My ***** human lips touch their wine bottle
and they shudder like old women
whose propriety has been offended.

I think they must have been like me, once,
when they were young inside, however
many lifetimes ago that was for them.

They began their journey as I did,
full of sacred fire
and holy dreams.
I wish I had been who I am now,
in those lost times.

Discussing Plato and justice with fellow idealists
upon an Abuela's porch;
I would have been at home with them.

But there is no time for truth now,
no time for holy writ,
now that they have a mortgage, and investments, and me.
Ideas and the will that accompanies them
fall away
with the accumulation of wealth and age.

So now we are at odds, we new torch-bearers
and the old truth-seekers
because life has got the better of them, or they it.

It is time for me to depart
brow furrowed, burdens too heavy for lesser men.
So I tell myself in the long hours
without recourse to violence
or prayer.

I have grown soft you see
apparently
as I have almost forgotten the sting
of your love-whip at my back.

My road is not a lonely one
verily,
yet it's travelers have no heart for conversation
since the desert engenders silence from we wanderers.

You alone walk upright,
seemingly burdenless
free
but the desert and I, know
what you keep from the mortals.

You laugh at vengeful passersby
fearing nothing,
everything.
You should not worry over much
as your secret is probably safest with me.

We are walking to the blue mountains
out beyond Rumi's field,
that place where you and I made love
in the days before Christ made you his concubine.

I welcome your scorn, your disgust
lovingly...tenderly
for it proves how much you once loved me.
Though you truly have forgotten our
half healed wounds.

Smiling a child's smile as I tread behind
your bare shoulder of a memory
I recite poetry aloud;
heartlessly
you continue ahead and above.

It's almost over
this journey I began years ago
thoughtlessly
the day I held you close
so our souls could touch.

You had no room for a garden at your
    house in Valencia
so you made an Eden from brick walls.

I remember your kitchen full of tropics;
  how you loved the hot plants.
Loved what they whispered of even
  more; fleshy, supple summer nights
with no need of sleep.

Do you remember those golden afternoons,
  those siestas full of honeysuckle
and oranges?

My Body lies at the foot of my friend the Cypress,
  why have you come to gaze at it so?
It is raining, and magic things happen in the rain here,
  but you do not see the growing things.
Your Beloved needs you, cries out for you, but you do not hear.

Life surrounds you, caresses you, quivers under you
  yet you push her embrace away like a dying thing.
You stare at my empty husk, but you do not even see it;
  it is yourself you see, your own supposed pittance, fearing life more than oblivion.

Stay and waste yourself then, friend...fool.
I am going to go smell those lilies over there.

Upon the road East of Gergesa,
  A red sunrise burning the morning
as poor peasant women pass me by.

Wars, rumors of wars, have followed at my back;
  my whole journey being ahead
or behind of some meaningless conflict.

You called me to this task
  the only one of them ascending;
my Holy of Holies, my religion
  you bade me go and wander,
returning only when I am worthy of you.

You chose well, I the lover of the
  long rides and the open sky,
perchance the only one of them
  you believed would ever return.

Where was it born,
  this fire-bird's song,
  this diamond thread,
  spanning lifetimes?

A great turning wheel,
  eternal change,
  this love-journey,
  returning to you.

Nearly dead from exhaustion,
  hallucinating with thirst,
You can barely remember the face of the Beloved.
Don't give up now, not ever!

For this love-work is the only labour
  worthy of we pilgrims.

Timeless trinkets scattered about our home,
  pieces of those painted moments we shared.

This paper full of scribbled love; and your pencils,
  worn old with creation...and desire.

Why is it that such things are all I have left of you?
  These burning stars within me.

The paper is the novel you were writing, and promised to let me read.
And the erasers of your pencils; the pink of your breast.

These relics you've left behind,
  proof
    of your soul within mine,
have become my creed,
  my faith.

Because everything is biography.

I remember well your house by the sea,
sand in all the corners, plants like gypsy tents,
a garden full of senses and clothing.

I remember well your garden by the sea,
a red dress draped over hibiscus, a linen shirt in the grass,
birds and orange blossom and always the music of water.

