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Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
blessed are the fools
who call themselves fools
for others will call them wise

blessed are those who cry out to the world with stammering tongues
crouching aching and sweating
over endless lines of gibberish that fall like drum beats from the tips of their frantic pens
for they will be called Earnest

blessed are the ones who suffer withdrawals
dope-sick
shaking and sweating
desperate for a drink or a fix
for I will make them High indeed!

blessed are the ****** “deviants”
cast away by the “holy” as unclean
for they know that no man or woman may call unclean
anything that God has declared clean

Blessed are those who shake their fists in rage
at the heavens, cursing them
for they will dance in the pouring rain
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2015
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
this four-cornered cave, i’ve been calling my home
the sun has dried up
and left bleached like a bone

this bone i’ve been living in, like an old woman’s shoe
but i have no children
and i have nothing to do

this deed that i’ve done, it has been done for me
but I was condemned
and condemned to be free

this freedom is nothing, not like freedom at all
i sit staring at shadows
shadows play on the walls
Written by Justin Aptaker, 2006
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
i was told
last night, by a woman
whose life was passing her by
that the card in my hand
indicated that i was to be reborn

now i sit
with ink from a borrowed pen
that i borrowed from a friend
who also gave me his food
as America was passing us by

and i
so long to express this lovely isolation
we are the light
of a single star
and no star
is ever very far
from my single thoughts
they touch
every one

i am
so many colors
when i divide myself
in the water that falls
poured by a man
with no plans at all
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2010 - 2011
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
momentary clarity
seeing i’m human after all
grandeur drowned in mortality
i am all totality

i’m nothing at all
yes, feeling small
the largest of feelings
the hardest for telling

foretelling my futures
complexity looming
chaos consuming
hope always blooming

at the last minute
not done till i’m finished
never give up the ghost
just because you’ve lost hope

over the horizon
fixing my eyes again
flesh spirit battle weary
soul, hold me, onward dreary

love, you’re a mystery
a curse and a gift to me
the wind that keeps lifting me
the waves always drifting me

connected to feeling
in body, in realness
ethereal madness
fading some, can i grasp this

can you grasp?
i don’t ask this
my last breath, my life passed then
never to ask when
in an age, in an afternoon

breath fleeting leaving soon
inspiration the gentle moon
good night sweetly gripping me
i am all totality
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2016 - 2017
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
Beneath your vast oceans of sky
i trembled in wonder
And the veil was torn asunder
And for a time, standing still
I could see: oh, all my blindness to reality

The gears clanged together, shifting again
I was in the world of other men
And everything seemed so pretend
And even then
just when

I felt crushed to the crumbling, time would flow
Your oceans of time move fast, then slow
The currents in our minds that drift and blow
Listless so

Like our ego and spirit kaleidoscopes
Today we’re high, tomorrow
Low
And time, and time just seems to go,
And all the while we know
We know

That when we bid our loves farewell
Time can be our only hell
Time, on which our minds will dwell
Wasted years, and love grown pale
Life is never our story to tell
I don’t want to end this not so well
These lines are not my story to tell
They rush from under your waves who swell
And creatures beneath the deep who dwell
My spirit is stretched in the wind, my sail

Walk between worlds I know so well
Knew so well, unfamiliar now
Revolving doors to worlds abound
And feet never can stay on the ground
Not forever

Nothing is
Nothing could have been, or could ever be
Nothing at all, no, nothing should be
How could anything ever be? I shake my head in agony
Discarding others’ philosophy

That’s the glory!
Nothing compels to tell this story
Nothing, the natural state of things
From which something pure and holy sings
From which life and love and beauty spring
From which all this sorrow and suffering

From which come these broken and holy rhymes
And discords, and tempos
And faltering times
And wars and egos the size of dimes
That yet tread down the earth
Like Jehovas, endless lines

I cannot
My ego press on
My spirit stretched thin
I cannot
I cannot begin again

I can’t begin to make you see
I can’t begin, for even me
I can’t
I can’t
Not I
Not I
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2016
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
tomorrow’s a new day
when
this
night

Will be forgotten
And
the light

and the might
of the eager armies
surging to war

we’ll have forgotten
what the fight had been for

and the wind whispers peaceful death
over grass reaching for height
and the moon in the morning sky
and the silver-hot fright

which the living things move by
driven to flight

when the quickening pulse
and the mood is just right
when the life-shedding earth snake
pulls my skin around tight

i will cling to the new grass
Like the cold morning frost
i will sing to the very last
i will sing very lost

Like the song of the deep sea
Like the howl of the stray dog
who scours the night streets
outlined in the dense fog

when the earth overturns itself
yet again as it always does
when the ends of the universe
touch me, soft like my mother’s blood

i will change in the darkness
like a lady *******
i will cast in my fury
every trapping and dressing

I will rage in the silent storm
I will find peace at last
I will blaze across eons
I will lie in the grass
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2009 - 2011
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
the stars are lying
between layers of ether and projected purpose
burdened with grandiose plans to toy with the dust bunnies that blow
everywhere like tumbleweeds
in a western flick just before final showdown
the outcome depends on an angry Matryoshka doll of endless ecosystems

remember that perfect silence fell on our history like a shadow, guillotine-sharp
cutting out any tongue that would retell the fable of Hiroshima
reborn, She was immaculately misconceived as the unwanted child of a firefly
and a street sweeper
while in correlation a pin crashed to the floor of a factory somewhere
in the boondocks of Babylon

i mention this in riddles, not to mislead, but hoping to preserve my own
slimy muscle tucked safely in its bacteria-laden skull, where it burns white and blue
to taste, and somehow amoeba all things sensual into itself
sweet water, salt and iron

for no reason i riddle on alone
as plain discourse will not prove to be any more terrible for me in a day
my tongue, the unstable centerpiece of all things volatile
will prove to be its own undoing, not needing a blade to mute it
its white glow will one day implode to expand in an instant of recklessness
which vaporizes tongue before skull
to at once spray my organic-wet thoughts through every quantum nook of the known universe
and parallel, to finally satisfy my undiscerning palate with the rich, heavy taste
of every decomposing delicacy that truth grows in

the gods are afraid
of what we might become if we could lay hold of their winged heels
or learn to outrun their surest arrows and fastest dogs
if we were to stop dangling mouth-first by their ******* threads
as if our very existence was the carrot

the ascendant, sun of morning reduced to earth
he looks up with such longing, where his trusty dog still sits and stays
not returning his gaze, but having every appearance of doing so
the black paper sky splashed with white ink, folded in half, and unfolded again
we stare on and on
and project all of our unconscious into something meaningless
and create our story

a freudian chuckle rumbles in every thunderclap, while we lie
on riverbeds like cold sofas, pondering our lives and our futures, while we feed
every kind of fish and scavenger--a mock eucharist which moves molecules
as above so below to the universal singularity
in the redundant shape of a figure eight

self-emaciation, a violent circumcision that cleanses like soap
discarding the fat which no machine needs for survival
like Howard Hughes i scrub until every bone is bare and bloodstained
empty, i step into the holy of holies afraid that i must die again
forgetting everything, i begin to slide
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2006
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