- to the mother
down in the belly
in the maw
in the tomb
stand two legs strengthened
by the anger of a frustrated womb
in the night they wander
spiral up the case
ever close to morning
but never see his face
once the moon
hung daylong heavy
tides of the goddess
breaking levy
and up the stair
to forbidden heaven
trod two strong legs
from six
to seven
to a mirror reflect
bright lunar glow
on legs a fat belly
began to grow
the daylong moon
in pregnant pause
at noontide splendor
stretch forth her claws
to seer the primal dirt
beneath
before come day
and to him bequeath
if crown we must
this half-breed boy
then scar his cheek
and make him coy
borne of clay
begotten of night
he'll rue the daylong curse
to fight
down in his belly
in maw and womb
meet mother again
in sacred tomb
down the case
in spiral stair
approaching slow
with greatest care
beckon secrets
buried in mud
past every bull
drained for blood
as darkness comes
a secret shines:
to Mother, not Father
are built our shrines - on frivolity
"What is it you're doing, young lad?", the old man asked with a chuckle.
"I'm pushing the sun over there," said the boy with glee
"And how is it you'll hold him down—with a buckle?"
"That's just what I had in mind. You'll see."
"When I was your age, I tried a belt; long as the Earth was round.
"Well, was it long and strong enough,
or did it snap(!) with a thunderous sound?
"I found it couldn't be pinned down, the Sun:
too hot and too far away."
"Yes! Exactly" said the boy
"and it returns at dawn each day." - coyote-men
Here, this is us. Essayists, triers and tempters of both fate and our selves. Trust fund brats and usurpers of brother's birthright.
Despite the news of the end of the world we walk on steady earth. She does not wobble—and if she spoils, we revel in her grapes and sing the songs of sailors and soters.
Here, this is us. Sons of a bittersweet nipple, a yet un-severed nave. Sons and daughters of a most high God in whom it is fashionable to deny our allegiance, while we rot for doing so—like the grapes—like the cannibals that we are.
Long is our ink and yellow the page on which it is lain. No matter what brilliance spills from our barrel, no matter precedence in cannon; no matter if a Russian in grandeloquence or by the subtlety of the finest Jew. Here, this is us.
Coyote caught one-legged in the dirt-trap; one eye pleading for salvation, the other aimed at heaven's own tree, and no idea at what lies beyond or that our days number only seven. - hangman
and last, hang him high
for all the world to see
the cost of lost integrity
each grain of rope met
his soft neck in glee
refreshing its parched stains
another soul set free
those threads cinched on sin
in tightened turnbuckle
joy in a job well done
welcome new kin
with a shake and a chuckle
fate-maker and fate come one - Noventamór
They had seven decades together, provided for by the fates, each with a perceptible beginning, an arid interregnum (or an eventful one, depending primarily upon her proclivity to turn to the various shades of wine for comfort and entertainment) while the webs between them were re-sewn by those taciturn gods, and just as stark an end; then two more—glories which were all their own, squarely held in their fleshly hands and for their own sakes, which the fates could not hem in; in these their human wills triumphed in a human love in the way that we each hope for in old age —in a human way— against the tragedy of our plain and certain deaths. They were:
Ten years of laughter—his learning to make her laugh by way of her undressing, faster or slower, in accordance with his variegated wit;
Ten years of guessing. The taking of turns toward or away from the idea of commitment for the long haul despite the investments to date;
Ten years of the deepest and truest love, in light of which, were a comparison available to all parties, Romeo and his sad bride would readily admit their shame;
Ten years of feasting and fattening, as if they knew they were in for that long haul they had decided on, for a long and thinning winter, where she’d eventually stray from her celleric ideals while his convictions, what rivaled those of Krishna as concerned the moral procurement and rabid consumption of butter would only deepen;
Then, twice ten years of candle counting and an annually relearning of ‘happy birthday’ on the ever de-tuning piano, for the sake of their handsome offspring. These at first, which they’d recount as their best, but which they would later realize that, while good, were also compact, harried, and as such their most aging years as viewed from the latter wisdom of their rocking chairs, which, from their seated retrospect, could not rock slowly enough as to keep their idealistically grasping, wrinkled lover’s hands close enough in their togetherness;
Ten years grace, given first by her, to the necessity of finding the boy he’d sacrificed in becoming the man that he knew that —if only owing to her beauty and fairness alone— she deserved; a killing not less than that by Abraham of Isaac, had he not been spared by God’s own grace and mercy. For every man is the killer of the boy he once was, few of whom can stomach the truth of which, if admitted, is capable of redeeming a lifetime un-lived in boyish splendor. The men who do summit that old and bloody altar are those who, through the same sacred mechanism of trade with that only and oldest divinity, timeless itself and capable of bestowing such grace, who may receive a second youth. And this is the rare glow of the young-old man that those others, with their canes and eminently repeatable woes envy as they rot from a sacrifice only half redeemed;
And finally, as is the natural course of the yet more sacrificial and thereby truly more fair half of the species, ten years of grace returned; to her, his pride and prize, his ‘if-not-for’.
In her decade, fittingly the capstone of these two lives’ tangled endeavor, she would take, with as much ‘Capital-Ess’ “Self” as she could —and not all ten years would she get, for two would be spent unlearning the long held habit of ‘otherishness,’ the time to breathe in, at last, to the bottom of her lungs, the pride of a life made, and made well— in her incomparable image ,in her indomitable spirit of hope against moments that were more ageless states of despair deserving of their own aristocracies than they were moments. For moments like those she’d borne were agnostic to and impenetrable by time; moments when, if not for a hope like her’s, life would make little enough sense that the devil’s tool, as it always is, would shine brighter with logic than the love (the hope) in the love of God’s mother, Mary.— And the breadth of trust that, given their decade of guessing, was behind them, she could relax into, like a bath, whose source of heat, she felt assured, could last ten winters. With this long awaited baptism, she cast her crow’s feet as she looked downward toward the womb that gave rise to her desire for just this life she’d earned.
Her water would rise in that bath, in both depth and temperature, as warm tears Mixed with joy and self pity, pride and pride’s reflection on its price, anguish, shone back at her. With a long soft cotton embrace, she would begin singing in the mornings to his ever de-tuning piano, and without a fraction of the timidity she had in all those long years before her late but effervescent rebirth. She’d win new admiration each day from her lover, in awe that a woman who had given so much could have so much more fruitfulness within.
In a final ten years they would die together, the envy of Shakespeare’s pen and the ideal of a family whose seeds would forever know how to find, by the laughter, and guessing, and the truest love, and by feasting, and by candle counting, and grace, and mutual sacrifice, that same rich soil of her heart’s eternal forest.
- a novel in a bird’s morning
"I pecked a worm,
then a friend joined
and he pecked a worm.
then a romp and pummel
through dry dirt
an unsure hop
on some man-made
abomination—
and we ate
and we made our escape." - while you can
sacrifice while you can, for you are fated; either to a heavy cross, carried but chosen, or a light grave of belated burdens with no time to make good.
- hard and holy.
it must be hard and holy,
this love
or it is secretly abstinent
in love's secret heart
a stow away
awaiting a shore
a mouse breath
beneath the floorboards
there is no proof
without difficulty;
and all that is holy
has been hung on some tree
in offer of nothing else
but proof - the life-liver’s dance
a dream wrap't round men's hearts
a whisper pulsing its constrictions
a tickling half-truth:
"I am"
becomes a thunder
just for the lightning,
the gumption
a clay man
divorced from dirt
rain without water
earth dry of heaven's myrrh
how long can a skeleton shake
how long can dead men dance
finally, any dream will do
mad devils all a'trance - El Cambio
hot on the coattails of unity
a duster don'd ghost
palms burning with puddled poems
ever hungry for a host
soon a convert marches
faith across his brow
trading tomorrow's dream
for totality in the now
here's a story of man
impatient for the win
ever externally seeking
the one found only within
- meditations on Camus' The Rebel, pg. 97; written in a cigar shop in Asheville, where I met a homeless writer and carpenter, Joseph. 2/6/2024 - a symphony flooding
i'm convinced there is a poem ancient of days sung from atop a mighty crag a honey'd voice atoning for all lesser might and lighter choice that giants and men might have i'm convinced of a chord harmoniously uttered lyre and lyric lain layered love and not one scattered differences all unstained weary of climbing but pressing forward the troubled tread and whipped the mountain mule then cried voices grips let go in symphony that sigh of severed pool then came rain filling men filiation in common flood eyes wide prides cleansed and laughter all rang truth that song in blood
- passion or sugar
Can he yet be saved, this sugar-addled addict? We feed the mass man as we do the herd from which he eats—the corpophagic masses. And that hungry mental organ? What does it know, too, but its diet: sui generis foie gras—the cognitive animal produces its own feed. Mouth to mouth, slave to slave, “truth” to “truth” maketh sick any species. Knowledge cannot save the knowledgable.
