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8. 6. 2014
Between
Mind and Eye hovers
a barrier,
a thin force —
crinkled film,
morning fog —
blocking
interior concentration
from
exterior fruition.
This is the beginning
of the end of
Mind.
8. 27. 2013
First,
the thinkers fell
under sway of Darwinism (I)
—
a swinging stroke
upon the binding of the Church.
You fishes all,
and each thing else,
that here have any sway.
Science postbellum
supplanted theology,
cuffs of hemp unraveling
on the divine bind,
and vines of a hybrid curled
upward, fertilized,
to the crystal pinnacle,
over walls of glass and the gray lead cames,
so clear and secretly radioactive
—
you could see through the walls to the Sun.
—
A lending library emerged
to supplant
the call of the sanctus
What do we?
The thinkers turned away (II)
from the dead Darwin,
having secured the legacy
of natural selection
o'er a half-century run-up
to uncertainty
—
it was 1882
on Surrey green
when grim survivors
put the old scientist
in the ground,
a creeping fortnight
after the outlaw James
fell to a hot slug shot from a Colt,
a pistol in a rival's hand
on a
muddy street 'mid April's blooms
in Saint Joseph, old Mizzou,
frontier town
christened to honor
the husband of Our Blessed Mother.
Some claim the old Darwin
came to Jesus at the end
—
and embraced pragmatism, progressivism.
Ah, this is misplaced....
ain't it now
so easy to err:
—
Not old Darwin, don't get me wrong,
he was dead and gone by then
it was a long sentence
I meant to say
it was society's thinkers
a doin' the embracin',
evolving,
finding pragmatism, progressivism
after the gnawing victory
of natural selection.
—
They evolved.
Newly stricken by practical things,
by matter
—
shrunken small, writ large,
—
the thinkers aligned their minds
with gilded makers of objects,
put a structure of thought
'round the engines of industry,
surged forward into realignments,
made great war to thin a dying age,
and
crafted the ideology of consumption.
Down below,
amongst the inferiors,
falling,
came the deft manipulators
of the archetype,
admen, selling the goods
on Marconi's crackling waves
everthang that weren't tied down.
At the last (III)
—
we pick a range, set it,
1929 to 1974,
the only way through this mess
—
the thinkers sought to understand
the change, maybe a transformation,
empire falling like strange fruit
used to fall in the meadow of Jim Crow,
The One Thing
becoming a thicket of wilding branches,
transglobal,
thick 'n unruly like deep woods,
impossible with so much shade
to trace 'n chart,
precisely,
all the way back to the origin.
The thinkers gave it a name,
cultural pluralism,
denoting
an expansive age,
beset by the rush of procreation,
knocked down by the gene flood
of different folk a comin' in
and demanding
their rightful place at the table.
What began as a quest
for a fresh and liberating identity
became a salvage operation
to fix a broken mold
and restore certainty.
So there!
There you have it:
1865 to 1974.
I, II, III.
They did these things.
These things are done.
My notebook ends
I was young nowhere else to go
there they that and done
10. 2. 2012
Jumped on
the Doom Train
in a fit of resentment.
Now the train's
rollin'
so fast
I can't get off
lessen I jump into the blurrr.
It's the motion.
My eyes — slow shutter —
can't pan fast enough
to see.
12. 6. 2011
The man
on the couch:
He wanna get political,
pontificate and occupy,
rake a screed across the chalkboard,
H A V E I N F L U E N C E !
but
he canna rouse
the Will
to enter a fray
on the numbed horizon.
Too much beauty
on the edges of ennui,
not enough Will
to power.
9. 26. 2011
What year
is this year?
Twenty eleven,
eleven eleven,
aught one after Christ?
(it is)
Any year,
all years,
the present year
with a number and a name.
8. 3. 2011
Cycles n'er end,
but they do.
— broken circle —
Cycles ne'r begin,
but they do.
— mended heart —
I intend
to look out,
to see.
3. 9. 2011
Go to hell,
not to suffer and burn
but to destroy evil once and for all.
Go to heaven,
not to reside in glory and splendor
but to intercede on behalf of Man.
2. 8. 2011
His dream yields an opening line,
but he'll be hard-pressed
to recover it
when the time comes.
There are
other first lines,
but the one he dreamed in the dawn
was the best one, the good one —
and then, just now!
he found it,
or a suitable version,
and he wrote it on a piece of paper
lest he forget again
the line
when light dims.
12. 14. 2010
Write around the pain,
enclose it
with prudent words.
Avoid vile imprecations.
Refuse bravado, too,
or else be beguiled
to engage the pain directly,
head-on, like a feral charger,
bristling boar at roar
in the deep and karsty hollow.
—
Head-long.
Into a chasm.
The free fall.
—
Say no
to
soothing consolation,
the swaddle of comforting lullabies,
earnest and vain confession —
any craven act of postponement.
