DREAMCULT: ODE TO THE WORLD (Penned in my twenties)

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 expose 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 "lose my head."
And after all of this, you still knew not Whose breath truly sustains me.
Amen.

PAINT ROOFS BLACK, LET MOON SHINE (Penned in my twenties)

Perhaps if it is dark enough,
they won't see us here.

And how I long to tell them that we will all face the inevitable wrath
of our collective and individual sins,
without all of this hiding.

We used to have the company of our shadows
which lept and danced about the house
waltzing in perfect time to the symphonic cacophany
of our Fear.

Yet when at last we were forced to look-
the Cause of all of these epic struggles-
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 reaction
of Shame & 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 we are so conspicuously hidden-
but hidden from whom and 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 incongruent, coarse and tedious tasks
of Mourning & Conciliation,
leaving us in the end with only the thought:
if only as many lives got to be fully lived as deaths died
in the name of "preservation"-
preservation of self,
preservation of country,
preservation of liberty,
preservation of family, honour, dignity...
then perhaps we would all finally come to know and grasp
the higher logic and purpose of all things-
the living to die, instead of all this
dying to live.

QUANTUM IV

Father forgive us, for we haven't yet recovered from the last fall.
There is a point where Hope & Exhultation
converge to a cruelly fixed and sharp point-
only to find their meeting place upon
the gothic architecture of all existential Despair, Ambivalence & Anguish.

And then Evil entered into the world,
and Good became something to kill for-
the hands of neither Warrior nor Martyr coming clean.

Father, forgive us, for we haven't yet recovered from that fall.
We confesseth ye with our mouth and Yea! We are saved!
But must we endure every moment as though we were damned?

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 open vessels.
We only pray that the wrong spirit does not enter into us.
Fighting it has come to naught.

Must we lie with the Devil to bear the seeds of our own redemption?
Which came into being first-Heaven or Hell?
Or is there only The Void,
still teeming with infinite possibilities?

REVELATION I (Penned in early 20's)

Swaggering before the shrine,
Of the mortal subjective mind,
The gods come to know remorse,
For if only these humans would have been fashioned with no sight of mind,
Perhaps would they then,
Just begin trusting in,
The obsolescence of Sin,
Take gayly for granted, proof of The Divine.

THE LUCIDITY OF THE SOUL'S EYE

Just for once to throw caution to the wind,
to let the heart beat at its own true pace-
rumbling, thundering and allegro.

Just for once to cut myself open at the core,
letting the blood run out to every sea
and the Mind beyond all so-called reasonable bounds,
tamed not even by the snares I know to be lying in ravenous wait
within Fear's vast wilderness,
which clings with gripping, merciless tenacity
to the Achilles' heel of the Spirit.

If only Virtue and Joy could reign equally commensurate
to Fear and Despair, then perhaps would the human heart know
how to stay upon its truest path,
and the mortal human Soul could finally meet its noblest task and Cause,
that intangible, elusive thing that keeps it tied and bound to the earth,
while also taunting with promises of Transcendence.

Yet, this is just it-the secret:
Transcendence can only be attained in being, right here, right now.

THE DEVOLUTION (Penned in early 20's)

I walk with the manic pace of modernization,
footsteps thumping the cool Earth
in time to the flickering, hurried heat of the hell-bent Heart.
A crowd of festivity seekers weaves this way and that,
a mercurial mass of "I"-onized energy,
all becoming one amalgam of Form and Matter
not yet made realized by the Master Sculptor's hand,
as they wrestle with the Ultimate Question:
"Oh, how to live as one and One?"

Doomsday sayers exalt themselves upon rusted trashcan barrels,
providing ample opportunity for strict Unity,
as they hand out Salvation & Damnation in one heaping helping,
letting all whom, excluding themselves have sinned,
cast away their own stones of fire and brim.

The streets become a fatal sea of discarded Bible tracts,
blotted with tiny smudges of blood-
the papercuts of overcoercion to rebellion-
"Here is my blood, take of it and lick,"
the formulaic laws of Mortalkind's encumbrace,
a cup ever runneth over.

A young mother strains to the cumbersome gravity of Son & Self,
as she tries to defy her own Youth,
twisting and fidgeting in her own skin to pick up her boy who,
sensing Mother's anxiety through the telepathic tendencies of Mother & Child,
now reaches out a tiny hand, which is creased and lined already
with such Willful Dependence,
to seek out her warm, nourishing breast,
latching onto the cycle of redundant Instinct in a world
pulsating and aching from the perversions of Infancy-
the all-too-early sodomization of those things better left unknown,
morphed into Death's heyday at the first wailing breath.

I am still and silent as I ponder those who ravage themselves
with the ill-paradox of over-population, trial & tribulation,
as they bring life after death after life after death
into this new-old world only to find themselves submitting-
only to find themselves becoming the Scapegoats of all Dire Digression,
as their children grow up/down/every which way that is loose-
and they look on in abject terror,
as all the while, Fate stands by with a shit-eating grin.

THE DHARMA BUM'S PRAYER (Originally published in Nuthouse, 2001)

Oh great Brahma, Vishnu & Siva,
When I remember,
Help me to forget,
And when I am moved to do,
Remind me, to sit.........

