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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 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
every line bears this weight
clumsy truth, crucifix-like
and in bearing alone, they are born

up and sing
on the wings of those demons we've seemingly seen
to be
descending
one ladder inverted
where once Jacob had torn
down his alter
in anger, in the dry place where we left the vision
Written by Justin Aptaker, 2006
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
i am the man who weeps for the world
i am the man who weeps

i do not, I will not
bleed for the world
i’m not the one who bleeds

little sister, my love
do not dry your eyes on my account

i am a fleeting consolation

i have been
to the ends
of the world
i have seen
the great emptiness (it lies)
on the other side of that horizon
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2010 - 2011
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
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
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