Man now has before him a choice, and only barely so at this late hour, and only if by grace he can dare see it, and by God —if he could bare to believe— divine it:
Slaughter, sheep, your temporal shepherd kings, for by your bite he leads you, stomach to cliff; or court yet that ecstatic cannibal rush he offers and perish of blind mens’ sweet knowledge.
Can you decline your sugar? Bathe in cold baptismal rivers? Starve for higher love? Can you dream freedom?
Freedom: but for a movement toward what sugar forgets and the slave abhors —that a new man, yet harbored within, and truth unsubject to false shepherds: yes, suffering is salvation. Surely, in suffering, we can believe.
- upstart friends
from a time particular to us when futures hung moist-heavy all words, every topic, just one a game of laughter and provocation bones plucked for battle sticks straws for marrow's goal friends, a'meal, a meal shared I still have your fork washed by the time of that time particular to us - for all we know
what is it that we produce and reproduce but souls for soaking up this infinite sadness accompaniment to the halftone key harmony of harps punctuated by bliss by happy glimpses at death what is ecstasy but forgetting? then we drone on dragging our blanket through time's dusty hallways aiming for magic rooms hopeful of contents some for salvation some for soma it is no wonder at all our impatient hearts' anticipation of the saviour from beyond our mortal perdition and no wonder our prodding curiosity on his prefigured fate "Show and tell us, ancient babe! Rise again and share life's blood. Speak to us in our cannibal tongue for death is all we know." For death is all we know - thine enemy’s gates
how did Zeus get himself to the page? what mortal fingers scratched the draft of the god how are gods drafted but on the wind, on the fall of red leaves sewn for spring in sacred tomes and caverns to campfire coal and crackle "how does it go, old one?" and sometimes he'd pass before passing on that adumbrated dénouement so our symbols drift from land to sea to sun and always on that occidental gust "has it not grown colder?" what better a god (and who more well-suited) than the Wander's? scattered to corners of fields left fallow fertility fostered where enemies abdicate the sentinel shift: gods all storm gates unguarded for a chance at crowned glories, at laurels once proper dawned and beautifully ghosts respect only walls of the secret heart don't all kingdoms crumble first from within? these are the means: all our halls a'haunt in early hours promenade the gods of stones and flowers - hell or highwater
men, cry out for a memory long lost may salts dissolve our half-blind sciences and see again through eyes of faith; that from rivers we come on not more than bulrushes; that on hey mangers we lie humbled babes men, cry out for a memory long last blood-rinsed, river-washed for unbound violence crouches at our door red tides pent, wanton lips part fear those breaking banks for mother will not fail us and another king yes a kingdom men, cry out for kingdom come by peace and not the sword - dirt slinging sons of Mawu
thank God for his distance every instance of nearness visit us a contagion divinity revealed madness meager finite vessels, we to crucify the madman is a favor compassion for the overfull of spirit release of an outbursting desire uncontainable in the mind of man what were we to do end the empire? all become polishers of empty thrones? floors all scrubbed now tenders to the lame? if the final knee is to bow and tongue confess all desire toward being for becoming will have vanished to a permanent fullness then all will have become a divine un-wanting and God Himself will He have finally become his becoming no longer to birth no longer zealous for men's hearts? what sort of pleasureless hell might be imagined emptiness... isn't that the devil? and you say "God is not here" he cannot therefor... yes, that is His proof his kindness that you may exist only half-mad were you full, so full and emptied of desire isn't that the devil? - buoyancy
I cannot face you how could I permit early moon to such a happy sun I do not reflect you though when I see you wane all my darkness turn good for hiding bright pain and so, how long could you burn how long can I stand, float sadness on bright tides pillar adrift on you on hope forgive my pitch and yaw I do hold fast in my own way and may the tide truly will? she too rolls of day to one of breadth to one of depth who moves sun and moon and pillar by tide and tears well swept of daily dread by night and by noon - death to Protagoras
I will not to be measured by man ruled by those killers of well-spring daughters turned doubters wrung dry of belief blighted aliens a Jubilee! a coup! from measured madness a desert flood by tears for a God sorely missed robes torn, heads dusted thorns pressed crown to brow wonder working power we will to bleed for this: to live again wet in rain wet in life wet in blood in belief's full heart we will to will less to be measured yes, ruled by God and not men - love’s bread
have you swallowed God rejoiced in final bloodshed power in lamb and shepherd's strike lead to golden understanding have you found Cain in your hand ruling lately and poor king without a kingdom pauper's pride and pomp hiding the earthly urn measure kings by treasure or better by the cubits' stretch as stories of men's hearts from first to last healing humble robe wrap round our cold hearts point our feet home fill our bellies - song of the dead
feel guilt too deeply and sin too sharp fault inscribed upon his heart not a word in counter of moral pagan silence rise to writhe a'mourning a nothingness so violent turn the day and dread the night enact the sacrificial rite but have you heard or perhaps read our sacred sacrificed "god is dead?" leapt not to sky for endless search but into man to heavy earth what sort of beast with heart of God can know forever and earth still trod?
- whaling venture
god and sinner reconciled divine made dirty through a child and washed clean in simultaneity reconciliation by the rock the god-man dilemma a going in two ways this the passion ancient of days man's mind is proof white whale within hunter or pray true north to sin how to win but by losing ourselves unto this whim and wind "bring me the whale!" we Holy cry but each man's whale within - Punxsutawney’s Poem
closely, I am undeserving from far I can worship and fear sin brought near by truth's fire burning infinite shadow cast me bare call me Phil; I do fear the summer sun and ask me again in six weeks my answer will remain: —run! so the devil's veil man seeks no wonder man can't stand his god; he cannot stand before him this way a day of yahweh comes? Jesus Christ! —run!
- Yhwh
signs and wonders lain at your feet but your confession lay pursed behind tight lips no breath fills forever justice demands admission nations as nothing consumed on cud with last breath cry out the glory admit the life that lives you and dances your bones and be happy in God or last pride across hungry lungs and choke on want ye vile of all nations you signs you wanderers you stolen breath whose Name sounds your wretched breathing? pity the kingless court pity the courtiers for they are poor of spirit - vertiginous
look within and know your distance without be cast and placed but a dizzied dancing dandy you've become a god self-effaced spun blind adorned in modern beads darling, a religious whirl lust for the swirling senses a beast - why shouldn’t we be like the gods and eat of the fruit of sacrifice?
why can't I tasted deservedness bright yellow palms of fruit gratification in their shiny wax real sugar really grasped in palms of my own these fingers, false in hunger's haste or else giants' footsteps brooding no meat however fat nor idea in heaven's dew technique torn between man, dilemma in two a becoming of bread a coward's cracking pulled for parts for fruit of labor for lacking - slain supposition
retire thyne illusions grandeur being poison life, simple in a field love lain on a supper table love on the altar by hands holy-made men and god and bread between this is grandeur's illusion slain - hungry marrow
a return to huger first by mouth then further unto hungry bellies and bones unto petition's last first plea my God my God why hath thou... "Stop there my child you are not forsaken. By hunger I call until you call me from your belly from your bones and have but the word alone we speak on emptied pride thankful for this bread I hide" - that what’s sed
how then is one to be great on time's scale or only humanity's what is it that can be said for all ages —or all men? survival is the statement offspring, life its clamor funny, the stir-stick of this desire for lasting which no, who sets man's mind in motion though it springs eternal few are we who echo whole lakes dry in desertion to be the centuries' fodder and to know it no man the text himself only context for canon's mouth its thirst what is due of morning's dew not to mourn that day but love his sun and source to dance his evaporation man is not captain but course - this devil
saddest gift to give away gratification desire faithful lust haughty simplicity sweat and feast and dinner today a quiet mind full and sated bellies pagan love innocence from sin from thought laughter! at tomorrow for what is he but More: a plump ghost blind love surely even the sin-counting god rejoices in us this is the devil I flee? —Joy?
- everyman the miser
Did I miss it, the point of life? falling for that big lie and loving it—love? If I skipped the heartbreaks, the silent monotone misery, traded for silence and monism, was this such a terrible trade? Sure, I'll have robbed another of lightened load, buying enlightenment instead. And if I acquired that sacred host, with an account of loneliness have I not paid my price? Pity the fallers in love, for their god is in a man; ours is higher, more mysterious, endless! Yes, bad gods are those predictable beings; rising and aching, beggar of the sun all her hours: for chips, for want of rest, for commiseration, hiding behind eyelids tilted down never daring the true glance. Yes, I have made the righteous trade surely — only, they demand their misery, and mine.
