{i remember}

She comes to presence
in a great wave of grief
that has no bottom.

{water cannot swim}

Feeling the unbearable
weight of womanhood
tearing me open,
revealing my own sorrows.

{a channel of life}*

To be a gate of love and blood,
the flesh of desire,
bearer of all burdens,

was so traumatic I was reborn
in the body of a man.

While the globe crawls as
S L O W
as my bill is thin,
I've got places to go,
sunsets to chase
and mighty, invisible wings
to feed, so

              bring on the sugar water!

Feathers flickering furiously;
sweet Jesus!
where are my feet?
I am BUZZING through today,
routes as long as my tongue
repeated in an
unbroken line
thousands of times,

              hey, *******, you goon!
              That's MY nectar!
              Scram!

Planning my daily rounds,
relying on the donations
of fans who eye my turf war
with childish glee

              and I hope
              beyond hope to see
              pitcher after sweet pitcher
              waiting for me

Because neglect is starvation,
an end to the thrum
of tiny hearts.

Tolerance is a form of intolerance:
public acceptance, private disdain,
the pretense that humanity is one's to allow.

Acceptable operating parameters
are not to be defined by support,
and certainly not by a token indifference.

To tolerate is to glorify one's limits.
Feigning acceptance of the beyond,
true character remains just out of reach.

Better to hate openly and honestly
than veil it in the robes of community;
...better yet, see tolerance for what it isn't.

Taste of blood
lingering, flesh still
against the tongue.

Bound tight, the willing
neck in the noose
swallows.
All continuity
sprawls forth.

This Truth
we keep Secret
is the burden
of the throat.

The chase ends
when you stop running
from yourself.

All my life
is waves, expressed as rays,
phases, and cancellations...

...Waving by
and paving over
what I made in other ages

Undulating sway,
disrupting Self,
the Phrase, the Word, the Way --

Nameless, without
shape - within all shape -
all touch, all taste;

One expressed as Two:
compress, expand, repeat.
In balance, truth.

Lilting swells
that break in mind and water,
endless scintillation;

Every word as complex
as its counterpart,
unpatterned ocean;

All motion
the illusion of Desire,
the fire that burns to Rest...

...But only ever
simulates, for trough
but stimulates the crest;

When all my waves
have ceased and found their peace,
there ends my quest.

The blazing eye of Dawn is all to fools:
those who see the joy
in Light expressed as Light,
but brightness also graces Night.

Her veil parted, the black curtain
giving way to shades of blue and gold,
Her rapturous embrace inspiring eyes beholden.

Planted in Her garden, neighboring eaves
rustling in their trembling eagerness to share their leaves!

For in Her realm eternal, flawless
clay of earth and blade of grass
stretch forth to feel the loving light
of their supernal Goddess!

Her joy ran rampant through my boughs,
my swaying branches spreading wide
to grasp the rays of her horizon --

With love untainted as a child's, so boundless
as my selfless roots cried out to sing her praises soundless!

No dalliance ever felt before complete
until this blessed revelation -
this, Her holy emanation, warmed my heart,
annulled my restless reason:

She was every mother: deepest love
in understanding all that came of Her,
enclosing us within the circular.

*She beckoned but a moment by Her brilliance; best,
lest I uprooted trunk and earth to shade Her manifest.

We ****.

I brushed her hair just
the other day
and left stinging
handprints on her
eager flesh like she
loves.

Loved her in an
undertow of
blankets and throes,
fullness and
folds

until the drums
pounded in my
ears and
the adrenaline
burned.

On altars,
in tombs,
the sabbats,
esbats and
moons.

We slap
each other
     for fun;
     she listens
when I tell
her to
.

I'm sure you and
your mate do just
fine,
but

we **** better
than all of you
combined.

Closure invents a reason to let go;
that hoped-for last **** is
anything but

Life is cataclysmic.

Seizing an imagined moment
in a now that ends
before its beginning

signifies a slavery to transience
so complete and pervasive
that words heave and shudder
in its withering folly

Timeless puzzles are incompletable
by artifice; rather, resignation
to disparate pieces,

and identification with neither
the pieces that didn't fit,
nor those that did

The period does not
complete the sentence.

