Sunshine

Rainbows

Unicorns

Copulating

Microcosms of childhood fear

Wonder

Wonder about sunshine and rainbows
Wonder about whether or not mythical beasts procreate
Wonder about your childhood fears
Wonder why I would be telling you to wonder

We can be wonderful together

Heavens!

Whose angelic bodies sing
Eternal in service
To supremacy

Whose chains of light confine
The awful creatures’ existence
To knees

What shallow merit in good
To be condemned to
Servitude perpetual

And yet,
Here we are

This world a frightful Eden
It’s laws unbroken binding
Their exception paradise
For fools

Heironymus!

What say you of our garden
For whose earthly delights
We do tread shallow waters
Longing for release

What say you of these new-built cages
Steel and glass spires rending
Views of heavens for multitudes
Of scuffling creatures

The fertile forest lain flat to mound
Smoldering bile skyward

What say you, Heironymus?

And Marcus!

What say you of the rampant plague
Indifference
Of stoic nature not hard fought
But fostered from the womb

A generation’s tethered dreams
Of vain glory
Seldom pursued

Whose very tools of liberation
Themselves became
Their ties

What say you, Marcus?

And Plato!

What say you of the shadows
We have cast from whose dancing
In the flickering light
We have grown to know
Bemusement

Would you call that virtue
Justice which has stole
Away our vessels

Where would you have
A soul migrate
Which, lost, knows only

I

A vagrant - a lion?
A king - a sheep?
A beggar - a lion?
A soldier - a sheep?
A doctor - a lion?
A priest - a sheep?

What say you, Plato?

The mind of the lesser man is as rain. It forms in the sky and falls upon him in patterns incomprehensible. The lesser man regards this rain in awe, and lets be known every drop which forms a puddle, but always returns to the sky where it began. Occasionally this man will  learn of rain which enters a reservoir, or a pond and be dumbstruck and say, “All must see this.” And so he will let be known the pond as his highest knowledge.

The mind of the greater man is as rain. It forms in the sky and falls upon him in patterns incomprehensible. The greater man regards each drop in awe, but lets not be known which drop forms a puddle, as he knows this will return to the sky where it began. Occasionally, this man will see a drop which lands in a river, and only this will he regard, as he knows this river leads to the ocean - the source of all rain. This man will not be struck dumb, and will let be known the ocean, as this is the highest knowledge.

The mind of the greatest man is as the ocean. It accepts the rain, and feeds the sky. It is disturbed not by the lesser minds as it knows they are but part and parcel of his whole.

Be as the ocean.
Bemoan not the rain.
Revel in the puddle.
Seek the river.

There is a sickness one feels alongside the revelation of the embarrassing humility associated with the perpetual stillness to come. There is a peacefulness one feels when splayed out on a basement floor emaciated, engorged, **** stained, ***** soaked. Pouring blood into a dull ***** plastic ventricle. Immaculate precipice. Infinity.

My eyes are painted the color of my dying flesh to kindly remind my reflection that it will get rest in the end.
My veins are constant reminders of times when I shared blood and broke flesh.
Please don't mind my voice -- I swear it sounds best to the dead.
I'm sorry if I have vocalized too much regret, but I knew that you would be listening alone in bed.

If you bled the way I bled
If you died the way I died
If you were tied how I was tied
To that hospital bed that night

Would you feel the things i feel
Would you see the things I see
Would you know the things I know
About the shadows in the night

The way they dance
The way they writhe
The way they breathe the scared light
How they’re the only holy thing
I’ve ******* found
In this god
******
Life

I am an angel in the rise

I am angelic in the fall

I am I Am at rest

And awake to such a tall

Man – shaggy hair rising in plaits
Form – immaculate sans
In pitch black etched across his chest

“Shall my hands afford ash?”

Read to a roar of laughter

1000
100
Only us

“Who are you?”

Cut short by a roar of laughter

100
10
Only us

“They call me Cain, brother, and I can only show you ‘what’.”

And what, indeed, amidst fiery chariots and divine palaces suddenly surging from ocean chasms had my thoughts sought to comprehend?

Here I am amidst a dream

A neon second scene

But where is the Word when

Awake, and to multitudes.

