PSALMS FROM HELL (In the works...)

Store up your treasure here in Hell
where neither moth nor rust can destroy,
for the Soul has grown comfortably numb
and the Mind lethargic & dumb
from the copious anasthetic of Nihilistic Indulgence.

Blessed is the man here in Hell
who walks in the counsel of the Disconsolate,
where the fires burn only so hot and for so long
before the flesh learns to admit defeat.

Cursed is the man here in Hell
who continues to seek The Light,
shunning the dark Eternity which he has inherited,
as Hope, once his greatest comfort & salvation,
now, his intractable torment & damnation.

The fool sayeth in his heart here in Hell:
There is a God, benevolent, absolving, full of grace
and sufficient for Thee.

Weeping endures for the night here in Hell,
and woeful gnashing of the teeth for all Eternity,
where all dwellers receive plentiful malnourishment
from the choicest morsels of alibis faithfully inflicting,
the lifeblood of God running viscous & cold beneath the skin,
as the shivering upset of the animus finds consolation only
within the promise of infernal Eternality.

Who may gaze upon the Dark Master's presence here in Hell?
Who may stand in his unholy place?
He who has unnclean hands and an impure heart,
who lifted up his Soul while on earth to idols
of mere stone, metal, parchment and bone,
and swore only by that which is false, facile and empty.

The Lord is not the Light or the Salvation of dwellers here in Hell,
yet these no longer need concern themselves with whom they should fear,
for Terror is all that reigns, is all that these have inherited,
for the Lord offered Himself, a stronghold of their earthly life,
yet they abdicated, allowing evil men to advance against them
and to seduce, ply and devour their own flesh
at the eventual exploitative causatum of the Innocent & Righteous.

Unblessed are those here in Hell
whose trangressions are not forgiven, whose sins, not covered
and in whose spirits lies Deceit,
for when they did not keep silent & still to the call of Evil,
their bones quickly wasted away & their spirits groaned all day long,
for day & night the Lord's hand was heavy upon them,
but their strength was sapped as in the heat of summer,
as they could find no absolution in the obstinancy of their self-deception.

The eyes of the blessed Lord no longer gaze upon those here in Hell
& His ears turn no longer attentively to their cry,
for the face of the Lord is against those who did Evil,
He hath cut the memory of them off from the earth,
for although the unrighteous still cry out, He does not hear them,
no longer offers them deliverance from their troubles,
for Evil hath slain the wicked,
& the foes of the Righteous are forevermore slain.

Still in the works...more to come...

BETWEEN THE PRIMORDIAL AND THE NEOTERIC

                                    





 Wildness is not an inciting or an invocation of applied will or force. It is a giving in, a surrender to. For we are, wild by nature. And an embrace of primitivity, contrary to common wisdom, is not what turns us into savages. What transforms us into savages is a denial of our raw, pure naturality. We so smugly assume the methodologies of communal refinement and cosmopolitan acculturation to be the sole genesis of humankind's sense of morality, but in this case, the cure is indeed, the cancer. For, delightfully contrary to what the majority otherwise believes and socially engineers its inhabitants to become, the neglect of the primeval self through such spurious and overzealous attempts at fanatical homogenization is perhaps at the root of every single societal ill. Yet we still project all of our failings upon some inferior, "pre-historic" entity, causing only more estrangement from ourselves as a species, thus allowing evil to further root itself in every de-humanist endeavor.

     We can transcend our destructive nature only insofar as we can fully integrate and own it as merely a natural and otherwise in its inert form, benign aspect of our human condition and experience. Furthermore, over the years, countless scientists from all disciplines have attempted to elucidate upon this very truth. Yet we, as a species, still believe that we cannot maintain our so-called dominion, efficiency and sufficieny over the earth and all upon it and within it, while also kneeling before the shrine of our primodial leanings. And it is not so much a case whereby one must serve two masters, but it is a case whereby one must learn to appease both.

     All of existence, mundane and transcendental, teems with enough esteem to be gleaned by all willing to pay proper homage and reverence to their own humanity and to the humanity of others. For the glaring, superficial lights beneath which modern man gleans his esteem are not only harsh and deceptive, but are very unflattering to his image as a whole. Yet perhaps this is why we, as a species, continue to remain prodigally adrift from out true imago and home. For it is at least assured that while man basks in the sickly pallor of this spotlight, he still has an easily accessible mirror that is more than willing to reflect back to him only that which he wishes to see. For in this light, he can sneer with smug, pitying contempt upon his so-called "inferior" former incarnation, and congratulate his more "evolved" self with impugnity.

