

would we perhaps come to know the secret of how

to stay upon our truest paths,

finally conquering our noblest task & Cause-

that elusive, intangible thing which both ties & binds

us to this earth, while making us long for Transcendence.

Yet, perhaps this is just it.

Perhaps it merely wishes to instruct us,

in each and every moment of ambivalence,

that there truly is no such thing as Transcendence as we think of it.

Perhaps it merely wishes to remind us,

that we have already attained it, right here and right now.

THE WRITING'S ON THE CEILING

A wasteland of bodies rough-hewn, strewn & writhing

upon shag-carpeted plains

of shattered & splattered Vice-

beer, sweat, semen, blood & tears, unassauged fears

misread in the screaming head

as blurred words once so clear now absurd.

The ashtrays are overrun with the lipstick-kissed remnants

of cigarettes and 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 himself of all of this,

for 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 and mock-

stop 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,

and 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 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 most clearly sings in Morse Code

pitch & meter of the Soul's impending inferno,

and the Mind's perpetual betrayal,

wrought of that harrowing narrowing to get straight,

in the face of the safeguarding of those Pandoraean floodgates.

A hot eclipse of desperation descends like a depraved moon,

in slicing, adept, devious crescent,

burning out the eyes of the 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,

as their vulnerability fumbles with maladroit front 

upon their sleeves.

And what is the reward for such stoic candour

offered to these out-of-their-elements devotees?

Perhaps it can be found in the armour which such

clairvoyance & lucidity & congruency of being lends.

For they are alieni generis, and they read the writing

on the ceiling like the thunder reads the storm,

with such sure, scientific measures of displeasure-

as more of that knowledge which wants to be forgotten,

stacks up like fool's treasure.

A young girl slowly stirs herself into noncommitant motion

as she rambles about in fumbling, mumbling, quixotic gait

towards the bathroom door,

as if this affectation of "holding it all in",

was not twin brother to her sin.

The young girl now claps her hand to her head,

which is glowing red, still unfed.

In strained, feigned sing-songey cadence she sings her thoughts aloud:

"Now-what-is-it-I'm-looking-foooooorrrr?"

as if anyone but she has the answer.

She lights up a Salem menthol,

breathing in again this living-life-for-death-supporting poison

bearing the classic Cheshire grin,

of one who only knows how to lose to win.

She then throws herself into the ever open yet rigid arms

of an old Arabesque chair, peering out over the others

whose bodies lie toilsomely inert, as they are heavy

with the blasphemous irreverence of such casual prayer,

yet another displacement of care,

spawned by a Despair & a feigned Indifference 

that have even grown lukewarm.

She now exerts a sigh of labored attention,

trying to convince herself again that she is out of her element-

even here, where it is most assured that no-one cares

who or what one is trying to be or not to be.

She rises up from her abstract yet well-delineated

position in space, a raging tiger in her own Rorschach blot,

leaving the others to find each 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 lawnscapes.

The young girl now walks on,

passing the flags which litter this dystopic cul-de-sac,

as they unfurl in the wind like the livid tongue of God,

as the Sons & Daughters of the Western bourgeoisie

go on regaling their tall tales of worldly conquest,

which always seem to fall so short of the mark 

of their proclaimed Cause.

For this is mere green-backed venom for the masses,

in keeping with the fine art of projection,

as they come to hate themselves for those Virtues deemed Sins-

Sins deemed Virtues, as they deprive themselves

of the need & right for freedom from such subversive conformity-

as they long to gather at the feet of the Ultimate

like the soporific, intoxicating sweetness of Agape Love

felt & given with unsurpassed, unfettered Joy & Bliss.

For this destitute life has bestowed upon all of us

an endless wealth of impoverishment,

wrung from that true & abiding enrichment wrought

by what can be gotten out of that which has been denied.

For in the face of all of this, 

there is only one true revolutionary act:

The diligent choice to embrace voluntary Truth-

despite the earthly indignities & indigence it affords us,

rather than to become filthy rich 

for the pandering & pushing of Lies.

For there is another adage that is commonly wise,

Heroes come in many 'a guise.

THE TAMING OF INERTIA

Why must we shoot popcorn kernels at the crescent moon,

when we know that Salvation is truly,

the slow taming of Inertia by an inside force?

And what is at rest shall remain at rest through our own will-

and this is so, too, when formulating Loneliness

& that insurmountable gravity 

that we are all irredeemably encumbered by.

Yet still, we seek a kindred galaxy, clustering together

despite the fact that we are all also, quite lone stars.

And when we manage to finally come to grips 

with the cruel persistence 

of such Solipsistic insurgence, we cry out:

Shall Eternity be thicker than Time, why must I feel so betrayed?

Yet when there is no tangible seed with which 

to fertilize the Soul,

a kind of spiritual parthenogenesis occurs-

and thus is spawned from the barren egg 

of the Separate Self-

the bastard offspring of a Disunified Essence,

wreaking Chaos & Havoc throughout the Galaxies

of Solipsis and Pro Bono.

And, even knowing of the fragility of the time-space continuum-

which many call Fate, Destiny or Divine Providence,

we neglect that of our own, and it soon abandons us,

as our lives are possessed by the exacting laws of Life's

non-commutable equations-

all nevertheless continuing on a 360 degree axis-

for what goes 'round must continually come 'round

to meet at a moot point.

And thus, the synthesis of Realism & Idealism again fails

to be brought to full fruition.

For only when the taming of inertia from within begins,

can we be brought to full-quarter revolution,

and the laws of Nature's splendid Design,

and the philosophical physics of the mortal human experiment

may allow the organism to undergo Gradualism,

as old traits no longer self-preservatory,

are phased out day by precious day,

by the blessed phasing of Metaphysical Evolution-

that which will defy all Logic

as it proves with meta-scientific surety,

that what goes up, cannot come down.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

Hoc est enim corpus meum.

I take of it and eat, every day.

It gives me sustenance and yet taketh away.

It grants me life yet plaques me with Death.

It is distinctly reflective of an individual entity,

yet also masks the true, unified Essence lying beneath it.

And so we all live our lives in subversive defiance

of the things which deny us the application 

of what we know to be true

vs. that which we must believe to be true 

in that we may continue on towards

our fullest & most authentic actualization.

For who is to know of Transcendence,

as the pursuit of it further entrenches and tethers us

with even more inertial force than before

once we make the choice to alight from the infirm ground

of Mediocrity and Apathy.

Yet still, we must work for it nonetheless.

But perhaps we are just miseducated.

Perhaps we are conditioned to see it all wrong.

Perhaps we should be seeking Transcendence within

the gradual ascension itself and not in any place

of lofty finality and rest.

Transcendence has been and is being obtained

with every precious moment we remain rooted 

hereupon this earth-

it is merely missed, being as it is such 

a subtly forging phenomenon,

das ding-an-sich, the thing-in-itself, the numenon,

alchemically fused with phenomenon.

Life becomes whatever we mean it to become.

It is all complete, and all whole yet, amenable to our will.

This is the Body of our Salvation or our Damnation:

Life and Conscious Choice.

Let us take of them and eat, letting Flesh become Spirit,

Spirit become Flesh-being ever so selective and discreet,

and we shall find sustenance and nourishment

beyond all fleshly yearning or necessity.

VEHICLE

The angels still gather every morning at my feet.

I feel their leaden promises 

of buoyant liberation weigh heavy upon my soul.

They lift up their voices, so silverish and benign-

but I do not hear anything.

Instead it is like a kind 

of closed captioning pouring out from lips

whose utterances can't possibly be read-

only recalled.

I walk faster now, drawing faithfully upon the delusions

and satirical determinants of the body-mind,

and its massive, superencumbrant purpose-

to deceive consciousness always biting at the heels

to maintain the concept of pragmatic initiative-

a mere antonym to Life.

I am brought to a merciful halt,

at this raucous intersection of pedestrian walkway-

bold, adjudicating white and yellow lines

assaulting a black, perfectly tar-marred earth.

Perhaps today, I will teleport.

THE RIVER (A Haiku True)

River rushes by

I am stagnant by its side

yet flowing with it. 

ODE TO THE OPTIMIST

Sensations of joy,

Are my main ploy,

I laugh in the face of all adversity,

Love those vs. me,

And never say 'Goodbye' but 'Ahoy!' 

TEETER-TOTTER (A Post-Modernist Haiku)

Teeter-totter politics

In cahoots ethics-

Who's down, must come up. 

NIGHT CLOTH

Crushed velvety sky

Lofty cloth of the smooth Eve

Suits my soul just right. 

ODE TO ABADDON

Doubt is your religion.

Faith is merely your alibi.

You removed my heart to see if I had a soul.

You removed my larynx to see if I had a voice.

You tormented my mind to see if I could clearly perceive.

You burned and tweaked my flesh to see if I had a response to touch.

You severed my feet to see if I could fly.

You severed my hands to see just how much I had to give.

You removed my reproductive organs to see if 

I indeed had the powers of creation.

You plucked out mine eyes to see if I would recognize Truth.

You pulled all of my teeth to acquaint yourself with my bite.

You pulled each nail, one by one, to see if I could still hang on.

You stole my beauty to see just how much allure I really had.

You broke my bones to see if I did have it all together.

You drew my blood to see just what life force really animated me.

You ripped out my intestines to see if I had any true guts.

You removed my liver to immunize me to your toxins.

You clipped my urinal tract and my bowels just to see 

how well I could hold it all in.

You severed all of my muscles to really test my coordination.

You removed both of my kidneys to test my endurance.

You severed my spinal cord to really get me movin'.

You beheaded me to see just how much I could really "keep my head."

And after all of this, you still knew not 

Whose breath truly sustains me.

Amen. 

TACHYON DREAM: ODE TO FEYNMAN

Stars appear to continue to burn brightly long after they have given of their last supernovae gasps.

Yet soon, even their light will leave our eyes, to be replaced by new uncertain certainties, as we try our damnedest to reach superluminosity so that we might someday catch up with it all.

Yet we will merely continue to fall pitifully by the wayside every time, mere remnants of more lost momentum born from that search for the illusory Then, and When- whose real name is "Never" for there is only "Now."

Now. The sweet loaf of Life to be spit from the lukewarm mouths of babes, leaving only bitter crumbs of status quo dough to collapse into themselves in seemingly infinite singularity and implosive concentricity, until yet another hungry hand plunges into the teeming Void with such psuedo-scientific dexterity.

Yet now the Void is merely left rippling, having been incited of that trusty old phenomenon of interference, where the answers all lie hidden in proofs-universal & solipsistic.

So, we leave it all neglectfully propagating in isolation- isolating with propagation- to the quantum selection of where one is standing, and how fast one is going, and in what direction, and why...ad infinitum...ad nauseum.

Perhaps only in our physical deaths will we feel the sweet, synchronous embrace of Time & Being.

Perhaps only then will we know the secret dance of each and every particle, macrocosmic, microcosmic and beyond...

Death-this seemingly detrimental determination which we regard with so much Fear & Trembling- there is only Freedom and true Life in it.