The morning sun rises to bring light on a blackened church. There, at a vandalized oaken pulpit I give my sermon. My Bibles were lost in the arsons committed on my home, my church, and the corner shop refuge that once provided living space for local destitute. I am unprepared this Sunday, but the Word flows freely. He ‘Is’ is speaking through me. I look down to my notes and revel in their order. Clean lines, a steady hand stroke on every letter composing a glorious sight amidst the seemingly ceaseless chaos of this life. The times have changed, and so I write these words hoping that they may bring Light to times darker than these.

I am a fool in the rise

I am foolish to fall

I am I Am at rest

And awake to such a bright
Light – refracting subaquatic from
Towers – streaming ribbons with the current
Whilst star-light chariots permeate disorder

“She made ham from ash”

A thought recited to a piercing silence
Singularity while

10
100
Observe

“Where am I?”

A thought recited to a low hum
Singularity while

100
1000
Consider

One – stepping forward from light
Form – immaculate sans
A wild, pulsing eye

“I am here to show you ‘what’.”

Expressionless

“Are you able?”

A smile

A light

“No, come.”

And so, with caution, I proceeded down Atlantean waterways buzzing with preternatural light and rhythm. Amidst this shimmering ocean scene there was beauty and awe which words to comprehend could only paint pictures of madness. And so, I came upon my home.

Here I am a king at sea

With neon throne and queen

But where is my Hand when

Awake, and to multitudes

The morning sun rises to bring light upon a blackened church, home away from home. The attacks grow fiercer by the week, and I have not managed to procure a Bible for today’s sermon. The turnout is better than ever, and the Word flows freely from my tongue. He ‘Is” is speaking through me. The people are queued from pew to door, from street to corner. They seek, en masse, refuge from daily struggles; refuge not found within these Holy walls. Yet, they come. Their order is glorious! Such a wondrous sight amidst the seemingly ceaseless chaos of this life has never before been seen. I write these words in hopes that they may bring Light to times darker than these.

I am sacred in the rise

I am sacramental in the fall

I am I Am at rest

And awake to such insurmountable

Sounds – reverberating
Grounds – quivering
Towers – streaming
Chariots – quickening

“Oh, what a beauteous scene I have come unto! Thank the Highest, thank the Highest! These neon lights, though manifest in form I dread, do not belie the Supreme! Nay, unto him I deem fit all creation! Do not these streams paint your name?! Have not these seams sewn your claim!? I am free among these dreams, and from You have all I need!”

Sang to all who would listen

“Could these hands afford ash, the embers of eternal flame would brand the holy flock! Could I make ham from ash, the maw of sheep would ne’er seek to be sated!”

Sang to all who could hear

“And ye had better listen who doubt the name!”

“But who are you who are such a tall”

Man – shaggy hair rising in plaits
Form – immaculate sans
Opaque lettering across his waist

“Shem HaMephorash”

Read to a crescendo of laughter

Only I
10
100

“Why am I here?”

Cut short by a crescendo of laughter

Only I
100
1000

And why, indeed, had such beauty been shown to one who could not comprehend? Why, indeed, had I been brought to the depths, to revel in that which I have been cast from?

“To pyre, to pyre!”

And so, all the oceans were torn asunder. The final baptism before

10
100
1000
Years


There I was

The second scene

Of all I have conceived, but a dream

But a dream

For here I Am

Amidst the seams

Of all the paths I weave

The morning sun rises to bring light upon a blackened church. It is not Sunday, yet the patrons are queued to the street corner again. These people have come to hear the Word flow, yet the Word for me today is woe. The final sermon: Whole and hearted.

“You are here for me, as I am here for you!
There is but one truth, one way, one mind!
It lies not within one, but within two!
The Singular Multitude!”

I travel down a dimly lit road, and I'm not sure where it goes but I'm sure I do not want to be followed. I paint the lines in the road black and smash every street light. Upon reaching the other side I decide it's too dark, but **** if I can't find my old road.

The longest winter I have ever known
You left me chewing stones
To try and find something that’s meaningful
Inside of them

The shortest story I have ever told
Once left me breaking bones
To try and make something that’s meaningful
In spite of them

And as my fingers worked these grains of sand
Into the cloudy sky
I saw a picture that was meaningful
And lied to them

Severed sisters addictively
Seeking out serendipity
Atrophied on antipodes
Eating feasts from antiquity

I knew this woman once, and I got her alone.

