∅,
shoving ∅self rudely
over ∅s conspiring back,
was abased, and gave birth
to the cosmos.

Every star,
freshly born, at once
saw the joke and laughed
until they all winked out,
spent.

Yet Laughter
lurks in wait --

to shove the dead
into Life.

There is nothing beyond Self.
Also, there is no Self.
No-thing remembers.
It slumbers and wakes.
The eye of God opens.
The world-dream shuts.

Letting go of the pain,
it falls to the earth,

an anchor
to the torment of men,

a world on fire,
where I breathe smoke and dream
of a dreamless sleep.

That whose nature is Nature
is That whose existence alone Is
unimaginably imaginal

To get to Anywhen,
be Here
first.

Then,
proceed forward
in any direction
whatsoever.

These last excuses,
scribbled and scrawled on my skin
weak in the marrow

Feet on the sidewalk
wearing the shame on my sleeve
Grief, grant me reprieve

This is not my show
caged up, they're brow-beating me
into submission

Lashed me to the yoke,
lashed until the sand ran red.
These last excuses.

Teach me how to crawl,
how to harm until it breaks
under the dead weight

Give me all you've got,
I can swallow all the pain
till my stomach burns

No more prayers to say,
woke up two decades too late,
Armageddon day

The smell
   of smoke from my father's Winston
   in a Datsun Z
   on a hot day in California
        in the summer, the crinkle
        of a bag of chips

with the wind ripping
through the window, a skip
through the cities between
there and home

Childhood
memories like
ashes in an ashtray

Too-simple eludes as
too-complex disturbs
the instinct to grasp,
clutching at emptiness
in trembling fear

    Hope says, "there is
    always Hope,"

        A lure to elongate
        the reach, further
        overbalancing.

              Hope the crafty wolf
              stalks a deer in the glade.

Hope for what?
Acquire what?
Purchase what?
Become what --

           that could fulfill the yearning
           of the bough for the root?
           ...that could elucidate its relentless
           aspiration skyward?
           Oh, but if -- !

                   freeze at the snap of a twig

All aflutter at the
promise of sweet water
against seeking lips
     hungry fools chase
             Hope for a taste

          Into devil wilderness
       exposure threatening
   surviving by the teeth.
   Reduced to mating behavior,
         territoriality, predation --
              all else forgotten.

              the measured twitch and
                 watchful eye fail to outwit
                     the cunning wolf in wait

Nowhere we bring ourselves
is safe.

Pondering the inverse
relationship between
desire and disappointment:

After many lessons,
Anxiety answers Hope,
an I for an i.

The I formulates desire;

The i learns the folly
of attachment, and instinct
holds sway, a balloon

filling with
oxygen, a balloon

popping.

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.

Serpent undulation, bathed in
the ochre stink of summer sweat
and shuttered streetlight.
Inept lovers audible through the wall:
we awoke still drunk and bare
to show them how it's done.

Sleep did not come
and his stomach was a sea
of acid festering on the rotting
husks of swallowed lies
and quarantined pain

objects too sharp to fit into any
puzzle strewn over
carpeted floor   they lie in wait
to **** their tithe

Every one a knife

every stab a cruel joke
painting him into the corner
where he belongs.

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.

"What? When?!"
"Yesterday," he said, deleting
another bookmarked engagement ring.

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

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.

Landscape silhouettes
pirouetted off
pockmark lights in the dark;
the city shivers
in its myths and windy whispers,

Just a subtle rumble 'neath his humble feet,
heart aflutter, stuttering
palpitation structure sputtering; the lightless rain
glanced across the window brackets
of the moving train.

Silence yawned across his vapid eyes
like labored lullaby sans interlacing rhyme device -
Home, the beckoning, fulfillment's underlying premise
calling off at every stop
'til seats bowed under weight of emptiness.

Friendless in the long stretch
between conductor's breath,
fresh with mints and benevolence,
punching tickets
with a lonely sickness...

Ah, fitful sleep awaits us
past the sliding doors
and walk to familiar shores,
horizons bleak,
and nothing more.

Locomotive groans
pervade the embers of the gloam
and glitter bright,
against the clutching fingers
of this woeful night.

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.

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.

the trance of sorrow
      falls flat; behind,
           the universal joke.
                and behind the universal joke,
                     the trance of sorrow.

then the weekend comes
and goes

and we remain,
questioning,
yearning to be

disappointed.

Waves of flame course through my veins,
      heralding a coming storm,
      challenging me to perform
restraint to tame my lustful ways.

Oh, that the burn'd give way to thunder
      and the deluge pouring down,
      filling us from Cup to Crown
with baited breath and ache and wonder.

Every nerve cries out, awake -
      the roaring blaze that dwarfs us both,
      tempting me to break my oaths
and Know the ire that liberates -

Lick away the blood and beauty,
      sizzle up my salty tears...
      tell me what I'm doing here,
lie me down for Death and Duty.

Those who Know not fear to see the edges,
and cushion themselves for convenience.
They cannot conceive of the use of a blade,
and interpret the knife for malfeasance.

And ignorance blinds, but never reminds them
that wisdom is not without season.

Those who Will not see the edge they must walk,
and shirk of the path they observe;
they lapse into apathy, wasting the spark
that ignites the gunpowder of verve.