     Yet, when this light turns away from him, another light altogether may now reveal him in his true form. And only then, can he fully step into the light, unabashed in his totality of Being. And he soon slowly realizes that the self which he had been attempting to murder through fragmentation all of these years, merely lent more lucidity to his third eye, and is the one Journey which has enabled him to find Wholeness again. For this self was not the self he needed take heed of or feel ashamed of. No, the self which he has been truly fighting to preserve is the one that dreams, the one that feels deeply and sentiently, the one that thinks boldly. So, you want to evolve? Then, continue being that which you already are.

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 sieze no thing
as we covet that night of black.

Bitterness we taste upon our mortal tongue
as we see others' faces cringe
our song of love yet still 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
ever pernicious, the bane.

Symphonic is the Longing's song
genius prone the 'Have Nots' phrasing
erratic pulsates the Heart's Hand's grasp so strong
yet 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.

PATENT (Penned in 20's)

Well, hello there, feel free, come on in!
God's upstairs making popcorn-
The Devil's in the basement makin' gin,
And although this testament hasn't yet been sworn-
The kernels, by Jove! are being born again!
But watch your step 'cause the National Atheists With Rifles Association is strewn about here too,
Snap! Crackle! Bop! Bang! Boom!
A new seasoning for popcorn-
I'm gonna be rich-who knew!

ANTITHESIS CRUCIFIX: JOURNAL OF AN AMERICAN MELANCHOLIC (Penned in my 20's)

     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 change or perish. My armour has become too conspicuous, too heavy to bear. We are the slow death of ourselves, forgetting all too easily and eagerly how to garner our Courage instead from the tender, reverent hands of Virtue and our true Valiance from Heart-Tenderness. Have I the strength to be kind in a world so quick to turn vicious and cruel at the slightest gesture of self-defense? For when everyone bears Sword & Shield, the defiant act of self-preservation becomes a death-wish, the Stoicism of only Cowards & Fools. It seems no longer to be, that the only way to truly survive is by turning the other cheek.

     What have I become? Where has my faith in the saving graces of Discretion & Humility gone? To forget the self used to be the basic tenet of saving the self, yet now seems the stuff of Delusion & Tomfoolery, creating within the human will, an even more toxic core than ever before. In the Herculean grip of Loss, Alienation, Disillusionment & Loneliness have I still the 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 slipped enough that this devil-mind could never again bid adieu to irreconcilable Rage & Disgust, however righteously spawned they might be? Will I settle for the cathartic yet disastrous camaraderie of Fear & Loathing, only to return, a prodigal orphan to the Hell I have bore, into the arms of my true blood-father, Lucifer. Or shall I return to the merciful arms of my soul-father, God and give into sweet simplicity, to be loved merely as I am in His eyes, a humble newborn babe?

     I must die to all of this. Oh, Heavenly Father, if You can bear any more kin, I wish, to be born again.



                                                                        *



     I feel Time, even at this tender age of youth to be on my side yet a thorn in my side. I feel each minute as if it were an hour, each second, an eternity. And as I recount all of the years I have thus lived and reach a mere sum of 21, I feel within my soul, a cry of deep Despair. I feel I have already lived far too long, and have come to know both too much and too little. When will I be granted relief? Father Time, as far as I'm concerned does not know best and has grown quite exploitive and abusive to this Temporal Child, shattering his hourglass against my world weary cheek letting it be known just who's in charge and just how quickly Time might be running out. He then positions a scythe down low to let me know just how many more fields of time-grain I have through which to sift before I am released unto a much more tolerable Guardian & Eternity. I realize that I have a limited time here upon these earthly plains, yet my threshold of bearing this agony seems almost breached. For I gain and yet all at once, lose all concept of Time when I remain stuck and sinking fast, within the muck and mire of the Past.

STILLBORN TO LIFE: a Novel by Valerie Stephens (Prologue)

     The infant's cries rang silent throughout the dark, misty alleyway. The woman lay huddled, quivering and broken as her contractions slowly increased in duration and intensity. Her cries for help echoed with more morbid reverberation than the infant's non-responsive birthing as the blood on her hands glowed with the red siren pallor of a death, still undeclared. The woman, fumbling, took the infant by the heels, vigorously smacking its backside with the force of a mother's instinct-but still, no sound.