Prepare,
instead,
for the next psychic siege
upon you.
12. 7. 2010
Winter garden.
Lean, straightforward, determined.
He wasn't a master of it,
but could
coax
growth
from the cold ground,
put the right plants
into a fertile bed,
nurture a circumspect display
of pansy, dianthus, snapdragon, viola
to span with a little color
the pale time 'till spring.
8. 3. 2010
you force it
it may work
but
it doesn't seem right
like the smile
you don't mean,
grinning
when you'd rather
lie down
and cry
(don't seem right
. . . .
lay down and die)
7. 29. 2010
Anything.
Fall into it
like you're falling
into the unknowable hole.
Above you, clean, the unseen
cry for more, more: M O R E !
Any minute, they warn, the bell may toll,
the forum may pixilate and appear
to crumble on a weird screen,
but
the flow never stops,
just gets jammed-up in the virtual pipe.
Movements become abnormal,
voices hollow
like metallic echoes in copper.
Eventually,
the pieces come together
exactly as the creators intended,
but they'll fly away,
you watch,
into obscurity
after their moment passes away.
2. 12. 2010
He mistook
the master's
encouragement
for confirmation of his greatness,
prolonging the unfortunate delusion.
10. 22. 2009
When he looks back,
if he is so inclined
to look in a known direction,
behind him,
he sees discrete pieces of a mess,
strung out like signposts on angle iron,
marking select points of the moral compass:
the debts unpaid,
resources squandered,
his ruthlessness and arrogant vanity
spread across the plane of his relationships.
It's enough to tip a man into remorse,
the cold rain falling, quietly,
from thin gray skies,
the tired trees giving up again,
dropping their spent leaves
in glorious shower.
2. 3. 2009
In the mail I got a box,
circular
like one for a chapeau.
The box
is full of stars.
Can't get them out,
the stars:
too heavy to lift,
too hot to touch.
All I can do
is
look at them,
connect the dots.
11. 10. 2008
I could
sleep forever
and never
miss a thing
until I awoke
after forever
and saw all
that is gone.
10. 9. 2008
At the limits of fantasy
hovers a cruel realization,
forced by a bad hand, playing out,
that capability does not
and shall not — ever — measure-up
to the loftiness of ambition.
One loss, one spade too many falls
with chips on the painted velvet,
an empty clanking like failure,
pale like late-night discovered lies.
The discovery presages,
by moments, the judgmental voice
of divine, stern Severity,
who commands, tone like a swift sword:
Give it up, your fantasy quest,
done for. Accept your limitations.
9. 29. 2008
All blanks. Most blanks. Some blanks. No blanks.
Puffs of gray smoke without bullets.
Empty words, transparent, faded.
Slow sweeping of the hour hand's
singular revolution is
the fullest sense of the concept.
To gain life, depart the hovel.
Move randomly through The Others,
the throng, but ne'r come to love
the wanderer, who abandons
you, your revelations, your blood
for a different death far away.
9. 12. 2008
Let us, we cynics, we dreamers,
cart out the warm clichés, paeans,
and serve them as blood sausages
to the benumbed and befuddled.
Let us embrace The Big Worry,
be it artifice, tempest, dirt.
Let us ride horses, run dogs, chase
a phantom in the high country.
Let us be golden, be fiery,
join a golden and fiery race
toward the setting sun, dead ahead —
And Darkness before we get there,
get there,
but,
Ride anyway, run anyway.
In the riding and the running
the deed
is done.
8. 05. 2008
They do not see.
They may.
One day.
See.
They forget.
Always.
Forget.
What is immoral?
What is impossible?
7. 30. 2008
Be choosy and drown —
not a permanent condition.
Cling to any life raft
floats my way.
Shouldn't I?
9. 5. 2007
Space is rearranged.
Change hangs
in the cloudy sky, the shadows —
visible always, seldom seen.
Fantasy does not die
in the daily march
of corporeal disintegration.
Spirit overcomes flesh,
then flesh compelled
by lust
obliterates all
other expressions of reality.
The flesh settles,
the heaving
and
grinding abeys
—
And he dreams, he plans,
he conspires against death.
4. 22. 2007
He became old lumber,
easy to obliterate.
The murder was a simple matter.
With bare sure hands
I broke him apart
into splinters, scattered
the shards under the sycamore
next to the back door.
It didn't have to be pretty,
the murder, but you
could say he deserved it,
what with the threats,
the snarls, the meanness.
It ends there, nothing extra
to accompany the last breath
when needles become knives.
A dead man is dead wood,
rotten and crumbly to the touch.
Who could know I killed him,
scattered the disguised remains
as natural fragments
among the chips and clots
in the wood pile?
7. 31. 2006
Because we waited on God,
We heard the sharp strike
Of sacred hammer on golden spike.