The sentence ends
when it is finished.

Pink blossoms falling,
warriors falling in kind;
Portland in springtime.

Hale, hearty hana
aloft on the vernal winds,
transient beauty.

Cut down in my prime,
someday, I, too, shall fall down,
fading into dirt.

Like my mother did,
and my father before me,
returning to dust.

Until then, I fight;
Until then, I carry on,
a blossom in Spring.

When mom was dying,
she felt like everything
she'd worked for
was gone.

She showed me Life
as Its steward
and Death
as Life's reward.

How to lean into
the unknowable
whether I want to
or not.

That our deeds,
carved meticulously into
the bedrock of Forever,
are immortal.

It becomes clearer
that our work
is not for us,
but for It.

This life
is service;
only what we give
is truly ours.

Stuck to an icy
   history of thought,
   the habitual web caught
the Fly in its enticing
   display of verbs
      that match the pattern:
      language is the matter,
   betraying ourselves with words.
   A tongue to its Work tied
      might make the spider
      think twice before biting;
   those venomous lies
we tell our Selves about
   helplessness and somedays
   victimization and blame,
empowering our self-doubt;

                    ∴

Devouring our might as writers,
    we have nothing if not pride;
      We take flight to the deepest parts
        of the universe of literature.
Neither nihilistic nor cynical,
    our linguistic is made of visuals.
      Verily we write with studious care,
        veracity a common trait we share:
We are an orchestra,
    a symphony of synchronised melody.
      Epiphanies emphasize tragedies
        that consume us repeatedly --
We seek to
    link our verses
      and feel deep connections
        when engulfed by depression

The error is
   somewhere between
                  the keyboard
                           and the chair

Youthful ignorance wishes
    that life meant something
    external

But nothing means anything
    to anyone until one gets
    involved

Meaning follows experience
    inexperience has no place
    demanding

Maturity destroys innocence
    self-indulgent egocentrism
    encourages

Failure to find deeper meaning
    is failure to build the bridges
    connecting

How convenient to blame life
    for meeting the low expectations
    we've sown

Means
"I am sausage"
in Spanish

To fit well
into this scheme,
my slice of hell --
my wasted dream.

Never fit
the social stencil --
messy colors,
lines in pencil.

Could not see
that I was strange,
nor feel free
within their cage.

On the fringes,
binary fear
oft impinges
upon the queer.

No context,
bridge, or adapter:
gender/***,
and person after.

Categories
supersede
humanity
in word and deed.

Life between
the lines, beyond
median, mean,
and mode is odd.

On the fringes,
binary fear
oft impinges
upon the queer.

My father said,
"I don't love you
unconditionally."

I heard,
"I'm not ready to love
unconditionally."

Success is
learning the things
he couldn't.

The hunt begins. The fur
of the white wolf
beckons me forth, along the trail
into the woods.

The smoke is the reminder of Her
initiatic journey.
The trap is set.

    She guides me into it.

Hope is a clever animal.

Doing unto others
as we do with ourselves,
we manipulate
and conceal.

Power -- poorly understood,
absent autognosia --
seeks gratification
and little else.

Bewitching
and unscrupulous
hypnotic pageantry
holding sway.

A visceral magick
used cavalierly
by vampires
on the hunt.

Rapt in the Promise
of continuity,
the world
watches on.

To-night is dark, so
  step lightly and carry
  a large lamp into
  the howling woods

Wisdom says run, run
  to dark caves and
  harrowing silences
  mirror the bottomless

The abyss, gazing
  headlong into itself,
  recoils in horror,
  shudders dis-eased

And only lamp-light,
  courage flick'ring
  in oppressive depth
  persists, defiant

A stain on un-becoming
  a trampler of stars
  peddler of filth
  who knows all the answers.

Five years old and they
   could not hear me in the backyard --
   I called out, the gate was locked and
  the screen door, mesh frayed at the handle,
  was locked too -- I could see it --
  and they still couldn't hear me and I
     was afraid and the mesh
     was frayed and my little finger
         just barely fit through and then
             aunt Lucy came and made sure
                 that I was punished.

