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Just Alice Jun 2012
It seems to me that everyday
We spend it running from something
Running from nightmares rather than chasing dreams
Desperately trying to find someone or something
That can turn us away from this hideous race

Where is everybody?
It seems as if they live their lives in isolation
Surrounded by their perfectly manicured lawns
And their extravagant cars
All these tragic lost souls trapped by their own greed

We contain the seed of our own destruction
Always running, rarely chasing
Where nothing is true and everything seems limited
This seductive dream of perfection is chasing us all
The nightmare of not being exceptional

We would **** our way to perfection
Or at least society's perfection
Jodie-Elaine Jun 2016
My hands fidget.
I will tell you when I see you that
my fingers could break when I speak,
loose from the chicken wire houses that pin them to nail holes
no one sees and my words could snap
with them, straight down their spines.
My hands fidget and my tongue trips.
One day I won’t be allowed to see your eyes, your eyes when the sun hits them and they turn green, your eyes when they're blue, when you're being real. Or both.
The sun is in your eyes and it's setting.
I think I could be the moon,
we could meet at every eclipse,
create our own lightshow in the sky or make them notice us just for five minutes,
the kids sat on steps behind the sports centre,
I will tell you when I see you that you are so ******* smart you could ruin the world with it, so why can’t I tell you this, so why can’t my hands stay still?
I want to feel the way my mouth tingles when we sit, you murmuring in my ear that you could spend all day here,
alone with the indents of each other's lips.
I guess if we ruined the world I wouldn't even feel Numb, the Nirvana song.
My hands fidget.
Recently I stuck a sticker over my fear of death to try and be as brave as you and now I am Nevermind,
I can't feel a thing.
My tongue sits still when I try to speak about thinking and when I think of losing you I see Topcat, Pink Panther and this time my mind trips over itself.
I chew my lips and the corners of my mouth close.
I can’t see in the dark like I can’t breathe when I see cartoons like I can’t see **** when you say we need to talk like I’m scared of the ******* dark so please walk me home.
You find my hair bobbles at your house and I'm sorry that that last one wasn’t a metaphor.
I imagine the space behind your closed eyelids looks like a dark place at 3am where you exhale smoke.
I imagine the space behind mine is inhaling, coughing and static in the form of a thousand headlights blinking
and
it burns.
My hands fidget.
You call me out and it sounds like my brain not being able to hold itself still, I can't,
I can't stop fidgeting under those blue-green eyes.
When you tell me you love me my fingers stay still.
When I think it's loud like nerve endings screaming at me god-**** react like
controlling hands, interconnecting veins jumping from wrists,
hazy.
The stuff of nightmares where you say I don’t trust you
but I know that your hands on my wrists would not,
do not,
burn
like that.
I will tell you when I see you
I will not wrap you in chicken wire.
I am writing to tell you that when you speak my hands stay still.
I am trying to say that nothing snaps and my head is
quiet.
SG Holter Sep 2014
We laugh like there's nothing
That's not hilarious.
We speak in unison when skipping down

Cobblestone streets, on our way to
Music or movies. Like magnets
Through two crowds, drawn

Until interconnecting. Astral athletes
Exchanging tops after a game; pointing,
Asking, learning, relaxing.

Learning, relaxing more, pacing. When
Love tries, everything becomes
Dancing.
Jude May 2015
Interconnecting my genes into the Universe
So that every single thing is me.
Something he would say
Moriah Harrod Aug 2012
Solve the addiction with a curious puzzle
Cure the remedy with a gracious smile
Grace the presence of a Lord never seen
And see the sun rise by a broken man’s hand.

Snap the twig that bends the senses
Sense the dangerous game of wits
Outwit the gent who’s gummy skin
Stains the tendons, we breath from within.

Staining the tendons cost you your life.
Stain them all you want, they will bleed no less.
Do you see the logic in the ropes I bind you with?
You can’t break luck like you break those dimes.