Buck and I, dog and man, sleeping deeply
In a dark hour before blessed dawn,
Heard the retort of the divine hammer
Strike its brilliant blow for serendipity.
The sound of the spike being struck arose
From the dormant depths of a shrouded Earth,
A sudden sound like iron sharpening iron,
Rousing memories of the lasting heart,
Sunk forever, permanently rooted,
Revealing, in a stark and heavenly stroke,
A meaning of Place.
7. 17. 2006
Old Quintilian, strolling through the veldt
On the dawn of a cold December morn,
Heard on the easterly piteous cries
Of maddened roosters, breeders and broilers,
Railing from Tyson's flattened Circle of Hell.
(Limbo.... Not the birds' fault, the Old One thought.)
That eve, sitting by the bristling hearth fire
Of ash and oak, Old Quintilian spoke
To his sad-eyed pard, a man rooted there,
saying,
It must be a new form of Hell on earth,
The commercial house of wailing roosters,
Beasts held twenty-four seven in a shack
Of brazen tin and ruthless fluorescence.
His pard stirred the coals, said, "I've heard them, too,
But if you think that's Hell, you ought to hear
A pig farm on a hot night in summer,"
A thousand shoats who ne'r cease their squealing
In an orgy of manic fattening.
7. 12. 2006
Rita Marie calls on the telephone,
Announces her untimely retirement.
Her kitchen is thoroughly remodeled,
The kiln outside astutely refurbished,
Abstract accounts rectified, replenished.
On the morrow a potter she shall be —
Tactile and stylish stuff, fitting
for a
Working girl at the end of her wages.
4. 11. 2005
From the White South, a lament is delivered:
Arriving,
nearly empty,
and flaccid,
unseemly desperate, the Old Man
rests on a sandstone bench. A sharp
easterly dries his cold sweat,
won
on a climb
— so many old steps.
He would (did)
descend to the out-of-doors,
and sit
beside shade Bill Fulbright's Peace Fountain.
The structures
outlast and transcend us.
Even untended, they last past man.
How long before Old Man
on a hard bench spied
the bloom
on a dogwood, blooms
splattered like warm stars,
clusters of suns in a Hubble galaxy,
creamy white blossoms as a vision
on the stony, pale face of Old Main?
A vision, but
what
portent,
what
meaning?
Old Man musta idled too long, could not
decipher the psychic ideogram.
Clouds from the white South, land of seashells,
Roil and tumble behind April's sun.
In throes of nostalgia o'er dashed dreams,
Old Man listens to water on rock.
Thirty-eight years ago Fulbright's fountain
Rose in a dry, invisible future.
Old Man, potential-laden, (the freshman)
Climbed the stairs of Old Main to his failure.
2. 4. 2005
"Lookin' for answers,"
bluesy torch singer sings,
gravel tumblin' in her veins.
We quit lookin' for answers
long assured time ago.
These days we be lookin'
for questions (grey questions).
We be lookin' for questions.
12. 19. 2004
I am gonna eat the Little Book,
attempt to resurrect past glories.
It is the rest of my life, slurred —
the golden steps, the slag; Blavatsky,
Bukowski, Tchaikovsky — ruins, swollen
fat from so much pompous rain.
Flagged and gasping, (he with)
wormy soles bleeds
on jagged fragments of crucifix.
The broken daggers are underfoot,
the sacred leaves are like dry wafers,
dissolving, becoming the stories.
4. 29. 2004
Marxism's bane
is the litany of limits
sung by its obfuscated ruminators.
Too many exhausted noes
float
in the fog of a negative dialectic,
or emerge
like jagged jargoned bergs of praxis
from the icy strategies of hibernation,
which the old men plot with symbols
in their everlasting political winter
(in the time of the white terror).
4. 25. 2004
Sometimes Quintilian comes
to tell a story.
Sometimes Quintilian arrives
at a junction
on the infinite textual byway
(Rue de Perineurium)
to survey an idea,
to come to know
the women and men who
create and refine it.
Isn't it, ultimately,
good enough
to make it
bearable
to the
end?
4. 13. 2004
The bumble bee
flies from the sun.
It is the soul
bearer,
the solace of the Rose.
4. 10. 2004
Give me biscuits,
the old dog says.
Give me one because I'm nice.
Give me two 'cause you're nice.
Give me three to satisfy my desires.
9. 15. 2003
He wasn't expected,
the Mysterion, who nonetheless arrived
on a whisper stream
to deliver news of Wayfarer Quintilian.
The Wayfarer was known
to have fallen hard
beside the path to Paradise.
—
The Mysterion speaks:
—
Quintilian fell,
hard this time, rolling
into the south ditch like an old egg.
On his back the Wayfarer stared
into the cold and drifting stars
of a clear and moonless night.
Some of the twinklers he knew by name.
Aloof and dry, his knowledge
parched the potential for solace.
Known facts of astronomical science
pushed consoling beauties of the sky
into an impassive, unreachable quadrant
of eternal violence and hot change.
