On a Sunday evening, the hall started to fill up.
for one of the most influential leaders
young people, full of questions about the church they once loved
reassurance to challenge articles of faith without leaving faith behind
the preacher had come to speak out against what he called lies
eternal damnation might be misleading
Gandhi’s in hell? We have confirmation of this?
God wants all people to be saved. Does God get what God wants?
The leader had rejected Hell, thereby embracing heresy.
hoped to spark a movement
faith is best expressed in deeds, not words.
we have a winner.
I’m only going to say things that I know are true.
the future of the faith belongs to skeptics and doubters.
dreaming of a world without Hell, building Heaven on earth.
Jesus will come again, to judge the living and the dead.
We disagree about the nature of this judgment.
Hell was a divine penitentiary, Hell was the status quo.
Hell was a riot of mutations—a sick parody of the natural order.
Hell was the only fitting punishment for the crime of being born
Hell was a vivid symbol of an awesome, unreasonable God,
holding you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider
the doctrine of Hell doesn’t hamper recruitment efforts,
God is good enough to save you from it.
worry, instead, about eradicating the various hells on earth.
life beyond is a continuation of the choices we make here
God might offer salvation to dead people who failed to choose
-Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?
-Just picking  the verses I like? I think everybody is
free will means that human beings must have real choices,
judgment is God’s way of taking  human agency seriously.
choose between a personal Jesus and a perfect Bible,
some questions about the afterlife will have to wait until we get there
the mystery at the heart of creation
one more mildly spiritual Californian,
was a dissenter in Michigan.
Not a lifelong believer.

Incognizant of the excrement,
I'm the dozing tenant of advertised adversity.
I ignore the fact that the world now is like a toilet,
And I avoid it, I avoid it, I avoid it.

Boy, did you get exploited?
How could we know we're
No more than numerical exponents?
Can consolation prizes console him?
We're not aware of the ventriloquists
Or their true motives.

Popular perfume conceals
The stench from the load of,
Finite excrement that
The suited men sold us.
They told us that it would be beneficial,
Not an imposition on our self-image,
Pinocchio before he found
Out he was artificial.
Is the American Dream a reality?
Why did I hear a dissenter
Say it was superficial?

We must have missed something,
We see no issues.
Meanwhile, my Uncle Sam designated
You as the mental missile.


Originally written 5/25/11
Revised 10/15/14

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

Nimble foe you've taken plenty o' life,
Condemned spirits of right to disdainful strife,
And illness of absence at that of departed,
Wrongfully beseeched at what you'd started.
And here with these twigs, I abolish at once,
Unable to return to these lands for months,
And shall we meet again at the glimpse of eye,
Let it be known that thou be sentenced to die -
Employed upon you ever so swiftly,
And might you remember such last moments stiffly.

Here I warn you once, no more,
And command you away from this land you'd tore,
For your existence has given thee such shame,
It is all but you, you are to blame,
And for once might you realize in agony, in fame,
Your callous actions have set surefire to name,
Alas, may you conclude tis' not a game,
As you walk among a blaze, for you are the flame -
At once, which all, seize to burn out,
Shan't you menace and retort with incentive to spout,
Rejection, forevermore, your friendly bloom,
Yet now even disgust stay wretched in Moon;
So that one day might you seek to learn,
That dissenters hereby are condemned to burn.

kevin was 45 and a loser

his now deceased father
had been a man of money
rather than a man of patience
for his extrovert son
who had spent the first 18 years of his life
not lifting a finger

before being kicked out at 18

once he was on his own
the years went by and soon kevin
found himself single at the age  of 45,
impatience being his only inheritence

kevin could often be found at his desk
singing his favorite gin blossoms or offspring songs

he could also be found walking around the office
at other people desks,
or back at his desk asking me how to save microsoft office documents or how to spell certain words

kevin made daily announcements:
on monday, he was a writer
on tuesday, he was a non-conformist
on wednesday, he asked me if he could write a book about rock&roll
on thursday he announced that he had to take out a personal ad;
no one had a response for that

because a week or so later he was glad to be single and have no responsibilities or commitments to anyone

i can't remember what he said on friday,
but i do know that he spent his christmas break
battling  his 6 year old nephew

once kevin confided in me he was sick of trying to improve how things were done at work. he had a lot of ideas, but no assistant
to implement them. kevin was a collections agent who called customers about past due accounts.

another time he told me he was 20K in debt
because there was this girl
and all these uber rides he had to pay for

a learned man, he had been a poly-sci major
so you could often hear him loudly bellowing in the office
about Trump and Russia and how terribly wrong it all was

i always wanted to ask kevin
if he was lone courageous dissenter in seattle
during the 2012 presidential debates
when everyone was laughing at Mitt Romney
for saying Russia was America's greatest geopolitical threat

but I never did
because kevin was the kind of guy
that everyone felt sorry for

at first.