Yet for now, let us renew our sacred Vow: 

"These are my molecules, take of them and do whatever it is You do, Oh Great Creator of Cosmos & Consciousness. I donate body, mind and spirit to Science. The Science of the search for the proof that can be seen only after it is no longer needed. And then, the Light shall be unceasing."

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

We all long to get lost within sanctified Madness,

loosening our Mind's tenacious grip upon the world.

For it is only through what the world deems 'insanity' that we are truly free.

Our senses are weary from the constant barrage of the profane from day to day.

We see everything yet feel nothing.

We taste everything, yet the Soul's tongue has grown coarse and numb.

We hear everything, yet do not comprehend.

We smell everything yet still remain insensate to all but the malodorous.

We feel the sun upon our flesh and the wind, gently caressing our skin, yet remain emptied of all Sentience.

Where is our Soul, where has it gone?

The pain is so constant that it has become all-too-familiar.

Yet we are no more stirred by it than by anything else.

We no longer glimpse of God's face.

We are no longer imbued with His spirit.

We have grown lukewarm and He has spat us out of His mouth.

We long to feel the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit-and this alone, is our only redemption.

For we belong to Him and will never grow cold beyond thawing, or hardened beyond malleability.

Somewhere along the way, we lose sight of ourselves as He has fashioned us.

And it all begins when we turn our backs upon the worlds which we have created for ourselves-

the worlds which seek to preserve us from the snares of The Devil.

For the world outside of God's love and grace have nothing to offer of true sustenance or lasting value.

Yet that private inner sanctuary within every human soul fighting The Good Fight is sacred.

Yes, it must remain undesecrated, for it is the Kingdom of Heaven within us.

Yet until we regain our sight and our agility to surrender to blind Faith, we will dwell only within this Hell.

Perhaps we often just fall asleep and forget how to awaken.

We are still asleep and dreaming upon the crude laps of Indigence & Insolence.

And our Treasures, once abundantly and generously shared with all, must strive only to stay hidden away for safekeeping.

Yet we know we must give anyway-this is why we suffer as we do.

We can bear the weight of our own private worlds, but of the other world?

We must weigh the costs and decide which world to commit to.

Until we commit, our infidelity will run amok and we will bear the consequences of our sins of omission.

We are wedded to God's world, yet will always lust in our hearts after the other.

So, shall we just give in and consummate this lust for the other world?

In this matter, one need not find a way to serve or not to serve both masters.

One can instead...Be mastered by the former.

METAPHYSIC IV

I could get lost in a eagle's eye,

for the reflection of his mastery and divinity

lulls me into a blissful slumber

of selflessness.

He seduces me with his majestic wiles

and the image

of beauty, grace and superiority

henceforth eludes any congruency with my being

and I weep for the promises I have spoken, then broken,

for the eagle always feeds their young,

always finds a home.

And so have I, within the eagle's eye,

as it now soars down

to the jagged ranges,

carrying aloft,

a lone tear. 

LAMENTATION

Depth is the soul

trembling are the loins

blood fills the glass bowl

disassembling where the mind conjoins.

Flighty is the Spirit

futile the Heart's retreat

for in the disquietude of felicity we fear it

will drown out Melancholia's constant beat.

Finity is our quest

conceit is our bane

so we battle for humility lest

we come to know insane.

Fear is our loathing

faith is our lack

so we grievously seize no thing

as we covet that night of black.

Bitterness we taste upon our mortal tongue

we see others' faces cringe

our song of love yet unsung

an inner Hell and corrosive singe.

Meager is the cost

mediocrity, the petty profit

what Passion born at rebirth is lost

the still womb of Apathy to scoff it.

Unity is the Cause

yet Alienation, the effect

upon the edges we pregnantly pause

the fragility of Courage we accept to reject.

Serpentine is the Mind's curve

vicious is the Vein

judicious is the gavel of the Nerve

pernicious is the bane.

Symphonic is the Longing's song

genius prone the 'Have Nots' phrasing

erratic pulsates the Heart's Hand's grasp so strong

all-too subtle is Nature's phasing.

Chilling is the fever

brittle is the bone

arthritic is the Weaver

as the noose is sown.

Vacuous is the Void

raging, the inner scream

elusive is the inscience of the Embryoid

faithfully evasive, the Cathartic Dream. 

WHERE IS MY SOUL, WHERE HAS IT GONE?

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. 

PSALM FOR THE POETS & PHILOSOPHERS

God, do you forgive even the heart of a Poet & The Philosopher in all of its eccentricities & excess?

Do you forgive the reprobate minds of Poets & Philosophers & all of the endless torment & internal questioning in which they often luxuriate?

Do you forgive them their yen for the black of night, preferring as they often do, to roam the bleakest, most desolate landscape of the Peripatetic, as they amend each succinct & absolute answer granted by Thee, with yet another slew of questioning?

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 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?

Do you forgive the Poet & Philosopher for their belief in the synthesis & embrace of Opposites?

Lord, do you forgive the Poet & The Philosopher for their prostration before the excesses of Paradox & for the continual striving for something more in this life?

Are these sins for which they should continually repent, or perhaps virtues in disguise which they should deem just as sacred & honour as thus?

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 musky emollience 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 transmogrifies into slow & measured, insidious, implosive 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.

For 'ole Willy Blake was right on the mark when he saw imitation for what it truly is-a form of 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. 

Good night.

THE POET'S DELIVERANCE

Night falls over me again,

Creeping its way into my head,

And past any hope for better days.

Oh darkness descending,

Oh darkness descending,

Why upon me?

Why upon me?

I have known you for long,

This is so true,

Yet no matter how much I hate, loving you,

We still, bedfellows estranged do make.

Oh darkness descending,

Oh darkness descending,

Why over me?

Why over me?

Something won't let me smile,

For when a faint Joy in my heart begins to bloom,

Some abstract Fear steals it away-

Yet even if I knew the Thief,

I would have to let him go,

For as much as I long to feel the sun again:

Oh darkness descending,

Oh darkness descending,

Why not over me?

Why not over me?

Let it be.

Just let it be.

Darkness falls inside my head,

And it begins to storm,

I let it rage in the name of its Cause,

For there is plenty of sunshine where I don't dwell these days-

But this is said as if Sorrow is a choice,

Dwelling within a land where Despair is an autonomic reflex of the Soul

than it is Artifice or Vice.

Oh darkness descending,

Oh darkness descending,

Why upon me?

Why upon me?

When there are so many other places where you could be.

I wretch and I heave,

For in Hope I do believe,

And therefore also grieve, also seethe.

Yet perhaps this is why the darkness is more sought,

For caring hurts too much in a world which could care less-

And it's us against the world,

It's us against ourselves,

And thus we grieve.

It is never-ending.

But my affliction is not nearly as deft,

As my line of defense, masterfully erected within the Realm

of Ideas, Thoughts, Emotions and Wordsmithery:

The Poet's Deliverance. 

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 gravitational 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. 

A TRAGICOMEDY IN INFINITE ACTS

The leagues of the mind converge,

arriving upon disembodied truths,

deciphered but not fully comprehended-

being so indecipherable to the conundrum-dumbed tongue,

as sound and sight again pass from their crowned glory

into the densified annals of the absurd.

For this body and its modes of being are truly seasoned

only for the Art and Techné of Comedy,

Tragedy being a concept we invent

to lend ourselves grandiloquence and credibility,

although we are viable and taken only as seriously

as we can manage to become credibly comical.

So it seems that the mastery of all things expedient to this earthly incarnation which we must procure for ourselves all too often lies in trickery and deception-Thus, is any of this worth it? 

Between Being & Nothingness, indeed.

Hence, it all comes down to need.

And the real tragedy remains to be the trickery insidiously inherent in the concepts themselves, of Need vs. Want,

when we need to want all too often more than we want to need.

But, if only just the utmost pertinent information could exist...

Ah! But then we would merely invent tragedy on even grander scales, and may never return home to ourselves.

Then the comedic just might become our God,

and nothing would be left sacred, save the profane, the arcane.

Thus is this perhaps, the funniest poem I've ever written.

A TRAGIC SABBATICAL 

What do I fear of this life? The life that kindles like a potential funeral pyre within me? 

My soul pulsates erratically to the indefatigable rhythms of Fate unsubstantiated.

My dreams seduce me with whispers of their chronic latency of waking, lulling me time & again into a mind-state of Platonic over-indulgence.

 Sometimes I fear I will never sleep again. I dread that, should I succumb to the fiery womb without-cut away from the symbiotic enmeshment of spurious masquerades of phantasy unactualized, that, a metamorphosis, encumbered shall remain by the incurable hypochondria of a Destiny which day by day grows tired of this inertia and negligence. 

And yet still, it perches itself thereupon the infinite wing-span of the time-space continuum, knowing full-well, that it will always fall short of the mark. 

Yet these empirical studies in the realm of Hamartiology still can never fully know, that there is no such thing as earthly transcendence, as it repeatedly crashes to the ground, a feeble twit, never truly able to apply its learning until it submits its mortal vessel to the schooling of the sovereign-most Headmaster. 

Until such time, the ground will split wide open and we just might someday tumble to the depths of such grandiose longings in Infinite perpetuity, Eternity, never to see the light again, as it is just now, soft on the eyes. 

Home sweet home. The lights are on but is anybody really home? Sooner or later the thieves will catch on that I am on extended vacation, a sabbatical with interminable implications. 

NIHILISM: AN UNORTHODOX MESSIAH

What is it about the darkness that makes me feel so at home? Or perhaps, what is it about me? Why are we so crippled by the contradictory commands of our day? Or perhaps they are crippling due to our aching need and hope for the absence of such trilemma and the ruthless dictatorships forged in their place. For whatever nature of orders we are given, we respond with thrice more, thinking that any authority not granted to us, is that means by which we need even more follow our own dictates. 

Obeisance requires its own massive stores of energy. Yet in the scheme of human affairs, we are left with nothing, making revolt disappointingly chronic albeit soon quite dull and arbitrary. So, how to give it up without giving up? Life and its success or failure is directly commensurate with a trick of constant measure, whose scale’s units read like some dyslexic, cryptic codex, more being less, less being more and still, the space in between, determining fortune or catastrophe. For in Truth, equitability is an abomination, a perversity of those fallible yet malleable phenomena of human vitiation and imaginings.

     Ah, what terrible webs our minds do weave, when first we practice to believe, for belief is but the portent of assured repudiation. Thus perhaps only the nihilists of any culture are christened for true greatness, as they leave room for that endless epiphanous redemption which cannot be preaned from the snares of all definitive “knowing.” For they are of quite another kind of mind, as they know all too wisely to coddle objective indifference & to search fruitlessly for neither question nor answer. 

Thus do they find, in their aimlessness, direction and resolve, in their wealth of despair, can they buy out the indigence of careless ignorance, finding true exultation. For the nihilist, through his flagrant apostasy, finds salvation, and through his humble agnosticism, comes closest to God. And yet he finds with such abundance, because he does not seek. For Truth is already here, there and everywhere. 