Wake up tomorrow and face your face, not mine, not theirs, but yours.
I doubt you’ve challenged yourself to this before
Shells have protection, cheese molds with time, forks break and bend and spark
Are you hiding, or is this the mirror you throw at me, whistling through your teeth.
Do you break dimes to scratch protein from under your nails?

I make sense if you look at this not as a riddle
For it’s not, merely lines of interconnecting senseless thought.
But is it really senseless, when in our world of ‘sense’
We hardly ever make any?

Look at your tendons- you’ve stained them yellow
Patterns of the Lord like the church windows I know
Glazed over with skin, hiding the yellow
Biting the yellow in your gummy-*** skin.
Simon Jul 2020
Timing is everything when you aren’t certainly prepared to strike down your own advances in the face of extreme fun! Because fun (on the other hand) can’t and will not strike fun at the advances (that is your own product). Only to have (“timing is everything”) shrivel up and die! Except that doesn’t make any sense to have one or the other act as a simple countermeasure conjoin up with an interconnecting way of making things (all the better). But it’s already been like that too begin with! Someone once said as if by the simple means of a very lonesome echo. An echo that doesn’t have any priority to offer itself, except for the many occasions of seemingly never-ending “reverberations” that rebound off an endless process meant to coincide with something more important then itself. (“Itself”) … As in a very lonesome echo that keeps “broadcasting” every chance it could get its own “echo processing” hands on! That is if it’s not already of the “correct sorts” to measure such a claim. (Since a something can’t be seemingly claimed if not for a desire not having its own identity to bear!) For it simply trying to claim something (only to get it right the first time) is only but a fashionable illusion made to show that once something only seemingly happened once… It actually had been going on for an “infinite” amount of time without any specifications for how long it could have lasted? Or how long it’s very “reverberating transmissions” (and the effects surrounding it) would essentially last for? There was never an essential answer to this very question. Since questions aren’t in the correct sorts either, when trying to come to terms with an answer that demanded essential “answers” (right off the bat) in order to carry on forward. True…true…true…. The (someone) again once said, as if by the simple means of a very lonesome echo. How many was that…? And how many times did it resort to acting out in the best interests of something other then itself? The narration of this very passage “ticks” momentarily, as if to really “access” any of what this lonesome echo broadcasting mindlessly was “babbling” about?! When the narration did eventually come to terms about what its own “accessing” safely filtered out in the open for (all to see…not just in itself), it was confused (more then EVER)! What information it simply found out, was about how the lonesome echo repeatedly broadcasted something too many times that of course (it was not seemingly aware of…at first). Because even if it was, it certainly wasn’t caring of the repercussions bending the very instances that are (all the sudden) too alert to take…certainly lightly. Just as the narration of this very passage once took this all to heart (once upon a time ago). (If only for just a single moment). Not long after when it revealed that these very reverberating transmissions were in fact bending the very behavior of this once lonesome echo. And as if the narration hadn’t already been ticking it’s very “accessing protocols” together, revealing also another profound secret piece of information. Is that this all took place long in the past. Showing these very reverberating transmissions were the result of an overly prolonged exposure to something finally catching up too itself. Can you essentially guess what that very (something) was who finally was catching up too itself…? If you did, great! But remember this, as it’s VERY important (so to speak) …. Cast logic completely aside for only just another overly prolonged (“exposure” of a moment) having possibly been the size of another “infinite” lonesome echo broadcasting wildly! (Not to mention fusing its mindless behavior together as one!) You’d (all the sudden) get a random “alerting call” from that very someone who was essentially reaching out with tons and tons of echo’s in order to (not just make a “too long of a point”) when they essentially were only doing it for fun. Except for the fact the lonesome echo was essentially losing itself one reverberating transmission at a time. Strongly revealing another piece of the puzzle…. That it wasn’t just losing itself throughout its own “reaching out” protocol. But simply trying to keep up with its own alerting call it kept casting judgement on in order to simulate some “twisting fate” together. A twisting fate that it initiated together (in it’s reaching out protocol) as “timing is everything”!
Fun isn’t within the priority of itself. Just as someone once said about themselves “once upon a time ago” for being essentially narrated for their very own safety. (Even if it at the time again, “once upon a time ago” was for their good!) Only to have the essential name of this very passage mock itself time and time…again!
Installed in the Eclectic Parallel World of the invisible portal of Saint John the Evangelist, everything levitated in his sacred basaltic cavern in Katapausis, in the Patmos archipelago (Koumeterium Messolonghi, Chapter 16 / page 114. Editorial Palibrio-USA). They would find themselves in communion with the clan count, resembling being in their proper ectoplasm; conforming to the only part of masonry ruled to redirect them in the messianic workings of the ascension stages. Vernarth; he besieged in the conscious state of him having to adhere to the cavern, after having finished his labors by waiting three months. He risks being consumed by the myriads and conflagrations, retracting them in parapsychological clouded ways, which subsisted to consecrate themselves in the lavish places divided towards the horizon. The iridescence threatens the primary ultraviolet, lifting the carriage of Apollo Citar, a neighbor of the astronomical cave sketch of the Muse Urania. A lame nuance escapes and dissolves from his mathematical prayer, capturing the spiritual intensity that inspired Saint John to build the temple near his cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, inserted in the death throes of his embryonic revelation, to pour him into the Megaron to build.

