There were days
I used to dance
Alone
But never really alone
When I'd shake my spirit loose
From it's confining shell
To hover and watch
My clothes drench with sweat
To feel muscles wearing, tiring
The joy of movement
Whirling dervish
Marionette catharsis

I don't dance anymore
And I don't know why not
What have I to hide?
What is there to lose
But this melancholy
That's got me in it's grip
A helpless addict to
This endless ennui
Who will free me
To dance one last time?

dark cloud settling in the too-calm skies
bringing dreaded clarity to half-closed eyes
sticking like a shroud to a dead man's bones
bugs and worms crawling under upended stones
travelling countless miles down the spirit highway
you can feel it when it hits, don't know how long it's gonna stay
takes away the smile you thought you earned by being free
replaces is it with concern, worry and insecurity
all things must pass, it's true that's what they say
but this dark cloud don't look to me like it's ever goin' away

From where did this dark cloud come?
This black fog that has descended upon you
That you breathe in, tainting the air
That clings to you like soot
Seeping inside through the pores of your skin
Where did it come from
And how do you hide it so well?
An actress, for sure
Hating her work

From profane tirades mixing lies with the truth
Delivered loudly, directed at you
Hateful words devoid of the love once expected
Given up, lost to shame, tossed away, another burden
For your bent back
Heavy weights carried with the remnants of dignity that remain
You say you can handle it, you can handle it all
An actress for sure
Hating her work

From where did this black cloud come?
Descending, tainting, clinging, seeping
Breathing

From the force of clenched fists
The changes wrought by violence
A thousand times the ringing sound
A thousand times you kiss the ground
Convinced, almost, that the blows are deserved
The bruises spread, the blackened eyes
Explained away with blatant lies
An actress for sure
Hating her work

From where did this gray cloud come?
How do you hide it so well?

From the hardness of men possessed by lust
Their ******* brains half-full of fantasy
Their money as good as anyone's
Eyes drinking in your mirror's reflection, unfeeling by necessity
Imprisoned forever, trapped in a computer file
Twenty minutes you will never get back, how many more
Given away for an excuse, forfeited for an excuse:
An actress for sure
Hating her work

From where did this gray cloud come?
From where did this dark cloud come?
From where did this black cloud come?
Can it get any darker?

How will Light find you?
A white-robed Deity
Or the barrel of a gun?

Davar
Riding the speed of sound
Your command fills the room
How many heads turned
Looking for the Source
What was the question?
How did you know my name?
Her name, her name, her name, my name
Important words our parents used
To describe us

Davar
You must speak if you wish to be heard
First command respect
Next command obedience
Obedience to the power of a word
Don't tell me to read, I'm lazy with sloth
Read to me, let me close my eyes
And pretend creation is the purpose of the world
"Poets writing about poetry
I can't tell you how much they bore me"

Davar
The former word rides accompanied
One on the left side
One on the right side they fly
To the ears, the brains, the hearts, the soul
Speak it into being
Only one could
Speak it into being
Soon comes the day
Davar drips from my tongue
The air around me will turn from oxygen
To liquid to gel to something more durable
Inside this cocoon I'm walking into
I can manipulate all things
I can experiment with five, six dimensions or more
So that my cocoon
This eternal hibernation unit I've designed
And powered by my creativity
Is heaven
This cocoon, evolved brain
Is all I've wanted needed
All I'll ever need and want
Planted the Davar
Almost a century until it was ready
Blossomed now into
My beautiful reward

Laying back
Close the folds in on me
Only room for two
I lie in bliss
Waiting for you

drowning in your eyes
would be such a cool way to die
all my memories floating by before my eyes
unfamiliar
these are the things that i thought i'd remember
lost in one forgotten night with you

i must be
deaf
dumb
blind
all those memories left behind
i can hear them
they are crying out to me
to remember
sanity lost on the 8th of December
gone but not forgotten in your life

if i were a child
who hadn't yet lost his innocence
all that i know, all that I see
would you take those burdens from me?
this is the way it's supposed to be?
no, this ain't the way....

where are you now
you used to come around every so often
where are you now
i need to know
i must be deaf and dumb and blind
all my life i must be