And when man seeks for that which he has never lost, loss of Truth finds him, blinding him with cataclysmic and paralytic grief for the rest of his days. And the more he tries to remember, the more he slowly & painfully forgets. And it is past this point that he, the zealous believer, has become his much dreaded world-without-meaning. Implosion occurs in nauseatingly infinite syncopation & with stunning reverberation, and neither the deepest sea of longing nor the highest lofts of asomatous aspiration can offer any reprieve. And one day, the only thing left to save him from complete annihilation, will prove to be the crafty but wise counsel of the nihilist. 

OF TRILEMMA & TRINITY

Soften mine heart, Oh Lord.

Make me right again.

Be my fix-er & not my fix.

The outer shell has hardened

& thus is no longer malleable,

like clay, at the mercy of Thine artistry.

But make haste,

for I can no longer bear

the thought of becoming,

knowing that being is truly what

composes & fuels the essence of Life.

Nothing is fixed, static-

nor is it meant to be.

Thus when it seems that we

have gotten there,

that we have "arrived",

must we then crumble & break,

with all of the fanatical obeisance

& veracity that we can muster.

For it is the very lack of such

surrender to our own impotence,

& helplessness in the face of it all

which has brought us here, to You, Oh Lord.

Yet being broken is still, not enough,

for now, although we have indeed

made our move, are we still

just inert, shattered, hardened fragments

of our former assemblage

of Divine Mosaic & Machinations,

implosively & explosively loaded & half-cocked.

Yet oftentimes we still must go through

with the scheme of our own

debasing & demise in moments

of immanent Apathy & atrophy of Mind & Heart,

for at least we can feel as if we have

the passion to still commit to something.

At least in these of our darkest,

most frightening moments we feel as though

we are seeking the answer to some ultimate question,

& we can be rest assured that,

somewhere along the way, someone will stop,

bowing down to lend us a helping hand,

where we fall short for ourselves,

so that we may begin to really see & hear the answer.

Is this being of such Insolence & Extremes

a creation of Yours, Good Master,

or both one of Yours and one of our own making?

But what to be in between, what to be in between...

For when the Self continues its ripening,

& actualization, and we must then find a way

to acquiesce to Nature without compromising

our current man-made philosophies

to a state of further disgrace & detriment,

the main task of earthly survival often trumps

that, Oh Lord, of divine ascendancy to our so-called

spiritually evolutionary inheritance.

Thus, I ask, Oh my God, how do we each,

I for myself, he for himself, & she for herself-

become the people of genuine reverence

which we strive to become,

when many earthly "masters" vie for our appeasement?

For we do not wish to blaspheme Thee or ourselves,

and yet must also continue moving forward

upon the time-space continuum with equal deference

to all of our passions & desires.

And I suppose here is where one realizes Hypocrisy

to be just as meanderingly indifferent & discontinuous

to our human plight-

indeed perhaps even irrelevant to it.

For the higher aspirations of Humankind

always manage to assert themselves in some place,

& at some time before, during & after

even the most depraved of human endeavors.

Thus, must we commit ourselves to the entrapments

of moralistic tyranny with such austerity of purpose?

For was it not You, Oh Lord, Who fashioned us

within the very nature of such sensual esurience?

We cry to You of our keen incomprehension

of the doubly-binding command to subterfuge

who we are at our most authentic core,

in order that we may become that which we are not,

yet are promised someday to become?

Or is this merely yet another torture device

crafted only by the hands of Humankind,

mistakenly patented in Thy name?

Yet we must continuously striate these two,

seemingly irreconcilable worlds-

painfully constricting ourselves down to just two

dueling entities when we truly contain multitudes.

Will we remain ever split into two,

thus adding up to nothing?

How has the human spirit endured

such excruciating Paradox throughout

our relatively brief history?

Then again, after all the only true defeat & victory,

granted simultaneously to both players,

is that of Stalemate.

For perhaps this mortal human battle is less

about defeats & victories as it is about The Fight itself,

& how much we give to it-and why

& in Whose name.

AND GOD MADE WOMAN

As the man-being sleeps, his chest begins its heavy heaving, his ribs fluttering and contracting in what seems an attempt at each bone, to burst through the skin and alight into the cool night upon each their own separate wings of mirthful marrow and harrowing epic. The Great Deity then, oh so gently but skillfully plies open the man being’s side-flesh beneath which, his right lowest rib-bone lies. After this first cosmic extraction is complete, God closes up the hole in the man’s side just as gently, nimbly and efficiently as He had opened it.

As the night sky gradually turns from a deep, velvety black to a dusky hue of greyish-blue, the Great Deity’s intention for the lone mortal’s rib-bone is finally becoming manifest. A heavy gust whirs through the tops of the trees as the myriad creatures of flight herald the dawn in doxologous song. The man-being awakens slowly from his abysmal slumber, stretching his lithe limbs perpendicular to all corners of the Earth as he rubs the sleep with vigorous strokes from his eyes. Suddenly the man hears a sound. He cranes his sinewy body around-a double take-for the sound is unlike anything his newborn ears have yet to have heard.

It is a voice, this mysterious sound which the man hears. But the voice is not like that of his Father God, booming, deep, rumbling and yet tenderly measured, but is something altogether otherly yet strangely familiar at the same time. For the voice speaks in his known tongue, causing again that old stirring in his loins. Suddenly, at the sound of the woman’s voice, whispering and silverish, so tender and so soft calling out to him, the man knows all at once that he loves his Father Creator with an aching, deep and profound reverence and poignancy which he has never fully realized before. Yet this love is tinged with an accompanying shame and sorrow, for the man also senses that he, as a creature servile to God’s sovereignty, will never be able to return his Father Creator’s favors or fidelity quite so adequately or equitably.

As the birds’ sweet songs fill the air and that great sphere of fire filters its light and heat throughout the plethora of flora and fauna surrounding man in his bountiful Eden, the woman-being emerges from amongst the shadows, plain for the very first time, to the man-being’s sight and sense. And although all throughout his lonesome wanderings as King of his domain, he had, many a spectacle beheld, never had the man-being come to know such substance of Beauty until just then.

The woman-being walks with such delicate self-possession, her slight but well-rounded form, bulbous brown breasts swaying gently but alluringly to the heavy gravity surrounding her unearthing-the physics of feminine geometrics, kinetics. Her dark waxen hair falls to her shoulders like the wetted feathers of a Raven-bird, longing to be loosed, freed and set a'ruffle by the man’s long-awaited, plundering caress.

As she draws nearer and nearer still, and the man-being comes into her sight, her lips, following the same soft form and curvature of her anatomy, set into a sly, mysterious smile as her dark eyes spark and leap with the fire and rushing tepidity of erotic enigma and promised sensual subjugation. The man now stands, erect, transfixed, enthralled, his eyes filling with a kind of luminous madness, as his tongue nervously and quickly flicks around the perimeter of his lips, the jutting notch on his sinewy neck bobbing up and down as he struggles to catch his breath and regain his bearings. His whole body pulsates and rushes with a cool, mercurial electric sensibility, much like he felt on that first stormy night when the Heavens shook and great streaks of light had flashed across the landscape like great bolts of God’s very own essence, infusing his soul with both an ominous Fear and odd jolt of animal desire. Now, the man-being feels this desire once more, but without the Fear and thus is it, far more satisfying and stupefying.

He cannot move his body. But when the woman says his name, Adam, for the very first time, his whole anima stirs with a sweet, covetous turmoil and yen. His breath comes in ragged gasps, his muscles tense and coil like a serpent in ravenous wait, as the booming thrum of his heart and the mad rush of his blood quickening through his veins roars like the sea inside of his head. It is as though he is being born after the fact, only this time it is not his Father, his Creator God who has breathed a living soul into him, but the sight and feel of the woman, Eve, as she bounds into his arms at long last.

Soon, time-space knows no borders and all the life-energy of the world, no dichotomy, as the first man and now, the first woman, cleave unto one another in hylozoic, desperate, dissipating agony, borne of this newfound paroxysm of wanton rapture and procreational providence. And never, even next to all cataclysmic natural events witnessed since its inception, has the world known such magic. As Adam and Eve’s bodies, glistening with the excretions of their exertions in the moonlight, do their fateful, convoluting lambada, the universe convulses with ecstatic fervor with them, for something of the grandest significance is taking place right here, right now. 

Suddenly, the man cries out in what seems some tormentous woe, his body writhing, his head thrown back, bearing a grimace of contorted euphoria. The woman’s fingers grope fervently, digging into the rippling flesh of Adam’s back, her own back now arching as she moans, gasping sharply inward at the awakening and newfound knowing that they have found together. As the storm subsides and their movements became slower, more languid and ebbing still, a new Halcyon dawn takes its place as the woman, Eve, and the man, Adam, sigh softly as they settle down, nestling contentedly, fluttering like spent ashes of some great fire into each other’s arms, now sleeping, and the universe, deeply and restoratively, with them.

GOAT'S MILK

We long for congruency,

finding most often, asymmetry,

our own part always seemingly falling short.

And we proclaim in our distress

of isolation that we would cast off

our Scapegoat's hide,

were it not for the fear of such

beastly countenance truly becoming of us

in this very act of subjugation.

To play the fool to yourself,

or to others?

There is not question,

that the answer always lies within the former. 

DREAM JOURNAL ENTRY #?

I dreamt I incited the Apocalypse 

with deft concentration of Mind

and slight gesture of hand.

And as the waters rose in cresting revolt

and the Earth exhaled her last gasp of shuddered indignation,

all of Creation-that of God and Man-

burst into redeeming inferno,

finally seeing all as it truly is,

finally seeing all along that it always knew how to bleed-how to be.

And as the weeping and gnashing of the world reached 

synchronous pentameter,

and sleep gently washed over my head, 

I became no longer eminent-

perched perilously & vertiginously above it all,

but found myself standing unscathed & yet utterly Alone.

From thenceforth I knew only of a disembodied, vacuous silence

as my human kin ran about in screeching, 

cathartic pandemonium,

yet there I stood, so Stoic, so disaffected by all 

but the actual depth & force

of my Rage. 

AWAKENINGS

Some of us revel not in the sweet-throated harmonies 

of the nightingale,

yet wait with eager ebon ears for the dissonant cry 

of the crow’s undaunted projections.

The wind whispers my name.

Sometimes I hear it on the shabby outskirts of recollection.

My dreams scream the voice of an unknown girl,

and I am jolted from this disorienting somnolence

to autonomically consume the dense, stale air of unknowing,

the intangibles of memory recall,

a variant ensemble of images and question marks,

gyrating with cunning allure,

to the mesmeric doubt-beat of Reality vs. Fabrication,

the illusives of past wanderings

in a mind, trembling with confusion,

longing for the saving grace of Logic,

while Reason remains, a room with a thousand lights,

their filaments always on the verge of eternal sleep.

Most would prefer to die of natural causes,

yet we all live irredeemably encumbered by unnatural clauses.

Severed from the umbilical cord of the mother,

child flourishes,

while all that nourishes

is nonetheless prophesied,

to be cut off from the self, by the self

time and time again.

