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Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
Money protect Me, for i am of money
Power protect all your children who love You
may it be always, that we remain one
till’ all accounts settle, and we transform into none

passion for poem, wanton weakness in words
I am nothing
like anything
you think you have heard
chaos of rough draft
order adds on each edit
I give bread, and give breath, and you give me no credit

my father, my father, tell me why did you leave me?
the lust of a dust castle
seduced, she bereaved me
she robbed me of every singed hair, I remember
she left through the cold chimney late in December

I struggled to speak, in a world without ears
I sought long for weeping, but never found tears
I the day, I the night
I am time before years
I the moon
I the sun
I your most hopeful fear

Me is not I, unless words could deceive us
my bitterness feeds on the truth that you leave us
you leave and have left, and are leaving again
Me equals Us, and you leave us my friend

not leaving or coming, see
I’ve all come and left
I have no where to go, I have no where to nest
no bed and no pillow
no blanket or tree
you refuse to accept that my rest is with me

don’t tease me
or mock, with your promise of wages
you, the dumb-deaf demise of our weak-minded sages
you, insisting we work seven days of the week
you leave my hand empty and return me to the streets

it is for want of a road
you must sleep in the streets
I offer you rest, but you are always asleep
I ask you to walk
Your sun crumbled your feet
I ask you to walk
so you severed your wings
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
come now
i welcome you
and as the sign of my invitation
i’ll smear some of my blood over my thoughts
before i write them down

come burning
like the ember at the end of my cigarette
which i burn ritualistically
like a sacrifice for sin

come, i’ll slay swine and serpents
to lay out for you
forgive me, it is all i have to give
but i understand that it is the sincerity of the giving
and not the gift
which you desire

and for your thirst
i’ll give a bitter gall
that is all
i have, for your thirst or for mine

but come
come in time
i pine
away
like every day
you ever made

i ask for no angels to herald your arrival
lest wiser men arrive
and present you with better gifts
than i can afford

come Lord
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
awake now!
Recite!
Write it down, letter by letter
the house of Holy is being built
brick by brick, letter by letter, gem by gem

my Spirit approached me by night
with a vision of gladness
a triumphant tiding
born on a warm and powerful wind in the dead of winter

Say, “It is finished”
Say, “The city has fallen!”
Say, “Come away with me, my love. Come away, and taste not of her poison delicacies”

as in a dream, I watched
while a mad-woman
a maenad
ran through every street and back alley
a lunatic
possessed by the moonlight
holding in her left hand
a magic wand that she had retrieved
from a children’s magic kit
a plastic wand

and everywhere she ran
she swung her wand
pointing at each and every thing
and shouting

HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!
Holy, the cobblestones of the street! Shining in the moonlight!
Swinging her wand and pointing up
HOLY the dark clouds which move to block the moonlight
and move away again to reveal!

Swinging and shrieking and crying
HOLY! HOLY!
Pointing the wand at the gawking passerby
who stopped to stare, clutching their children tightly to guard them from her madness
HOLY the skeptics, the blind, and the deaf! For they shall see! They shall hear!
Holy your children, whom you shall not keep from me!
They will follow me through the streets, singing and dancing to my merry tunes!

Holy the children, for they believe in magic wands of plastic
Holy the plastic, no less than the gold with which you adorn your temples!

Holy the darkness, which falls over your land!
And with those words
the Lady flung her arm
pointing her wand at the moon itself
which turned red-black
like congealed blood over a wound
and darkness fell over the cobblestones in the streets

and panic fell in the hearts of the passerby
because the light was gone
and screaming terrified, they tried to drag their children with them back inside their homes
where the cold hum of electricity kept the incandescent status quo glowing from the ceilings

but the children would have none of it
the Lady had begun to dance under the darkened moon
through the black streets
singing a merry tune (holy holy holy)
and the children each broke free from the terrified death-grips of their parents
and danced behind Her
into the streets
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
death calls
every heartbeat by name
making each one the same

this is your life
this is your life
this is your life
this is your life

the metronome, calling me home, ticking away, fading the day
life can be so melodramatic
like watching static
with the volume on mute
and your mind on mute, numbed by the gentle static hiss of your own personal hell
and the waves that swell
the remains of life-forms onto endless beaches of time

all time is mine
all time is mind

i look out by night
at the vast ocean of Being
and the sand, as it slips in my hands
is not made for my counting
infinity is not comforting

i smell salt
sitting on the naked earth, i draw from a vast reservoir
a deep well
hoping that maybe if i bury my head
under the beachy sand
i will escape the tide by becoming one with the earth and the stars

i try to write perfect words
with the absurd feeling that if i get them right
they will work like a spell
that shatters reality itself
and places me somewhere else
where things were right the first time

after all, we cast reality with words
and all of our pictures come to life
and all of life is our pictures
and words are our entire reality
so we must not be saying the right words, thinking the right words
no one taught us the right words, we don’t have the faculty for those kinds of words

silence and sleep
thoughts of the deep
give no rest for me
they reek of the sleep i dread to sleep
i make noise so that the universe must keep listening
i banish sleep because a white gangrene is glistening
where the worm never dies
and the smokes always rise, blotting the skies

are we the children of Cain? cursed from the face of the earth
is it because of ****** in my heart
that i am marked to die?