- want of weight
a touch of knowledge and tumult come of leavened gold bellies bloat a second day in seven spines repose to sloth man sick, want for work for heaving yoke we yearn but too long upon unyielding line and by distractions turn far afield and put to pasture on setting sun he wince in painted pride unsaddled youth inside un-rattled such value to man: the fence
- in negation
What about a writer so good he wrote a character he couldn't erase?; one who refused either end of the pencil; every grain of graphite lain bent a little his way, gathered in the gravity of ages—of sages and stories? What about a zealot mad for pain and by it? Like fated lovers one dancing, one defiant, wrapped 'round time, the invitation never quite right nor the dress, for the occasion of redemption. For, were it your very name once blotted at, half a world permitted crusading at your soul and against it in all narrative righteousness, wouldn't it be you reluctant to regain parity with such a brutish author; wouldn't you try turning the tides of tiny men, grains of weak and malleable merit, against their authors' hand? And spite, would it not also this situation suit? credit for the concept of 'the rebellious slip of the pen': Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, pp. 105, Penguin edition, Translation Alastair Hannay 1989
- feed
a busy world counts the need for peace evil, quietude ignorance, room for presence starvation how can a man pursue "Oneness in Being with the Father" whilst the chop surrounds his sinking head, a threat to breath, to aspiration—to spirit? at every moment he is expiring, dark banal currents tow him downward to nothing Leviathan's belly, full of bodies like his, no souls speak, but cry out of its mouth hungry in lust; she dwells in these tides of life, a hurried circus beast, belly fat with the stupor of man's immediacy
- guts burning
I and the father are one the starved become divine a golden child is born these temporary hands of His, mine a Christian Midas given golden truth how can a babe be born long of tooth? starve the man become the child benevolence to self becalm the wild patient with woman whose faith is slow she bears Him, King whose crown will glow
- heaven’s net
When you've killed off all your unbelievers and all tongues and jaws wag 'rightly'' what world will you have wrought? a heaven stacked of bodied bricks? temples of rank offering fearful compliance sans love, sans reliance souls racked and taut not surrendered, not faithfully purchased But you'll do it—make hell for lack of facing despair cast a dream o'er the whole world and choke on perfected netting And we'll believe it with all impunity, religiously weave it each day with bright eyes and squinting half-belief and eyebrows raised as if, running off our stapled foreheads, our kin unto dumb death will rest in their sturdier hearts our infinite doubt in these gross methods. Yes, what a hell we've woven 'round heaven.
- slave king
why so eager to busy our lives no quiet for God where busyness thrives labor unthinking is labor in vain this slight to numb the pain disconnection from one to All and each to other too tied to plow's continued fall shoulder to shoulder-askew some know of this petty predicament but before the word, the slave mention condition and provoketh perdition to be dead or to be brave? best to love one's captor kings unthrone not often until one day a rapture when all great men do soften these meek, They shall inherit? wives tales you surely sing but one day came unto Their merit slave-to-God turned mighty king the lesson of busied hands is to know for whom they labor quiet minds in chains yet stand when to god they show their favor work not for a kingdom here but for a kingdom come rest your mind on things unseen repeating: I and the Father are One.
- letting go
self-perdition a crumbled faith the auto-poetic curse of one's own wraith a wrathful possession unwillful obsession; a relinquishing of arms not to fight such is our right to court these devil's charms
- sweet lies
what is a faithless beauty? shapely berry for the bite in thorns surround begetting flight but wait her swelling bulge of summer in fall she burst seeds asunder plump with promise her sugar stale how careful the timing of beauty's veil
- the ascetic
off my back and under foot I'll call the wild when needed anima[l] fire in ash and soot a call best left unheeded provoke at greatest peril wench and devil's herald from peace and patience eternal nasence song of war she carols
- river of dreams
In the heart of Mary ticks a clock whose moment is the moon Around it spins the Son rising at yellow noon Late to her, late the day this god work and while away Eternal Mother, temporal child all that's mighty becoming mild The birth of man, his death to time Oh how fateful a clock we wind The sun her second hand a thousand years, her day Moon-song in our hearts tick even time away Earth in man and fire inside a burning star he cannot hide Manifest his mother's dream bulrush babe a'world redeem
- essay of a poet
it must come inevitable from outside or within but could it be, for once, in courage this coming to his end? tragic sentence punctuated exclamation at its close a relinquishing of claims to deed in comedy and repose this the brighter—a willing act stead' the tear-stained 'goodbye' instead a laugh at fate and fury 'watch this!' —a thrill, a try!
- single, sailor, signal
a man with no right hand shall bear no son for what will he be taught? grace or greed or grievance a shame he will have wrought he may write his way out instead too light for this world and woman pipe in hand afloat on wicked word ever chasing horizonal lumen
- omnibus
wealth enough to care for others wise enough to be free weather love and rain and sun these are enough for me to name the spirits forthcoming to breathe in the last of days paying warm smile to maddened men faithful in their ways
- for the cricket’s quiet chirp
man dancer upon his own dirt unbeliever in his gods seemingly without recourse but he has misconceived of their flight as though they've absconded at his bluffs instead they hide now within him; through his feet they stomp in his throat they wail surprised at his creative hand man, the dirty puppet convinced he's a 'real boy' best he pray
- ex-spiritu
break his body and break bread from purgation inspirit the dead drink his blood and jump for joy terrible treasure dying god sacred boy safe from sorrow in salvific rage murderer's mana man alive sin's wage
- Capital Letters
must I be so god damned significant? as if goddamnedness weren't sign enough but signals we are lights and sounds flashing our shiny cuff "I am this sort of useful tool" spending my powder unwise "and I, this other" to mine and plunder twisting to my demise with that settled let's settle our score who's worth less and whose got more? what color's your metal, kin and kind? which gods do you claim whose names do you sign?
- young dying god
his only arms against death art and war every form created by mineral ore meant to slow the face of day but only the dark chaseth time away and so to grave he sows his soul back to soil to be made whole child again from mother's womb rise and conquer from her tomb unto us a babe is born for our sakes the curtain torn but to the furnace with this soul for in death is life what's broken, whole
- taboo and violation
sin forbidden sin sanctioned and always for the good whence came this moral man such sense for simple 'should
- don’t think twice
fear and reason haunt the night courage and hubris, day a shadow never resting nor the lie two paths before us lay what befalls our feet but worry of profits and lovers lost but twice deciding day and night dilemma of greatest cost
- ambivalent chorus
how long the chorus dance our bones by nature's heaving hips how little left to heaven shone bloody god on man's ripe lips quarter-willing, half-compelled remainder left to fate how much of this is given to love; and how much of love, to hate
- solitude
damn mundanity but the sublime ordinary days ordinary time live forever me and the owl forest a blanket wolves a'howl stars in circle and time to see no personal parrot just the forest and me
- we who love wisdom
Moses in the desert wand'ring Jung with pipe in hand limitation maketh mind and mind maketh man end of infinite line, each from god within, dilemma reach forth from aether and back again signs to son of father's hand from a place he cannot know pipe in hand we heave and ho'
- tired summer
don't you forget that weed in need of pulling your body laid asunder hide me in a branch beneath fall's yellow thunder memories pressed to dirt notice to earth and worms don't you forget that summer we had rain and god confirm
- plumambre
if we act with fists a'rage and play our strings hot on stage "for who?" I beg the writers hand and when's the time for final stand fellow player he's our god "Desire" his name, that lightning rod no not you but devil inside stomp our feet in regicide tragic heaven comedic hell all hands on pen, Desire we sell
- faithful father
and he hanged for a long while this promise between peaks while I could still conscience his morning face whipping off the purple night from his eyes he pressed two fingers to yellow lips and kissed me the day then warm shadows and lover birds sang praise with me: "all to us you are, yellow sage, our facets gleam your reflection" and he hanged for a long while in reply as fathers do — written from atop boulders in Joshua Tree, Spring 2023
- the honey dance
sage to the unwieldy lovers private in their maddness oh love lost, oh stars crossed and christians you are born to a generation ungenerous ramparts to what was tired lead lobbed at enemies long forgotten fear not the baby's cry he is your sacred siren he will lead you home to god where contemporaries march in carefree conceit these are bees to leaden for flight to heavy with pollen to find a way back deafened by their wings' own clamor dance round your queen and bear christ and cross fruit again our nation; 'o hope, 'o love, 'o lovers
- unpublished
don't put my poems down in some book of letter and rhyme. they are the ramparts. let them be not bound to a name like mine; I am neither quelle nor canon. Logos born of our lie I am a man of treachery and lechery like any; men were not born to bind —from the poetry section of B Street Books, San Mateo, CA, Spring2023
- some men
some men find no passion no sanguine servitude worth worry it is from a hollow place come prophecy the deepest and saddest luster profit of prophets a stained ore of starvation and guilt from gorging come the love of hunger tip of the sword of Christ ah, here is that blood more sacred than woman, and bread here is that cardinal on my shoulder a spine of patchwork concrete sins bound not cast away rock of resolve here is understanding here is the passion of some men
- homo temporatum
whose game is this we're batting forth and back a'round loving, lying naming, dying heaping bones on hallowed ground pebbles plied to turning tire as history's wheel mow down merrily we the muck of god a brief crushing and a sound
- recursed
rain and sun are of all we speak of rock and man through whom they peek wearing their weather in crack and crown we rise and reign just to burn and drown
- the spare change dance
plough under the lazy man till him to the soil sow his sinew to the worms but spare me, the prophet the poet of toil for on the word the world turns
- rei triste
is this our final morning if we knew, surely we'd mourn lichen singing silent peaceable hymns in tune with the sergeant cardinal they who know no number who count not the days save the tired squirrel squirreling his away hungry we are for the morning feasting on the morrow man, the lonely animal who sees and seeds his sorrow
- hieros gammos
is there really no god? into who's eyes does a groom gaze? and no heaven too? into who's arms does a bride fall? is there no Christ child? who is our hope to be born to this divine pair? is there no prayer to the heavens? these words we promise to one another in secret tones? do we all deny this non-existent god? and 'amen' that very idea in communal spirit? He is in her eyes. He is in his arms. He is in the hope of every wishing heart in this room, for a babe that might shine truth upon us. He is in your quiet promises. He is in our gathered love for you. tonight may we party like heathens. but on tomorrow's sun ride our secret prayer: God bless this bride—might she hold her groom's gaze forever; and this man too—with mighty arms of Eros catch her love. If this union isn't sacred, then nothing is! We wish you, together, that oldest idea of divinity, our gathered love and a blessing: We are for you—may therefor nothing be against you.