Accountability is shifted,

as Mother and Child are further and further drifted,

to reach the weathering shores of individuation,

where they will learn of Nature,

and come to discover their utter nakedness,

as they try to come to grips with the crude logic 

of Solipsism.

And they will then frantically try to dress one another

with their separately endowed eyes,

for they will no longer recognize one another,

the breach of a newfound stranger’s autonomy,

a mutual shaming.

So the tides of Mother and Child come and go, ebb and flow,

their moons to wax and wane

to the formulaic law and pull

of dissimilar poles, denying their dichotomy,

thus failing the bringing to fruition

of the cycle

of birth+weaning+severance=Rebirth

+weaning+severance=Life & Death .111111111111111,

ad infinitum, to its keen figuration,

to its final order and equilibrium.

Yet the greatest tragedy

is that those who most yearn for peaceful passing,

instead allow themselves

to be repeatedly stabbed in the back,

as they plead to let it bleed,

until all strain is grotesquely drained,

and they have both become scapegoats of Fate,

apprentices to mortal life’s overruled objections,

the crimes, those justified through eyes

of warped perception,

made cataractic by the diseased soul,

the heart once crystalline and transparent,

now opaque and sooty,

the shadowing of the dark essence,

wholeness to never come full circle,

the libido of Virtue

to remain somnolent, impotent,

shunning lucidity, embracing obscurity,

hence, to never ravage impurity.

The inner essence of light is time and again obfuscated

by the denial of unifying depth introspection,

and the mortal organism becomes laden with infection,

from the promiscuities of life’s rough, bare intercourse,

the human experience becoming a little too experienced,

while Innocence steadfastly clings

to the cold, dry breast of Ignorance,

a virgin, oppressed, and pining away

within the savagery of civility,

yearning to be raped by the engorged phallus 

of Truth, uncensored.

And when the hymen of Innocence

is finally penetrated and stretched,

the blood coagulates inside,

after it drips the last stain upon the pristine black sheets

of necessary corruption.

Innocence then begs for more-“Another! Another!”

until Truth is spent and abandons her like a forlorn lover.

Yet still, she gives a come-hither wink and nod to Deception,

waiting his turn in the wings to possess her.

But he, too, flees the scene, when she tells him she didn’t mean,

to become impregnated by Reason’s essence

and immortal seed, a child of integration to be bore,

existent forevermore, ever evolving,

revolving within the realm of the Homo sapiens generation,

a new life form to breathe while we heave,

that faithful childly Mother, Wisdom,

who will need resuscitation from life,

only after we have bore Death, unnaturally.

COSMIC COUPLINGS

Venus aligns in inept exactitude with the earth

as we revolve around one another,

a small infinity passing,

your alien eyes now open, probing me,

the two mean mystical stars they are.

When I am pulled in by their glorious gravity

how I wonder what I am, a lost lion cub traipsing

the star guided lamb?

Down beneath my world so low

are thy kinetic laws 

of east, west, north, south

elliptical glow,

thy meteor showers reign over my sky thrice

in a pink-red moon,

the sun passes over my meandering orb,

a strange illusive eclipse of depraved doom, girlish gloom,

for you say the next one might not come 

for another seventy days,

as you close your eyes, a blessing in disguise,

our come hither, go thither atoms of mortal cosmic matter

now splitting and separating,

spinning and whirling,

boying and girling,

the ever altering alchemic maze,

always fooling us into believing

that we have mastered its maddening complexities,

eternally exited its boundless bounds of space-time causation.

Yet how quickly it comes to pass again

that we implode and explode,

shatter flatter and flatter into the weathered walls

of our bond and need,

rocketed by love/lust’s creed,

its wily, sharp turns, intricate patterns forgetting us,

yet we still keep thinking we are found,

to come full revolution time again and again and again,

losing our way, universally.

AN EPIGRAM, 

ALIENI GENERIS

Imitation is a form of insult,

Once quoth Mr. Blake,

For we are unlike any other,

For goodness sake!

So if someone tries you on for size,

In that of their own guise,

Discreetly bow & defer,

But do not concur! 

AN ACTUATING RESIGNATION

Alas, the curtain is closing.

Here is the former masque, fashioned of that oppressive, hideous, Nabakovian constraint.

I hereby resign from my traditional, for-too-long played out roles of Mediocrity, lest they become my slow but sure demise,

as they can surely only continue along an infinite line

to an Eternity in Hell for such negligence of God's grace & gifts bestowed upon me.

Yes, I must go forth now, into the world, where the only roles I will sign on to play are those which I have crafted & writ myself-

the roles we are all revealed to truly play in each end act.

For we are all saints masquerading as devils. 

A DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT/AFFECT

The sweet, burning scourge of Love, agape, for self, mirrored within the eye of another's kindness & positive regard, illumines the path once more.

There is a gentle yet momentous shift within, a parting of the Red Sea of Pain & Primal Rage pitted against the tides of Truth & Justice.

Yet it is of a substance completely devoid of any color, weight or texture.

It is of a fabric organic yet wholly immaterial, ensconcing one within a return to meaning without form.

What is this bliss which surpasseth all understanding which expels demons so parasitically embedded into shoulders for so long shrugged?

What is this force which turns one 'round again, to alight upon the Right, which lifts that unbearable load, carrying one down another road?

The poem wants to be ended.

Yet...

What still longs to speak?

A voice which still seeks a synthesis, a sublime symbiosis between that simplicity & meekness so expedient & the complexity foreseen.

A doctrine of double affect/effect, & the endless abstractions, & painfully exacting contractions-Can vs. Can't, Will vs. Won't, Do vs. Don't.

The main paradox of the human experience: 

To be but not to be, simultaneously.

With so many double-edged swords, you'd think we would make the cut by now. 

A WAY WITH WORDS: THE POET'S ATONEMENT II

My head swims in sleep,

My eyes cake with wake,

My body will not keep,

The Soul from its shake 'n' bake,

I am riddled with sin,

This is my new obsession:

I am my best enemy-I always win,

This is my latest confession,

It has been one second since my last,

And if your own Mind is the thief-

What does one cut off now, I ask?

For mine hand has caused me no grief,

Only the crudely reasoning Mind is the crowned Devil,

Whom this world deems me hold in high regard,

With the ground, I struggle to stay level,

For the man in the sky rules a more celestial courtyard,

An idyllic bearded bard,

To whom I plead for pardon,

As I prepare for my own execution,

The clock ticking away, the heart beginning to harden-

Yet one thing still remains-such impressive elocution! 

IN HOSPICE

A recovering Soul's awakening must be well-paced,

'Though no measure of convalescence, its full burden, can erase. 

I SING THE BODY'S BETRAYAL

Slipping into madness again, or is it the womb of God? A soft, slow descent. There is fear here. A blocked dam of potential. 

Dear God will I flood out, strangulated by the elements of this mystical undertow in such states of humane extreme, as the mundane senses taunt and mock this cowardly compliance with promises of the supposed 'known'-of words, tastes, scents, sounds and sights, over-recited theorems and overrated conceptions? 

Oh, deviant, imbecilic tongue, how you taste of that sweet cherry juice, yet boomerang that mystery pit with such haste at the slight feel of a texture astray from what you have been lashed to disarray and paralysis to savor. 

Oh, fallible self-serving ear, how your brother Arm, shuts that window with such irascible scorn to quiet that nagging droning of the wind as you fail to hear that it is the soft, sweet, whispering murmur of a praying child across the hall. 

Oh, shape-seeking eye, how you wish that what you have seen could but only have preceded what you have read or watched countless mouths squander, foretell, reminisce or deride with such toxic conviction. 

Oh, hedonistic nose and skin, if only the fragrance of a lilac could but be found repulsive and a shotgun blast to the knee levitate and not ground thee so harshly, would you begin anew, unmitigated by convention. 

For then you would know where true madness multiplies, overpopulating the society of the soul with its overbearing antics of pseudo-nurture and rhetoric Rage. 

For it is all too common in this day and age, to smell Fear while merely tasting of Redemption, to see all but those whims which merely seek to cultivate Perplexity.

Yes, it has become all too common in this day and age, to feel the flesh enraptured or ravaged as the true feeling and sensation is lost grasp of at a mere one degree, skin deep. 

ON THE RETURN 

Like dust to dust, the acquiescent merging, the soft, supple surrender of the form of this matter at hand pools with the dense, calcified masses of irony. 

For the womb of any fallen human impulse cradles and seeks to substantiate not what we are truly being sustained with, but with that which we seek to neglect in our nihilistic indulgences. 

But the innermost workings of the Spirit do not engineer according to the blueprint of the Gothic existential edifices of disease, fear, pain and diffidence which haunt the narrow, frigid halls of our current compound incarnate like ghosts of relentless reckoning. 

For these are entities which forget all too quickly, the things which imprint themselves most indelibly-the things that cannot be forgotten. 

THE REFUSAL: A CATALYST OF FAITH 

The dawn of my creation, 

Standing before me, 

An eclipse of elation, 

Don't you adore me? 

The dawn of my creation, 

Naked before me, 

Oh mortals of Eden nation, 

Don't you revere me? 

Rays of finity, 

Illumine the Tree, 

Such sweet infinity, 

As Thou strayest from me. 

The dawn of my creation, 

Setting before me, 

Rays of finity, 

Penetrate the floor, 

Such sad sanguinity, 

As is closed, the Door. 

PARAPHRASE 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadows of doubt, I shall fear only this: Doubt. 

For the rod and staff of any god cannot comfort thee in the face of this: Doubt, the Dracul of Hope, ever in covetous search of the blood of saints, that rich liquid gold of the reverent and noble who have made of their souls, impenetrable temples of diamond, onyx, lapis lazuli and mother of pearl. 

Might I become one of these, oh, my God, for only then can Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me, guiding me to still waters and the greenest pastures, no matter what very well might lie there on the other side. 

For these pastures, despite their perilous proximity to the fiercest opposition and open fire, remain still, the safest place to dwell, where the encompassing skies whisper joyous lament. 

For my strength is only my gravest weakness, Yet Thou restoreth the fatally aggrieved human mind with the balms and ointments of the high noon of day, where Reason and devout circumspection are at their peaks of interest and concern. 

For only here, at this particular innermost coordinate on Earth, can the mind’s eye gaze upon the Son, despite all climates of impending plunder and metaphysical pillage precipitated. 

For otherwise, we are merely blinded with the searing enlightenment of a cardinal heritage most primordial, which overcasts its shadow over the temple of the soul’s mind, heralding nothing but an eternal season inhospitable, of uninvited guests.

We struggle to comprehend the meaning, in order that we might mean the struggle, which so often lends to the struggle’s end. 

Thus once more we can see, both cause and remedy, to any ill or anomaly, within the spiritual process of refinement itself. 

Thus can we hear so clearly now resonating throughout, the newfound hospice of reunification with all Truth, the song of I & Thou, Oh God. 

Thus can we find again, Freedom from Bondage, Freedom in Bondage, Mastery only in Subservience to Thee, Oh, God. 

FIRST BORN 

My dreams are steeped in prophetic doom. 