I am a creator,
a builder
a maker.

Bringing substance to the void,
brings me the greatest sense of joy.

A blank page.
A clean slate.
I draw out form,
and bring forth shape.

And I am a musician,
a lyrical magician.
The man.
The myth.
The mission.
My own unique rendition,
In every composition.
                                                                                  BUT
Can you identify my theory?
I'll be shocked if you're correct.
If this is sonic engineering,
then I'm a sonic architect.

And I am an inventor
A leader,
A dissenter,
A believer,
A protester,
A deceiver,
And a mentor,
A compatriot,
An apprentice,
A confederate,
An accomplice.

And I am a teller of stories,
of horrors, and of glories.
And I am a writer of tales,
of triumphs, and travails.

And I am a creator.
A builder.
A maker.
A musician and a writer.
Not a lover, nor a fighter,
Not a fixer,
Nor a breaker.
Not a giver,
Nor a taker.
                                                                                                  No.
I am a creator

They swore I’d be that girl
The pitiable dissenter, to whom
You would not dare confide your thoughts
Or allow one moment of your time

But I’ll leave a shadow in your heedless heart
A place I once called home
Where destiny was wrongly scribed
And cruelty ceaselessly presides    

On the dusty mantle, now shall sit
In this pale and vacant room
The portrait of a son, a life
Bartered for your vain delights

Enjoy the silence.

i rolled up the sleeves of  my sweater
and felt the impertinent nagging
of the cold frost in this winter weather
the need to stay warm diminished
this new sensation left my tingling skin satisfied
in the cold frost that too soon relinquished
gray haze consumed the sky
sunlight was no longer evident
this cold frost inundated all but one single cry
that cry was my own asking for a change
and in that very second
the cold frost turned into a heavy snow, spotting my arm like mange
the last of the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud
without even a last glance
i imbibed the cold frost as it never made my skin tingle so proud
my skin that longed for my clarion winter
to feel something new that was not warmth
thank you cold frost, my beautiful summer dissenter

Sender's search for grain
Demeter's semester of scintillation
Of silverware
On the table
Dining for two
The reflection in the knives
Too?
A lonelier glare keeps her
In the view of my stare
When I find the deer among dragons
In the spectral leer
Head-full of facile fantasy
Mead in her brown glass
Blue blood-bad blood
Broken heart
Doe running
Easier in than out
A sprightly dash
Like burgundy brings a smile
Her garbed lipstick
Full of vamped veritaserum
With a mindful of cultured curiosity
I filter out her secrets
In the question of ad quorum
Of my justice
That is my fiction
That is my end
Of my imagination
Harboring my death
In the clasping hands
Of winsome women with schemes
So lithe
Feeling solace
In nothing but a heartbreak
Love is the rose
You just got to
Let it grow

There is a new pale between
non conformists & conformists
erected by the latter in states
of medicinal apartheid where
the un-vaccinated are deemed
to be contaminated, we are the
later day lepers condemned to
social distancing by puritans.

The orator speaks as the masses run towards the flame. Not the light of knowledge, but the radiant beacon of ignorance. The masses embrace the false comfort of surrender as they bask in the light. Life is too hard and we must not think for ourselves. Release us from responsibility they cry, give us our desires and protect us as we give up bits of our freedom for false security. Many are mesurized by the hypnotic words of the Sphengali's that promise them everything, but deliver little. The fault of your life is too much freedom surrender and be at ease. To those who go willingly the dissenter are the obstacle that must be overcome. As the mass delusion carries the masses to their doom, some struggle against the light of ignorance, but in what seems a futile fight. The curtain begins to fall on freedom as democracy is replaced with lies. So goes the book of liberty as the chapter of the script of ignorance heralds the end of a story as freedom is closed out of the scene.

Once upon a time
In a distant land
Lived a king.

He was a bloodthirsty tyrant,
A lover of massacres,
Excited by war,
With a lust for fight.

Every day the axe fell
Upon the head of some dissenter,
Every night the body
Of some enemy
Dangled on the castle's walls.