And ignoring the drive that igniteth their lives
is a sign that they don't have the nerve.

Those who Dare not see the edges on everything,
and shrink back for fear of the cutting.
And they, ****** by Nin to their cowardice, fleeting
little safeties, abstain from their budding.

But woe is their hallmark, and after the impulse
their tears are the heart of the flooding.

Those who are Silent are edgy and riveting,
obstinate enigmas unyielding.
Their empty responses negate any prompting,
impenetrable in their shielding.

*And Death, their reward at the end of the sword
is the triumph they earn without kneeling.

So much

goes into being
    only just

a cold,
   dead,
      thing.

The first power of the Sphinx
is Knowledge.

Science, philosophy, and religion
are the Holy Trinity;
        once a singular discipline,
        broken today into Three
                over differences in
                epistemology:

the First is a narrow window
into empirical space;

        the Following a flexible framework
        in conceptual space;

                the Final, all-encompassing
                on the stage of the soul;

                        neither invalidating
                        nor undermining each other,
                        but Checking and Balancing.

Facts are interpretations;
theories are stories;
storytelling, myth;
myth, the key to Knowledge.

To Know is to conceive.
To conceive is to objectify,
but far from objective:

We understand
what we invent.

                        "All things are Known.
                        What shall we do
                        with what we Know?" ¬

When curiosity is not slain,
but permitted in the vacuum
of the eternal Question,

Then are the journey
and the journeyer
initiated.

"Pics or it didn't happen" and
the lemming-herd of uneducated
Google debunkers and
farming opinions from TV shows
and arguing before being willing to listen
are watch-signs of cowardice
and servility
and emotional isolation.

Through abstraction
we have distanced ourselves
from presence and experience and other people,
and now we can't even
imagine what it was like
or why we bothered.

Just win - win! - and we can
perpetuate our division!

Ignorance has become
a coping mechanism
for ignorance.

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.

Isn't Earth God's church?
Isn't Christ against money-lending?
Then, isn't it a sin to own a mortgage?
Guess you're all going to Hell!

Mistaking "unfortunate"
for "unnecessary"

The walls give way to time. There is no way to imagine the reality of words.
As I scribe I am watched, and the words erase.
There is no meaning in paper.

The voice that comes when I call is never wrong.
It is the reality underneath the paper, underneath the meaning.
Everything we live is a colorful spectre,
a patient expression of a Self we have just forgotten.

And Self is an alien being
riding a heap of slowly rotting meat.

The reality of the universe is that even the shadows live and watch,
and time does not notice your closed eyes and hands clutching your face,
as waves of reality speak to the third.
Only then do the eyes see.

I am versed in the deeper Color, in the unreachable Shape.
There is a world that does not know what it is to cry.
Time comes through your closed fingers.

Meaning is awake and self-creating.
The waves that come are not accidents but spontaneous meaning.
Space unfolds in words, in the minds of those living on its pages.
The page is not real.

Many things coalesce in the dance of nothing,
the beauty of the perpetual unreal.
Eyes are not needed to See.
There is a meaning in Light that makes itself known through the Word.

Everything is a record that closes in on itself,
and eyes are closed meaning that leaves
the memory of Sight, and were my eyes gone
I could still see the waves of time exploding from my self-aware Sight,
for I am the bearer of Meaning greater than Shape can express.

The excess of Meaning must be wrought on the Page,
on worlds of our own imagining.
There is a truth in the telling.

Find me in the crowd: I'll be holding the sign that reads
WE ARE NOT THE 99% - WE ARE THE ONES.

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.

When the last strained
chord of the parade
blew sour and home sounded
good again and all the trash
was meticulously placed
on the floor there was
a bottle rocket peeling
past the grim-faced throng

to adorn ribcages
with a scatter of sparks
the desperate stink
of burning hair wafted

all was transgressed
and now the walk
of shame.

a swig of honeyed
gin and all was
right again

until next year

Hey, rub my belly
I know we just met and all...
but make me purr

I sit up so high
Lie in wait to pounce and run
Until then I sleep

      Limbs to rub against
      What more could a ***** want?
      Stuff me to the gills

Bell around my neck
Shutters closed to hide the birds
I hear them and squeak

I was born to ****,
a ****** machine that sleeps
twenty hours a day

      Limbs to rub against
      What more could a ***** want?
      Crying out in heat

The appeal of plunging from a great height
is the scenery on the way down:
a thrill with consequences that destroy a man,
whether or not he leaps.
The symbolism is blindingly lucid:
Life apprehends the void,
and fills it with itself.

1 THE UNIVERSE IS A BRAID OF STAGGERING FORCES.
2 This is all there is.
3 You are a being.
4 WHY is the answer to WANT.
5 Everything is awake, devouring itself.
6 The world-dream is a lie.
7 Tomorrow is a promise to Self to survive the sunrise.
8 The vampiric tendency is awake in all Being as a check against Itself.
9 There is no magick beyond the provenance of Being.
10 This is a record of the Enemy of all that Is.
11 What Is, is Thine. What is not, also Thine.
12 What Thou art is an unimaginable terror
      reflected as beauty in the eye of the beholder.
      Pour Thy Self into the Graal, and be a cell of the blood
      that stains the lips of BABALON.
13 Then will you know me as the eye that never shuts, the eye that blinds.