Other known things about men marked
the old traveler's face with vine-like
lines of stony familiarity, pushing
the far-away fires
of the night
into a primal region of vagueness and fear.
He became, suddenly, the fallen one,
nakedly aware of an archetype,
Survival,
and its abject bearing upon the moment.
From a south ditch of late desolation,
Quintilian arose,
doubt falling from him
like glitter on a darkened proscenium,
like shadows on frothy waves.
—
Wayfarer arises!
Listen,
the Mysterion utters in an augury tone.
The old man's calloused feet
tap tap tap
the dry path again.
He sees the journey to its original end.
9. 6. 2003
The sham shaman,
a double,
demands compassion.
The Zen Warrior,
discerning,
delivers the necessary Severity.
8. 26. 2003
My place, Mother?
Where shall I wander
on the field of diamond-fractured stars?
Where shall I go tomorrow
when I leave your enfolding embrace?
—
Lodge Mother answers.
—
Moon is your mother, Sun your father.
The darkness which was Darkness itself
shall be banished
from the woodland and the prairie,
the desert and the canyon,
swept from the tracks of your days.
The seasons of your life
shall pass in a middling space
between heaven and the void,
and there you shall cast Light
upon the monsters of the dark,
send them reeling into hidey holes.
You shall drift on dreams,
drift on the floating Great Island,
which shall nourish you,
O child of mine. O child of mine,
lie down in the soft weedy bushes
and gaze in wonder at the sky.
8. 11. 2003
To the north where Boreas blows,
the episcopals rushed to ordain
the Sodomites (their backsides
turned toward the impregnating wind)
as an official branch of the order,
ripping into halves like a half-new moon
the vestments of their union,
whereas,
in the blushing far elsewhere,
in baptist-ruled southerly regions,
Professor Woman arose (sun's light shining)
to serve harmony and grits
to her Buddha in the morning.
Her dogs ran, happily (they frolic)
into the garden of actualization.
Up front the soft-shoe dancer
brought dewy flowers
to the parallels of her lintel.
5. 1. 2003
Opinions and the rare idea
professed
by the public man on the stump
seldom align with his private thoughts,
demonstrating the fundamental opposition
between political necessity
and personal conviction.
As for the rest of them,
component parts of the populous and the throng,
they are simply sheep
with nothing to profess.
4. 30. 2003
Prudence aligned with Pretense
keeps the pages clean,
scrubs away
the gross vulgarities of the pit
and the animosities of the fringe,
not because
of innate moral sensitivity
or the inclination to chaste living
on the part of authors and editors,
but in wary and cynical acknowledgement
of the distended, censorious watchers
and their boorish prole masters,
who stand ready
in an sham's instant
to leap,
to enact the melodrama of rejection,
and exact the punishment of the Elect.
. . . .
The self-restraint of circumspection
clings to the sense of good judgment
like pasties over taut red nipples,
like a G-string on the imagery of offense,
like a black spot on foul verbs and rude nouns
from untamed alternative voices.
Beware
the deafening blast
of moral repercussion.
Become
a well-formed player
of the measured game.
Learn to feign
the right and noble good intent,
else the standard bearer get wind of it.
No dead and mangled bodies
displayed here,
no radical idea unbound
to upset the vetted sensibility,
no hardcore horrors
hidden on the backpages,
no hatred of skin or blood
exposed to startled scrutiny
in the zones of trust and delusion.
Prudence chooses, Pretense discards.
4. 28. 2003
Why does the rock 'n roll goddess pose,
so often,
(for the voyeur's slack gaze)
with her lithe legs spread,
wide 'n open,
even now, when she is old and loose?
Is this the pose
of her liberation?
She lays a detached invitation
like a calling card on the platter.
Does it require your instant reply?
The rock star is a calculating child
of the wandering demigoddess Lust.
She shears the womb
of its sacredness
by inviting exclusive attention
on naught else but the lure of the portal.
4. 23. 2003
I am the only ghost of the old corral,
the only dancer on the dusty sod,
the Trickster heard her sing,
but he couldn't see the audience,
so blinded was he by the Siren's sparks.
He knew her by a familiar fragrance
sprinkled on the simile of her sighs,
knew her by the lilt of a sly lie,
by the see-through curves and depressions
of her lithe, speculative suppositions.
Her once potent nakedness faded
under the shaded foam of ghostliness,
dissolved into the neutered blur of half-life
on the far side of the quantum fold.
4. 21. 2003
The World is not indifferent
to your attitude toward it.
Reject the World
long enough and loud enough,
and the World shall reject you.
The noes become a torrent and a roar,
the slamming door an oft-heard motif,
and the dearth of opportunity
a chant from the arbiter of nay.
Who has the greater staying power:
you, naked and isolate and done,
or the raw and impervious World?