we stand shivering outside, in chains and shackles, all in a line
with brothers and sisters in front and behind
and every so often (we never know when)
our captors pluck one of us out of the line
and none of us can stop it
and we are forced to watch it
while they stand our mothers and fathers against the wall
and open fire, but not at heart or head
on stomachs and bowels instead
so our loved ones expire slowly, writhing on the cold dirt
pleading eyes upturned
begging our love to save them
but we can only wait our own turn

it seems that no Mind would dream up such a dream
and give it as Life
to its very offspring

i tremble to blaspheme
but i am questioning
doubting

whether Love has ever tread these tangled paths at all
whether Life ever begot life
whether we are not in fact just the spectacular fireworks
of passion and sorrow
that the universe has cooked up with
its chemical sorceries

which paint once the sky
for an instant in time

Father! Father!
do you even remember the name that you gave me?
do you remember the night you pulled me violently from my resting place
where it was dark and warm and secure?
and you cast me into a cold, hollow womb that continually miscarries
and i was born in a tomb
too soon?

it was winter
do you remember?

the dying of embers
O, wanton December!
Who pierced me with sorrows
and gave me tommorows
but stole all my todays


i inquire into the science
of infinite gaps
of gaping synapse

i investigate the substance of Being
poking at it from every angle
demanding that it yeild fruits fit for our consumption
that it justify itself

must i remind you
that i never asked to be here
and i never consented
to this form or this figure
riddled with cancers

i am the eternal thought
thinking itself
watching with terrified attatchment
these bodies which i inhabit

my haunts, my accostomed places
my ethos, my habits
my character, a socially constructed facade
my self, ever putting itself
into the eyes of others, looking on itself
imagining itself playing the roles
of each of the other children in the schoolyard


but at last, the primitive state of nature overtakes me
i’m going to sleep now, do not awaken me
and when i awake, Love will wake again with me
and all the smoldering, dying wreckage of this day will forsake me

ah, i remember now, the sound of Love, walking in the cool of the garden
when each day seemed to stretch on forever
and the night was full of magic
the infinite gaps can only be scaled
in the space of one instant, no more and no less

working its way back through every other instant
time, since it is a function of mind, is also subject to language
i stand back from the bodies of the dead i inhabit
i am the universal singularity, the one thought
throbbing and pulsing in the ****** heights before explosive creation
i
howl
the body electric
and rise, ******* over Moloch
whose mind is pure machinery
and whose children drown in their insanity

with a cold and broken hallelujah
i hymn the blessed race immortal
and rend the fabric of reality from top to bottom
entering in the place most holy
and die, writhing on the warm, welcoming earth
the place of my birth
the place of my hearth, where the embers glow and spark

December has now heard a lark
Hades, required to return to her mother
the goddess he has stolen for a season
and the Bird rises wreathed
in flame from the ashes
baptizing the Forms of our collective unconscious
with the blessed and holy power of life

and coming to life, all of our pictures bring us to life with them!

*

one can not blaspheme what is not
for one can not think of it
look again at what Love gave us
in the space of an instant, which extends on forever
since time and space alike are a construct of our symbolic processes

i pull out my tabula rasa
i am written on the tabula rasa
all is white on the tabula rasa
all is white
all is white

the waves now are dragging me in
to the ocean without beginning or end
and the depths are alive with the wind
of warm currents and of births and of sand
and death would appear now a friend
leading me in by the hand
calling me into the land

Love is life
Love’s alive
Love is death

Death calls
Written ca. 2011
Justin Aptaker Jul 2019
worlds within
and without are all waning
insatiable
chaos
vacuum
the void
which sat between heavens
heavens splitting the waters
the waters, the weeds
create living geometries

etch-a-sketch drawings
of silent mandalas

now the dreamweaver
lotus
now the lucid unwaking ones
who appear at your bedside
disdaining your closet

while you lie
awake
sleeping
hypnogogically paralyzed
their eyes burning green
freeze your skies
red
as

Christ
comes

you
trapped in misogamy
you
flying through tattered air
you
****** off this oxygen
burned by the stare
of a mirror
Written ca. 2006
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
i insist on suffocating slowly
still
    i refuse to die
    imposing my will to weakness
    avoiding applying the "why"

implications are closing in, oppressive
my mind is open, fluid
suggestive
interposing meaning and form with
    the spoken and written letter

the light source filtered through all this
            wreckage
  the squeaking moving in, oppressive
  regressive, the way my vantage remains
a disjointed unit-whole

you persist, and i suffocate quickly
you ask so nicely for me to die
deposing my God ****** will to power
why do i seem to avoid the "apply"?

THE SYMBOL ON MY HAND IS BURNING

    into the flesh, and back out from inside
illuminates Prison, a chasm, a prism
dividing a spectrum of impossible light

we wholly refract the soma, the psyche
The Panic transforms into beauty inane
compulsion, obsession, redemption, addiction
we know we're alive    
                      we perpetuate pain
Written by Justin Aptaker, 2006
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
all together
with numbers and rulers we form
circles in playgrounds like schoolgirls

with jump ropes and all with short sing song rhymes
short, and now shorter, now shorter
like ozone

with long life hum whispers and all with eyes
like lacking
Written by Justin Aptaker, 2006
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
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
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