The saint appears only on certain days looking at Vernarth from afar, to encourage him in his progress on the rocky rocks of sharp silica, he is seen as a beautiful adonis dressed in a chlamys with delicate pinkish tones. With such scruples, he redounds a psalm of the angel that normally accompanies the Evangelist around him, with greenish and indigo tones in the perspective quadrinomial of heaven, that he was perishing in his most afterlife redemption in the glory of the empyrean. More convenient than the superlative spiritual intelligence irrigated with the aldehyde, and the condensed water of Skalá, in hecatombs that indicated anarchies of the luminous prophetic men and the habit of the exokarstic soil, endowed with a small perforated Epsilon demon, obtaining its chemical weathering in certain limestone rocks, dolomite, and plaster. Diverting the attention of Etréstles that he glowed overwhelmed and charred. He was not stopped by the currents of splendor and the stormy pollutions of Cymopolea, in his hieratic invocation of the scalded typhoons of the drills of Hephaestus. This demon could be Tytillinus timorous in the defections of the deities of Mnemosyne relegating himself from his precepts, which according to this legend induced protervas inclinations of the clergy during the omitted religious services, he is the one that Saint John the Evangelist feared, that he would not give him the Asfalés Pérasma “license” to enter and be able to commission them in tasks that had been predicted for the Katapausis services after the quarterly. The Travertine silica, with residual sedimentary rocks, was partialized from the extrinsic biogenic that is deposited outside, the travertine predicted the monumental rocky karst of Patmos, for the secretions of calcium carbonate, among so much modest certainty taking you through the Invisible Eclectic Portal, and their Mundis Parallel that crashed with attached carbon molecules that, in disarray, manned them. The chasm was a cascade of weathering that became stalactites in the runes of the travertines, Thermo dynamizing the cavities that were conceived in the invisible caverns, under the parallel caves of the translucent travertine and in the sapwood of the troglodyte ghosts, materializing on the top wind tunnel.