(The reward for my fear was
the most frightening and humiliating
experience of my childhood)

                   I hid.

"Get out here!" my father yelled
and his voice made me flinch and
trembling I unhid.

       my uncle and aunt watched
as my father spanked me
harder and angrier than ever before,

       my uncle and aunt watched
the shock of every blow
reverberating
through my tiny body
                                    until

       my uncle and aunt watched
everything let go
and I ****** myself on the floor
in front of them

weeping and violated

I do not remember what was said after

they left the room and
I was alone with my shame
while the sun fell the walls
faded blue the ride home
was silent --

-- all over some torn mesh
      and doors they should not have locked.

"I'm so complicated!"
he said, exasperated.
But really,
he was too young
to understand himself.

Gitano yawned,
stretching out under
the shrine of Öli.

Here he plotted
and hid a mouthful
of secrets; and the Lord
watched over him
as he slept.

He plotted,
for coyote wisdom
is disguised by folly
and cunning
and guile.

All about, the vermilion
stain of Mars. The coyote
chuckled mischievously,
dreaming at the feet
of the Master and Judge.

Above,
a ziggurat raised
to the Goddess.

Two great black eagles
circled in a sky
of dry roses and lilacs.

La Santisima Muerte
stood at a distance,
yet bore Gitano
in Her *****.

His mischiefs were scribed
upon a cartouche
to amuse gods
and teach men;

Yet men are not
so easily taught
as gods are amused;

For men have not yet
learned to believe
what makes them laugh.

And so Gitano sleeps,
and talks while he sleeps;
wherefore the Ways
of mischief and trickery
were laid bare.

The secret is to teach
at the expense
of innocence.

Certain illusions persist;
they must be shattered,
but their thrall
can only be broken
by design.

Whether bitterness
takes root in the wake
of the shattering
is not Gitano's concern.

Because sometimes
realization can only come
through being made a fool,
revealed to ourselves
as absurd.

Angry at our own foolishness,
we blame the one
who denudes it.
The coyote, too, is a Fool.

A Fool can learn,
shaping destiny
by taking responsibility.
Through death a Fool
becomes wise,
seeing the joke.

The burden of karma
is left to those
who cannot laugh.

Man grits his teeth,
his brow furrowed.
He despairs.

Gitano chuckles,
unperturbed.

All history is Black history,
wrapped in the shadows of time,
obscured by secret purpose and motive.
The Mother of mankind is as black as night itself,
the rich earth as dark as the space between stars.
History IS Black, and a month barely begins
to scratch its near-inscrutable surface.

Dazzled by
the glamour of robber barons,
   a **** fetishist
      shills for feudal revival
         ambidextrously flogging
      bleach-white equestrian bones
   eventually dying
a looter's death.

The face is the soul's thumbprint,
the shape of character belying all lies;
subtle, compelling, and telling geometry:
face, the equation of I.

Behavior is ******;
   Bodies are *** objects.
      Persons are more than bodies.
   Sexuality neither invites,
nor licenses, violation.

The third power of the Sphinx
is Courage.

"Herein lies the great mystery of the empty throne." ∆
Giddy in the throes of realization,
        the Arbiter, imbued with needful action,
        takes a great, daring leap across the chasm
                into the implications of knowledge:
                This is It - the Puzzle that Fascinates Itself.
                
"You awoke in the Kingdom with eyes closed. In the beginning was the Trapezoid called Control." ∆

Borne by an umbilical Breath
to a lens too small to see Itself,
Buoyed by the lapping waves,
Reason wrought a waking sleep
of hallucinations, a sea of dreams
and possibilities to become;

        Memories too large
        to conceive by aught
        but the perennial story
        that swallows the narrator:

                "I see their entire lives in an instant,
                being devoured and loving and living
                in a world that does not realize
                it is already over." ‡

Courage is the Bearer of Truth.
Headlong into the open maw
heaves the gleeful Fool
and his glad Word.