He showed no mercy,
He felt no pain
In witnessing the horrors
Of his ****** rule.
War was his entertainment,
****** his joy.
He had no friends.
He knew
Only enemies and servants.

So this king
Once went to war,
With his knights
and his horsemen,
Aiming at a merciless victory.
His horse was the on of champions,
His sword the masterpiece of blades.
His shield was shiny and strong.

But he lost the war.

And then the enemy captured him
And put him in jail,
Almost naked, wound and fragile.

The tower he was in was cold,
The chains were tight,
His fate unsure.
Nothing was left of his glory.

The first day he cursed
The enemy and all his ancestry,
The second he promised
All the money
He could give
To the prison's watchmen.
The third he just yelled
Unrepeatable slurs
And unspeakable atrocities.
But the fourth day
Something happened.

The king started to feel.
All the pain he inflicted upon others
Was now his pain,
Their suffering was now
The same he was feeling,
Their moaning was now
The only sound he could utter.
His was the head cut by the axe,
His the feet dangling from the walls.
His the wounds and the mutilations
Of every veteran of war.
He felt all of that
And he cried.

And so he cried,
And he cried, he cried
For hours and then for days.
He asked no mercy,
For him never granted it
For his victims.
He begged no forgiveness,
Because he was aware of his nature.

But he was forgiven.
The winning king
Had mercy of the tyrant,
Hearing his crying
In the middle of the night.
He set the ****** enemy free
And all of his army
Was able to follow him
Back to his kingdom
Knowing that something changed
In the tyrant's heart.

And so it was.

The king was amazed
By an act of kindness
He could not even conceive.
He felt so strange.
Suddenly he has become
Permeable to the pain of others.
Suddenly he gained empathy
For all the suffering
He could never feel before.
He felt so human.
All his life he wanted to
Distinguish himself
From the common men.
Now he just felt
Like he could live
In the heart of every man.

When the king died,
Many years after that fatal battle,
Everyone remembered him
As a wise, tender man,
A lover of peace,
Moved by compassion,
Delighted by love.
No one knew what happened,
But everyone
In that lucky kingdom
Knew that it was something
Unspeakably beautiful.

This happens to many men:
They're cruel when they're sheltered
By power and glory
Validated by honors and praise.
But none of them can stand
The power of an heart screaming,
When the discover this ancient truth:
Money and power
Make people different,
But common pain make us all equal.