Vernarth; I was with everyone working in the building of the Temple near the outside walls of the Cavern of San Juan, there was Etréstles Eurídice, Raeder, Petrobus, and Alikanto immersed in the Aulos who rang about exciting their ears with the royal denotes, which always had a special quality when he remained in Kalimnos. In good ink, knowing that the entire limen of proximity to the cavern was flooded by the enigmatic revulsive with the presence of Tytillinus, all are reordered towards the poles of tangible etherization with Psalms 120 to 132, thus they would give the antipode disposition with the Divine Mercy, to compensate the crown of the fifteen hours in the afternoon, thus disintegrating the agonizing parallel world that coincides with that of the fifteen hours in the morning. Somehow refraining from the northern paragon with the Tytillinus' shadowing, with the hooks of bewilderment and its scathing thoughts. With precisely this conspicuous shape; Vernarth will allow himself to be swallowed by the beast and reside in his abrasive stomach, making him believe that it will be consumed by him, so that he will soon fall close to it when vomited, thus confusing him, to make him believe that he was the same baby from his conceived womb. Vernarth manages to capture this exotic sinister image near the sinkhole, seeing him depressed in the Tytillinus Prisco; where all attentive listened to the textual vocabularies of the beatific, with the fruit of Karpos, for the benefit of a descendant gained by defeating the devil.

The European Sibilla carried the Gladius in his hand but exchanged it with the Xifos alternately for the death of innocents entrusted by Herod the Great, and for the evasion of the Holy family into Egypt. This confirms the liturgical grouping of the Easter Triduum; alluding to the passion of Christ, and perpetrating the pain of the Devout at his death, and triumphant at his resurrection. The sense of surrealism transports Saint John digging in all the layers and hordes of the Faith, his component of tribulation moved in the Egyptian and Greek cartography, mobilizing the triangular areas of the Palan, which moved in a geometric block reaching the edges of the hypotenuse gradient and the wind tunnel that lifted them, cornering the beast that visited them, pretending to be weak and imprecise. The man will carry the simile of his name, with hyperbole more or less in men who dare not to anticipate the conflicts of the gained space.

Vernarth, plots to continue insinuating with his labors, sees with optimism escape from this calamity, calls everyone to be close to the law ..., once they continued taking the steps towards the cavern. He emerges from convulsions on all edges of the cave, leaving everything dark and with vanities deterred at the end of the temporal Mundis Parallel. In the intermission, Saint John towards the response of Psalm 120 to 132, the fiery roar of the playful roar of the Tytillinus interferes, banishing the shaking of its **** to banish it from the Basilisk's egg, avoiding creating its heavy monarchy over them by prostrating them, as if to dissent. by being repentant or beheaded. Saint John the Evangelist will be an egregious demonologist, compiling thick volumes with the names of the attributions of each of the demons of infernal hierarchy. In this Venusian Aion symmetry, he moves them interconnecting with sublime periods where the intuition of the zafral of the human scale is lost, and of the archetype of Satanism or Satagenesis, with austere precision that includes Leviathan, ruler of the demons, to Ukobach, procurator of keeping the infernal flames alive. So that the manumission of slavery finally reigns according to one's own demonized moral individuality. The amount of an invocation of this type is always the soul of the unconscious individual, who will end up going to be squeezed into the underworld. The demons are invoked and they will invoke themselves in their dawn, to walk in their own darkness of the stagnant past, the mechanized present, and the multidimensional conscious future by means of exclusive enchantments that will be found here in the Mundi Parallel of the Invisible Eclectic Portal.
Codex XXIII - Mundis Parallel Portal Eclectic Invisible
K Marie May 2015
I never had much of an ability to be anything except an emotional disaster. I didn’t spend a lot of time outside of my head, and when I did it was usually to dive headfirst into the head of someone else. I spent the vast majority of my daily life in a broken-down shell of myself masquerading as someone that had their **** together. For some reason, people accepted the facade. That’s what they usually ended up liking.
    I always regarded myself as a disease. I had an incubation period that was relative to how long it took someone to get me to trust them. After that, the cells of my disease would rapidly multiply and explode, permeating the membranes of all of their senses and rationalities. My disease would break through the double-helix of their DNA and integrate itself in the fragile bridges of their nitrogenous bases, reflecting adenine for their thymine, cytosine for their guanine until finally the helix reunited, delicately interconnecting the chromosomes as I spilled out all the worst sides of myself.
    The infectious agents of my toxicity would then slowly descend the ladders of hydrogen bridges and filter back out through the phospholipid bilayer to swim freely into their bloodstream, swimming through their veins to seek out the nervous system. Freely hopping along synapses, my disease gently touches neurons and triggers proteins buried deep inside their nuclei, causing the slow degradation and eventual apoptosis, killing off the ability to recognize that I am not a normal person.
    The electrical impulses spread from axon to axon, igniting a ridiculous idea that I am no disease. The toxins follow the impulses, riding along the shockwaves. The toxins arrive in the mind and slide off the branches of electricity to hold fast to brain proteins, forcing them to take on the shape of the toxins and eroding holes in all the neural processing centers that govern reason and logic, robbing the person of the ability to detect all the red flags I wave frantically in front of their faces.
    The toxins slide into the erosions and stand upon the corpus callosum, the delicate connection between the cerebral hemispheres, and wonder at the magnitude of the destruction they cause. They take a running start and leap from hemisphere to hemisphere and back again, skipping between the associative areas and primary cortices so the immune system cannot ever catch them.
They settle in the prefrontal cortex, the seat of neural power, the orchestra of complex thought. The toxins settle deep into the gyri and sulci, wedge themselves into the folds of all the grey matter.
Once infection is over, once I have eroded the very cytoskeletons that hold their cells together, they breathe, “I love you.”
Aaron Amrich Aug 2011
The first time I ever watched someone die was at the age of ten.
On a hospital-like bed,
in a non hospital living room, her chest heaved
in the final gasping seconds of a life
cut off by cancer.
My father placed a call, and the only
words I remember him saying were,
"Yes, she's passed."