Your hubris claimed you did not need it
to get along to your destiny,
but now you are ditched in the fallow,
ruminating the release of death.
4. 18. 2003
Patience becomes refuge
when the act fails,
repeatedly and without issue.
To wait, free of malice,
while the world passes by
is a private virtue.
The day of redemption shall come,
the world come 'round again,
redemption come.
4. 17. 2003
The Emperor wishes
for your complaisance
with his diktats and decrees.
He makes perfectly clear
his genuine desire
for universal societal compliance.
He personally guarantees
your material prosperity,
sustained and stable and just.
He urges us all
to affirm our love
of orderly neighborly harmony.
—
Come, O disparate,
freedom loving peoples of the land.
Embrace
the cessation of quarreling.
Accept
the compassionate initiatives
to ensure a lasting stability.
Why not
liberty and democracy for all?
Why not
the one way to permanent union?
Why not
a legitimate, benevolent guiding hand?
Yield, now
—
or die.
4. 16. 2003
Hungry?
Eat everlasting morsels of ambrosia.
Thirsty?
Sip from the cauldron of witches' brew.
Puny?
Feast on manna, bestowed from heaven.
Angst-ridden?
Seek your atonement from a lesser god.
Your answers
cling to the primordial morning dew,
burst from the harvested corn of glory,
seep from honey-frost on a wavy meadow,
fall
like winged omens
from the dry trail dust
of the terminal fallen star.
4. 15. 2003
I went to walk on the Moon,
but found myself on a desolate desert basin
in the North American southwest,
wearing a superfluous spacesuit
for no good reason.
Unwittingly part of a trick,
I supposed Luna,
but encountered Terra
because the vaunted rocket ship
couldn'a fly far enough to avoid the lie.
I shudda noticed sooner
when the gravity tugged me down,
but the adrenalin rushed too hotly
to let me see straight away
(through the rose-colored visor)
the duplicitous video cameras
on the crater's closeby rim.
4. 10. 2003
Love was already wounded
when combat broke out,
so she checked herself, willfully,
into the infirmary for the cure.
. . . .
"I'll just wait 'till the battles end,"
she said, boundlessly hopeful,
"then join my sleeping sister Peace
for the Ceremony of Resurrection."
. . . .
Peace in a tomb, Love misguided?
The infirmary becomes the prison.
4. 8. 2003
Roused from his long slumber,
the Mysterion, sluggish and pale,
enters the Great Hall of Two Truths
to announce his search for a pattern,
buried deep in the stacks of standards
from the olden days of the Enigma.
"I shall use it to guide the weavers,"
the Mysterion said in a soft whisper.
"I desire to fashion a template
for the creation of fresh meaning.
Can any here among you tell me
how that might be done
before the morrow?"
4. 4. 2003
One day you're here,
the next day you're not.
The structure of the universe
you carefully create cannot withstand
the scrutiny of the Others,
who ofttimes attempt to share that universe
on ill-defined terms and conditions.
You disappear in the fog
of dogged personal obscurity
and frustrated fraternal indifference.
You disappear.
4. 2. 2003
The ninth Hermit,
Lord of Necessity,
holds a lantern of stars in his left hand,
illuminating the Ancient of Days,
who asks, knowingly,
"The young ones speak
of a discipline of inquiry,
called by the name Science.
Tell me, O son of the father of time,
are Creation's seven days
subject to carbon dating?"
The ninth Hermit replies,
"What is the difference between
immortality and eternal life?
Who can prove that a million years
is less than
eternity,
for who among us
knows a million years?
Science's billions upon billions
of measured units of artificial time,
despite the certitude of its priests,
are mere theoretical constructs.
There is the now,
the one now,
forever constructing and destructing
the infinite flow of an unchanging moment."
4. 1. 2003
In the time of Origin,
the meaning
lived in words,
which were spacious,
exact,
and elegant.
The words flowed from one fount,
exclusive and dependable.
Meaning bathed there comfortably,
dwelling among the people
without ambiguity.
By nature complicated creatures,
humans grew weary of clarity,
discovering the diversion of embellishment.
The clear imagery of the narrative
faded in the smoky visions
of the dreaming men and the wistful women.
Substance withered.
The meaning, once ago rooted firmly in the text,
became secondary
to the artistry of the canvass.
3. 26. 2003
Last annum, according to informal estimates
from propaganda mills,
nine billion forms
of intelligent animal life
were slain
for human consumption in the USA.
How many of the nine billion
lived with dignity?
Did any of the slaughtered animals
deserve dignity?
Can the roasting hen and the fatted calf
possess dignity?
Oddly, we recall an assertion
by the famous movie director, Mr. Spielberg,
who floated on ephemeral imagery
his foundational premise
that the meaning of life is found
in the formulation of questions
—
the act of I ask.
He offers balm to a society
without the ability to formulate answers.