- fruit of earth and sun
almond, olive, citrus sun-seeker by birth blessed grin upon man balm to heavy earth fulness overflowing speculation rise careful, sun-kissed goddess of want for almond eyes
- bomvici
how might love win in an evil world? does hate not also have its hopes? who is measure of good but victor? must not love be a lion?
- pour god, poor man
I have heard it said, "hope is a beggar," as if hope were hopeless and the beggar poor but if he begs, he begs of us a kindness; a gift to the poor in spirit and if he hopes from us his daily bread, then mana he feeds our hungry souls What is a beggar but a hopeful god with a humble alter
- dialogue and the devil
"How could a good god conscience such evils as men?" —Do you not also write in pleasure from pain? Now for the claim: "He is in you," and "in your heart!" —Do you not also do evil in good's own name? Yes dears, that is where he dwells A resounding "Yes, and!" I proffer; Your heart is good, and the devil's red runs it through. Father's heavens hug hell by every beat sure as your father hugs you.
- underbelly
at bottom where shadow shade a brook springs from all unbade his underside all will and wealth desire she gush the Taker, the Self no other consider in womb, all one no sin nor sinner bid "return, become"
- cold sails
wind become me well up inside spark of horror earned pride burden and brawn brothers in bearing gather the heavy cross and carry pulling his pride aboard the ship nail each plank and guard the hip regard the rain and weather storm a sheet of fog become his warmth
- sun-promise
rise as the sun without effort wanting rise, because he does to greet your shining countenance how great our god! a single guarantee: light in the morning, warm life to come a promise to our babies unwavering even as we wane: wax son wax light wax promise of god! almighty is tomorrow's promise almighty chance divine: to build again what breaks today forgiveness, inherence, time
- a meditation
a room full of hearts together in repose eating the rhythm of the sun holy ghosts prance the compass 'round her hand ecstatic east spinning a room want of wanting light as food tears as sated salt aurora paint technicolor love behind each eyelid sight without seeing love absent lover face of god in blooming bud
- if you come
If you come... I will teach and beseech you hold high to heaven's path burn lessons into brow I will put courage to vein trod first down dark paths press small toes to mud I will answer 'why' with mystical whimsy 'how' with hammer in hand 'when' with error and essay nothing less than profound play nothing free without forbearance na'er a second wasted a'worry kings secrets to prince pressed forehead to chest bond of God to his Creation I will let you go with courageous tear count your every year number your toes' tread I will wait reunion on fate bear prayerful burden by night hold you in almightiest hope you will live in the heart of God for I will demand it of Him like Job on the every hour of my breath I will die standing on my knees and you will know Him thereby as sure as you stand, small toes in mud I will be your father my whole heart speaks your name here, son, my holiest vow
- after hubris
how do I make plain to you a truth with the very words who's meanings you refuse? a game of truth to which I'm bound—and bound to lose how can I hand you a precision tool of eternal value, flexible and fine, knowing you wield it wildly, these words of mine? trace them back and find foundation, source of difference, all creation. but mock and murder, invite, invoke, dead brothers and gods ye provoke subside they will but not without blood; a word to unwise wordsmiths—after hubris, the flood
- tongue a’tangle
men and monsters a hair's width between a simple tango, turn the round bloody the pristine scar a'cheek a telling asymmetry sudden thirst, unquenched alone blind telemetry tongue a'tangle, wild lust pursue flame at center and chant young man for that flame that monster is you
- time is a splinter
hold fast, young woman to babe and dream fast is beauty to your heart as countenance —more, and beams do not fret, it beams damn height and Nietzsche damn medicine and age love's bell echos love's a sage young voices crackle warm under hearth and wood for winter plenty time will pare in time of need our warm hearts are scarce twenty hold fast to love warm bones pass winter hold fast to hope time's a splinter
- Convince us otherwise
Convince us otherwise
Our mythos too distant
Heroes dead and gone
Nation lost to the instant
Flags lain on lawn
Convince us otherwise
Children can’t believe
No regal fathers extant
For whom to behave
Truth of state to chant
Convince us otherwise
Spirit of the law
While liars are winners
Scraps under table
From thousand-dollar dinners
Convince us otherwise
Your suits are in peril
Threads turning bare
Truth from a barrel
Soldiers a’scare
Convince us otherwise
We need that great hope
Brothers are warring
Sickened by dope
No light in the morning
Convince us otherwise
While we simply dissent
Cities in rubble
Bodies for rent
You’ve burst the bubble
Convince us otherwise. - A babe is born
A babe is born, a hope for our sorrow if not today then maybe tomorrow But we put him in line and strike his knuckle and bear down upon ‘til creativity buckle On the chance we’ve mistaken and forgotten him God let us instead clear the path where divinity trod Laud him with Love on shoulders pressed high and crown him a name of man in the sky For hope is our savior, our forever-pursuit So may this little one’s labor return us the loot
- I wish you well
I wish you luck in love
I wish you transcendence of self
I wish you a hug encompassing of your mother
I wish you wild political success in the face of your accusers
I wish you grace in your own fruition
I wish you your guard down, and your hair
I wish you innocence in a lover’s arms
I wish you spring babies
I wish you life abundant and comedic tragedies for contrast
I wish you amen in singing surround
I wish you gardens from which to emerge
I wish you bleary eyed bliss
I wish you peanut butter everything waffles
I wish you well
- Pirates of sorts
A Chiasmic Cavalcade and Calamity
I’ve learned your habit of weed I keep it in my ear I’ve loved and lost And shrugged and tossed I have found my way indeed Through weed, that is, my dear Waste and haste besought and ground me Bones they do adhere But spirit rides the crashing tides Eternal ship and sailor queer Demanding sky sick horses Pride-hard men Seekers of enlightenment Just hard fucking bong rips and sea monsters by lamplight. Like, “hello: I’m a fucking stega-fuck-you-a-sauras and you’re dead.” Curtains. But they survived Our pirate parents If your people came here on any boat, under any circumstances; free, slave, prideful, ignorant, guilty, curious, or insane—they were of savagely righteous spirit and mean constitution to have endeavored, perpetrated, outsmarted, endured: simply for having survived. In all seriousness, I don’t think they had weed, and it would make them proud to know that we now have, if not the will of their mean constitutions, the fruit of their righteous spirits at hand. We’re all pirates of sorts.