     She cradled the babe in her trembling arms, praying but if even for a faint wisp of breath to be suspired onto her mascara-streaked and rouge-mussed face. As she attempted for a second time to grant animation to this ill-fated child, a voice, disembodied and strangely androgynous rumbled and sizzled through the alleyway like hot, molten lava: "Is anybody alive in here?" it inquired, just as quickly retreating. And it was only then that the stillborn child stirred, still for the time being mute, but forevermore crowned very much bright and alive. Yet despite the answer to her heavenly supplication having been made manifest through the child's fruition of bearing, would both Mother and Child would henceforth be left, in question.


www.open.salon.com/blog/sphinx365 for complete novel...

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.

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 get its meaning.
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, hardened beyond malleabiliy.
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 special.
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 & blind Faith, we will dwell only in 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, must one serve both masters?

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?

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 what's "wrong" and what's "right."

They say that the only thing angels cannot understand
is how mortalkind often seeks as much solace in hate as in love.
They say that angels can walk the earth but seldom "feel" it
beneath their feet, cool, firm and inviting,
feeling instead the "gravitas" of the world within their hearts.

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

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

THE FRUIT OF THY TOMB (Originally published in Dream International Quarterly)

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 former state
of animation
while a rattlesnake winds its scaly body against a mossy rock
outside of the barren cave,
shedding its skin in one shiver.

Suddenly, the rusted pages of the 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 now to the haloed 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 LAWS OF INTEGRATION

To never allow life to dissect you is to risk never being put together just right. Integration thrives upon fleeting yet profound moments of disintegration. For what desires Unity must first allow fragmentation to assert its form and force so that Psyche, the Master Sculptor, may bring to fruition the realization of the Self it seeks to substantiate, the personage it envisages within the realm of Divine Projections.

TEMPUS ET AESTU (TIME & TIDE)

     Time weighs so heavily upon the mortal soul, cannot be transcended. But this is just it! It need not be transcended, just dwelt fully within. And God said "Just know that I AM." For this is the immutable, omnipresent essence infusing all life with hylozoic, quantum consciousness. Consciousness is not only the ground of all being, but is being, is life itself, and is even perhaps the light of the "dark matter" which lies microcosmically at the Source of All That Is. I am alive. I am conscious that I am thinking, feeling, experiencing right now. Cogito ergo sum, indeed. The problem with our current cultural and societal paradigm and milieu is not with thinking but with a fluidity & integration of both thinking and feeling. In other words, the problem with most of this human existence is with not only with becoming, but most significantly with just being. We so easily end up becoming humans doing rather than humans being.

     In continuum, although the embrace of our freedom does create angst in the face of the weighty responsibility that it entails, it is also at the very soul of our greatest triumphs and ecstasies. And in the end, it is the key to our Ultimate Transcendence. Yet we ask: Can this state of consciousness be maintained whilst the task of survival remains ever so achingly imminent? But what we so often miss out on is that here is where the synthesis of "Survival vs. Thrivance" comes to its most beneficent fruition within the soul of every human entity. For we all must continually weigh the costs of this life of paradox, much like that ancient, mythical Sumerian jackal-headed imago called Anubis was assigned the task of determining every individual's eternal fate by the weighing of each human heart. Yet, the moral of this myth was that it was only those souls that weighed in the lightest-not the heaviest-that were granted entrance into heavenly realms. Yet in all truth, while we are in these current human incarnations, we will be required to keep weighing in, and very heavily indeed.

     Moreover, most of what our current cultural milieu teaches us is quite toxic to the human spirit and mind. The truth underlying all things, natural and supra-natural is that we, as all else, are always evolving whether we blind ourselves to it or not, whether we resist it or not. And personally, I find this underlying reverse of so-called entropy to be quite comforting. Yet I do not think that we blind ourselves to this assurance of orderly perfection inherent within the design of all things out fear of the evolving but oftentimes in fear of the dissolving.  To clarify, all change of any kind is experienced by us as a loss-and indeed, perhaps change is loss. And we must then be faced with the Dantean task of grieving these losses and releasing them. But we must accomplish this for ourselves if we are to be brought to a gradual spiritual fruition and maturation, as this aspect of our experience is as much a part of our existential purpose-if it is not even more so. And, to coin a phrase, this can be called our metaphysical biology, if you will.

