PARAPHRASE

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Doubt,
I shall fear only this-Faithlessness.
For the rod and the staff of any God cannot comfort Thee in the face of this-
Doubt, the Dracul of all Hope and Mortal Transcendence,
always in search of the blood of saints,
that rich liquid gold of the reverent and the noble,
whom hath erected 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 do Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me,
guiding me to those still waters and greenest pastures,
no matter what very well might lie on the other side,
for they, despite their perilous proximity to the fiercest opposition and open fire,
remain still, the safest dwellings,
where the encompassing skies whisper a Joyous Lament.
For my strength is only my weakness,
but Thine strength restoreth the fatally aggrieved human psyche
with the priceless balms and ointments of the High Noon of Day,
where Reason and devout Circumspection are exalted to their peaks of dynamism,
and the Mind's Eye may gaze upon The Son,
wincing only when those clouds of impending plunder and metaphysical pillage,
wrought by a devastating precipitation,
blind one with the scathing reproach of our archaic cardinal heritage,
which is overcast over the Temple of the Soul's Mind,
to herald the season of that old familiar uninvited dark Guest,
as we struggle to comprehend the Meaning,
in order that we may mean the Struggle,
which so often is what leads to the Struggle's end.

Thus, once more I can see both Cause & Remedy to any ill or anomaly,
each within the things themselves,
and hear sweetly and so clearly resonating throughout
the newfound hospice of Reunification,
the song of True Freedom,
the song of I and Thou, Oh, my God.

DIABOLUS EX MACHINA

In the beginning of the end,
the bureaucratic jungle was declared null & void,
Final Judgement was upon the face of the Earth,
and Man still made God.

In the end of all beginnings,
only the bankrupt and indigent kept all of their winnings,
and the unmeek inherited the Hell of each their own worldly investments,
the blessed being those thrown to the Fire to perish forever-
no Eternity to bear the wear & tear of neither here nor there,
the last great irony pillaging its last life effects out of the minds of all earthborne,
turning the cogs and the wheels of diabolus ex machina,
the wrench of the Great Work's halt,
rendered by those who've come to neither own nor disparage Evil,
but to praise it on low for its many illusions and afflictions,
which had continuously lured so many back to mere upright affectation.

Yet when all was said and done,
God looked out over His creation and still saw,
that it was Good.

POEM FOR THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST

Words tumble out,
so rest assured that there is some light there to catch them.
But is this, that kind of light so cloaked in misty obscurity,
bringing a darkness all its own-
so indescribably dense,
so cumbersome
the soul can't shake,
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 left to understand,
is what speaks beneath it all-
the incommunicable,
the bearer of that dark light which propels us ever onward
through the time-space miasma.

For this is what we truly live for-
the unutterables,
the mystery of that glorified redemptive kind of sweet inscience,
the things whose prescience exists to us only through and by their unfathomability,
absence of evidence becoming the evidence,
of unshakeable, mute-strickening presence.

ENTERPRISE (Penned in my 20's)

Everything drops like a leaden weight to the epicenter of all Perplexity,
a longing for some kind of exonerating Sublimation.
Even my dreams are foreign to me & I awaken time and again in some solemn stratosphere
where Reason becomes the Loathsome Lie, a figurehead for the Raging's vast Enterprise.
For such sapience and existential impartiality have required of this human heart,
far more than they, themselves have to compensate with.
The human essentia which can neither survive nor fully thrive without the safeguarding
of such damnable and damning dialectics.

How will humankind keep its Spirit alive?
Or will the Spirit, too, become more and more subject to the gross rigours
of artificial sustainment & respiration?
Have we sacrificed the Sanctified & the Sublime at the altar of Secular Science
and its ever multiplicative gods?

Artificial intelligence.
Artificial life support, indeed.

And this is just it!
The deceit which the mortal heart is pressured daily to commit.
And what a tall order indeed-to be all and anything other than that which one unalterably & inescapably is.
The most profound & omnipresent multi-lemma every 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 and truly potentiated experience and existence.
If only we could find a feasible way to reconcile and synthesize that primitive hunger
with our more neoterically prone thirst,
would we perhaps no longer continue to so easily mistake one for the other,
and perhaps finally breach that true Sublimity which will lead us to our noblest & most authentic raison d'etre,
that whispering apprehension we cohabit with daily,
tickling the raw, pink underbelly of the animalian essence,
rousing those icy-hot huffs of ragged respiration,
thus enlivening the dually-instinctual, pulsating organic human engine of human animation, circumnavigation,
relaying to the amygdala with super luminous circuitry,
that old familiar feeling, a dark hovering cloud to which we so often commonly allude,
always brewing up its Venusian rainstorm-
a persistent Voodoo drum thunder-
But first! Yes! First!
That fine flash of electric light, so indescribably white, illuminating all neuronal pathways
if but even for a nanosecond-yet still, more than enough for the ever-eidetically nuanced soul
to be branded with the imprinting of yet another enticingly facile dys-cryptic codex.

At what price, progress?
Or will we just continue to digress in infinite regress?
Have to continually confess in excess for those issues we so often painstakingly fail to address?
Or for how we too often exist and depend on much, much less than a mere guess,
born of what faux noblesse and tedious overdress of specious politesse to which we daily acquiesce,
before the shrine of Egoistic obsess-a false sense of success at best,
which we embrace with far too much agress.

How much longer will we continue to escape the dire consequences of our sins?
We must let the ailing present pass, before we are ever to become ready for rebirth,
reborn into renewed health and vigour.

For this Life is not a test of the reasoning, linear mind.
It is a test of the earthbound Spirit.

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.
But, the Grande Bribe?
The brains of your most coveted Proteges jarred in formeldehyde!

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 tyrranies
and pseudo-sadistic pursuits.