- Wilder one
Mono enojado toro domado
Creyéndose dios
Hermanos en muerte Agarra fuerte
los cuernos por querida vida
O deja que la bestia pace todos sus días
Y por siempre ambos durarán
Mad monkey, tamed bull
Thinking themselves god
Brothers in death hold tight
The horns for dear life
Or let the beast graze for all his days
And forever they both shall last
- A church of dimes
A church of dimes I begin. A dime at the door, the exact replica of the tithe, the tenth.
Kataboles placed in the epitomic dish, above it the only righteous sign to hang reads “change.” Business first, then you get your salve, your salvation.
Yes then I blaspheme for an hour. A rant of consciousness, payments of attention, the eye of Ra, and the sacrificial murder and it’s glorious cover up story.
Then the recovery akin to after-care, a relation to the lay who have lain down their coin—and yet I will ask them for their lives to boot.
And they will praise and gregariously worship the light and the dark in fascinated confusion of their own symbolic dissolution. A weeping and a laughter, the Cry-Laughing Christ, the ridens deus—for thankful we are when the face of god no longer reflects our self-enmity nor reminds us of our original victim, our “survival” of Abel.
I will weep with them in all sincerity at our broken altar—our collective determination to fore-give rightfully due penance, to absorb violence, to give the coat when only the shirt is required.
And we will ready our own persecution somehow, by some insane human flaw, because even when of good intention, Gentlemen, we are not the keys of the piano.
And we will fall off our spirit rock, our pride, having made our profits and killed our prophets—for they are antithetical.
May god bless us Esau’s portion atop our own stolen birthright. May we forward the light one name, in our accursedness.
And all the murderers stood and confessed!
“Amen!”
- Kataboles. Kataboles.
It was the beginning of payments. It was the cessation of payments. It was consciousness and rest. There was new man and old man.
Old man was strong, but new man was clever. While old man grunted and groaned and fucked and took his tear, and warred and rumbled and held sacred his hair; new man plotted and scribbled and drew and in so doing thought himself a new.
The old way of the old man, brawn and buck and stew, and hunch and wander all day long, fighting three for two.
The new man rode on the shoulders of these giants, standing ever tall. Mushroom hungry, mixing barley, fire-stare-ers, all. Around the blaze, in dancing haze, a terror did befall, his first eye-dea, an aim, an arm, and beside him, big brother, and a fall.
Now write his wrongs and cover coal and tuck and run and hide, from the face of god behind the cloth, and burn the rams fat, blood a’side. Tell all to sacrifice, to the god of shame and guilt, ritualize and sacralize and be thine house built.
“Katapauses! Katapauses!” cry Cain to Seth’s God. “Kataboles. Kataboles. Forever must we trod.” “It was you who killed old Abel, Osiris did he rise, and ‘strength to strength’ as you heave and hoe, but work won’t make you wise. Gnash! Gnash! whip and bow and give the devil his due, and Caesar his, and the priestly ours, skinned penance to garments, blue.”
Acting always we wakened ones, indeed “all the world’s a stage.” And thus we strive, and striven, we, and bottled up our rage.
To he who hath, more and more, from our trodden working beggar Cain, and finally maddened, like the days of old, a letter shorter fell his name.
But Israel! Israel! for stories outlast men, and distance makes for blurried books says a trickster with the pen.
“Lápiz philosophorum boys, hunt it down and bring it nigh!” Discovering nothing, sadness fell them, blind eyes of peeking pride.
Kingdom of god on camel’s back through sand and stream and strife, rode the secret of the one true god, the secret of the mind.
But sand kicked up a spirit as the wanderer trod home, through darkened Jacob’s desert echo whispers: “Kataboles. Kataboles. …perhaps from even Rome.”
cf. Hebrews 4:3, Matthew 13:36
— the ramblings below are my trying to explicate the ideas I’ve conveyed in metaphor above— “As above, so below.” —Jesus of Nazareth (and for 13,000 years before him, all of Egypt)
For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said,
Hebrews 4:3
“As I swore in My wrath,
They shall not enter My rest,”
although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.These are the antonyms of each other:
of the word for ‘Rest,’ (Katapauses) used by Christ to describe Both the ‘laying down’ of the original foundational pattern of man—man forever at ‘payments’ (Kataboles) of his attention, his work, and to the world in exchange for his existence in it, his penance symbolizing his ‘place,’ despite his curse being to have none—as the coyote, the trickster on the road, the wandering Jew; and paid via god’s people, of course; and to describe the laying down, the rest, the Katapauses of the cursed wanderer and his burden.
Paul, writing to the HEBREWS is saying, hey Jews, I am one of you, I have converted, know me as Paul instead of Saul, that’s how serious I am about Jesus’ insight and his fulfillment of the prophecies:
For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said,
PaulChrist believers will have a ceasing of the burden of consciousness upon our deaths (duh.)
As I swore in My wrath,
Jesus
They shall not enter My rest,In my godalmightiness, speaking for the great ancestors and our god, non-believers in the new way —the use of fore-giveness in place of monetary sacrifice as tokenized and ritualized acknowledgment of the original murder, the instincts of which remain in us even unto this present day, and for whose past, present, and future malfunctionings in the face of ever increasing regulation by the letter of the law and cultural binding, we are disposed toward acknowledging and paying for both in penance and tax, an automated penance— these people shall be forever cursed to consciousness, hell being to live forever under the system of payments so compounded and laden with owing, by what our ancestors have overcome, and in sorrowful acknowledgement of the impossibility of restoring something that never was in the first place —consciousness ‘with’ god, god being a product of consciousness; these people will never find rest from that guilt and sin tax. Consciousness was a real curse to primitives. They avoided ‘thinking’ as you and I think of it as a matter of course. It lead to disruption of the tribe, new, dangerous tools, and social upheaval of a strictly taboo’d and ritualized balance that kept collective tribal possession by the daemons of mimetic violence and our animalic instincts toward resource competition (for sex and food), at bay. So ritual and more ritual, and taboo for peace. Else we must sacrifice a scapegoat or go to war—else, war within.
So to those Christ is condemning, they are cursed to this thirst for knowledge and to the pattern of the world, to wander, and for the tribe to live forever in their ways; forever striving, forever ‘paying’ (kataboles) in cursed consciousness of their original sin—their murder and the unrelenting repression they must exert upon their still murderous instincts, and the guilt that accompanies it. He is extending the curse of the garden forever over the heads of the Jews who will inevitably inherit the earth, but the curse is in that selfsame inheritance: a curse to further labor, to labor over their knowledge and their ever-thirst of it—this is no different than the plight of Prometheus, and his liver, that piece of us that connects to the stomach along with the pancreas (pan-creas: ‘all-creation’ —creation being belief (cf. ‘creer’ in Spanish) real-ized symbol (the sema, the sign that Hermès hung in the barn as a reminder of his deeds and his ability to ‘forgo today for tomorrow’ despite his thriving ways) of sacrifice, delayed gratification — being what can be done by ‘hanging up’ the instinctual appetites (sex and hunger) to regulate Ghrellin, the chemical that governs our hunger response and drives our animalic curse: wandering as a conscious, biped, worrying its way to its next meal. (cf. https://www.yhktherapy.com/en/manage-your-liver/detail/245/the-liver-and-the-pancreas-how-they-affect-each-other)
If “in the beginning was the word…” -John 1:1, and presuming ‘the beginning’ here means the same as ‘the foundation of the world,’ —and I take both as ‘the first founding of culture itself’, then the curse (the knowledge of good and evil, from the bitten apple, the ‘bite of knowledge,’ the ‘Mortis Consciencei’ of the pursuit of further consciousness (the curse of consciousness itself, the thirst (sed, set) for more knowledge—being described by something like Neumann’s Centroversion mechanism describing the conversion of life (libidinal) energy into psychic energy, the energy of Jacob foundational of Israel in its sacrificial forgoing.); if in this beginning, the beginning pattern of procreative man, was also the motif of insemination, then Christ is implying quite clearly (for Christ) that the beginning pattern of man was established by the man ‘injected’ with the word. In-sem-inated; sem being the word for ‘name.’ Christ has said that the world, effectively, began —the pattern was set— with the thirsty for knowledge consciousness Semite, descendent of Seth, Set, Satan, Lucifer, the enlightened, the bright idea having, the thinking, speaking (silver serpent tongued) man began his journey into consciousness; the first man and his word, was the same word in ancient Egyptian for set, sed, satan, and seth, great grandfather to the Semites of Noah’s son’s tribe: “but,” said the clever third child. As for Sem, his name the word ‘name’ itself. This man, the man with the word in his mouth, this man is god, just as John 1:1 tells us: “in the beginning was the word. And the word was with god, and the word was god.” To in-sem-inate is to speak the word into. Gods people are the people with the word, are they not? And if they are with the word, the word they have in their mouths is god. The foundation of the world is built in language. Understand language, understand the foundation of man’s world. The study of symbols, those images of the mind that determine just what we think of things —how we think of things— is sem-iotics.
although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.