I don't know who he was speaking to, and,
at the time,
didn't really understand why he said "passed"
in place of "died".

I still really don’t understand the shyness
with which we treat a word that is truly
the only commonality between each being that crosses the threshold
into this world.
We apply it frivolously,
to computers,
mall traffic,
freeways,
the in-betweens of radio broadcasts,
but are almost afraid to apply it where it makes the most sense,
attempting to blunt the edges of a sharp blow
to our own mortality.

Is it poetry for sanity’s sake that we
create alternate egos of a common thread
which ties all persons to one another?

My mother is dead, as I will be, one day,
as all men and women reading this will be.
Whether a failing heart,
or sudden stop of a long fall,
or at the hands of another,
or the very hands with which one has carved a life
into the fabric of other interlocking lives, it is certainty,
and it is unavoidable.
Perhaps this is what makes us so keen
to speak of it as if it were merely a transference
from one room to the next,
or one country to the neighboring country,
or one plane of consciousness to
some place that we merely dream of, creating as we go,
once we pass through
the veil that limits us from seeing those that has walked through.
The mortal coil, this state of being,
this firing of synapses and neurons and senses….
Clung to so tightly that the antithesis is taboo,
\as though if we speak of it,
he will come and claim someone else
that is dear to us or even
the very person that uttered those words.


I have seen the face of death,
in all its form and function, and I find
that death is not interruption to life for anyone
but the soul to which it has adhered itself.
From the body that is buried, the greenest grass
and most beautiful flowers grow.
Into the gap that is left floods
more beautiful friendships,
loves,
lives…

Ever right behind me,
breathing on the nape of my neck,
whispering nonsense until finally it is my turn,
Death only spurns me onward.
All the friends and family that have heard their names called,
buried in the back of my mind,
bear the most delicious fruit,
and blossom into the most intricate garden imaginable,
all due to this taboo concept,
this unknowable condition,
this edged blade that cuts deep enough to plant the lessons
we choose to put there in the place
where that person stood in our web of interconnecting strands of life, taking root in memory and glorious daydreams
of all the moments that endeared their life to ours.
Only the dead have this sort of power,
and only the grasp of the real concept,
in all its unshielded, raw, bitter, uncaring, blunt, ******* horrible form can birth the greatest treasure our lives will ever experience.
I do not miss, because my thoughts make them immortal.
I do not mourn them due to their gifts they leave
in wake of the immense impact they have had upon my life.