I rise from them, doused in pensive lucidity, to beach the ghost shores of shame and nameless indignation, having long ago learned to fear the inevitability of others’ wrathful reciprocity over that of my own primordial urges. 

Thus Salvation often happens in the face of this: I must change or perish. 

For one's armor becomes too conspicuous, too heavy to bear. 

We are the life-giving death of ourselves, for we know intuitively that we must learn instead, to garner our courage from the tender hands of reverent Virtue, vulnerability, heart-tenderness. 

Thus Damnation often happens in the face of this: 

But have I the strength to be kind in a world so quick to turn cruel at the slightest gesture of self-defense & self-assertion? 

For when everyone brandishes sword and shield, the act of self-preservation seems borne out of the stoicism of cowards and fools. 

For it comes to seem no longer to be, that the only way to truly survive is by turning the other cheek. 

And thus we begin to ask all of the wrong questions: What have I become? 

Where is my faith in the saving graces of discretionary humility & surrender to God? 

Yet in truth, the actualization of thrivance must come before that of mere survival. 

Thus we often come to feel that an abnegation of self used to be the basic tenet of saving the self, but now seems the stuff of naivete, creating within the human will an even more toxic core than ever before. 

In the Herculean grip of such intractable loss and alienation, can a human spirit muster the resolve to kill this sickly beast? 

Does it have the strength to stand apart with purity of heart? 

Not of its own power. 

We all must choose whether or not to allow the devil-mind to bid adieu to Rage and Contempt, however well-founded they may be? 

We must continually inquire: 

Will I settle for the cathartic yet fatal camaraderie of Hatred and Fear, or return, a prodigal orphan of the Hell I have bore, to the arms of my true blood Father, to be loved only as the simple child and newborn infant that I always am, in His beloved, merciful eyes? 

And alas, when we have reconciled it all, we must die to even all of this, allowing for the evolution of the spirit to continue along its edification process in semi-Pelagiastic triune-file, submitting in prayer & prostration, before God: 

Oh, Heavenly Father, if You can bear any more kin, we wish to continue, being born again. 

MEDICINAL MOON

Medicinal moon.

Black misty acid sky

dissolves its white half tablet.

I breathe in deep

its fifty milligram dose.

This proves more than enough

for I no longer weep,

yet am falling within sweet oblivion,

sweet sleep.

I think I’ll take a couple nights of this

and call when the last dawn hits.

RIGHT DECLINATION TO ASCENSION

The darkness seeps into the cracks,

A gain subtracting from what one lacks,

To walk while one has the light,

Soon brings one 'round 'gain to fright,

Such a defeatist triumph of neverending plight.

Surely ascension poises for Eternity

on the tensional momentum of such drawbacks. 

THE TOUGH LOVE HAND OF FATE

Hurtling through time & space I am,

Turtling through grime & waste I swam,

Now drudging,

How begrudging,

Is Fate being to me,

Yet the powers that be behind, nigh this tumultuous Fate,

Set the flowers that be refined by the showers' fists they tolerate. 

TO THE TECHNOLOGIAN

So you think you can Faraday-cage

The Spirit

with an architecture of metal & silicon?

Dear technologian:

Where is the illogic to your science?

A bird cannot soar upon wings of mesh. 

UNCOMMON TREASURE 

Much like the scald of the hot iron tells us to pull away, 

The pain, where it matters most, reminds us to stay, 

No suffering is illegitimate until it is spurned, 

As no want of release becomes necessity, 

Until by Nature’s yielding, it is earned. 

CIRCUIT BREAKER 

It floods in and I turn it off, 

afraid that if left undammed, unguarded, 

that it won’t ever stop, 

and I will seep with a vibrant joy and endless, indomitable Love 

until the end of my days. 

For it just cannot be ordinary to feel such 

unheeded warmth and weightlessness, 

in a realm of such substantiality, tangibility and gravity. 

That we can live like this-Is it perhaps possible? 

Impossible? 

I’m possible. 

How do we know if we cannot live like this? 

Has anyone ever really tried it? 

Put it to the old scientific test? 

Perhaps I will lend my body, mind & spirit to science, 

as it is now-a live specimen, 

the first experiment of its kind 

hopefully to be successful. 

And if it is not? 

At least I will have died truly living. 

MOTION SICKNESS

Sticks & stones

skim skin & bones

but words are the balms which desert me.

I can't exert me.

I am stuck in my own throat.

There is nothing worse

than this kind of constipation-

an inertia of Soul from within

a moving body is always cause

for the worst kind of motion sickness.

And it goes on ad nauseum,

like a compass with no electro-magnetic

center to start from.

Yet this feeling is far worse

than merely not knowing

which way to turn next.

For inertia from within the Soul

is, more often than not,

a comparative noun,

meaning that it has a choice

to become instead, its antonym.

Yet with the finality of Death,

this is not true,

thus perhaps even the Life

one feels one does not fully live

and in which one may currently toil & burn,

& endlessly ache & yearn

is nevertheless worth so much more

than that which it repeatedly fails to yield. 

MORTAL TRANSCENDENCE

He wretches and he heaves,

Amidst the bitter, fallen leaves,

Weighted with tears & remorse,

Having no chance to send,

Of being freed by the wind,

Neither does he,

Bound by contract of mortal gravity.

But now, there is a shift,

An opening within-a gentle rift,

Releasing all tormentous woes,

As Hope, through spacetime blows,

An earthbound fate of repentant cries,

Absolved & Redeemed-taken to the skies.

THE ART OF HUMILITY

After Pride cometh the fall,

We must keep our heads small,

So think of me what ye will,

But next to God I am nil,

The Art of Humility indeed is this:

Stand naked before God,

Thine own self, dismiss. 

PSALM OF ANSELM,

MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM

Anima humana, anima mundi, anima divina.

(The human soul, the world soul, the soul divine.)

Quod me nutrit, me destruit.

(That which nourishes me, destroys me.)

De profundis clamo adite domine.

(Out of the depths I cry to You, Oh Lord.)

Ubicumque me verto ades.

(Wherever I turn, there You are.)

Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus.

(I am my Beloved's & my Beloved is mine.)

Mens sana incorpore sano.

(A sound mind in a sound body.)

Horridas nostrae mentis purga tenebris.

(Cleanse the horrible darknesses of our mind.)

Mundus vult decipi.

(The world wants to be deceived.)

Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, arte de fide et veritas in coelestibus perficitur.

(What nature leaves imperfect, the art of the faith & the truth in Heaven perfects.)

Occulus Deum, Occulus veritas.

(The eye of God, the eye of Truth.)

Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea, sicut incensum, in conspectus tuo.

(Let my prayer, Oh Lord, ascend like incense in Thy sight.)

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

(Blesses is He who cometh in the name of the Lord.)

Accendat in nobis Dominus ignem sui amoris.

(May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of His love.)

Fiat justicia, ruat coelum!

(Let justice be done, though the Heavens fall!)

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen.

(In the name of the Father, The Son, & The Holy Spirit.)

(So be it.) 

NOT ON BREAD ALONE

'Tis true as Holy Writ has shown,

No-one lives on mere bread alone ,

Seek & ye shall find therein,

A soothing salve for many a yen,

And a quiescence of mind akin,

To freedom from bondage to all sin.

ORPHANS OF A STATE OF MIND

Why are you so afraid of Sadness,

when it is Sadness from whence ye were spawned?

The melancholic spirit,

the Mother of all stillness & reflection,

hence the bearer of all true Felicity.

Sorrow must always come first,

& from thenceforth,

the Joy may spring into a vigorous chrysalis

of conciliation & rebirth from within

The Human Soul.

For Anima Mundi must now drink

of the foaming blood of the grape,

& become drunk upon the choicest wines

of Solemnity & Introspection,

letting the omniscient Eye of Death awaken,

swaddled & gently sheathed within

the silken, saturnine palms

of that ultimate unbearable lightness of Being-

Hope & Love, the progeny of all Grief & Lament alike. 

'O GLORIOUS FUTURE

‘O glorious future do unbind these wings,

Quivering be they now, whilst longing for exalted things,

With a wingspan spreading into infinite bounds,

My spirit's courage embraced and found,

For deep within my being I'm fully aware,

Of Who holds my future within His care,

And in His loving and omniscient hands,

Glorious things await upon these lands,

For we are all so blessed to come and know,

A Heavenly Father Who bids us, blossom and grow,

For the future of His children does behold,

Fulfillment & Joy, boundless & bold,

And holding steadfast to His profound Word,

Allows for eternal treasures, soon conferred.

AN ECONOMY OF SPIRIT

That notorious Wall Street here on earth,

Does not bring unsurpassed worth,

For the worldly Wall Street conducts 

affairs quite menial and avaricious,

In comparison to spiritual wealth, 

which is anything but capricious,

For all stocks in Heaven are distributed equal and fair,

Under contract that we then share,

With those nearing spiritual poverty or destitution,

And all of us who are prone to sinful devolution,

For a world so monopolized by its own greed,

Causes the human soul to bleed,

For the only broker to negotiate spiritual commerce,

Is Jesus Christ-the middleman worth this rhymed verse,

For the booming economy of Heaven suffers no crash or decline,

Under the law of supply and demand so methodical and divine,

And we, being mortals of flesh, blood and ego,

Are in dire straits for munificence which only He can bestow,

And the only commission charged by our broker Jesus Christ,

Is that we remember by His Word to do right,

Investing towards fellowship, love and charity,

Storing up treasure in Heaven & eternal prosperity.

THE BONDAGE WHICH FREES, IS THE FREEDOM WHICH BINDS 

Just think what that must’ve done to the human soul. 

The forced labor of taking part in the crafting 

of one’s own dehumanization & demise, 

or the sowing of one’s own noose, 

or the digging of the pits which would entomb 

one's own funeral pyre, and the genocidal lynching 

of one’s own kin. 

A labour camp? Straight from the mouth of Satan himself. 

They were “death camps”, plain & simple. 

They had no intention of any survivors. 

But good thrives both despite & because of Evil. 

As above, so below. 

There is only one sovereign, Holy God. 

Now rewind: The past being an all-too crude prelude: 

The laying down of train tracks yet foreshadowed. 

The erecting of that wicked beast of the sea itself-

steers a wrongful course in sun or rain, the train, white man’s new faithful dog, bringin’ ‘em in, the train, bearing but more shackles and chains, the train, the white man’s milk and honey-an abundant flow, but the Black man’s continual subtraction from nothing. 

Imagine hands forced to carve from nature all of those things primed for one’s own systematic 

and unnaturally cruel torment and destruction-

let alone that of one's very own: grandparents, mothers, fathers, cousins, friends, sisters, brothers and children, 

with no end seemingly in sight to such blight. 

A damnable and damning coercion, a constant gnarling of that which pleads to just for once, remain straight, unentangled by nefarious projections-just for once to be left the way that it was and is in its glory of pure being. 

White man’s hypocrisy perhaps more heinous and unbridled 

than the crimes which it wrought. 

Yet the true casualties come from man’s own war with himself, 

as it seems to always become so endlessly displaced upon 

that which reflects to the most mindless masses, 

a feeble-minded gestalt of that darkness of night which some akin, to those possessed of lighter skin, 'though certainly not a light from within-in their vicious cycle of fear & shame, burden upon everyone but the one guilty of the greater sin. 