     In addition, even Darwin himself was very sentiently aware of the great numinosity and mystery behind all of nature's design, although he is often presumed, as many scientific-minded are, as being either a-spiritual or even anti-spiritual. Yet we all intuit that all just is as it was created to unfold and express itself. And indeed, as many ponder, perhaps Heaven and Hell are states of being, or consciousness, and evil is merely that force which seeks to blind us to this Truth and to convince us to resist our truest essence, which is wholeness, goodness, freedom of being-ness and love. Integration is key. We desperately cling to empty idols & fruitlessly search for a Saviour, completely forgetting that we are already saved. We are, in this very moment, free and loved by a Source unconditional and indestructible. And even though taking this all into ourselves feels overwhelming at times and we constrict to it, even then we remain whole and completely loved. In the beginning, God saw His creation and saw that it was good. And, so it was after and still continues to be. The rest is left up to us, inasfar as we are the co-creators of consciousness and thus, of many worlds. For although the power which works in us through God, if we are choosing to live in truth and love, is far more dynamic and vast than our finite human intellects can fathom, this is the very function and definition of "faith."

     In closing, we must let go, to hold on, surrendering ourselves, no matter how frightening, to a source more powerful than ourselves. We need containment. We need protection from our destructive potential as human beings. But our God is a God who does not see our worth as being strictly contingent upon either our "saintly" virtue or our turpitude. He is eternal, constant, ever faithful and ever eminent. For He, the One we cannot even fully fathom, cannot be anything else. It is we who are limited. Yet whatever we believe our higher power to be, belief is at the macrocosmic and microcosmic core of all things brought into being. Mind-stuff over matter. Mind-stuff as matter. We are not there yet, but we are, as a species gradually unfolding in our evolution and beginning how to see and how to think and how to live. Yet, at the same time, we just are and God's unconditional grace is sufficent for us. For there really is no such thing as "self-improvement", merely "self-actualization" or realization. This human experience is, in and of itself, a process of unfolding. Sometimes a blooming thing is hesitant in reaching towards full sustenance and light, yet when it finally allows for its truest nature to take course, is brought to fruition beyond anything it could ever dream.

PHILOSOPHICAL PARTHENOGENESIS (Penned in early 20's)

Personality is the offspring the parthenogenesis of the soul. Parthenogenesis is the production of offspring from unfertilized eggs. Hence, when the human Soul is unfertilized or barren, meaning that it is unfulfilled or longing, individuated personality becomes a product of that soul separation from the Whole. For we oftentimes feel the need to fill the void of our lack of deeper, truer connection with other human souls as coming from the source of one universally experienced spiritual being. Therefore, a sort of philosophical/existential parthenogenesis occurs, and thus is born, from this barren egg, The Separate Self, the miracle progeny of the Disunified Essence.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

Hoc est enim corpus meum.
I take of it and eat, every day.
It giveth me sustenance yet taketh away.
It granteth 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 try to deny us what we know to be true
vs. that which we must believe to be true.
For who is to know of Transcendence,
as the very pursuit of it further entrenches and tethers us
with even more inertial forces than ever 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 have for too long been conditioned to see it all wrong.
Perhaps we should be seeking Transcendence within the gradual ascension itself
and not in some envisaged place of lofty finality and rest.
Transcendence has been and is being obtained within every precious moment
we find ourselves either bound or freed in on this earth,
in these human incarnations.
It just all takes place within the human Soul, a subtly forging phenomenon.
Ding-an-sich, the thing-in-itself as synonymous with noumenon.

Yes, Transcendence is being achieved every day.
Life is Beauty, take of it and eat and Beauty ye will be.
For Life is whatever we mean it to become.
It is all complete, all whole and yet still, amenable to our will.
This is the Body of our Salvation or our Damnation:
Life and Conscious Choice.
Take of them and eat yet be ever so selective and discreet,
and ye shall find nourishment and sustenance beyond all fleshly yearning and necessity.

BY ANY OTHER NAME (Penned in 20's)

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,
high 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 Answer bore more weight than the question.
And he wondered how such gravitas had ever
been transcended by mortalkind
to alight upon any solution
by all who had held on and by those who still 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 only thing in the way,
the missing link.

THE HONORABLE FAITH PRESIDING (Penned in my early twenties)

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 abundantly presented-
The Defendant-the circumstantial theoreticals underrepresented.

Yet now the dire disunity of The Jury-
Faced with a higher impugnity-
The Verdict is in-no need for further fury-
The case is dismissed,
Gavel and wood colliding,
At the hand of the honorable Faith presiding.

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, as you do not heed 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 my three phases?
1.The conscience amour-propre.
2.The concscience vagabond.
3.The conscience lost...

TACHYON DREAM: ODE TO ALBERT (Penned in late twenties)

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 damndest 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.

For now:
"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."

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.