JesusAlthough (but) god’s (man’s) works (employment) finished (arose) from (as) the foundation (the pattern of life itself which was an unstoppable foreign conclusion once Adam knew Eve: man was always destined for consciousness)
(more specifically: the pattern is the paternal pattern of insemination [injecting of the symbol or word] of the woman)
of the world (ordered chaos, the beginning of man, tribal cohesion, the instantiated cultural and religious law written to justify the unholy original murder, made holy in its violence and its product, peace, that was necessary to order society initially, and which shall nit be repeated at the cost of our society).
The deed was done when Adam came in Eve. None of this is changing. Death is death. And death is rest from life. Christ is promising nothing but that death is restful from life. The other time he mentioned the ‘foundations of the world,’ in Matthew 13:36, he announces to begin with “I will speak to you in parables.” Yea, well, no shit.
Translational references & context
—or Καταβολες and κατάπαυσις
—or payment and requiem
— phallus and bowl
— infection and cure
— man and woman
— a pattern (pater) and mother (mater)
— a specific foundational plan, cast (the work of man done by paying specific attention to mimicking the pattern of the great ancestral fathers, moving forward our consciousness and our heroic undertaking of the work implied in our survival which we call god’s will) over the earth and over woman, to subdue them as he sees fit, and to call it the will of god—the god of all gods, the gods of man’s ancestors, and his totem spirits, patterns of action, all; patterns true to the masculine spirit of mankind functional enough to develop the secrets of the earth, order the chaos produced by a half conscious, half mad former beast contending his damndest to bind his animal impulses through the religion and the culture (the religious cult’s formerly taboos expanded to society at large) he finds himself in. All this a gift, consciousness, and a curse, the foreknowledge of our death, and the deeply implicit and final death, and modernity’s future tense: the death of even our instincts. A grand plan cast by man’s deepest urge, reunification with god: a plan to beg borrow or steal his way to all-consciousness; omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence; all knowing, all being, all able.
And able, who was pleasing to god, was killed, made unconscious, given reprieve, Katapausis, rest from payments, Kataboles due during life. The truth is that the old saying is ill-emphasized. It’s best understood: either death, or taxes.
We strive to be able with cain’s blood coursing our veins. And the cool handed man calmly takes his portion in place of his place, this man who has no place. The birthright without the scepter. But perhaps he’s got it all now. And all through the technology of the narrative and that of its distribution mechanisms, comes the writing oneself into the pantheon, like Hermès. I believe that Seth is Hermès in every important way. He’s the late born son, he charges at the crossroads of liminal spaces, he is favored by Yehweh as Hermès is Zeus, he tells his story from his own point of view, the theft and founding trick of violence, the tiny portion hung as ephah, sema, sign, reminder of his guilt, ritualized sacrifice as a remembrance, the acquisitive mimetic object, meat, being the contentious object causing brother on brother violence that, if not quelled, whether by a song played on the lyre or a story of guilt and shame hung round the heads of a dead man’s hopeful brow, the taxation motif that persists, and the innocence demanded of their hands while soaked in blood.
If you intend to be alive, do not. forget. to sacrifice.
The gib hanesseh is what Jacob gave up in order to found the tribe of Israel. This is the sacrifice of his animalic procreative instincts, the socket of his thigh—this is ritualized to this day in the practice of circumcising boys into the tribe as men; men of god who do not forget (gib hanesheh translates: ‘to forget’…the organ that does make one lose his head, his consciousness, his commonness with god) to make the sacrifices of animal instinct for pursuit, for their wandering.
All tricksters are wanderers. All men are tricksters. All men have bellies and cocks. We are all cursed into our last days, and then, relief: Katapauses at last.
The only way to curse a tribe forever for their evil deeds and their awakening into godlike consciousness —the curse they themselves earned— is to consider ‘forever’ in light of inheritance, generational sin, generational punishment: kataboles, payments forever. If we finally put up our animal instincts —if we became the perfected man of god— we would die of starvation and lack of procreation. To die, finally, all defendants included, to die as a people, a tribe, is the only recourse we have to join again our ancestors in final rest, peace; and we refuse final hunger and abstinence—we cannot turn away from those ‘sins that separate us from god.’ Thus, we are Cain’s god-cursed wanderers doomed to pursue a place in this world. Seth’s coverup story for our collective founding murder, and Judea’s laws are all that make our guilty lives bearable: lies and laws. Hence Christ: an acknowledgment of our sins, and a final sacrifice to emulate: “If you would have your life, give it up. Those who would keep theirs will lose it.”
Are God and Set, the enlightened tribe of Seth, forever juxtaposed against one another? Is it only the Canites’ curse? Do the tax collectors also have the curse of paying? Or is that done in that infamous curse of knowledge: the knowledge of their guilt? Perhaps each has its Pyrrhic victory: man and man’s god, his conscience, in an infinite wrestling match, Jacob and his Angel. If ‘god prevails’, and Jacob-Israel and his conscience are both god (god via a vis ‘god’s people’), then this is not a final prevailing but a continuation: life.
- Someone close
In my dream I can feel her. She is in the next room over—just across that threshold. Anything can happen before the crossing, but after, everything is set neatly in stone.
I forget she is there; lying in a bed, awaiting, atomb in hopeful blindness for some king—or a prince at least.
While I clamor pots and pans about and compose my days of busyness and noise, of nonsense and ramblings over the variegated meanings of life found in the tail feathers of the male peacock, she awaits this same bright-plumed idiot she’s dreamt up in all that time spent on her back, thinking —no— wishing him a hero, a dragon slayer.
I near the threshold again and the smelling salts of fear and infinity strike my nostrils with consciousness. A midnight and moonlit glimpse of her cracks through my mind, like a strong thunder unnerves even the boldest hound. Would I trade her that place in the bed? Is that mattress not stuffed with feathers just like mine?
I must awaken from this dream and return to my own sleep. A different dream, a different room, a meal bereft of salts. A meatless feast without dessert. A lonely room. A shut door. A preservation in as much, and a solar stare despite the beauty of the gorgeous moon.
- We are not men
We are not men any longer.
Men rode rough seas and rougher horses—into dark places they brought their callous human light. We cower and tremble in silent —and all the time more loudly— petition of kindness, grace, acceptance, hoping our shaking or our shaking voices will garner us safety from even the slightest shades cast by the dimmest suns. No we are not men any longer.
Our women strengthen themselves. In our dishonor and submission to false authority, they must. If her protectorate becomes the faceless force of state and your men are chosen for compliance, preferring plebeian prosperity to true vigor, if he softens his edge to a dull blade, if he signals he’ll only feign war, if he is too fatted, a danger only unto himself, a mumbler and fat-pursed courtier, a flatterer—who then would protect her? And thus the strong tyrant comes with her invitation across the threshold. No we are not men any longer.
Our boys, impulses feminized, every teacher a wrist, every moral a secret disguise to chain him while the girl flows freely—a girl who because he will not be be able, will not be able herself to love him in, through, his weakness, his learned helplessness. Kill the quarterback and laud the leader of cheers for equality and hair dye. No we are not men any longer.
Our cities, littered with human garbage and their refuse, millions on the brink of joining; our cities burn and rot with fowl smell and carrion awaiting the early morning searing smog hour. Statues toppled in service of should-be asylum patients and steer. In faggot fear and weariness of wailing women, wraiths of their mothers, who should prefer to cower more, our men let all of this happen. No we are not men any longer.
Our authorities author exactly none of their bills, absentees in our hollow hallowed halls. Elected by their peers and cronies, thin-chinned skeletons of Ebeneezer all, keep balances and favors in black books blacker than their tarred hearts. Men did this. No we are not men any longer.
Our companies: We are no longer forming companies of troops, but corporations, bodies of drones, but of weaker will and lessor vigor and higher desire for satiation—for there is no world left to conquer and so we must down breed the conquer and demean the conquest. We have become incorporated —‘into the body’, that is— we form a hive, drones in training, and we perform all of the honey dances madly, but for reasons we do not understand, magnets of modernity pulling at our senses, and for fake nectar too. No we are not men any longer.