I remember well your fountain by the sea,
flower petals always dancing, some druid's holy spring,
the blessed waters a perfect shrine for you.

I remember well your love by the sea,
your body a continent to explore, your heart an ocean to sail,
an oasis of flowers, of water, of music, of a soul.

O Discordia, Where now will we turn for salvation? Our dreams have withered and our legends have passed into shadow.

O Discordia, Revel in your triumph, ****** and barren. For the towers have fallen beneath the weight of our folly, and with them, hope.

O Discordia, To whom shall we turn, for what light do we yearn? The land has sickened and the children go hungry into the night.

O Discordia, Where now lie the ruins of our mighty house? Where now fly the banners of our people, once fair and proud?

O Discordia, The blood of our line is all but spent and we are overcome, as the days grow long and the nights close about us.

O Discordia, All of our loves and all of our heroes are now your trophies. As our children and their dreams are now your pets.

I gathered myself from four winds when you first awoke in this life; As you opened yourself to the world, the center of the universe held it's breath in awe; When you wrote your first poem, in the depths of Heaven, angels cried for joy

Your spirit has journeyed through greater spaces than your body; You followed your soul and came to the East, the heart of faith awaiting your return; How many nights have you wandered these long roads upon a camel and your courage?

I first knew of you in my dreams, mere feelings in an ocean of feelings; And yet, before you had been conceived, I had walked with your soul through the streets of Babylon; I knew you a hundred lifetimes before the Towers fell beneath the wait of our folly;

When the world was still green and young, when our whole life was nothing but fireflies and honeysuckle; When the height of a summer's day gave us hope for the people; That old shaman, hy heart, bid me hasten unto you, and your quiet peace;

I met you in the robes of a ***** on the road to damascus; my soul broken, my heart tired, my faith nearly a dead thing, you brought me back from despair.

I have seen you die a hundred deaths in the name of love,
each one taking a little more of you,
  tightening the chains woven round your heart.

Your eyes close when your lover wounds you,
wishing for the sweet release,
  as he slips the blade between your ribs.

You never die from these wounds of love,
though you wish it often enough,
  but wishing does not make it so.

Your lover pours honey into this great hole he has made in you,
and you taste this nectar and blood,
  and then you let him take you.

I have seen you sacrifice yourself to the god Janus,
though in your  honest defense,
  you believed him to be Adonis.

Forgive me for hurting you now,
though I swear forever,
  you will never ******* blade.

Your love strikes you down so terribly,
not because it is it's nature,
  but because it is not love.

So many ounces of pain,
and so many ounces of pleasure,
  these form the chains that bind you.

But it is not love.

I am afraid of what my hands may write
   I’m not sure why….
most likely something to do with not wanting to hurt anything innocent
   but I suppose we all fail at that endeavor.

Fragile, beautiful things come into our hands and we break them,
   not purposefully, desiring not to **** a lovely thing…
but we can’t seem to help it,
    can’t seem to help hurting people we love.

It ought to have been different, no one should be made to laugh at their own dreams…

I don’t want to write anymore; I want the peace of sleep.
   But I have to write…to keep my soul from dying, I have to write…..
but the only person I want to say anything to doesn’t hear me.
    No matter how absurd the situation appears,
the emotions that we feel are all we have that keeps us alive.

Oceans separate people from each other….
    oceans that even psychonauts are loath to attempt a crossing of.
Anyone who ever believed in anything knows this:
   things ought to have been different….

But people can’t think about things like this all time;
  people aren’t able to go through all of the ******* that encompasses modern life while contemplating the mysteries of human experience.
   And when things get too complicated we run away…

We fear what we don’t understand,
   and I am afraid of you.
No one had ever turned me inside out like you.
No one has ever managed to cut through the crap and shake me to the core….
   except you….

But there’s no time to focus on that,
  there’s no time to focus on one another when the whole world is imposing itself on you.
How can we possibly be expected to delve into people’s souls
  when our mortgage is due eh?