She asked me who the real Leo was, so I told her I was a poet. She said something like, "Aw. That's cute."

I looked into her eyes.
I looked into her eyes and saw that her poetry was the vain pursuit of a lost americana. Her poetry lived where could-be cartographers coddled their craft in closed-minded communes.

So I took it upon myself.
I took it upon myself to explain.

I said, "My poetry is when you find the dreams that your television set sold you -- while you're chained to a hospital bed on life support."

I said, "My poetry is when you're starving on the side of the road and a stranger gives you a sandwich -- only to die of malnourishment later because the sandwich was hardly enough to feed your tapeworms."

I said, "My poetry is when you find Jesus Christ -- while you're lying face down in a ditch in your hometown because you just couldn't make it out of that place alive."

She said something like, "I need to go. I forgot I had a thing."

I know that I haven't seen you since, but I want you to know that sometimes I pray, and when I pray I petition your god too keep you from finding my poems.

Deciduous frost crawls up between my toes
My feet sink in the deep mire
I pull my left foot out and the right sinks
Finding something solid
The cold consumes my left leg
Chilled and raw in the open air

Can't you see that they want it this way? They propagate it in their media and glorify it with their politics. You are part of a lost culture, indebted to your distant cousins -- yourself. They want it this way. They want you sedated. They want you kicking on an old mouldy couch. They want you tuned in, turned on and foremost dropped out. They want you to slam spikes in your corrotid. They want you shuffling from institution to institution complaining about the food as you pace a single hallway. They want to see the greatest minds of your generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. Look for it in their media. They know full well that to a generation of nothing, being a statistic counts for something. Look for it in their politics. They know full well how to demonize and revolutionize. Why can't you see that they want it this way?

Forget the seasons
Their flavors hold no inherent meaning
Manufactured frostbite
Fleeting
Overpaid cosmeticians mask our ugly dealings
How cripplingly demeaning

Forget the seasons
Their flavors still hold no real meaning
Amputated tree limbs
Seating
Underpriced prostitution builds translucent ceilings
How cripplingly demeaning

Was it worth the price of heaven?
To view angels as the demons
To build a sulfur kingdom far away from sheepish bleating
Though joyful sound resounds around the fallen flock I've found, I cannot make a sound that permeates when I'm not bleeding.

Take your trivial differings draw, them up in stippling and call it meaningfully crippling.

Lying between sticky sheets in a hospital bed, contemplating my lifes story. Wondering, "Who could be so cruel as to write it on the ceiling in blacklit fuschia heiroglyphs?" Cooked psychosis crazy. Though that's a little insensitive, I suppose.

Lying between coarse sheets on a locked ward, contemplating two knots atop the door. Wondering, "Is there a place in The Father's Kingdom for the self-eradicated to lick each other's wounds?" Raw reality sane. Though that really isn't much better, I suppose.

At what point does tragedy become regular, mundane irony?

Like, why do artists always die in obscurity
When everyone else just dies?

Jesus Christ!
I saw you -
Standing naked on that stage
That we had made -
When we stole your clothes
And anglicized your name
Oh, what a shame!
To be born again -
Into the things you hate
Oh, what a shame, to be born again!

As everything you hate

I had a dream last night about Versace shirts

Ripped them off from China and traded them for ***** works

Contracted every illness out in Fitchburg

I'm telling you that I did it, officer.

I knew this kid who would acid wash catastrophes.

He flipped his fiddle to ****** fiends in tweaky scenes.

I rolled up once, to show him that my hands were clean.

He tucked his junk up and copped a couple fingers from me.

Jesus didn't love you like I loved you

Jesus didn't show you what I showed you

Jesus didn't care for you --

In fact, he died

Lucy left her bracelet on my dresser

Came up to me asking for a picture

We spent the night together

Then I spent the day alone

With all my questions

You were like wandering a dark alleyway with only a trashcan fire to guide me. And when the light revealed your face, there was already such little left inside me that when I broke my flesh and poured my blood all the world could see me pass over in rememberance of you.