But is this semiotic analysis concerning color and its extensions of association an oversimplification? 

White= purity and righteousness Black= impurity and the abominable. 

Of course it is. 

But which comes first, the chicken or the egg? 

Am I who I am in defense of myself in justifiable response 

to another's transgression? 

Or am I who I am in offense to a transgression merely anticipated, thus often falsely reiterated? 

But this shit could go on & on & on... 

an unfortunate perpetual motion machine that does exist. 

But in the end the only thing to concern ourselves with is: 

Is who we are on the outside congruent with who we are on the inside? 

The outer world just blurs these distinctions-if it honours them at all. 

For has not the rich brown earth and the albino moon 

always been the things to which we supplicate in wonderment & awe? 

And upon which and beneath which we mollify our lovers and our gods? 

And isn’t it the far-sightedness of night which we let wash us clean with redemptive ambiguity? 

And isn’t it only in the darkness that any light is found? 

Where the most abiding, enriching sustenance is sought? 

Isn’t it only with each and every rarity, 

that true sanctity & sanctuary dwell? 

Isn't the contrast of all opposites the very force 

& magnificence of the universe itself? 

All things considered, & in the end, 

there is only one immanent battle which must be fought: 

that of the individual vs. himself & the forces of evil, both exogenous and endogenous. 

For there is only one human race, which must face the following in each our own way: 

Should we decide otherwise to try and rise and become what God sees us as, that which we truly are, by default we risk becoming an accomplice to both our own liberation and ensured enslavement. 

But again, we must ask: 

Freedom from what or who? 

And enslavement by whom or what? 

For there is much more bondage in freedom 

than there is freedom in bondage.

Yet we bear crosses, shackles & chains hereupon 

this earthen expanse today, so that may bear eternal exaltation & victory tomorrow. 

But “freedom” by nature is not meant to be a destination, 

but rather, a goal toward which we all must strive 

until we have earned that salvation eternal-the only abiding and actual freedom which ever existed to begin with.

THE DEAR, SWEET FACES OF HOPE & LOVE

In a world of such belligerently negligent Deception,

only the Truth hides us safely from view,

also emboldening a distinct form of redeeming contrast,

as the weary Soul is engulfed with alluring warmth, light & depth.

But when we dare to live the Truth,

and revel within the dynamism which we exert upon others,

we come to see that it is only while dwelling within Truth,

that we can see our irreducible need for others and theirs for us.

And during these periods in our human existence,

we vibrate & resonate with an indescribable Joy & Newness.

And all of the darkness & sufferings of past states of being

are no longer seen or felt as the nihilistically forged

anchors of futility, meaninglessness & despair,

and they are stored away just as quickly as they first found us,

setting us free to sail upon the pristine azure waters of new worlds, which reflect back to us as we gaze into them,

a mesmeric imago of the face of all Humankind

& that of its Creator & Sustainer,

beaming an incorruptible ray of Hope & Love. 

A LIFE I NOW LOVED, ONCE AGAIN

         As I walked home today from my usual errands, I turned on the radio on my Ipod. Passing through the stations for about 20 seconds, I hit upon a song sung by someone whom I at first thought was a secular artist that I was familiar with. But as I listened closer to the lyrics: "Save me according to Your loving kindness, Oh Lord," I soon realized that I had happened upon a Christian music station.

        And as I opened my heart & listened to the lyrics of this Christian song, seeking out its ministration, tears quickly sprung to my eyes, as the morning Son, riding on High in the expansive clear blue sky, shot its rays of warmth & Love right through to the center of my world-weary Soul. 

Prior to hearing this, a song sung with such truth & feeling, I failed to feel His all-encompassing benevolence & watch over me, as I dealt with the exigencies of the day. Yet His presence was manifested to be yet still, unceasing & ever-faithful. 

For the rest of the day, I felt more centered & whole than I had in weeks, perhaps even months. And from such a seemingly simple act of opening my heart & mind to His Truth & Word, His undeniable, unshakeable presence within my Soul, it was then that I knew it was all going to be alright. 

Again the Lord had extended His benevolent, merciful hand to me, this wayward child of His, coaxing me gently & ever so sweetly back into the Light of a Life I now loved, once again. 

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE SHRINE OF THE EGO

Fame is fleeting, adulation is deceptive

but the one who pulls the chord

is to be feared,

shall get all the praise.

We all truly worship the same God

as we kneel with bloodied, skinned knees

before the indestructible shrine of the Ego,

where even when we think ourselves

to be in humble, reverent worship

to a being greater than ourselves,

we truly are scheming self-serving things

within our hearts

within our minds.

There is no room for humility

as long as we idolize ourselves

and other merely mortal creatures,

along with the enticing material gains

of fame, fortune, and power,

ever ready to devour us,

just waiting until our cups overfloweth

to then chew and grind us into one inedible package

and if we are spared, if we are fortunate,

to then spit or throw us back up to our only

sustaining, gratifying source of nourishment.

Yet if we fail to recognize,

if we fail to beware the pharynx

behind all of this perishable self-gluttony,

we just might be swallowed whole

to end up fecal matter,

trapped within our own bloated bodies

of obsession and greed,

never to be given release,

never to be relieved.

THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

And so the tree of life ever so majestic flourishes,

And its plentiful harvest, the ailing spirit, nourishes,

Love & Charity, the first seeds that are sown,

The terra firma upon which fruits of the spirit are grown,

The first of love’s offspring being that of Joy,

And this, an offering which no pestilence can destroy,

From the adjacent branch sprouts another divine bud,

The spiritual fruit Peace, tended & rendered from up above,

Then the fourth fruit-at first bite bittersweet,

Patience being its name-an undeniable treat,

And as the cycle of true Life, for fruitfulness strives,

Upon a limb not far from Patience, Kindness thrives,

As well as its counterpart Goodness, soon to be cultivated,

Nurturing the maturation of  faithfulness, unabated,

And along with all these other savory gifts inherited,

Gentleness, the bearer of all seven fruits, shall be merited,

And so there is only one seed, the ninth, to be planted,

Yet it seems this one has been taken for granted,

For the tree of sacred fecundity standing holy and resplendent,

Has at its root, Self-control through Christ, our masterful Ascendant.

SEEDS OF SUCCESSS

Seeds of success are first planted,

When desire,

Sparks the fire,

Of the gifts we have been granted.

THE WHITE HORSE CANDIDATE

The only Governor worthy of my selection,

Does not ever need go up for reelection,

The King of Kings reigns forevermore with steadfast loyalty,

Jesus Christ-the One, the Only, Almighty Royalty,

And He shall never resign,

From His office of Holy design,

Nor will He, His consensus, ever deny,

His true providence & guidance by and by,

To be distributed bipartisan amongst His Electoral College,

Blessing all who abide within His wisdom and knowledge,

A life under His merciful, righteous hand-the only prelim,

For the President of the Universe rules with vigour & vim,

Unlike His opposing dark horse candidate,

Known as Satan, will try to advocate,

False promises & other assorted glittering generalities,

To entice us with deceptive non-realities,

For the one and only resolution to ameliorate societal decay,

Lies within legislation of Divine intervention amidst worldly dismay,

And during these here primaries of which I speak,

There exists only one way to seek,

Your thoroughly qualified Leader Jesus Christ,

By voting straight ticket on Satan's dark propagandic device,

And it is perfectly just, to be a little biased,

For this proposal exalts the King of the Highest,

And all dark principalities shall soon lose all persuasion,

As Christ's lobbying efforts win us over, on any occasion,

As gracious patronage upon His followers is bestowed,

And the truth of His Word manifested, as His power are shown,

So all we need to do to seek a righteous ruling hand,

Is to let He alone lead us through this rugged land,

And no matter what mortal strife,

We bear within our life,

Let's cast our votes and draw nigh,

To God Almighty on high.

IMMORTAL STRIVINGS IN A MORTAL VESSEL

Bound in chains of penitence and remorse,

Allowing mortality to run its course.

Yet though these chains may fetter & bind me,

Under their binding I am safe & free,

For this is how He lives through me.

WINTER WONDERLAND

Oh billowing waves of cloudy-sky grain,

And sacred terrace upon which the feet step 

so gaily & reverently within the snow,

Mirrors that field of wondrous sky, 

as all things bound from its glory & grandeur 

may again peer into their own

oft forgot imago from on High.

THE EMINENCE OF IMPERMANENCE 

Lying here, letting sweet silence mend my Soul's ear, 

I attune instead, to the subtler sonancies of Joy without Fear, 

For the prospect of Lost, 

Comes at no cost, 

When nothing so fleeting is held so near, so dear, 

Yet Felicity's fervour, 

'Tis also quite fleeting, 

For the fickle human heart, 

And its erratic, bereaved beating, 

Yet we may instead learn to take heed,

Of the eminence of Impermanence as we so need. 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S VERSE 

I mean nothing that I say, 

And everything that I do, 

This is the verse, of a Philosopher true. 

A SYLLOGISM FOR THE SPIRIT

There is a God.

God is not ill.

God is not broken.

God is not empty.

God is not lost.

God is not imperfect or incomplete.

God is not disenfrachised.

You were created by God.

Therefore are you well.

Therefore are you whole.

Therefore are you filled.

Therefore are you found.

Therefore are you perfect.

Therefore are you complete.

Therefore are you Home.

Now...believe in what you are not,

and go be what you are. 

AN ESCHATOLOGY IN VERSE

The blood toils in longing,

The mind fills with rage,

For want of infinitely wronging,

The false righteousness of the Cage.

1/3 of the sea of the seventh seal one day will bleed,

As the breath of all life turns to poison,

The slaves of the Beast will continue to breed,

Satan's final exert of foison.

Those in the last days, under virtuous restraint,

Will be exalted in immortalization,

New bodies granted, without taint,

As God grants a final cessation-

The beginning of a new end,

Never to be known again. 

BIRDS OF LIFE

Mountain birds singing

tiny wings as they flutter

make the air I breathe.

THE DETHRONEMENT

You sit, a false God on your crumbling throne,

wreaking chaos to rival what peace is lost-

Oh, at what cost will I continue my prostration before you?

The divinity in me must replace,

the profligacy riled by your face,

You want me weak so you can feel strong,

you weave wrong into right, and right into wrong-

But now I must sing my own song,

at the altar of my true Lord & Master,

For 'tho my earthly Mother & Father have forsaken me,

only He hath reigned, ever after.

And oh! 

At what infinite, everlasting profit shall continue,

my prostration before Him.

THE DEVOLUTION

I walk with the manic pace of modernity,

footsteps thumping the cold earth in time

to the flickering, yet hurried heat

of the Hell-bent heart.

A crowd of festivity seekers weaves this way & that,

a mercurial flow of first-person "I"-onized energy,

all one massive amalgamation of form & matter,

not yet made fully realized 

by the Master Sculptor's diligent hand,

as they grapple with the Ultimate question:

Oh, how to live as "one" and "One"?