Do you really see your reflection in me, Mr. Death Wish?
If so, I am not at all flattered.
Not looking for 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 is blood-soaked from my own self-slaying?
This bent we have towards destruction truly a facade to mask
the fear of committing to that truest internal dictator-amour-propre.

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.

A TRAGICOMEDY IN INFINITE ACTS (penned in twenties)

The leagues of the mind converge,
arriving upon disembodied truths,
comprehended but not fully understood-
being so indecipherable to the conundrum-dumbed tongue,
sound and sight passing 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 Techne 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.

And thus is this perhaps, the funniest poem I have ever written.

FIRST BORN (Penned in twenties)

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, I must now change or perish. My armour has become too conspicuous, too heavy to bear. We are the death before dying of ourselves, forgetting all too easily and eagerly how to garner Courage instead from the tender hands of reverent Virtue and Heart-Tenderness. Have I the strength to be kind in a world so quick to turn cruel at even the slightest gesture of self-defense? For when everyone brandishes sword and shield the defiant act of self-preservation can transmogrify into a kind of death wish, the stoicism of Cowards and Fools. It seems no longer to be, that the only way to truly survive is to turn the other cheek. What have I become? Where is my faith in the saving graces of Discretion and Humility? To forget the self used to be the basic tenet of saving the self, but now seems the stuff of self-delusion and ignobility, creating within the human will, an even more toxic core than ever before. In the Herculean grip of Loss, Alienation and Loneliness, have I still the resolve of will to kill this sickly beast? Have I still the strength to stand apart, with purity of heart? Just how far have I slipped? Have I fallen so that this devil-mind will never again bid adieu to irreconcilable Rage and Disgust, however just they might be? Will I settle for the cathartic yet disastrous 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 sweet and simple child I am in His beloved, merciful eyes? I must die to all of this in order that I may live again. Oh, Heavenly Father, if You can bear any more kin, I wish to be born again.

THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA (Published in Silver Wings Mayflower Pulpit 2001)

Standing upon the beach
in the middle of everywhere
within the vortex of omniscience
tidal wave of revelation-
I, a miniscule mote of Creation
amongst an Infinity of Creations-
even the grains of sand upon which I glance
and make my ephemeral imprint
humble my weary soul.
I have only begun to grasp
the concept of Him-
the round, hard chalices of my bloodied, skinned knees
the callused balls of my well-travailed feet
now surrendering their reverent hollows
to the warm sands of the fathomless Creator
the Alpha and the Omega.
And so the ends of all ends begins
the beginning of all beginnings He sends
upon His gentle breath of Life
the winds.

LAUGH THEN BE STILL (Published in Art Times 2002)

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, will 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.

ALL SEEKS MERELY TO BE (Penned in early twenties)

Still,
choking upon the bittersweet juices
of this Life's fruit,

Yet what is to be savored,
of the delectably flavored
must first through all drought and frost take root.

Still,
are my soul's hands bled and sore
by the thorny stamens
of Love's ever receding rose,

Yet the aloe vera of its mollifying memories
and anointing amenitites, in plenitude still grows.

Still,
in the garden of all omniscience
the Seraph of Beauty is mauled and jaded,

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

FOR JOHN FREDERICK NIMS (Accepted to be published in Nomad's Choir)

Early 20th century North American poets,
strange but poignantly familiar voices
preen my weary heart,
an unwanted child orphan of post-modern day,
out of its anachronistic agony
into a time where people resided
within the unadorned, earthen Church
of Tradition & Integrity,
a time where we walked and we talked
with such purity and simplicity,
a redeeming reflection of only the facts felt,
where we were more in touch with the reverent acknowledgement,
that all that was truly worth knowing,
was all that was truly worth saying.

A WAY WITH WORDS: 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,
Poor, poor dear...
much adherence here.

Like the Fall was for Mortalkind,
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,
Blind, blind seeker...
Ah! But what an eloquent speaker!

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 digust 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.

AND ALL THEY GIVE YOU IS THE DAMN ANSWER (Published in Art Times)

The lines of fragmented ardour pierce as crazy rays-
this way and that,
And I am left bereft of much to say,
But anything that will bring,
This geometrically inept mind,
To incalculate understanding.
Yet it all keeps coming to 360 degrees,
a full vicious circle of transience,
Quite moot in its points, configurations and convictions.
For the variables may alternate,
But the solution is always the same,
One which never ceases to elude 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,
Survival vs. Thrivance,
this Life and the preserving of it vs. this Life and the Living of it.

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,
Falling over the edge within a dream within a dream within a dream,
I awaken to the maniacal laughter of the spin-doctor to the Politician of Pain-
A winning filibuster.

I, ONTOLOGICAL

It's not the weight of the world so much, 6 sextillion tons of dead weight.
It's the weight of the self, black hole singularity, infinite live weight.
Even demi-gods eventually fell, gave into the weight of their own worlds.
But truly, the question is posed-
Which is a more reasonable & sound expectation?
An inquiry not altogether moot.
Yet still, both are unaswerable, given the lack of any empirical affirmative and/or negative to be found.
Thus, to which do we owe our devotion, the prostration of ourselves?
If it is said that the outer world is changed first from within the chrysalis of each self,
how has the world gotten off so easily?
How has anyone transcended anything?

We must be gods.

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 into 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 Dignity.

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

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

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 come from 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.

Now, be what you are.

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 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 near the mark of unimaginability and Despair. 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. 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 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 Sysyphean task. For it is indeed, a superhuman feat, belonging to the leagues of all ontological argument, where the Idea 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, yet 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 configuration of trilemma and seemingly endlessly regressive doctrines and Byzantium 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. Nihility is an illusion. It is all full beyond measure. The only Void which exists is the Void of a Void.