I copped some Subutex at a dry rooming house up the road from a run down clinic while waiting in a line a mile long and thought to myself, "These people need to hurry up."

I am an ocean of single use plastic. A birds nest of cigarette filters. A sky of fuel emissions. I am the cell phone always by my side. A bell attached to my hospital bed. I know someone is always a button away. The foundation of my house a blemish on the earth. Clogged concrete pore poured so I may exist, proliferating infection. The soles of my shoes are rubber armor. Spare me from feeling anything that might be real. I am ****, I am ****, *****, dead skin cells, blood poured out in a bathroom sink. I am a messy bed, ***** clothes I am the never ending cycle of clean dishes. I am consumer. All I touch I need more of. All I touch I corrupt and make commodity of, make for market. I am an empire. I am imperialist for I saw and said nothing. As the planet was *****, humanity stripped of humanity. As people who looked like me and thought like me dictated the course of lives of those who did not. Therefore I am dictator.

As though we aren’t all pedants working fruitlessly to scratch our names onto anything that is still pure.

Find a weapon. Anything will work. Yeah, a pen is perfect. Use your weapon on everyone except yourself. Make them ugly. Accentuate every out of place contour, every blemish every grotesque discoloration you can think of. Take your weapon. Turn it on yourself. Make their ugliness your own. Know it was always yours.

Lay awake at night. Stare at the ceiling in your bed until your eyes adjust to the dark room and it is bright as day. See how deep the shadows truly are. Watch the creatures crawl out from the depths - scurry across the room. Always just outside your vision. Take your weapon. Imagine what they look like. Place the forms of the most disturbing things you have known on them. Dismember them. Disembody them. Strip them of any piece of them that makes them look like you. Contemplate yourself. Take your weapon. Draw the pieces of them that are you.

Drift off. Feel their hands wrap around your ankles. Don't be afraid. They are not forgiving but they are not unsympathetic. Drift further. Feel them looming over you. Sense their warning. Take your weapon. Spin their wisdom to fit your narrative. Use your weapon on your self. Find the narrative that unwinds your truth.

Look in to the fire.

Tell me what you see.

When many aeons turning stones
Did find you muddied silt

The rivers coursing from your veins
On highway sides
Of Grecian ilk

What coils must I shuffle from
To find the fatted milk

And taste the salt which binds to you
In hiding places built

Before the turning of the spheres were
locked inside your gaze

Here, so many ages past
And still to seek a name

Ah,

I see you
The way you spiral
Enmeshed through empty space
A dance not seen or observed in a usual sense
Developed —
Exposed —
Built up into an overpowering neon scene I can not look upon, nor would I wish to look away from.

Oh,

I hear you
Chattering cicada rhythms
Pulsing— pulsing—
Wild, rhythmic chattering
tk tk tk tk tk
A low hum, a machine?
The sound of my blood
Coursing past my eardrums— a machine?
Wild, pulsing — pulsing, chattering machine hum
Tk tk tk

Mh,

I feel you
Or I feel something
Well, maybe not something
But certainly a lack of nothing
Alack, not nothing
Or it would be easier to call it something
But i can not call it something
For fear I may be placing too much faith in it

It shoots up my spine
In to the center of my skull
Explodes
I feel the shock in my core
I gasp
I am awake
I am alive
I am
Aren’t I?

A piece of myself left behind
To fester on that summer day
Ripped open for the sun to finally see
The rays caressing my bones for the first time
My marrow exiting its cave of flesh
I am exquisite
The rush of what blood I have left to my head
As I watch its like pour out onto a blank page
I paint a picture with it
Try to make it beautiful
In the end it is only my blood
Blood I did not choose to spill
But chose to transfigure

How can I live brain damaged and disfigured like the lights seeping in through the walls don't trigger frightening synesthetic psychoses that exile my mind from the pinnacle of this oasis to the furthest borders of the existential void?

Celestial Sodomites, decant your debaucheries carefully. Here Dionysus lies -- 1969-1969. Summer sunshine sexcapades. I have been sent by the true Khalifa, supreme placeholder, perpetual nihil to sever defunct neurological pathways and lead to the pearly gates of emotional wounding. Please, open your hearts and pray with me.