Doomsday sayers exalt themselves 

upon rusted trashcan barrels,

providing more than ample opportunity,

for this kind of strict unity 

in the religious literature they pander,

handing out condemnation & salvation 

in one heaping helping,

granting the chance for all whom-

excluding themselves have sinned,

to cast away their own stones of fire & brim.

The streets quickly become littered 

with a fatal sea of Bible tracts,

which are stained with tiny smudges of blood-

the paper cuts of over-coercion to rebellion:

"Here is my blood, take of it & lick,"

the formulaic laws of Humankind's encumbrance,

a cup runneth over, under, over-asunder.

A young mother nearby strains 

to the cumbersome gravity of Son & Self,

defying her youth as she twists & fidgets within her own skin.

The boy, sensing her anxiety through the telepathic tendency

of Mother & Child, reaches out a tiny hand,

lined with the prophesy of such willful dependence,

to seek out her warm, nourishing breast,

latching thus onto the cycle of arcane instinct in a world,

pulsating & aching from the premature sodomy of infancy,

as Innocence transmogrifies into corruption

not too long thereafter the first wailing breath.

I remain still & silent with my ruminant, ideational

 germinations, now continuing 

in my course throughout the crowd,

to seek & find my own place of sanctity 

amongst the clamour & chaos,

feeling strangely more whole & serene 

than I have in awhile.

For this is the world that I know,

 and this is the world that I love.

THE ELEGY HAS BEEN SUNG

How does one fight an enemy that is oneself,

without incurring any casualties?

But perhaps all things must die in that they may live.

For truly, there is no creation,

only annihilation assuming many forms-

Life is Death as Death is Rebirth,

a continual requiem.

The elegy has been sung,

we merely lie await within the desanctified Tomb

of this earthen expanse.

What will we call The Awakening?

Or will we never know, that we have been sleeping?

THE WELLSPRING OF LIFE

To not allow the evils that have been done unto you to become of you.

To acknowledge the darkness around you without allowing it to engulf you.

Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of Life.

To separate your true, God-given, virtuous essence from that "self" which the world and the tasks of survival oftentimes call you to be.

To gain your true strength from tender-heartedness and compassion.

To fight the inhumane with only the humane, always.

To fear most of all, becoming so hardened to the bad at the expense of the good and the just.

To defend yourself and others not with antagonistic posturing, but with protagonistic Surrender & quiet Faith & Dignity.

To fight unseen principalities of Destruction & Defeat with foreseen principalities of Resurrection & Victory.

All of this in God's name we pray. Amen. 

THE EXPEDIENT INGREDIENT

In 1886,

Coca-Cola had the fix,

To cure all touted ills,

In the absence of bitter pills,

The secret ingredient,

'Twas quite expedient,

Offered up by the Coca plant,

Better than Gregorian chant,

Ensuring a steady demand,

And many 'a tremoring hand,

When the last drop was nearing gone,

They all soon filed to Al-Anon,

A communal "high" not to be missed,

Much better than a Coca-Cola in the fist,

Resulting in a sales plummet,

And a swell new jingle if you could hum it,

Coca-Cola was now stronger than ever,

A brain tonic for any soporific weather,

The new secret ingredient,

Just as expedient,

To keep working minds alert & keen,

Why, the "real thing" now boasted of Caffeine!

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

Me, myself & I-

The unholy trinity,

An existential vacuum echoing on into Infinity,

Unless both the "I" and the "We",

Can Coexist,

In the unparalleled bliss,

of true Unity. 

THE HONOURABLE FAITH PRESIDING

Shall Eternity be thicker than Time,

why must we feel so betrayed?

Day by day, the not quite moot

Maternity/Paternity suit-

The Plaintiff:

The materially evidenced inadequately presented,

As the theoretical circumstantials remain underrepresented.

Yet now!

The dire disunity,

Of the hung jury-

As they are so faced with a Higher Impunity.

But the verdict nevertheless is in-

No further need for fury,

The case is dismissed,

Gavel & wood colliding,

At the hand of the honorable Faith, hereby presiding.

CLAUDIUS' HYMN

Heaven hath no fury like that of a devil born.

When I was born they say the Earth shook with pre-ordained doom,

And God wept with unfettered gloom,

Mortal eyes looked away in disgust and shame,

As I reveled in my post-natal fame,

For a fate of Rage and a sickness of mind,

Had already put me in quite a bind,

I am the Eternal Child of Nature's Being, raw and wild,

Come to fruition in one lone soul-

Yet sooner or later, it must blow-

It must blow,

With the force of a wrath justified and true,

For where two rights make infinite wrongs,

Faith in Truth, one must renew,

This heart is deeper than you will ever know,

And if I die drowning within myself,

At least I will have earned, one less foe. 

I, ONTOLOGICAL

It's not the weight of the world so much, 

the 6 sextillion tons of dead weight that it is & feels.

It's the weight of the self,  a black hole singularity 

of infinitely live weight.

Even demi-gods eventually fell, 

giving in to the weight of their own worlds.

But the inquiry poises itself with maladroit front 

upon the tip of an amygdalian-hijacked prefrontal cortex:

Which is a more reasonable & sound expectation?

A pondering not altogether moot.

Yet still, both are unanswerable, given the lack 

of any empirical affirmative and/or negative to be found.

Thus, to which do we owe our devotion & prostration?

If it is said that the outer world is changed first from within the chrysalis of each individual self, how has the world gotten off so easily?

How has anyone transcended anything?

We must indeed be crafted, in imago divinus. 

NEUROTIC DEPRESSIVE, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

I don the veil of oblivion fresh, fragrant and warm from the dryer.

Am I the means to your end, Mr. Death Wish,

or the end of your means?

Do you speak with eloquence or in spite of it?

You know, I've an offer to propose just to get you off my back-

an Eternity's supply of Super Bowl tickets for you and a new recruit of your choice and two brand spankin' new Italian silk upholstered couches.

But that is not all!

You will also receive that much coveted heart of gold,

all ready to hock whenever you're hard up for cash.

And, the Grande Bribe?

The brains of your most coveted enemies jarred in formaldehyde!

You see, we all have something of bribing value to offer others,

but ironically seemingly nothing for ourselves.

You're not the only one, Mr. Death Wish, who seeks redemption at the pricey cost of Salvation, bartered all too eagerly for a place on the chain gang of Blind Obedience & pithy Elitism.

Oh, let us count the ways and let us fill our days with endless Antagonism, so that we may know one to take one for a scapegoat for the torture we truly feel like inflicting upon ourselves, for we just cannot bear feeling alone in our idle, petty tyrannies and pseudo-sadistic pursuits.

Do you really see your reflection in me, Mr. Death Wish?

If so, I am not at all flattered or seduced.

I'm not into that kind of enmeshment.

Perhaps I am the one who can grasp you, while I continue to perplex your one-track mind.

How much difference does it make, whether I give or whether I take?

Whether I stay or whether I go?

Whether I truly know what I think I know?

What more is there to prove when there is nothing left to lose or to gain, as I hover, perched perilously upon the Plateau of Potentia, shivering with scared delight?

How can I speak of the Panic which rises up to meet the sullen earth, which excretions of my own self-slaying?

Yet this bent that we have towards destruction is perhaps truly a facade to mask the fear of committing to that truest internal dictator-amour-propre in a world which we know merely pursues with mocking agility, the animals on the move.

And finally, to lend my wit and candor to your riddle Mr. Death Wish:

How many times can others destroy me?

Innumerable.

How many times can I destroy myself?

Definitive. 

DIABOLUS EX MACHINA

In the beginning of the end,

the bureaucratic jungle was declared null & void,

Final Judgment was upon the face of the Earth,

and Man still made God.

In the end of all beginnings,

only the impoverished kept all of their winnings,

and the unmeek inherited the Hell of each their own worldly investments.

And blessed were the men thrown to the Fire to perish forever-

no Eternity to bear the wear & tear of neither here nor there.

And as the last great irony pillaged its last life effects from the reprobate ruins of the minds of all earth-borne, the cogs and the wheels now wrenched a perpetual motion machine of infernal dynamics to the Great Works' halt.

And so the final recompense was rendered to the Souls 

of those who've come to neither confess nor disparage the Evil

which had continuously lured so many back to mere upright affectation with praise on low for its many illusions and afflictions.

And when all was said and done,

God looked out again over His creation and saw still,

that it was Good.

THESE BLESSED RAINS

Sky is crying

its raindrop tears

reflect my solemn eyes

upon the pond

of all selflessness.

These blessed rains,

surge through my veins,

my earth-sunken toes

retap their roots again,

in the absence of Disunity,

my fathomable finite essence

nourished, rehydrated & found,

at once unbound

of the encumbering gauze

of worldly inflictions,

now standing,

a human tree,

awaiting to be sunken

back beneath yet above it all,

nestled within the womb

of the Omniscient Benevolence,

to sprout up in due time,

a new creation,

wielding fruits

to overflowing.

STILL I RISE

As the vivid splendour of the sun beneath my mortal gaze

Sets,

Its brilliance & grandeur set my mind ablaze

Whets,

My appetance for Life's grand prize-

Glee!

Rattles & torments my Psyche

Effervescence,

I now perceive within my Essence-

See!

The luminosity within all & within myself.

My dawning arrives,

And still I rise,

Yes!

Still I rise.



SUPERPOSITION

A disquieting peace settles upon the Soul.

Is this a portent of Death?

Or merely a contentment with one's legacy left for the day?

Is it the subtle sonancies of Spirit?

Or the petty mnemonics of the Neuro-Apparati?

God is a Quantum Computer.

It is both, at the same time...and so much more...

MANICHEAN MECHANICS

We learn compassion through surviving cruelty. 

We learn peace through surviving discord. 

We learn wisdom only after enduring senselessness.

We learn how to see only after being blind for so long. 

We learn how to hear & to speak only after we've been silenced. 

We learn how to be generous only in destitution.

We learn humility through humiliation.

We learn progression through oppression.

We learn how to be free only in bondage.

We learn how to love after the devastation of hate. 

We learn how to serve others after the pain of isolation. 

We learn to feel again after numbness hurts too much.

In the end, although Evil is a very real & destructive force, it, too, is under the rule of a Perfect & Holy God. 

Even the Darkness serves the Light.

APERTURE II

How much light must we let into ourselves before we know enough to be blind?

For where the light is most illuminant, how those shadows do loiter about, screaming out relentlessly for our acknowledgment.

And they traipse about at our callused heels, like starving, prodigal progeny of our self-defeatism, as we succumb time & time again to some benign yet malignant form of ontological ignominy, for daring to put Joy before Despair, & Living before Dying.

And truly, what is the cure for the human condition?

There is none-and this, is the remedy.

For those who insist upon walking backwards always fall to their premature deaths.

TRUE SUCCESS

The truly successful people are not whose who go on to soar to the greatest heights in the world, but those who dwell most fully in the here & now, just as they & just as it is.

The truly strong & courageous souls are not those who can harden their hearts & shut off to their own & others' humanity, but those who can remain psycho-spiritually pliant in a cruel world.