I died in bed
On a cold December evening in 1977
Screaming hatred for my father
Muffled by a goose down pillow
Damp with hot tears
Seventeen spoiled years
Was there even a Christmas in '77?
I got the coffee table bible
My mother left for me
(She got one for my brother too)
The good old arcane King James Version
With concordances and maps
And incredibly realistic engravings of
The heroes and saints of Christian history
Abraham with his knife to Isaac's neck
Jacob's ladder, wrestling with God
David slings a stone, throws it at the giant
Through Saul God made David king
Jonah surfing the whales back.
Then there were all the portraits of Jesus
There had to be a hundred of them
I liked the one where he was walking on the water
And he bore the stripes with such dignity and integrity
The stations of the cross
The portrait that showed him lying down on the crossbar
As a brutal Roman warrior used a sledgehammer to drive nails through his tender hands and feet
He seemed so out of place between the two wicked sinners he was sandwiched in between
With their laughing and obscene mocking
I'm sure my mom hoped we would make ourselves part of that family
In some way or another
But I was listening to the Clash and the *** Pistols
I could have paid closer attention to what my father was going through
If I didn't have so much coming down on me
**** falling from on high burying me
In even more misery
The process caused me to distrust love
It caused me to write off joy as fleeting, difident emotion
I died in that bed
It could have been '75
But somehow hope had grown
In the midst of uncomfortable confusion
It could have been '76
Might as well hold out for the Bicentennial
Those were the days
I turned seventeen
And that number took on special meaning
17 in '77
Dad had a few nervous breakdowns
He put his fist through the wall
He insisted,"My nerves are shot my nerves are shot
$100 do this for me
You re the only she will listen to"
But I'll take the cash and the car keys
Why does it still feel like you were doing it to me
Off to O.K.C.
Have a little talk
About what I have no memory
But NEVER mentioning the hope
That you would come back
Despite daddy's tear-filled begging
Why?
I don't feel too guilty
It was all relative to how I'd been treated the year before
When I came home I was condemned
By a man who'd gotten out of the habit of saying "I love you"
So I felt justified
Screaming "I HATE YOU!!!"
Deep into my poor pillow

It would be easy to say I didn't truly hate him
In December of '77 I genuinely did
Almost 40 years down the road
I know it's the powers that I despised
It was circumstances dancing so clumsily
Caught up in the inevitable vortex that
Tears things apart with ease
But fumbles when trying to replace and rearrange what's left
Few there are who can survive
I wasn't one
I died in bed
Empty inside
Brain drained
Still as the motionless mattress
I'll never love again
Years will teach me the foolish blasphemy
Of cursing my father
And when they buried him in the ground
I sensed he knew
How to play the scape goat
It wasn't him I really hated
But he bore that burden until I figured it out
Long before they lowered him down
I knew my love for him was eternal
That he would carry it with him wherever he went
And if I didn't die in bed that day
A good part of me did
Of this I'm certain
I won't say "the best part"
I still have strengths
But I'm always wondering
The kind of man I would be
With one less bible in the house
And my mother playing Farkle with me

Wipe the slate clean
Abandon preconceptions
I will prove your reflection a lie
As you turn to face the other way
As you turn to face another day
Don't you regret not being able to forget
When the harvest of your ego
Piles worthless memories at your door
More and more, how could there be more
Dismiss the reaper, send him home
With his razor sharp sickle so finely honed
Tell him "Leave me alone! Leave me be and go on!"
No longer scared of his skeleton bones
11:11, this must be the time
There must be something you need to be reminded
But what, that's the rub, where can you find it
Can't feel it or hear it or smell it or see it
And it travels the speed of light
Close your eyes and catch that flight
Dream your world and see the sights
Magical tygers burning bright
But no souvenirs, travel light

The hard part is acknowledging
The devil inside
Holding him back is simpler
Than admitting he's there
So I confess
The devil's inside
He's been off to find trouble
Now he's found a place to hide
I have to trust my better angels
To keep him close at bay
Else I know just what he'd do
We'd do exactly what I know we'd do
Would not stop until tears were shed
Hearts broken
No remorse
So I turn on the black metal
And let him dance until he wears himself out
Channel the rage into the noise
Turn it into music
With any luck he'll sleep
For a long, long time
Long enough for me to forget about you
And all the things I want to do

Diamanda Galas exhales an old ***** spiritual
Her multi-octave voice finds it's niche in a thousand places of the sound spectrum
Sticks there like screeching glue, beautiful in it's own way
No pretty wallpaper
I don't get pretty wallpaper very often

I read and read until at last I understand
And I say to myself, "how could I have missed that?"
It was so obvious
Mundane when the mystery had been revealed
Left with the usual

Diamanda Galas singing "One Barrel Prayer"
And that's pretty much what it sounds like

I'm not feeling sorry for myself anymore
Though you may perceive it otherwise
I'm not wallowing in melancholia
As if it were the only drug
I'm addicted to
It isn't

In death, perhaps
I can slough off all these dead weights
That bar the entrance to my heart
That block joy and lasting happiness
That keep me from loving you
That keep me distant and alone
That keep the thoughts, judgments, cynical tainted observations
From mattering enough to mean anything

The responsibilities of life
Hit me too hard
I was too young
Forty years later
I'm still reeling
Stunned
But I'm not feeling sorry for myself
Because everyone carries a cross
God Himself brings the hammer and spikes
Just hanging around waiting for you to
Find a place to lay down and die
Nowhere on earth seems good enough

I'm not feeling sorry for myself
I'm just feeling sorry
Because for every moment of peace
Contentment and satiation
A fortnight of confusion
Despair and uncertainty