Oooooooommmmmmmm.....;-)P

THE EXPEDIENT INGREDIENT

In 1886,
Coca-Cola had the "fix",
To cure all ills,
In the absence of pills,
The secret ingredient,
'Twas quite expedient,
Offered up by the coca plant,
Much better than Gregorian chant,
Ensuring a steady demand,
And many a tremoring hand,
When the last drop was gone,
They all soon filed to Al-Anon,
A communal "high" not to be missed,
Better than a Coca-Cola in the fist,
Resulting in a steady sales plummet,
And a swell new jingle if you could hum it,
For now it was stronger than ever,
A brain tonic for any soporific weather,
The new "secret" ingredient,
Ever more expedient,
To keep working minds alert & keen,
Why the "real thing" now boasted of Caffeine!

THE GAMBLE: An Epigram (Penned in twenties)

Our Virtue defines us
More than our Vice
Except in a World that counts
Only Odd Dice.

NIGHT CLOTH: A Haiku (Penned in early twenties)

Crushed velvety sky
Lofty cloth of the smooth Eve
Suits my soul just right.

TEETER-TOTTER: A MODERN DAY HAIKU (Penned in early twenties)

Teeter-totter politics
In cahoots ethics-
Who's down, must come up.

THE TAMING OF INERTIA (Penned in early twenties)

Why must we shoot popcorn kernels at the moon,
when we know that Salvation is truly
a slow taming of Inertia
by an inside force?
For what is at rest remains so only
through our own will to disempowerment.
And this is so, too, when formulating loneliness,
and the insurmountable gravity we are all irredeemably encumbered by.
Yet still, we seek a kindred galaxy,
when we are all truly lone stars.
And when we come to grips with this solipsistic certainty we cry out-
Shall Eternity be thicker than Time, why must I feel so betrayed?
For when there is no tangible seed with which to fertilize the soul,
a sort of metaphysical parthenogenesis occurs,
and thus is born from this barren egg, the separate Self,
a miracle offspring of the disunified Essence.

Yet even knowing of the fragility of the time-space continuum
of mortal human existence,
which many name Fate,
we neglect it and it soons abandons us,
as our lives are possessed by the laws of Life's inconsistent equations,
all nontheless continuing on a 360 degree axis,
for what goes around and comes around must continually meet at a moot point.

Thus, the synthesis of Realism & Idealism again fails to come to fathomable fruition,
as the Mind passively perceives while the Spirit
and its vehicle, the Body, dynamically & kinesthetically fail to respond,
the eradication of mere premonition coming continually to naught.

For only when the taming of inertia from within begins,
can we be brought to full revolution & evolution,
so the grieving of the loss of any and all former incarnations
may, in due finity be found,
and the loss of our grief, also no longer lamented, find common ground.

And the Laws Of Nature,
and the Philosophical Physics of the Mortal Experiment
may allow the human organism to undergo Gradualism of another kind,
as old traits no longer self-preservatory
are phased out day by day,
by the inimitable laws of Spirit Evolution-
that which will defy all Rhyme & Reason
as it proves someday, beyond the lurking shadows
of any Doubt, that eventually, what goes up, cannot come down.

-Art by Patrick McEvoy "Miss Universe" at http://www.fantasygallery.net/

LIVES NOT ON BREAD ALONE (Penned in my twenties)

Like water to lightning,
a seismic jolt of frisson
rattles and French-kisses the sentience of cognition,
and I am all at once made both fragmented and whole
within the scatter-sighted eye of Lust's suspension of burgeoning.

What is its mystery?
Does it covet only Beauty?
For not all the eye sees does it want,
and not all the eye longs to take in, does it see.

Along with food, sheltering, love and hydration lies Longing,
an essential of costly underestimation and omission.
And truly, is it a matter of what we want, or what wants us?
The latter too often opposes the former.
Is the Who desired any more nobly than the it?
For you see, with Lust, the lusted after is always merely an object
of the subjectification of our need for need.

Without want, we so quickly become wanted not,
especially by those who wanted us only at the very peak of our wanting them.
Perhaps this explains why, even after the had-not is now possessed,
want tends to either completely wane or intensify.

Yet our utmost decline always begins at that moment
when we must ask ourselves what we want,
and can no longer provide the answer, for ourselves.

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.

In the last days those who have lived under virtuous restraint,
The very same ones with the toiling blood and righteously rage-filled minds,
Will be exalted in immortalization,
In the new bodies granted them, pure, and without taint,
As God grants a final cessation-
The beginning of a new end,
Never to be known again.

A PRIORI (Penned in twenties)

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 Sorrow and Plight?
To preserve Innocence at the potential cost of Survival?
To make life your Lover and no longer your Rival?
To love to hate for mere Hate's sake?
Or love only to love and stun Hate right at Heaven 's gate?
To lose to win or to win to lose?
Or see only "good" or "bad" in whatever you choose?
To live whilst ye are young?
Or to remain tragically unsung?
To mate like the swan or to flit to and fro like the honeybee?
To commit to the Dawn?
Or cavort in the Gloaming for all Eternity?
To speak only with words sparing yet true?
Or let loose at every turn, with a loquacious slew?
Thus betraying a heart of wisdom others once thought you knew,
To jump into impartial affusion?
Or riddle the Mind and tax the Soul with hasty conclusion?
What will ye do, of these aforementioned ways to go?
Whose noose-the Devil's or thine own, will ye sow?

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!'

ODE TO THE 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.

THE RIVER: A HAIKU TRUE

River rushes by
I am stagnant by its side
yet flowing with it.

BIRDS OF LIFE: A HAIKU TRUE

Mountain birds singing
tiny wings as they flutter

make the air I breathe.

THESE BLESSED RAINS (Originally published in Nomad's Choir)

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.