        "The excess of Meaning must be wrought on the Page,
        on worlds of our own imagining." ∞

To Dare is to risk:
consequence the reward
fraught with baited hooks
to tether the Arbiter to Time.

The web of attachment
sprawls, an expansive net.

                "The web is infinite -
                those caught in it are beyond Number." †

                        Yet the spider is never
                        ensnared by its Art:
                        a master of the net,
                        a climber of the Tree.

                At the summit of its dizzying heights,
                the depth of the Fall overwhelms.
                        Responsibility follows.

                "Thou art That which resolves the frustum." ∆

Escaper of the Labyrinth,
Master of the Maze,
no longer merely Thou:
Dilation devours the Iris.

        "What speaks through You has Ordained it
        from the Beginning of Time,
        and only in harnessing it
        will you learn to devour your self
        totally." †

        "Then will you know me
        as the eye that never shuts,
        the eye that blinds." Ω

The way
(out)
is through.

Past and future daydreams
the delusions of
a present tense.

Unspeakable longing
fills every fissure
and pressure demands
the yielding of limits.

            (a dark torrent bursts forth)

      the shores will recede
      until the island is
      swallowed up by the sea

No survivors remain
when the tide, stemmed
for sakes external,
recapitulates the beachhead.

A great ache fills the land
with anguish, beckons
all beginnings to unite
with the end

      {the memory will fade
      to total silence
      beneath the roar of the waves}

Where wilderness waits
to interpose the tamed.

Dizzy, the rush
of thoughts incapacitate
synapses firing, neurons
    throttled, a crescendo
    of dendrites branching

Experience roots
inwardly, tearing the humus
           of pregnant dreams, scratching to see
                               the blood beneath the scab.

     The greater the itch, the greater
        the disturbance of sleep,
            bound by a tangle of vines,
            deafened by the cobbling-together
                of thrushspeak, the cry of clouds
                contorting into unthinkable
                     and suggestive shapes        

   Bleary-eyed, the lost wages
   of sleep gambled away
   on a ticking clock.

Quiescence:
The world yet to be;
change is imminent.

Excrescence:
The world as holistic;
change is traumatic.

Juvenescence:
The world as wondrous;
change is fascinating.

Adolescence:
The world as oppressive;
change is institutional.

Tumescence:
The world as idealized;
change is self-discovery.

Hyalescence:
The world as conceived;
change is forgotten.

Obsolescence:
The world as impossible;
change is unimaginable.

Senescence:
The world as finite;
change is death.

Obmutescence:
The world beyond conception;
change is māyā.

Latescence:
The world as a memory;
change is time.

Putrescence:
The world as continuous;
change is nature.

Rejuvenescence:
The world in utero;
change is birth.

Death affirms and is the term of life;
flesh and firmness, egg and *****, the means.
Breath interred within a Word and light,
deftly perched perpetually in-between:
born to discontinuous distraction,
borne through a contemptuous nadir;
     but in a moment, all's destroyed,
     and in the beauty of the void,
the helix and its hollow core appear.

Baphomet the emblem of Its power,
sacrament the reverence revealing
devilment to Wisdom yet to flower,
absent comprehension of Its meaning.
Pan personifies the All unbounded,
flouts the misconceptions of the seeing:
     Hermes the unmaskèd death,
     Aphrodite's basking cleft,
the androgyne transcends within its being.

O - not called "the little death" in jest,
Gnosis vaunted in the ebb of Lust,
though is Not, the know'r of Life and Death:
know that All It Is is what thou Wast,
Its continuity the end thou seekest
in contemplation, ***, and wist for death:
     Thanatos, eternal sleep,
     Eros, infinitely deep,
Generation poised to manifest.

Being Is;
Its nature is unity,
Light beyond light.
Being takes Form
in the Word: ॐ

        "There is a meaning in Light
        that makes Itself known
        through the Word." ∞

Word is a Symbol
that facilitates Idea.
Idea orders thought
into Belief -
which is to say,
possibilities.

Belief limits perception.
Desire potentiates perception.
Will sets perception in motion.

Thus,
the Universe,
and in reverse,
its destruction.