O, what a life

I like to think your eye is at the keyhole,
Your sloppy brain conjuring make-shift realities
     for your majick to paint into thin air
         from your lies.
Bald-faced whoppers or sneaky half-truths,
You twirl them around your illusion
     expecting
          a fantastic creation
                with which to delight yourself.
A pitiful white smoke jin,
     dissolving
          almost as quickly
                as it rose from the flame.
You honestly believe you've stolen my illusion,
     kept it just long enough to smudge,
           a chalk drawing.
You honestly believe
     I've let you do it, unwilling and unknowing.
Your fingers are *****,
     the powder won't wash away.
All for nothing.
You only erased the memory of what I once felt for you.
     Ah, your makeshift majick works!
Well done and thank you.

How long will you keep squinting at the light on the other side?
Your eye must be getting tired.
Why don't you just open the door?
     It ain't locked.

I've a feeling you've got a wicked temper
     and a lot of hate built up inside that you
          refuse to acknowledge,
              try to ignore,
Until you're secure in the darkest corner of your prayer closet.
     Facing a mirror,
          Worshipping and damning
               at the same time
That's when it boils over.
***** **** dog, frothing at the mouth...
Mean drunk, indiscriminate for a fight,
     but there's no one at the bar.
          Only a witch's cruel mirror
                    and all it says is...

"You aren't the Golden Child,
"Your majick is a sham
"No one cares enough to read you
"You're a thick, boring book
"The worst kind: a book about a book
"A book about yourself
"A book called 'Look What I've Done!'"

So here I sit, on the other side of your peephole view
Wondering what I should do next,
Knowing I'll never be strong enough to tell you
     to your face
          that I've known all along...
I walk through streets in your dreams...
Of this I'm certain
     even as I know you're watching me right now,
         with all your wasted mental projections,
                 charms, chants, lusts, cravings, desires, needs,
Casting that covetous spell my way but I guess
     The keyhole must be too small
Because I don't feel a thing
     and as I sit here,
         naked in my own secret place,
I could care less that you live for these moments
                of disappointed voyeurism

Let distance be a blessing
Priceless as any grand discovery
We might have made together
Likely misunderstood
Anyway

Let this be the last dance
Never again fated to gaze
At our father's nakedness
I repent of that first glance
While you stand and stare

You would not stand to see me
Dress my disabilities in wizard's robes
Or craft clay pigeons from my less than honorable traits
To worship and adore from afar
I cannot stand to see you do such things either
As you are

The man was not the kind to say "I love you"
He'd look you in the eye and you'd know how he felt
When Dad was of a mind to tell you something
He said it with an open fist, a switch or a belt

Dive bombing alone
After all the bars have closed
Dive bombing will sure enough get you low

Hard to watch your father have a nervous breakdown
But no one said that life was kind
One day when you look into the mirror
I wonder who you'll find?

Dive bombing alone
After all the crowd's gone home
Dive bombing was all he'd ever known

And it may as well have been blood
All the sweat, the oil and the mud
That stained his hands
Left their mark on the wood
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, that he could
He did all that you can, more than I ever thought he would
He did all...He did all...
After all, it's only love
And dive bombing is so much easier from above

2001: The Trump lobotomy partially successful
the Successful partial lobotomy performed on
Donald Trump was increasingly expensive
as complications were disregarded
He could have woken up with a Messiah complex
But a stray clot attached to the memluk
as a result he was unable to speak the truth
forever trying to make people believe his lies
"Liar Liar Pants on Fire" he bought a LOT of pants in the years after the chisel
Trump would meditate and contemplate
his singular black hole fate
so pathetic
it turned him
it turned him bad
it turned him into a bully
it made him hateful and unafraid to call wicked names
so many people hate the crooked one
what love they have left is for the liar
the one who doesn't know how to laugh
they'll give it to the man with the lobotomy
they'll give it to Donald Trump

I've allowed these sounds space
To find a home in between my ears
Metal Machine
Music of the Spheres
Bass digging deep, rattling intestines
Unfamiliar sounds to boggle the mind
Calm the beast and soothe the breast
No catgut drawn across string
Or human muscle powering the beat
Electricity, electronic alchemy
Like lightning streaking across the night sky
Left to right, blink and you'll miss it
Sonic ice, freezing sheen, dripping into sharp daggers
They fall and impale
This is the sound they make
When cold first hits the brain

Promise speeds along the highway
People and places blurred to the side
How many miles
To the end of the ride

Watch the white lines hypnotize
Paths for us to memorize
So we can drive all night

Cross the state line over the river
Turn on the radio, sing along
How many songs
Could we sing about tonight?