3. 19. 2003
The primary players in the drama of war
now opening on the Mesopotamian stage
are twice suspended,
first and principally
in the tremulous interregnum of a violent process,
defined by the principals as "regime change,"
and secondarily in the precise interval
between the delivery of an ultimatum
and its expiry
—
all that it portends.
The Enforcer
with the upper hand of power
initiates a psychological exercise
leading to finality.
Unequivocal, he defines
terms, conditions, and consequences.
He sets a deadline
for non-negotiable acceptance.
He waits,
"allowing the time he has given to pass,"
according to his official spokesman,
who teeters on a soapbox in the lobby
and eggs the audience on.
The drama is propelled
into the between-space
of a clock-bound countdown.
Burdened by foreknowledge
of the exact moment
tick tock tick tock
tick tock
tick
tock
of the ultimatum's expiration,
the principals and their audience
succumb
to a succession
of unacknowledged emotions —
the immediate and short-lived flood of relief,
the rising swell
of exquisite, forward leaning anticipation,
vain torrents
of contention among bystanders,
world weariness by many,
resignation by a few —
before the adrenalin rush
into the vortex
of the last hour arrives.
The arch foe of the Enforcer,
defiant recipient of the ultimatum,
evil nemesis and blood rival,
is compelled to make
his last decision,
his last mistake.
3. 17. 2003
Diplomacy seeks to diffuse
passion
by imposing
context
on actions taken,
consequence
on reactions anticipated.
3. 13. 2003
"I want to do something downright audacious,"
the Trickster announces with a grin,
but his scheme is rude and dicey,
requiring
both the supposition of virginity
and the unsuspecting attention
of a class of people
from the Comfort Zones.
These are the lumpen minions,
who hold in high esteem
the unsullied maidenhead of innocence.
"If I squeeze wide open
her left eye with a finger and a thumb,
then slice the globe with a razor,
will you be compelled to call me butcher?
Will you beseech the clouds
to veil the moon?"
To the formalist critic
it is merely a surrealist's trick,
this razor cut of an eyeball,
but to the Trickster
it is a calculated act of fascist theatre.
From a black hole
dug
into the palm of the right hand
of sensibility's assassin
scurry
a phalanx of stinging ants
to assault societal complacency.
"Down with your visionary pretense,"
the Trickster's huckster shouts,
oblivious to the artist's sly symbols.
"Down with your triune altars and sacraments,
down with your inbred thrones and vestments,
down with your manic arenas and diversions,
down with your usury and craven conversions.
Down with church, king, gladiator, financier."
Whoa!
"To be a fascist,"
the Hierophant decrees,
"is the worst of public sins,
grievous to the body politic,
heretical to the Body of Christ,
and deleterious to stability in the land."
3. 11. 2003
It's okay to be a masochist,
just not the deliverer of the pain —
okay to strike a pose
of tender vulnerability
in the shadow of the dictator's sword,
okay to act
in the name of the people
as a silly human shield,
okay to whither willingly
in a pool of falling ashes
from the Destroyer's big cigar.
3. 10. 2003
All of life moves
without rest.
Maybe it spins through space
on a scale of unfathomable proportion,
with tribes of millions of living beings,
each with a name
and a fragment of soul,
clinging en masse to the crust,
and unaware
of the incredible swiftness of the passage.
Maybe the life of the race,
commingled and interconnected,
swings
from one extreme to the other,
much like the measured motion
of the cosmic pendulum,
first far far to the left,
next far far to the right,
with periodic passes through equilibrium,
back and forth through
the unchanging calm of the revisited center.
3. 7. 2003
If I die this morn,
shall I be an angel of God
by the eventide?
If I answer
as a fool in the flesh,
shall I speak the truth
as a Spirit in the holy place?
Yes, yes, and yes forever.
I shall wear
a robe of white linen
from the looms of Isis,
and sandals of soft leather
from the hides of heavenly lions and bulls.
I shall dine on ambrosia,
drink deeply
from the ale keg of everlastingness,
and rest without fury
in the shade of the Tree of Life.
3. 6. 2003
At the coronation of the archbishop,
the solemn reader of liturgy
announced the names of the Triune God,
loudly with precise enunciation for all to hear:
the Father,
the Son,
the Holy Spirit.
Where dwell the Mother and the Daughter,
if not within the Holy Comforter?
Why is
the Divine One
split asunder?
03. 03. 2003
A calendar is the Trickster's domain.
How can
the imposition of
neutral sequential singularities
upon the chaos of episode and event
hold any value
beyond
the utilitarian clarity of the time stamp
?
To attach psychic conjunctions
to
the predictable, preordained alignment
of
03.03.03
is one sure way
of inviting the Trickster to persuade you
(in his all-knowing voice)
of the vitality of his secret.
Study it, ponder it, give it credence —
and be diverted
from the truth of the matter
(if there is truth,
if there is,
if you can find it).