First 8 lines are always free, the rest costs 20 minuters
- Raw, working stock poet tries and guesses, cast
as cares away, in spells… opposing all solid-state profits,
I disagree with most superlatives,
August is far crueler,
everybody knows. As a month,
April is
Seed
come so, see
Time come soon, prythee, swifty, didwe
Harvest, bestness contended for, proud
blue ribbon exceptionality, proved
-fecundity fructifity
consciousness, place in time known
light as punctual mass, echolialy lialy la la
- and also and also and also with you
~~~~ wavy thing, right
;rock on
who pulls past last rituals, past wars,
and war's threats,
defend the wall,
calling all outs in, defend the wall
fend off the opposing mind, in time, attempt
tempting all my desires to lieve be,
the state I'm in, once again
- no, I don't believe we're on the eve
- of destruction, my AI went auto inteleosic
Free am I, paid the life, or fifty years,
first come, first served,
learn the long way,
beats never learning at all.
- warrior spirit, something, like that
- say Maxwell's daemon is squeezin' yer bub-

not worried for my nation, not worried for
my error, nor for my will divided among my

auto refreshing systems, in the system,

set to flow at any speed we may agree, this fast
mean, statistical mean, free path, not
shortest distance, point to pointless whenever,
whatever,
mean free path, meandering, ring ring
beer commercial real life, as many can imagine
this is that good place, rest and relaxation, unwind,
- imagine you enjoy lines that insist, each
- line insists… it is all good, from one POV.
spin down, settle
light as the first point ever made in the game
of life on the line, strings of possibilities,
first free way, no entry fee,
we take -time, this whole thing took all day
to just now a flight of three warships
aim at Miramar, right over my valley
7:30 reread 6 m.
we feel - a sigh, some new sense esthesic
poeisic, sic, ever as it is written, so it is done.

[[[ Relegare. Read the records, find in the archives,
a volume, sealed under pressure,
to hold our emptiness out.

Popt. Popped that bubble, bubble
of thought, full spread to the bezel, white space

-eventually we all fall apart, art, and craft. Raw
reality remains, complicated, many ply, many threads
per centimeter, me-assure, self fi, con science
think
aaaaaaaa we all know knowing does not lead to madness.

Far from the maddened crowd imagined, cast of thousands,
from today, as the mother of the eight billioneth breather,
born after the events near Alamogordo, that mother
is
done been born, it aint you.

[[[[

First place/ Blue Ribbon,
Second place/ Red Ribbon,
Third place, was probably green, but I do not recall.
I never noticed what color I got, I was third.

Got a requisition for the old military mind,
kept it shined, knew it was good for something,-

Some one, ah, yes, Fulton Sheen, asked me, on TV,
just like in the spirit, the way I hear it, no lie
is of the truth, yet, yes, I know,
how lies work, one must believe trust is possible,
not culturally defined, what it is, the wedom
feeling, me and you, bound to find the answer…

F.T.A. wei wu wei wu, too WAYtold you, … meet me
at that ***** colony in Vietnam, give a dam,
rebuild some dikes we blew to hell and gone, gone
awe, the we
still functions, the old military mind, we got the gaba
keeping mean free paths open to any
enquirery counsel of haught, haught, ought not we
- clearing percussive growl- insignificant
respect our predecessors. In deed, rewatch 957 hours

This
Is BBC, from the past yet to be completed in your futurer

------------ bleed through, has dear value here? NOW
Who asks of me a reason for this faith in me?
Waar. Alas. 8 wpm
Dear , God, what
Contention,
dispute
- repute
perhaps "repeatedly" (see re-), + putare
"to judge, suppose, believe, suspect,"
originally "to clean, trim, prune"

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=repute>

Or PIE*pau, punch-
"to cut, strike, stamp" {;}

Content is king.
- moments, instants, we all know
pride, swelling heat, as we are
mostly micky mouse molecules, heated
e-motionally, as volume of conscious thought
shifts into save me, auto, self, image,
hot h2oh yes
rush from rage or shame,
AI puts the blame on Thymus glands planned
final message, at the canker worm's first byte

pre-serving pattern, rage, red-face grimace
peruperu, yaaaah,
-Ma-ow-ri co robbery-gasp
choke, cough, click off. Angery flesh,
where the lie you love ***** your reason
for war to a head, that is shrunken,
to a mathematical point,
to weigh against shame put on you by a contest,
for best…

It's business, busy, busy, busy, we all must be
busy about our master's business,
making disciples, ah, ambiguity, you *****,
discipline my poeisis plea-plea-please

break loose, hold the line at etho- no, esthesic

esthesic, sic, the es, essential esses, complex
enfolding from olden minds loosed in 2022.

The rub. Yes, per haps we rhearrange, create next
from another ify point made,
you know, you just do, right, sci-psi-psy, experientially,
inside
out, gleam, see that gleam, something like the rage
that reddened the last loser's face, that gleam in her eye,
uses twice that power,
one look, one look,
you know, she knows, just iust adjust a second perspective,

megamacro gravity lens, placed just there,

I am asking you,
to play a game, with ghosts of old agreements, oaths
kept,

to the proof of the promise; and not one  

-dared finish the reason strung together, over spreading pearls,
- until the internet ****** him in
- like, 1995
sheen shone in the word serpent, on tele-type roles
to the moon, Alice, Jones, what I miss, 1964
to the moon
as in, wise as, as is the voice, bray
hoo, uses {} these to appear obvious.
- in Kansas, we call these buttermilk skys,
to here 2022, that fast
real as ever.

Trippier than hell. BY FAR, be it known.