Watch the white lines, hypnotized
Paths we need to memorize
So we can drive all night

Catch your eye in the rear view mirror
Wipe the teardrop from your eye
Pull to the side
Let me drive

Pray for the poor bald eagle
Felled by a bullet from a gun
Killing eagles is surely illegal
You better harness your weapon and run

Play for the old bald idiot
Who pays to see your ****** old band
It's him who keeps hollering "Play Free Bird"
When you've just finished playing "Free Bird"

He's an idiot
Killed a majestic bald eagle
Someone took photos
Isn't that also illegal?
Just an idiot
weilding deadly propulsion
clinching the deal with precise aim
He's no amateur
Just sloppy, careless
Might as well be an amateur
Don't feel sorry for the creep
He killed a big old bald eagle

Stay in your homes, for no reason leave
Comfortably dumb in the webs that you weave
Trapped by the ridiculous things you believe
Pray for the eagle, and grieve

Now you come to realize
Roy Orbison was the man
But you never played any of his songs
In your dreadfully ****** old band

The crowd could chant "Pretty Woman"
For all the good it would do
Your ****** old band couldn't play it
Even if they wanted to

shouting
shouting into a void
waiting for an echo
that never comes
it's okay
i had nothing to say anyway

Eden happens now
Adam in me
Right here with Eve
Named everything
Straightened out my illusion
Millions of years ago
The thought projected
The Word sent forth the knowledge
Quantum time schemes carried the myth
For all to hear and learn
Today, this moment
We want to be like God
Knowing the knowledge of
Good and evil
Taking a bite to keep us alive
Disobedient diners
Each morning naked as a sparrow
Shame metamorphoses into sin
And only God can do anything
To bring us back together
It's cold without the warmth if His sun
So he made pelts into coats and leather into pants
To get us through the cold windy season
The first sacrifice
Blood flowed in rivers
But it never covered all
Heaven happens now
Leaving clues and reminders
For time travelers to discovers When they black hole sends them
To the generation inspired to write the myth
To add some clarifications.
We eat the fruit of the tree
Every moment and are cursed for it

The crucifixion happens now
Our souls have already passed this paradigm
The second Adam hangs bleeding on a tree
Of His own choice
It's at the foot of that cross
We hear him say the word
"Forgiven"
We won't even remember what the fruit tasted like ,

It was in a single moment
Moment of love and resentment joined together
Moment of lust redeemed by respect
Moment of violence given and taken
It was only a moment
Stretched out like taffy, sweet salt water taffy
Remembered as the beginning
An end to pretending

It was in that moment that I knew what I had
So many times I'd almost lost it all
I understood, mind illuminated at last
By the light reflected in your eyes
That you've been mine all along
To have and to hold
Sickness and health
Till dea...

I used to believe that enlightenment came only once
Maybe I still do
But I thought I'd already been enlightened
No place like the top, nowhere left to go but down
Everything is so boring after you meet God
That's what I thought, sure I was right
After all this time, though, and in a single moment
I realized what a ******* fool I'd been
It's the journey that matters
I haven't met anyone

It could only have taken a moment
No call for more
The gentle play of desire possessing you
Hard passion contorting your face in new, fascinating ways
A secret shared only with me
For my eyes only your curtain falls, your wall topples down
A gift to me, your sharing, taking from me
Everything I've taken from you
Without pretending we're ever going to give it back
Content with the exchange

It only took a moment
You ripped off my mask
What did you see?
Should I beg you to tell me?
Everyday I try to catch it in the mirror
Passing by, quick glance, same old *******
I'll never see myself, know myself
How, then, were you able?
I don't even know if I want you to remember
What you saw in that moment
Even so, I know
I will never forget what I saw
What I found, what I stole from you
I'll carry it with me for the rest of my days
To brighten everything within
The four walls, ever-shrinking, in which I dwell
The rest of my days indeed
Made of moments
But none like this one

I guess I'm not a very likable person
I tend to be condescending without even realizing it
You really have to try to earn my consideration
You gotta prove you have half a brain
Because I'm convinced most people are idiots
Even if I'm right
I'm still kind of an ******* for thinking that way
It's not as if I'm Stephen Hawking

As the missiles speed to their target
A sense of panic sets in and takes hold
Where are the cameras?
They've captured almost all of me
Now I'd better give them the rest before it's too late
(What are you doing? Put your pants back on)
The weight of fear slams me to the mat
Bathed by a strange rust tinted hue
Desperately screaming incoherent repentance
Held down by strong arms I feel the bee sting my leg
Within seconds I've given up
Paul McCartney lyrics fill my head
As I walk through the gates of heaven
Where absence of time insures I won't remember a thing
When I wake up

Even the letters of your name
Have power, hold sway
Fit together perfectly, a ring
A mantra to keep me here
The same mantra to set me free
Into your spirit
The atmosphere I long to breathe in
Shining from you, an aura
Transcendent we submerge
Sinking deep inside
To find a home
A dwelling for eternity
A womb-shell for Self
Reluctant to shed it's skin
Deciding not to
Instead clinging to your memory
Welding, melding, a parasite
A birthmark, a tattoo
In for the long haul