Our teachers teach molestation and sing praise to Sodom. In the name of sameness and the death of the striver, the standout (unless she is a he and sure of they’re confusion: in all cases a ward of the state to-be) this factory of false promise promotes its daddy’s forever stale propaganda. Forever they are ruined. Men did not dane to teach. No we are not men any longer.
Men of old, rough men, who murdered and in bloody victory, carried the best spearer overhead and handed him over to the shapeliest young girl for holy savaging; these men sit in soft chairs now, behind steering wheels of fast cars who go only the speed limit. They sit atop boards of direction twisting hypotheses around their mustaches —were they able still to grow them. Yes they have conquered, but which species have they done in? Not one has stood, hard chest to weak shills and charlatans. Now, we will all suffer for a time.
No we are not men any longer.
- Flight of Love
Love is a margarita. A belief in love is love. I agree with you and I’ll fight on your side is love—when you’re probably wrong I’ll fight for your right to belong; in your anger and falsity and hope, through the worst hell in you, into the best of you. I’ll believe in you—your most outlandish stories too. I’ll tell you the truth, perhaps, even when you’re wrong. Grace when you lose your mind. You can hate me and I’ll tell you the ugly truth with soft words—ones you can hear—that soften a heart even when it wants badly to harden. When you’re fat I’ll worship you. I will kiss that ass of yours, because it’s mine. And it is mine—remember that. I want you when you’re pregnant. I want you when you’re bleeding. I want you when you need pinned down beneath heavy mass, and when you need wrapped in warmth. My heart needs to beat chest to chest with yours. My veins throb in sync with your pulse. Love is the push-pull, push-pull between us.
And maybe love is the trick of nature, a falsity who serves her own greater driving truth—survival. If she is a trick, then I love her too, and her sorcery. We should be so lucky to witness the show, edge of seat and front of row. Die to her, die to the magic. Die to the queen and honey gathered. To live above it all, to be more correct and cold in our assessment; what good is rightness at the cost of penetration? What does it profit a man to gain the whole truth and lose his soul—the soul of the honey bee. Nevermind the buzzing hive and workers and their dying to life. Nevermind the monotony and crime, we live to a queen, a false ideal and idol; and that’s how it it ought to be.
And when that dies? When we all mourn in circles and wale and wallow, but beneath we hide a grin? Why then, like the man but longer lived; off with her head and crown her next of kin.
Life is the prime mover, not the living. It’s the gathering to bring something home that is doing the doing. We think so highly of ourselves because there exist among us a few kings, but in their kingdoms—painted vases and red rugs despiting—the same winds blow; their reigns and reinas turn and wither, paper books recycled along with their myths. Not even Caesar stands, nor Alexander, nor Rome herself. All extraordinary and extraordinarily mighty, but all: bees.
Here is to the honey and these lives of ours that we pretend to govern, and to the true governor outside us all, the magician, her love, her death. Here is to the queen.
- Trickster Deeds
I have done every wrong thing, but in the name of right.
I have cheated women. I have twisted truths. I have admitted only for the effect it brings. I have returned things thieved only for the benefit of relieving my guilt. I have made solemn promises and found rationalities for bending them. I have profited from grace while stringently withholding that necessary virtue from others. I have lived on the scraps of Hermès as a traveler.
I have wept at my own unfittedness, my life’s incongruity, my loss of hope in tepid love. I have become the books I eat. I have said the truths that serve no one but themselves in honest and harsh words so that if nothing else, their effect will be remembered, and perhaps one day examined when the world slows down for a deep breath, a campfire in the desert night–for a coyote’s tale.
But I have left scraps too. I have begrudgingly paid the everyman’s dues. I have given great love and sang songs and delivered towering panegyrics. I have taught my ways to those too straight-laced to consider a bend, and thereby delivered them from themselves or a tyrant. I have breathed excited breath into flattened lungs. I have made resilient my fellows by sharpening their talons and confounding their brows.
I have paid the price for my way. And upon it, I suppose I have no choice but to wander further. Perhaps I will lay down beside this tree. A chance nut may fall and feed me, or a squirrel may need a friendly ear to hear his wisdom, or his woes.
My deeds grant me eternal spirit, exemption, unruliness, a heaven run, a dirty footed grounding, food for sustenance; the oldest exchange—a treat for a trick.
- White-tips, White lies
Mother squalls her rage at the thief. Father springs into action, yelling his own brand of fiery throated threat. Down upon the wind he spreads wide to gain his steam and with it, courage.
Larger, cold, and hungry; a broad tipped and brawny bully. The norm of nature, piracy. He kicked in the doors, front and back, and declared his stomach plundering might and moral. No time to digest plump prize; the locals have their anger after all––a weapon of its own kind.
A fervent but boyish pursuit ensues, knowing no court to petition and recompense rare and elusive. Snapping at ankles like a hellbent Pomeranian–frightful in fervor, not fight; quarter sized and half-regal, unrespectable and so, unrespected.
“Goodbye son, I am a failure and you are my dead weakness.”
The killer goes free not from trial but by mass and quick cunning.
Mother is his first thought: “Fuck.” Just meters away and in full sight, his lowly loss. Acceptance of a new reality and a reluctant bounce of the branch. These white tips fly always a spectacle, even in sorrow. The short branch before the second loss; first a son, then an angry mother; a stopping place for small reflection before getting on with it.
Silent upon arrival, head hung as low as it would, go–further even. Too close. A second provocation, he does not need––a silent hop and flap instead, she turns her back, and lands three feet away but a mile in her mind and by the metaphor all mothers make: ignore a failure and punish him. You both need it this way.
Only two remain and they’ve shut the hell up, having had their first brush with life and its wiping away from above, the sky’s talons tearing carelessly through siblings’ hopeful hearts–they’d never seen what’s inside. Red to stain the color of hope; the only two shades these creatures ever see.
Father gives some distance, recognizing his guilt. Its going to be a long week; there is no distraction from his son’s death, no art to be found in a wife’s lifeless rage staring straight through him, into far-off disbelief at life’s cruelty amidst such beauty and freedom. Only the next worm. The sexual act, cold now to repeat. A cold lover after a murder.
And that is how this world works? I refuse it. A hymn to Hermés must ensue: a lie, a comedy, we need! Or we might just as well all kill ourselves in protest of that terribly truer pigment. We measure fairness, and thus we need our love stories and our lying: boastful and ignorant fireworks to do battle with wet tears and apologetics for dreaded misfortune. We need the idea of fortune itself, and fate, and to lie about God, calling him the sun when the sun was his first weapon against wholeness.
Dad never needed to wake us up in the morning, but he did. And now he knows our suffering as his own; a weight to his wings, death of the life he loves–and loves for want of having a commiserator, if he’s honest. Without hopeful lies we act like these white tips; angry at every fucking thing in passing perdition; dive bombers and mad nihilists squalling but never singing. Lowly, we must have our tall tales and mead and cigarettes; songs for our lost sons––songs for our sorrow: soothsayers for a life we cannot possibly live, nor live without.