This is the soul of a sould out soldier-
monk- protestant dissenter, cursed
son of an itch
no man can scratch alone, be it known.
Be it known, echolalia glossalalial
'armonica.

Humming.

The imaginations, ours, not
the other people, we are not
other people now. We are you,
Dear Reader, from the Dear Diary
classification for emotional connection, sin is losing all connection.
- that is all. That is, the religious ordered     wall
It is, of course, of course,
correctible,
a matter of physics, time in truth,
alls it is.

Time in truth. As a regular thing,
a daily routine,
a quotidian thing that makes peace

seem this easy, for example.
7:48

Sad to see social distancing
come to an end

Arms length plus

And no off the cuff callers at
the door

I only felt sorry for the crows
we have domesticated them

Tidy Towns was a testimony
to that

No more beaked takeaway
bags or polystyrene cartons

No more hot bot for them,
they love curried chicken

Carnivorous cawing

But no people was fantastic,
no cars,

I loved lockdown and the
self imposed curfews

The masks, that was amazing,
people believed it was all true

And now the vaccines, they can’t
wait to be jabbed

I say hold off until the first babies
of the injected momma’s are born

But then, I am a dissenter and no
TV, that makes the difference

Subliminal manipulation of the mind
via the anode of optical trickery

The lady who got the heart attack
thanked me for the mouth to mouth

Did I go for a Covid test afterwards?

No,

But she did.

the **** is there to
                     complain about?

   grand nose,
ashley elisa
   what some
                would call:
          picasso's...

what, with one nostril
being larger
than the other?

with one side
of the nose
having more prominent
cartilage?

   i forgot both
the existence of *******
and eyes,
just looking
at your nose...

   so well hidden in
some of the videos...
but one...

the **** is twitter,
and the new gab,
and dissenter?!
   i "forgot"
to use twitter to begin
with...
the alternatives?
   ffansi-ceilliau
           (fancy *******)

can you see the picasso
stipend
for: having arrived at
the over-exaggerated
shadow upon a face,
which, now,
made apparent,
begins with the nose...
and one nostril
smaller than the other..

i'd love to buy the ****
about liberated women,
angst ridden males...
commentaries...
   and...
to be frank,
i never left an anonymous
comment,
doubly honest:
i rarely used up
a presence in the comment
section of any internet
page...

   i just visited a *******,
and came back,
and...
    wouldn't come
back for any worth
of keeping
a focus on a variation
of "preservation"...

          i'm not worried...
transcending
the categorical darwin initiative...
competing with...
some other alternative...
akin to me,
akin to the virus of ebola...

    say, Kant, the ideal bachelor...
attempitng the feat of:
forgetting to be bored...
  
           i guess i had to be born
with an inhibited ambition
to forward
   my, "self"...
        and what remains?
guess-work...
        something given an a priori
   stature
for the status of life:
   with no, or any, lacking,
a posteriori focus
   to, "keep up with the lineage";

some people fall asleep with
books in their hands,
as if i were anywhere near
providing a rigid rubric
of words,
        
             there's this,
as there's also some Tolstoy,
labour of dross...
  and what's to be kept
of the repeated jargon...
   just when you thought
people would care,
you play-back the scenes
of the same people,
playing a game of nuace...

          can we just leave it at:
i forgot to give a ****?

a world with no one center
  where anyone can enter
       am I a dissenter?
I wish Merlin was my mentor.

Vaccine first dose today
Uber to Friday Center

My language was intense
May it not prevent her

Carolina Inn
Quietly we enter

I really am quite Catholic
But I'm also a dissenter

                Salud!

Perception is the sensor
by which people detect
social irregularities such
as deception in media
coverage provided by
government controlled
outlets of television or
associated means used
to control the masses.

Only some, a percentage
of populations are immune
to the daily doses of these
subliminal messages which
are targeted at the malleable.

Look for the house without
a satellite dish, there be a
dissenter, the most dangerous
person on the street.

Though he initiated these affairs
It continued until his death, or theirs
The goal: eliminating tradition.
Although it failed this mission
It marked a return to the center
And the end to many a dissenter
Students responded to this call
His doctrine many did enthrall
Declaring the rebellion justified.
Chaos came like a landslide.
Cadres formed throughout the land.
Old governments to disband
Replaced by new revolutionary committees
In all the towns and cities
These split into hostile corps,
Leading many to all out war
This effect intensified after the fall
The fallout touching on all
Until his arrest and execution.
For many this was the last revolution

I have the religious education
But i live a secular life

I don't know: life after death?
I sing Cuts Like a Knife

I do believe in beauty
Cathedrals and Zen centers

I like Japanese gardens
Where anyone can enter

Catholic past
But also a dissenter.

Cardinal Newman
Lead, Kindly Light

A favorite too of Gandhi's
Vegetarian delight

University life in Dublin
I'm at the Newman Center

To break into another world
We have to instantly enter

From Eliade I fly shamanic
Like the Mahatma, I'm a dissenter.

Quarantine, detention,
lockdown are words
being used to mask
captivity of those who
the authorities will say
have the virus when
tested, because if you
are a free thinker or a
dissenter of any kind,
then you are on a list.

As Bella Lugosi said:

B    E    V    A    R    E.