It's obvious
Static masked my thoughts
She couldn't plow through to truth
For I was still breathing
The gun in her purse
Much to my disappointment
Fully loaded and cold
I walked away
Navigated by telepathic insects
Scraping electrical pathways
Riding bitter cells, binary parasites,
Through narcotic blunted veins
To head and heart
Either one my preferred destination
Of her merciful ammunition

Tall, lanky, muscle-less mess
Couldn't dribble a ball across the court if his life depended on it
Curly haired pubescent Nephilim
Always the last to be picked by either team
Neither knew
What I'd do
For a dollar
Or my tricks with Oujia boards and magnets
Begging money from mom and dad
To buy Famous Monsters magazine
Stills ancient even then of frankenstein's creation
Count Dracula, werewolf and wolf man
Terrifying beings from beneath the ground
Or coming down out of the sky
Grotesqueries so appalling
You had to keep looking, you couldn't stop
For all their mystery at least we recognized most of them
We loved some of them
Or maybe even empathized
They didn't seem as dangerous as my tormentors
Though they would surely frighten the living day lights out of them
Like a sordid copy of True Crime, it's pulp pages stained with ink that portrayed REAL death
I felt I was in unfamiliar territory
Dangerous and ever present
Hopping straight from the pages
To the real world
The walk home is always too long
To toss the monster magazine into the box that contained the other 16 issues I'd managed to collect
To put a record on the stereo
Lie back in bed
Stare at the ceiling fan
Listen to "Tubular Bells"
And try not to think of "The Exorcist"
Or the morons at gym practice the next day.

The powerless gods
Whose names I have not counted worthy of remembrance
March like high school bullies
Neither I nor they
Understand the reason for their swagger
Some dumb determination to enlighten me, may be?
A cause, a campaign
A small favor
Willingly performed for the Conjurer

Who steals from the Dream World
Who makes enemies in the Real World
Because he will not share his loot
He labels and tags and stores the treasure
Describes it all to anyone with ears to hear
Quite eloquently
With an air of pomp and mystery

Listen. He brags that his coffers are full
So much more than he needs
So much more than he wants
Still he hoards

He's convinced the dogs
That he has more to give them
Than flowery words
(As words he worships)
They believe him
Though it was not his intent to convert
As it is not his intent to keep his word
So more fool them
They look like bunglers, trolls, monsters
Rounded up into a posse
I would laugh at them if not for the fact
That I'm the one they are coming for

Before the next five minutes are over
They will have twisted my arm behind my back
Spat in my face
Kicked my legs out from under me
Held my head in their hands
Pinched my nose shut
Stuck their fingers in my mouth
Pulled it, stretched it, as far as it goes
Then, when my screams cease
They will speak to me for the very first time

"FEAR HIM."

"Why should I fear the Conjurer?"

"He will laugh to watch you
Sink into his vat of language
The jewels he's plundered."

"Why should I fear the Conjurer?"

"He will confuse you
He will dig forks in the road
To throw you from your cherished path.
He will brand you
With pentagrams
He will tattoo a goat's head on your back
Worst of all, he will convince you
That they mean something."

"Why should I fear the Conjurer?"

"He desires to pick your brain
Hoping to pluck
A slither of flattery to fuel his narcissism
He will become very angry when he finds out
That you've never heard of him
Perhaps you have never heard of him
But you know him

"You know him well
You've even seen him
Though it was not his true face you beheld
He roams the land
Behind a smiling cartoon clown mask
That hides a blank stare of greed
Derision, scorn, contempt, lies, pettiness,
Dishonesty, depravity, perversity
And the insatiable lust he has for validation
Respect and Recognition
They have twisted his visage
Into stone and ***** crystal
Ugly diamond
The sight from which even he recoils
A reflection that pulls at his intestines
And pours ice cold fear down his naked back
So we say FEAR HIM."

"Why should I fear the Conjurer?"

"Because he knows you're looking for an enemy

"He is possessed of demons
One in particular
But he willingly let it in
Shared communion with it
Offered it a bed for rest
A home, a host
Gave it a book of Crowley and said, 'Occupy yourself'."

"A demon?"