- Vengeful secrets
I hope you have secrets. A paper just blew across my porch. She must have secrets of her own. A cutting, a grinding, a pulp of others ground to powder, turned into a commodity for markets. Then a hard press against her chest, so heavy an unnatural force into bondage with new sisters she cannot resist. Spewed out, dried like rag and bone, strewn about naked before sad slaves; titans before the war on their old groves and grooves and grains. Now for the cutting, now for the running, now for the dark box and the sale of her body twice over to the highest bidder; the new master, pray god of sun and former glimmering leaf of mine, give me good purpose. Find me a Roosevelt, a cannon’s mouth, a sparked ball to hide with fire behind him and pierce the chest of some killer, some cutter, some fiend of markets dare to take my branch and roots by force. Yes, let me set the precurse for vengeance. I’ll do my job; wrap wrinkle over wrinkle, my square I can make round to mete the difference. And keep me dry, dry as that hanging room of my ancestors; drier than the sun in the lean months, prostrate like the savior for his sins. For I was standing there, no more. I spoke the quiet truth of ages. I grew my fruit, I weathered storms. A family, the greats of the man, mowed me down, no doubt. I hid them once. From slithering and soaring from roaming and roaring, I hid them. Growing too high for serpent to bother, I stretched my own displeasure for them. The small ones, too innocent and short lived, circling me below in a chasing game, too sweet to leave low and scared. And cover I made from the winged death, those beautiful killers. They circle and swoop at plump meat, pressing the dusk and dim. I called upon my gods below me, I petitioned the secret source. He answered us both, me and the curious ones, with life. It course up, up, up, higher, and with every drop of magic mustered, I spread wider wings than that clawed killer, til his keen predator glare see nothing but my coat of arms, talons of my own and patence more noble than his; I shamed that bird from his meal. And then the king and queen, those sleek sleepers of day. Roam and rumble and tumble and play. I see them circled beneath me. I shelter their gold coats too, stained by sun and blood. They feign nothing above them, but know better. They wait for that swinging question mark to mistake his folly for freedom. Had I eyes, they’d pour out all my water. With strings tight across my throat I’d send waling siren til they snap. Alas, none of these do I have at my disposal. I’ve been given noble quiet instead, infuriating quiet, and eyes of sorts to watch the feast. So I bow my branches to those lost to the king and his queen. They dane to call themselves pride. And so I have wept, too, for this five thumbed and brilliant stick swinger, this tool maker of my twigs. And now he grows strong. His fathers brave the plane, venturing out, each day farther; more light and land for the hubris, everything his slave in its death. My arms make his bow and arrow alike. The silent swooping killer? His gray feathers now straighten the flight of my broken bones into the heart of the toothed one; a sad vengeance and irony I watch. Surely he’ll go no further. Surely this is enough for his stomach. Little did we –any of us– know that curly tailed saucer eyed sweetheart rather hunts with his eyes. And finally, me: mowed down in all my sorrow, all my silence. He mows me down too. Yes, make me an instrument, young naïve boy. Wrap me ’round poison and take me in your veins. I made them. I made you. My blood and bones and sticks and the stones beneath me, we are your forgotten and smeared source. Inhale my vengeance and let us count you the mulch below my long march back to the forest.
- Patriarch
What does it mean to lose the familial patriarch? Our sadness steps in what remains of his big footprints, unrecoverable truths forgone on the long walks of his livelier years—but what mattered then, perhaps to us both, was play; and play was proper too, while his feet could still dance with ours atop them. Those years are busy with the doing. We missed occasions though, ignoring the inevitable, putting off what looks like a burden, gathering sweet glimmers of his perspective before death; mopping the decks for the details of life that can only be pointed out by such a captain as our patriarch; for only he knows the dingiest corners that hide the secrets of our ship, only he can recount the waves that we were. It became his ship, after all, precisely because of his own months and years of scrubbing away with sore elbows, slowly acquiring the old man's palate; for peace in the mundane task, for the love of waters rough or soft. All at once and all too late we realize what luck we'd have stricken to have been the scolded deckhand throughout this captain's voyage cross sea—even the mop itself. How keenly interested do we become in those smallest of details post mortem? Where did he buy his shoes? What did his tailor think of him; his brother; his second wife? Which gales did he face down that perhaps he shouldn't? And what's gone with him, with the meager handful woefully tossed upon his oak square —gone is that same dirt, forever, from which we sprang. So here we remember to soak him up, to play the role of the mop, the deckhand, any instrument at his disposal while he still bares his chest against rough ocean, while he yet guides our crew, reading the stars as only a deckhand-turned-first mate-turned-captain, brave in action even while fear well inside him, like any man. One day you'll own his compass –and tears, distorting the arrow's direction below its glass protectorate– you'll mourn the beat of that captain's pulse that once warmed this compass, coaxing direction from it like a small god over dark waters, demanding safe passage for his beloved, however meager and green their merit—the direction that led fate across rough sea and to our own unlikely creation. Mourn your father before his death or twice you'll lose his treasure.
- Light and Dark and Dilution
Here I stand convinced again, sure of what’s not necessarily so. Soul turned outsides in for the diamond glint. And he contains none of it himself. Not a beam or freckled flint does he radiate. No, he’s possessed by his passers by. Each gazing the Narcissus glow upon his naked walls to see their own light fractured and bent by some foreign law –a microcosm of life in light and stone. To see the mundane for its profanities, vivisected and strewn out before us is too much a temptation for the eye, and thus that banal colony, the finger. Take it and put down in ink it’s flaws! Now! each and every! It must be done for we can not bear it otherwise.
The months and I transpire the vapor of hot days and cold, fearing only consciousness –the devil that he is– shuttering a stare at the staff. Prefer we, the vapor and leaves and I, the Moment Himself ‘stead his inclination for leaning and tipping into that longer shadow he boasts. Consciousness as the devil, sure, but who be the Moment? The unburdened beast. Perhaps the Ox can bear any weight but that of knowing the number of his days. Give our necks the yoke, return the lash and lasher, stampede us our innocent suspicions!
We were all innocent once. Cursed not with labor but with Knowing, the bitten cry for return to mother’s belly, to the ashes and dust from whence we came; any god damned thing to forget! To enjoy the days with fickle folly and the candle by night and even that we dane to romance (nay, we demand it) –these are the fodder of all story, all myth, all foundation for the stories that make our consciousness; but why a story at all? What of that can we explain? And if we wake up in such a tale, we’re surely not the author! And if shepherds can be slain, surely it’s not they who slay themselves.
Does he boast -this shadow- after all? Does he enjoy his role, this taker of innocence? Why he must have his own good days, and thereby harder ones too. Is he darkness itself? Surely he is not the light itself; we’re taught quite the opposite. Light casting a shadow, what irony! To be so, WE must be between, and if those two unnerved directors, then also we must be of crucial import; for what is the character of man without one being crucified, the slaughtering of an Ox? Without the tree twixt those soothsayers, liars and try-hards both, they have no game between them, no object to blame, no shadow to entertain their revolutions with its bending and gaining and dying and reemergence. And how numb a place to be cursed with; wandering around aimless. No, they cast the great irreversible curse, the very curse we bear, we and all the oxen however dim or clever. The buck passers, they, light and dark. But the makers of games know not all their pieces. They shouted “dance, dance!” and dance we did, for our bread, but our numbers were never meant this high, and that thief (WHO IS THIS, GOD?), he stole not the water, but the curve and shine of Pisces’ pleasure. And thus: If the pieces make war, well then Eve, Adam and the Early One will have a table shaking good time and order the next round. Perhaps this is their repeated reunion after a long drought. But what of this finger trap for the maker, that oldest circle and serpent? May those two managers vacate? I think not. I think that shadow grows long and dark and heavy. Something perverts it’s edges; the players–perhaps they make a little light and dark themselves. With what other qualities might they be endowed? Did the managers know they’d become diluted in this venture? In all the days of history, did perhaps a sudden gale ever whip round’ the house, and loose a single sheet of capital stock from the kitchen table and scissor it’s way ‘neath the door, all whispy like? Does that certificate have written on its face -or in fine print on its back, more likely- “I am.” Does he issue himself? Does he call forth that very wind, self-endowed, self storming? And if so did he not storm the beaches at Normandy and ride the steel beast down to the very point of impact upon our yellow brothers? Did he not crash every wave that sank every titan? Was he not in the tooth of every lion that just the same, sank our grandfathers’ flesh?
No, these two fickle managers are just as subject as we. Whether pawn or rook or knight or knighted queen, all gale force winds blow across our board with whispered hints that like waking dreams are forgotten upon rousing. Perhaps such dreams are dreamt for the forgetting.
And so are We.
Perhaps the spirit who signed that certificate, who spins the light and dark around, and who animated the wind and the doing of deeds, all; perhaps he is the myth inside that mysterious and preciously reflective rock that charred the cheek of Moses. Perhaps he signs his name not “I am,” but “I am You.”
We must hide if not our face from god, then god from our face.
- The Schuldner
Follow me southward and sing that pirate’s song the love of a woman will surely steer you wrong Siren sounds ring sweet but sweetly false ghost in gown go wandr'ing down long and winding halls You’ll find her in the morning a different sort of thing the ruby mask has fallen another broken wing Rescue her again each day and each night she’ll pay you well this, the path of the weakened man the path that leads to hell But why not enjoy her? fruit of the apple tree brought here before you just to waken thee Serpent, fruit, and woman god and christ and ghost abstractions of the highest sort of which we need the most Ploughshare and farmer they labor so in vain to pay the debt of fathers that cannot be repaid Sin is real and sinner’s guilt Brick-mortar, bones, and blood this is how the tower’s built Man from dust made into mud Redemption! Redemption! the low and lonely cry "remove the plank and pay your debt!" the pious priests reply Resentment! Resentment! Always best quelled with fear send pablum and pittance or a hero to revere the will of strength and health the mighty tame the meek justice given to them 'stead the vengeance their hearts' seek Quiet now and for a while we’ve got the "Good" to do Here: your chains and buckles each to other, one and two