2. 28. 2003
Do you dwell in eternity,
or do you live in time
?
the High Priest asks
an assembled throng of true believers.
The priest has cast a crumb
from the cupboard of dualism
onto the body of rapt listeners,
but not one of them
can stop to consider the question,
or formulate a valid deduction,
because
the pace is too quick
for the paradox to work,
the Priesthood is in a hurry,
the question about the continuum
is lost in the quickening,
the question falls upon the soul
like an expired panacea,
the sugar pill for show.
2. 27. 2003
You see the moth,
sleeping on cotton.
Do you slay it?
2. 24. 2003
The Oracle advises:
Stare regret dead in the eyes,
face it down,
or elsewise be blinded
by the stark, numbing cold
of remorseful introspection.
2. 20. 2003
The multitude of the lost cry out:
"An anchor! Lower the anchor!
Stop this infernal drift of the Sprit."
But we have none, not a single one,
the captain of sentries reveals —
the last anchor was lost at wine-dark dusk,
the rope snapped at the waterline,
the drifting acid of The Dissolution
split the ten thousand strands asunder,
one by one,
and when
the last strands snapped,
in a dissonant wheeze of anguish,
then
the last anchor sank,
irretrievably,
into the subterranean mire
of so many dismembered layers
of disjointed sub-culture,
into the detritus
of mock communities,
under the weight
of widespread public indulgence.
Nothing remains
on the last vast vessel of man
to anchor
the gathered ones to deeper meaning.
Nothing remains to end the quickening drift
to the perilous, whirling edge of The Dissolution.
2. 19. 2003
The Easterly is a whisperer,
the wind of duplicity and intrigue,
the Destroyer taught
from his Den of Lies.
On its surreptitious breezes,
the Destroyer said,
fly the false hopes of Dawn,
whose rosy red fingers portend
a carnage of blood.
The hag Dame Rumour stirs
under the dimming light of the Morning Star.
She strides into the throng
as the rising sun burns hot on her back.
2. 18. 2003
Eternity exists
as a bond
between human and time,
becoming upon definition
an infinite point
within a full circle
flanked by twin double helices.
God, Soul, I AM -
all the same entity,
the unified and divine
host of forever.
02. 17. 2003
"Soul to heaven,
body to earth,"
the Hierophant pronounces
at the crematory door.
2. 14. 2003
Reconsider
an ancient Triad of Force
:
the father as moral force,
the mother as organic force,
the child as the principle of all force.
How can an ancient trinity
of nuclear family prevent
the Dissolution?
It cannot,
but only serve
as the force for rebuilding
after the walls fall.
2. 12. 2003
Very near midnight
a softly speaking man from Georgia, USA,
brought to our attention
the absence
of recent sightings of the Virgin Mary,
mother of the infant Jesus,
and the warning
:
Mother Mary's
disappearance
from the collective conscious
portends
the coming of a great tribulation.
2. 10. 2003
In the Hall of Two Truths,
the elementals of being,
Life and Death,
I AM, I AM,
and their spiritual mirrors,
Good and Evil,
vie for ultimate supremacy.
2. 7. 2003
"From the cradle
you shall be judged,"
the High Priestess pronounces.
"May your Conscience
be heavy with Destiny
to counter
the weight of the feather of Law."
2. 5. 2003
A constitutionally healthy man
who attributes his health
solely to his rock-solid Faith
knowingly and arrogantly attempts
to bring all others into spiritual condemnation.
Audacious like a Sadducee,
he announces in the video temple
that he is better than Job
by virtue of his well body.
He implies behind a thin veil
that all others who suffer
from even so much as a headache
cannot possess
his higher degree of faith.
He becomes the Fourth Entry
on the Mysterion's list
of the Worst Kinds of True Believers.
2. 4. 2003
Sorrow casts
its corded snare o'er the heart.
The snare binds
expressions of joy and happy abandon.
Grieving and constricted,
the captive
pines for freedom,
beseeches the Master
:
Deliver me
from my despair,
release me
from the cruel snare of my sorrow.
2. 3. 2003
Hope is
a dream with feathers,
desire on the jet stream,
a ready confidant
of the heart's fondest expectations.
Hope rises and falls,
disintegrates into ash
from the all-consuming fires of desolation,
regenerates into life
from the catalyzing transformation of renewal.
Can you
wish
again
on a star
after the hellfire
has rained down from the heavens?
1. 30. 2003
Can you become
invisible,
stand in the crowded plaza and be unseen,
move
at leisure
through
the gathered throng
and be remembered by no one
as having been there?
The canvas
of the Mysterion's life
is transformed at will
into an alpha transparency.
He can stand
before the canvas
in certain adept's poses —
and disappear.
1. 29. 2003
Open an oculus into your soul,
the High Priest commands.
In the light of stars
you can realign
your spirit with the universe
and illuminate
a pantheon of private truths
to guide your journey.