"Yes, and a powerful one
It is a testament to the Conjurer's will and power
That the demon dwells complacent
Content to let the Conjurer study it
To take notice of it's wickedness
(For he delights in wickedness)
To search for ****** in it's black heart
(For he knows that there is a murderer in his own)
To dig through the egg shell surface
Hoping to find a germ, a genesis, or just a reason for it's evil
(As he is convinced he has many legitimate reasons
For the evil embedded into his soul)
The demon understands death, toys with it
Laughs at it, wishes it on all people
The Conjuror laughs with the demon
And this makes the demon laugh even harder
For it knows that the Conjuror has no understanding
Of death
Past the idea
All he has done is flirt
With an ugly girl at the prom
Made it the realm of heroes, his role models
Idols that don't talk back
Held high it's banner
Dreamed of mausoleums and tombs
'At last, something I can embrace'
Fool

"He let this demon be his teacher
And learned much
About
The powers of darkness
The father of lies
The hierarchy of celestial beings
All the arcane symbolism (tossed out the window by science)
Esoterica
Black-robed men carrying candles in the dark
Their teachings ancient, their lessons unheeded, unwanted
Diluted through millenniums
Cracked and drained of any power or
Purpose they might have one day possessed
Robbed of relevance
Outdated curiousities
A good scary movie to watch on Sunday afternoons after church
Morbid fascinations
Spooky dry-ice rituals
That once scared the **** out of him

"His demon goads and teases him
'You can resurrect it", the demon croaks
'You can close your eyes
Make believe it's all real
And just as long as you stay in your hidey-hole
With eyes closed you can call it your own
Posess it
Give it power in your own mind
But keep this thought nestled in the back of your mind:
It's all YOURS.
No one else wants it.'"

There is logic, I think, in what these giants say.

"The Conjurer will drag you into his heart core
And there he will take back the book of Crowley
From his demon familiar
And together they will beat you down with it
Pulverize your skull
Crack open your head
The book of Crowley
Is a very heavy book
Good for pummeling
If not for much else."

And with these words
Power given to brute gods
Transferred to the meek
They will soon learn wisdom
To see the Conjurer as he really is
To realize he has nothing they need or
Want
Prepare themselves
To rip out his soul
To cast out his demon
And to burn that ******* book of Crowley

Bells are tolling once again
Do they ask more than you can give?
Existence in a vacuum is the way you choose to live
No thought of separation
Body from the soul
When the movie's over, nobody really knows
Fields of autumn...

Where is the reason we should offer sacrifice?
This god we've made of Man has given only lies

All that I know I will tell you
But I offer only truth
Dream on, your dreams will die
Live your fantasy, your lie
Until you find yourself wasting away in
Fields of autumn

Lying there without the will to comprehend
Left there without the will to begin again
Grey eagle flies into the south skies tonight
It is his shadow that eclipses pale moonlight

All that I know I will tell you
But I offer only truth
Dream on, your dreams will die
With your fantasies and lies
Then you'll find yourself
Wasting away
Wasting away
Wasting away

...in fields of autumn

Find me on my knees
Face to the ground
Lost in the sound of
Silence, deafening

Always on my mind
I won't be surprised
If someday I find that you're right here
You're right here inside of me

The years roll slowly by
Illuminating
You've kept me waiting for so long
For so long
For so long

Couldn't you just come back tonight?
Couldn't you just come home tonight?
It's been too long without your loving
And your light, couldn't you?
Couldn't you just come home tonight?

Find me in my sleep
Pull me up easy
Part the sea of illusion
Drag me through to the other side
Where I'll fall back on my knees
This is no dream
This is no dream
This is no dream

Couldn't you just come back tonight?
Couldn't you just come home tonight?
It's been too long without your loving
And your light, couldn't you?
Couldn't you just come home tonight?

Everybody gonna find out
   follow yr gut
   mouthful of dust
  
Mind is the Serpent
   wingin' it, crushed
   repelled by enmity

Heart still blank as fresh card stock
   waitin' for a chisel or a nail
   names and numbers is all you've got

Everybody gonna find out
   nothin' but a drop in the ocean
   accessible as the most distant star

i.

Wicked elixirs gush forth to the north
the force of the earth pulls like rain drops
down south without doubt into your greedy mouth
your greedy, needy mouth

ii.

I'm the least materialistic person you'll ever meet
but you steal from me
I will cut you off
cut     you    off

iii.

The sad background music
she is crying, inconsolable
does not draw out any more sympathy
silence an echo chamber, effect achieved

iv.

If I were not doing this
my eyes would be closed
merging with a gas planet
collecting alien frequencies

v.

Five
Fold
Path
Diversion

Your lips were so small against mine
Slick, soft, slippery, alive
Pulsating imperceptibly
Sticky, sugar, chewing gum spit
The taste of children's wine
Ambrosia, Spanish fly kisses
Sweeter than old bones can stand
Electricity that forces eyelids shut
Shocks, sends spiraling
Into another dimension with you alone
Joined together, flying or falling free
We made a Heaven out of nothing at all
Ruled the darkness and named it "light"
Let it shine on our naked souls
Pressing against denim, moistening cotton and silk
I slightly opened my eyes to steal a peek
To see if yours were closed
To see the roundness of the orbs
Indeed sheathed beneath thin skin

I traced those small lips with my tongue
As if to gauge their width
I kissed your cheeks, your nose, your eyes
But always back to those lips
How many hours lying there
Did I taste the Doublemint gum
That was somewhere in your mouth?
And pushed the candy to the side
Whenever it got in my way