The ones with true grit are not those who so blindly & easily conform to the pattern of this world, but who strive ever onward towards self-actualization & individuation no matter the cost to their social & material standing.

The most charitable are not always those ones who contribute the most to the aid of others, but those who do so in a genuinely non-begrudging spirit of compassion & respect.

Those who contribute true & lasting value to society are not always those who receive the most accolades & fame, but are quite often, those working quietly & diligently 'behind-the-scenes' to make the world a more beautiful, truthful, bearable & fruitful place for all to live & work in.

WHEN THE HIGHEST GOOD YE PURSUE

How does one tell, a real from a fake?

The cowardly from the courageous,

The asleep from the awake?

The questions are complex,

The answers quite apparent,

When the highest good ye pursue,

And by Evil ye remain unvexed,

The inmost being 'tis revealed,

Tried & true.

KIND TO BE CRUEL

Some veil ill-will within sweetness & light,

Beware such dalliances of nefarious plight!

And some extend charity of a method of ensnarement,

So here is yet another bewarement:

Kind to be cruel,

For these, is the rule,

Beware those 'graces' which ye accept,

The snares of the devil are quite adept!

LIFE, THE QUESTION UNASKED

In these moments, Life fills me to the brim,

Lifting my spirit & reaffirming vim,

And all of the woes of that yesterhour,

No longer cause my soul to cower,

Everything becoming clear & new once more,

Life, a song, awaiting my voice outside the door,

I am loved, I am loved-

How was I ever so sad?

Unheard of, hereof,

Is a heart unglad,

I have risen once more to my fullest height,

Undaunted by Despair, unshaken by Plight!

Life is Beauty, 'tho oft unmasked,

And also the Answer to questions unasked.

TRIUMVIRATE

My turmoil is true,

As, by lovelorn days, I inculcate,

Nary a redeeming thought in lieu,

Of an anguish so familiar,

No Greek tragedy could be sillier,

No burr cling with more tenacity,

To every beast divine.

FOR NERUDA

Does the seashell hear us when we press it to our ear?

Does the sun wait for us to rise & to set?

Do the trees secretly long to sever their roots?

Is the crescent moon smiling or frowning?

Do crickets sing for Night or for Day?

Does the sky ever ask, "Why is the human blue?"

Do we till the soil or does it till us?

Can Good see Evil's light & evil, see Good's darkness? 

OF WAVE FUNCTIONS & MEANDERING PARTICLES

And if we manage this mortal human experiment with sufficient reverence & humility, we just may come to the place where at last there will be no more collapses of any wave functions to tediously measure & anticipate-no more photons & other assorted matter(s) left to flounder in mere propagation of vacuous isolation, no more Schrodinger's  cats to care for, no more quantum hypotheses to perplex & dizzy ourselves with. Perhaps someday there will be no more 'constants' to establish that will not allow in a wonderful infinitude of unitary transformations, new worlds to be learned. But in the meantime, may we continue our edification in learning how to live & love within the wondrous world that we have already been gifted with. For indeed, the destination IS  the Journey.

ZERO POINT ENERGY: THE VOID OF A VOID

My well has run dry and I cannot even describe the sheer Terror & Anguish this brings. My whole life is in the balance upon the tip of the pen. I never even imagined that I would lose my desire to create. A part of me that has always been so essential to my well-being is seemingly lost, gone. And I would suffer even the most unimaginable horrors just to get it back-my chi-my life force. Although this horror is, in and of itself very much nigh the mark of unimaginability and Despair.

Perhaps Divine Providence is the anomaly, and Disgrace & Despair are what we must place our Faith in. Indeed the constancy of these, are King. But the human experience of the Seraphic is ontologically dependent upon the afflictions & vagaries of the Demonic. In essence, nihility in itself illumines upon meaning, by contrast. And so there is...the Void of a Void-a zero point energy of existentialist proportions, ever teeming with intelligence & demiurgic infinitude & eternality. 

There is something in the human soul which clamors for elucidation & expression. It is a need next to none. Does this reside only within the soul of the Artiste or in everyone? Everything is at a standstill as long as the heart remains unstirred. It is a nothingness and existential sense of nullity which even Sartre or Nietszche never touched upon. For between Being & Nothingness lies an even deeper abyss. Perhaps its name is Apathy. Or perhaps it is Mother to Apathy-Ambivalence. We can never escape non-being, but can we ever embrace being? Yet we must, if the Void is ever to have any meaning.

Every force produces its equal and opposite reaction and not strictly in the Newtonian and phenomenological sense. Meaning itself derives from the union of opposites. And perhaps this is a gift, for nothing-not even nihility itself-is ever truly meaningless. Although this does not lessen our pain in the face of it. But the presence of the pain, parthenogenically born from our sense of barrenness, futility and emptiness nevertheless suggests a fullness & abundance of Being which is always there, even but if only as images within the ever-envisaging human psyche.

Hence, even Nothingness is always, quite Something. Zero-point energy. And oftentimes, our pain is, in itself, the salve for our pain. For as long as one is feeling, or as long as one is conscious of something-one is Being, one exists, is alive, has substantiality. This is often why we cling to our pain at the fear of never finding relief, or perhaps we fear that we will? We must have something to hold onto, even if this thing which we cling to is, in actuality, a losing of our grip.

To lose always includes a gain and a gain, an equally commensurate loss. This is why the ability to hold onto Joy should be regarded as nothing less than the miraculous display of an inner fortitude and Virtue of Sisyphean task. For it is indeed, a superhuman feat, belonging to the leagues of all ontological argument, where the Ideal always presupposes the Actuality. For truly, there is no evidence that Joy is a more valid and noteworthy emotion than that of Sorrow, especially in a world of such fleeting felicity.

The doctrines of Nihilism are very seductive, and even more still, when we must inhabit a mind and heart which often cannot choose between Equanimity or Struggle. To choose between one Truth or the other which is just as much of a verity-is at the heart of the human condition and the various configurations of trilemma and seemingly endlessly regressive doctrines and Byzantium ontological architecture we must decipher and navigate. The attendant Fear is often so great, that neither nor is secure. For just as soon as we wholly embrace one Truth, its equal yet antimonous opposite becomes all too manifest. And then we are ravaged and lost once again.

But this truth is exactly what makes all forms of bigotry thrive. Thus must we learn to embrace it all, although no one person can even know or see it all. This is the true act of Faith, where Ambiguity must become the God we worship daily before the indestructible Shrine Of Exigency. And learning how to persist in this cruel task without becoming totally adrift is a lesson that only the blessed can fully assimilate. For not unlike our love, belief and conviction must be spread just thin enough that it can maintain its clarity of purpose and efficacy, without losing its viscosity. For we can become One only when we embrace it all with equal measures of awe and expectancy. Then we are secure and left with the Ultimate and most essential task of all: Becoming all that we are.

Between Being & Nothingness lies a Perfection already operant behind it all. We are complete. We are whole. We are meaning. We are the Universe. Life is in love with us. Will we marry it? Oh, we already have-even in our hours of Despair & Faithlessness. Nihility is an illusion. It is all full beyond measure. The only Void which exists is the Void of a Void.

AND THE ABYSS STARES BACK

My chastening is not gentle & my yoke is not light.

Is this a diabolical force or a godly one which dwells in me?

But the very fact that I am asking the question proves my venal complicity with the Answer.

I am indisputably becoming the monsters which I have vowed to hunt & slay.

Sometimes the world withdraws from saints being preserved.

Let the Void ring out!

TRUE PURPOSE IN CHRIST

Sometimes we must tap into our own loneliness before we can find completion in Christ alone. It is often when we feel the least truly seen by others that we come to a higher and much deeper understanding of ourselves. Our view sharpens most in clarity when we feel mired within the murky uncertainty of our existence. Tethering our intentions and channeling our energies becomes both much harder and much easier in the face of life's vagaries, the indifference and often cruelty of others and in the face of our own overwhelming ennui. But thankfully, our Heavenly Father always provides for us, something to renew our spirits so that we can continue on in the uniquely calibrated and fated purpose for our lives. We may never be able to predict with specificity what form that empowerment and  encouragement may come in. But we can rest in the knowledge and in the hope that if we persevere, it will come. Resilience in the face of opposition is more a matter of determination and self- respect, both of which have been finely cultivated through all of our trials and travails. He indeed shall perfect His works both without and from within each of our individual souls and bring it all to completion some fine day. And then, we will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it has all been for. And not being certain but choosing to trust in an Almighty and Holy God is the root of true faith. And He shall also continue refining that as well. We only must choose each new day to move forward in self-actualization and courage.

NATURA ABHORRET A VACUO: 

FORM WITHOUT MEANING CRAFTING 

MEANING WITHOUT FORM

You were form without meaning crafting meaning without form-an essence preceding existence nullifying itself ad nauseam through the intemperate medium of carnal manifestation & ephemerality. Yet you came to understand that this dialectic of deontological scurryings was in truth, building, molecule by quark, the architecture of your celestial lot & highest incarnation. You came to know with utmost certainty, down to the marrow in your frail, disintegrating frame, that such 'proofs' are only revealed when they are no longer required. And you came to surrender to the grounding yet transcendental miracles of the Prosaic, thus discovering the path to your Redemption.

IN SOLUS CHRISTUS

I am thankful for these blessings in disguise:

Affliction, as it has taught me Prediction.

Persecution, as it has taught me Elocution.

Rejection, as it has taught me Self-Protection.

Banality, as it has taught me Reality.

Victimization, as it has taught me Individuation.

Deception, as it has taught me Mindly Perfection.

Emptiness, as it has taught me Plenti-ness.

Ennui, as it has taught me Jubliee.

Stagnation, as it has taught me Dilation.

Derision, as it has taught me Precision.

Restriction, as it has taught me Conviction.

Neglect, as it has taught me how to Effect.

Sin, as it has taught me Chagrin.

Yet above all I thank the Lord for these:

The intractable presence & scourging of Evil, 

as it has taught me reliance, 

In Solus Christus.

MUNDUS VULT DECIPI; SED SIT NON FALLI

For Truth crusaders in a world that wants to be deceived,

Anguish enmeshes these purest hearts unbereaved,

Whose highest aspirations & ideals cannot be achieved.

Hell on earth is here & now,

and thank Heaven for that.

There is no Hope without Despair,

Yet still, no Wounding without Repair.

And so we vow to let the hand that was

wrenched beyond all recognition,

become the hand that paves straight 

the path to Redemption.

Salvation is graced, but Sanctification must be earned.

Unutterable horror is faced, but immortality is learned.

All beings of the Divine must first descend to Hades.

Abba Father, mortify our flesh that our true spirits may

be freed unto Thee.

For 'tho outwardly we cling to the battered raft

of Hubris & Vanity,

Inwardly we are forged by the relentless tides 

of Chastening & Vanquishment.

Our own self-sufficiency is not sufficient at all...

Only Thy sovereign Grace & Providence.

Amen.

We need Thee this hour, every hour.

The world wants to be deceived-but also...to believe.

Lend us Your power, lend us your sight,

To guide enfeebled hearts & minds a'right.