1. 28. 2003
Have you seen de fiddlin' man?
He's old 'n grey,
from down ole Tennessee way,
hey, hey,
but he still can play,
they say.
We ain't seen him
'round here,
hey, hey,
sawin'
no tunes today.
1. 27. 2003
Dr. Rodin of the Airs Institute, Geneva,
proffers an experimental procedure.
We forward his announcement
(think it is a plea)
:
"Give me the right colony of nanobots
and a new pharmacology,
and I'll redefine physical beauty,
up close and personal.
For you I'll chisel
a fine fresh face
with classic
angular
boundaries,
smooth concave mounds,
and alluring monadal ovals.
You can be
the Helen of Cyber Troy,
Apollo of the Quantum Temple,
a figure
of sculpted balance and striking originality,
pure loveliness of the flesh."
1. 24. 2003
Opportunity when she arrives
selects from an array of options
one sure object,
a token from the Fates,
upon which must be lavished
decisive and immediate action —
that is,
if the bearer of the token
chooses to seize the moment,
and transform Opportunity's promise
into realization.
1. 23. 2003
The aged prophet
announces the onset
of a period of ruination.
Broad swaths of the populous,
the old sage claims,
are being radiated
into the numbness of amoral ignorance.
1. 22. 2003
Society is ever on the move
by the force
of the multitude of Named Movements,
like hot magma.
What collective attitude
falls into decline?
What school of art or fashion
rises to cultural ascendance?
Name your Theory of Everything,
I'll show you my demographics.
Together we can spin bright patterns
for a new social order.
1. 21. 2003
Blunt-force trauma
initiates and often consummates
an ultimate rite of passage
from invulnerability to mortality.
Survival
impels a man
into an interminable journey
of mystery, coursing
from innocence into experience —
and who knows where else
in suddenly precious time.
A pattern of from-to
is stamped
permanently
on the psyche.
1. 17. 2003
Tolerance of religions is noble folly,
but go ahead,
be tolerant.
Sanction the freedom of the priesthood
to impose dead ritual,
restrictive orthodoxy,
and exclusionary membership
upon a stunned populous.
Go ahead,
abet
another irony of liberty.
Name an alternative.
1. 16. 2003
A man from France
with very inside connections
claims to possess the purest mold
for creation of a Master Key.
For a price you can own
the finest product of the mold,
but not the Master Key.
1. 15. 2003
I know a place,
the Temple of the Overcomers,
where
you can get
a premium Grundig portable radio,
post-paid,
in appreciation of your love gift
of no less
than eighty US dollars
to a ministry
of the Body of Christ.
Insert two batteries
and tune-in,
after dark,
to midnight's Coast-to-Coast AM radio broadcast,
and hear
the latest most exclusive interview
with the appointed spokesman
of the Anti-Christ
on earth today.
1. 14. 2003
If you abide by ethics,
a private set of living principles,
avoid the folly of writing them down.
Others cannot validate the version you write.
They will know, you will know
their value
by the way you live.
1. 10. 2003
Welcome are the pansies
on January's wintry landscape,
singular splashes of yellow and violet and white,
and welcome are the evergreens,
lime green tendrils of the cypress
and olive green ovals of the magnolia.
Welcome are the colours
of photosynthesis and bloom
against the muteness of hibernation,
pale grass and grey branches,
the brown fallen leaves.
01. 09. 03
You are granted but one chance to make the day,
one reprieve on the night that follows.
1. 8. 2003
Astrology is a parlor game,
stardust in your eyes,
the rude imposition
of flat character stereotype
onto the dynamic nature
of personality and life course.
1. 6. 2003
"War!?" the High Priest shouted,
twisting the word from exclamation into question
with a fluid shift of tone and inflection.
"It is not about oil,
not about weapons of mass destruction.
The war is raised on holy precepts,
on ancient Christian ritual tied to the now.
It is about the sacred places of Sumer,
about measured distance and planetary alignment.
Mars draws near,
as close to Mother Earth
as the War God shall be in an eon.
Sweet celestial kiss!
Akkadian's secret temple
must be wrested from Islam
for the ceremony of transubstantiation."
1. 4. 2003
Every square kilometer of the continent
is claimed, mapped, deeded, taxed
—
either
exhausted
or
prepared for exploitation.
The result
is
extinction of the explorer.
1. 3. 2003
"Who is whole?" the High Priestess asks.
"Stand up, announce it, tell us how."
1. 1. 2003
"We have lost our way,"
said the Mysterion.
Why?
Blame
the compression of time.
Blame
promiscuous communications systems,
too swift and
too fragmented
for balanced discourse,
sensible decisions.
Iniquity is closing-in.
That's what they always say.
That's what they always say.
An ever-quickening distortion
of the natural order
hastens the Dissolution.
Doomed,
(Are we?)
or primed for reprieve?
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