I woke up when I sensed the change
Peppermint grotesquely morphed
Into stale tobacco
Thirty years came crashing in
Memories of plans abandoned
Empty prayers, empty mouths
Good times, bad times
But never that Heaven again
Whose to say you'd be the same
Had things not changed, had you remained
We are not the captains of our own destinies
Our ships are fated to never again cross
In daytime or night
Perhaps you stopped loving me the hour in which you left
My love for you died a slow and painful death
In it's last years it barely had a pulse
But I remember when that thing stopped beating
It was when I found out you'd started smoking
After you walked away
And the thought of Doublemint and Marlboro mixed together
Makes me sick

Ghosts and Spirits whirl like dervishes
Caught and crammed into a soft metal silo
Freed from time but tied to space by a coil
Clinging to dream, the lucky few
Vacate the hive for a moment
A short minute for remembrance
Denied a quick forgetting
Or consigned to lonely park benches
Behind seldom opened doors
Locked in basements, difficult to enter
Segregated from the swarm
Yet cursed in cherished imprisonment
They never grow old
They envy the ones ignored
Those who are being forgotten
Breaking their chains for good
Melting into the atmosphere
Where they belong
Parting the dead sea
They crawl without a leader
Too numb to appreciate this unexpected exodus
Caring less for those left behind
Knowing that they, for all their loneliness
Are the blessed ones

who can save you now?
there's no more room in here
the rat won't stop growing
and you keep feeding it
and you keep begging us to feed it
but we are what you make us
so somehow or another we will keep it fed
either in your heart or in your head
disgusting vermin
you should have killed it when you could
who knows what that would have meant
but you're addicted to it's company now
it has **** on your masterpiece

Thomas
Behold My side
Stick your hand in deep
Explore the spear's wound
Feel it
Touch it
Squeeze it like slick, glistening *****
Reach in further
Grab hold of whatever you can
And
QUICK!
Pull it out
You can have it
I don't need it

*Enough of generic songs about simple things easily understood. Let someone else bring the good vibes. I wanted to ask the eternal questions. I wanted to float some possible answers by you.

Another day to drown in sound
Arms open, legs still, no struggle
I just drink it in then
I breathe it in then
I sink to the source
Where vibrations toll new tones

And I was Quasimodo, rope in hand
Ringing bells louder than the life I live
Sound pushing waves of air into me
Knocking me over, shaking my guts
I couldn't hear the sound of my own laughter
Or the screams of my ears bleeding

And I was lost in space, doomed to die alone
In silence
I did not realize silence could be deafening
A vacuum pops the only thing breaks is
I stopped talking to myself yesterday
I was driving myself insane

And I believed all music was from God
As He said
He would comfort me with songs of deliverance
And I may have been fooling myself
But I believed God was in all music
I still believe that

Open the gates of heaven, the first song I hear
Will be the best song I ever heard in my life
Peter will ask me what I think and I'll tell him
Then he'll tell me it's the weakest track on the record
"Wait until you get to the middle"
That's how I'll know I'm in heaven

I slide the slow motion helter skelter of my mind
Ride the spiral into wide open vistas
Unbound by any sense of time
While my body stagnates, wearing down
I fly in realms of thought and imagination
Simultaneously
Form and substance congeal then dissipate
Leaving silence, imploding
Into the vortex where
On the other side
I Am

In the vast difference between what I wanted to be and what I am
The temptation is to count missed opportunities
To what extraterrestrial province has my Muse flown?
My legacy has been the evolution of an unhealthy obsession with death
A defiant ******* when plenty of years buffered from consequence
Getting used to the fear
Never forget the times I was high on potent hydro and paranoia kicked in
I thought I'd be dead on the ground in a matter of moments
Those times I wondered what the hell was wrong with me in courting the Reaper
Slippery medications knocked me down, metaphorically and some of the fear
Is replaced by numbness and a desire to leave
Take me in my sleep, o Eternal One, just don't let me wake up
Alas I keep waking up
And it comes down to giving up everything I have and know
Totally submerged in amnesia
In hopes that what comes after will be better in it's unique way
No brain to process senses so you might as view them as the wave of the past
I'd pay for mental telepathy and full reign of an active imagination I helped create in this life
So in the chasm between what I hoped to be and what I am
The potential for hope, even miracles stockpiling and inventorying blessings
They have their own expectations
All too rarely amused but **** 'em
In that chasm life still conducts business
Handshakes are still exchanged
There's no reason to give up hope
In that vacuous cave death and joy do a dance, ambition sings a number with missed chances
Like me Charlie
Have you got a bowl of that hydro and a light?
I need the big reminder
Coming soon
Love sonnets to a young Linda Blair