Why should we have to feel the need to love someone
while having to maintain one’s sanity in order to survive?
Since isn’t that what love is…a kind of insanity;
  the kind of insanity where one’s ego is completely swept away.

Freud never loved…
  never could form the concept of ego death
into a beautiful thing…

Certain things will never be spoken aloud by me,
  only written of….
because I too am enslaved against my will by fear of the unknown….

In the silence before the creation of existence……what God there may be spoke of all that may come to pass……..and this is what I now come to realize…….this great and terrible abyss opens up before me, beckons me to take the plunge into ethereal life yet death at once different and the same…….free association writing that I haven’t been able to stop flowing through my fractured skull since that one day when you and I composed some kind of insanity at 3 o’clock in the morning high as hell and drunk as ****…..I can’t stop to take stock of what I have written here today, right now……lest the demons of forgetfulness come to steal the words away…..the rhythm of the universe cries out in one ALMIGHTY voice “remember”…….what am I to say to the memories we share……shall I embrace the crazy ambivalent yet gruesome life you offer me…..here, now, listening to Tool whilst William Blake weeps in the corner beside me, weeps at the folly of the search for truth and meaning in such a dark and lonely place as this godforsaken desert of a planet……though what Blake knows not in his head, his poet’s heart has known from the beginning……WE CREATE OUR OWN ******* MEANING…….just because we are lied to from birth, just because we are made to believe that if only we follow the rules and vote republican, that everything’ll be all pizza and ******* (to quote Don Cheadle), just because we realize this lie does not mean that we must submit to the tyranny of lost souls and pens of insignificant blabbering about god and morality and some such nonsense about politics…….there is NOTHING…….save the world we create for ourselves….within ourselves…..like that Talmudic script of wisdom……”we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”……for what dark god must we sacrifice ourselves to somehow save ourselves or some such ******* that doesn’t make any sense except to say that the death of the self somehow equals salvation……I’ve lost the stream now…..wait it returns, the Fates return with the Muses to give me the strength to say what must be said in these times of trial and tribulation…..I am the Hanged Man, questing irrevocably onward in search of my own metaphor of a Dark Tower…..If only Stephen King would know what kind of an impact he would have on me……if only you knew what kind of an impact you would have on me…..you who tempted me to remove my Iron Mask because no matter how burned and deformed my soul may be, you prefer it to a lie………and that’s what I have done, unto others as was done to me…..I LIED…..I lied to protect myself from all that I thought could destroy me……but once upon a time, in the darkest pit of despair I had ever thrown myself into, when I had not God nor Love nor Belief to turn to for aid or succor I chose to continue existing simply out of spite……the knowledge of life within death sprung from some unknown source within myself, or perhaps Jung’s collective unconscious, or maybe even the Soul of the Universe…….I once thought that the Truth didn’t matter because if one has enough power the truth becomes irrelevant and only what people think is true matters….BUT YOU, YOU WHO BOW TO NO MAN SHOWED ME A DIFFERENT PATH, A PATH OF TRUTH WITHIN THYSELF……….William Blake lifts his head and stares at me after this glorious revelation…..he has come back from his own plunge and brings his own knowledge, his own take on truth…….I am tired now, but I must not stop, I cannot stop, because I have more to say, so much more to say, as do we all……I couldn’t muster the epic courage necessary to tell you what I feel I must tell you….much more than a simple drunken I Love You of a text message…..anyone can say that…..but ONLY I can say that I have know my first untroubled sleep in many years while in the same bed with you….you asked me if you could touch me and you said I was soft….you said I would be soft….I am soft of skin, though not of protection…..I am just as soft within my heart for you as my skin is without……we did nothing but look at each other and I was content within myself…..for just the short time we were there…..AND THEN CAME THE INHUMAN ANGER AT THE THOUGHT OF ANYTHING CAUSING SOMETHING SO BEAUTIFUL OF SOUL AND BODY HARM……….thus why I hate fascism and communism and totalitarianism and theocracy and all that would seek to destroy the world of drugs and punk and freedom that I have come to love with such a fiery passion because it has liberated me from the chains of resistance within conformity…..because of you…..I AM FREE.