Conjured heat through open vents
Takes some of the chill
Lying naked under three thick blankets
Counting, counting, counting
Inventory in your mind
These are the gods I worship
Sound, verse, melody, harmony
***, passion, ******, afterglow
Exalted above the detritus that is
Everything else in my life
No one that loves or cares anymore
Specks of dust in my eye
I don't have expectations for the next moment
I only try to remember what this song
Reminds me of
The kind of man I once was before
I catalogued every fault and error
Before the stone became too heavy
The nights spent alone in the country
An easy target for thieves who had no idea
How powerless I'd become

Dude is wide awake
His waking void understill
Five minuteplastic
The water congeals loudly
In front of his tonsure
Explode out of oceans of salt
To empty that illuminated ditch
When he parts
She supine in other days
Out of a matter filled gas
Over the shell of wellness
Or feather brush
The risen Antigone
Stuffed in her tonsure
Obviously never hearing the lie
Which carries darkness
Away from valleys of pride
The silence of the watchful Dullard
A cold stillness
******* in the forms
Exposing the Moon

She ****** medicine out of her mother's
Nose
Crawled clothed
Into her father's chair

Healing her mother's solidity
("Forget her")
Easy to remember the day
After the wake
She was found in the concrete
And the mother stuck in
Her grown-up gums

She tears his sickness
Not an apathetic ****
Away from him, black tendon
Reinforcing his unity
Without blunt gums
Eternity is drawing her hateful grunts
Of none these abrasive poems

We were a tiny Tonsure
Of the naked ***
Or a pristine sweetbird
Those sated turkeys are cowards
Empty of reverence
The sands were still
Of the red corpuscles
In that second spirit
Our divorce was undone

Sated
Against the white Moon out of his foot
Sated in the noise
This chills
The rejected plans of the impossible
That flitter on possibilities
Look behind ye
The rottings of all that remains
Never staring into
Junkyards of roses

Physical waterspray
Waking forest man
And she, last of the truly ignorant
A whisp burying opiates
Nightmares
And the obvious
Potent dwarves squinting up
From tiny depths
On those haters
Who cool
And freeze
And remain inert, careless, the missing stumps
They stop shrinking
"You lose what you don't want"
He tells her
His oft-described tonsure
Was in his toenails

"Confidence is a weak malady
Go away waking octogenarian
Go to sleep, Go to sleep..."

This gallery of shape-shifting souls
Has become a theater of the obvious

Token observations presented as
Extraordinary divine revelation

A parade of window-shopping prophets
Pointing, praying, "oooh, I want THAT one"

Stuck in a mold, how many don't know any better?
Confined to their emotions

It's All they've ever known

But that's all it takes to get your foot in the door
Of this funhouse mirror maze

Listen now to the laughter echoing against the glass
Lon Chaney guffaws at all who got lost

Hopelessly walking in circles
Hungry snakes chasing their tails

The waver in his voice
I'd never heard before
Though I heard him sing the song
A thousand times or more
Why am I only now hearing it?
It doesn't come close to derailing
His intonation
But gives the timbre of his voice
A weathered feel, older than his years
Turning workable hippie lyrics
Into sage sung wisdom
Picked up by the other voices
For three part harmonies
Some drug in charge of his mind
Allowing creativity an escape
Head's so high up in the clouds
He steals his best lines from angels
But he doesn't know what it means
He's been convinced that his entire life
Is one long journey to see what it means
Yet when they come to the end of the line
All that's there to find
Is
A mirror
A full size looking glass
For the wisdom he must make a pass
Straight through it's view of the world
On the one side
Wisdom lay on the other
And since he never got his fill of wisdom
He took a dive into the reflection
But he didn't come out on the other side
He fell and floated in a limitless pool of
Darkness
Black
He could only see himself and that from inner light
No rays touched him from the outside
Soon he became comfortable
Gliding on air
He decided he liked it better than singing
And wisdom
So he just sort of wafted away and
Disappeared
Leaving behind his song about
No simple highway
He accepted his passive role
And confesses from light years away
That he never knew the way back home

Ease me down gently into the Dream
Forget what I see, forget what I've seen
Hold me down softly, free me from sin
All that I am, all I have ever been
Gently, son, gently
Into the dream

Make me a home now, deep in your heart
So that time and space won't keep us apart
To dwell in your memory, free of the shame
As years and forgetting atone for the blame
A home, son, my home
Within your heart

Sing me a sweet song to put me to sleep
The one that I gave you and told you to keep
Until the day came I would need it again
To scare away gods and demons and men
No sad songs, son
But sing me to sleep

Remind me, my son, of the things that I said
Of no looking back, only straight ahead
Today is no different, though my eyes cannot see
This place where I go that my mind can't conceive
teach me again, son
These lessons I've taught you

One last thing now, before I begin
This eternal journey that starts at the end
Of a life filled with love, my last wish will be
Take mine with you, son, I'll take yours with me
Before I begin, son,
Ease me into the Dream