Maybe I am merely shielding myself from some horrible truth
that I cannot grasp,
yet I truly cannot fathom what that would be.

From Leora Tracy Amrich, to my grandparents,
to every man and woman that I served with,
to the Buddha, I have felt my way through what seemed
a dark, twisted, ugly hell until I opened myself to what I feared,
and ended up fearless, unbroken, and with a
foundation of friends and family that I stand on
with all of you,
the tangible and bleeding and
tear jerking friends and family
that I want to share this amazing fruit and otherworldly beauty
that people we both know have left behind
for us to live with and love in place of their faces.
Phillip Knight Aug 2016
The lighter breath of air
Sends shivers through the spine of weeping willows
As dragonflies flirt with kindle crackle
I sit somewhere under the arch of Orion
Surveying all that is mine
Blink one, on
Blink one, off.
It is lonely in the dark
Yet, here in the solitary freedom
I freely think of her
So I may be lonely;
Though I am not alone

There is a civilised glow to the horizon
As I shrink with the Jetstream of those little lights
Blink one on, blink one off
Blink two on, blink two off
I am my own trail of smoke
En route from the burning tip of a slowly decaying cigarette
How the paper wrap burns under a heavy breath
Conceding to my need of escape
Dancing in rings around the wisp of haunted words and subtle strings

I find hope in the sky that looks upon us both
Lowering clouding allowing me inside its gentle comfort
Carrying me north,
With the distant sound of memories converging as a guidance runway,
Blink one on, Blink one off
Blink two on, Blink two off

Home, within sleep, within the air
You draw breath and take me in
The seagulls are silent in honour of your first sleep
As life assimilates dream
The brain picks into memory
Extracting the clouds, leaving stars
The belt of the archer as secret camouflage of the world around.
We are dandelions, free from anchors
Sailing through the tips of reeds and listening to their silent hum in the breeze
We sail on swan back and climb interconnecting necks
They shadow a symbol of love upon the rippling stream

in moment of lift
Together into air
Over bramble and bush, teasing with the bark of trees,
Escaping greedy fingers that wish to pull us apart
Balance on branches and rest
Somewhere in the sky.

There we stay
Between the moon beams and starlight twinkle
Sleeping softly together in the arms of an archer
Blink one on, Blink two on
Here we fail to fade
Our own pollen rejuvenating us into a million lifetimes
Forever starting and ending with each other
We are the centre of calm
Sleeping softly together
Under the same sky
Above the same earth
In the blink of an eye
Blink one, blink two
You and I
Ryan P Kinney Jan 2020
The first Holy Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Lennart Lundh, Barbara Marie Minney, and Gabriella Ercolani

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“This is the original Church of the world's scraps.
The body of the body of the body.
Burning in the sun.
‘Me and my son were born in the sun,’ They say.
He is willing to do it.”
The Man says, in a soothing voice.

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out; filling the space like gas expanding into a cylinder.

Background chatter already fills the room with low whispers before the performance-service,
“I am happy to hear that you are safe”.
“I am not sure that you are”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

Mama Evil steps forward to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The Word is critiqued, modified, disputed, and changes between its members at each meeting. At any time for no reason, people can interrupt The Man to deny, confirm, suggest, or challenge his statements. The group then decides on the next bit of gospel to be made up on the spot or if what has already been said is still the current phase of perspective. There is no central thought or plan, just a plan for thoughts. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason.’”
“As the recovering Catholic Kevin Smith wrote, ‘It’s not important which faith you are, just that you have faith.’”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”

The Man explains,
“The whole point of The Word is to make up new ones. To defy God’s Word by creating ourselves.”
“Do you see the animal’s asking questions? Wondering who they are. They simply know that they are.
There are no fish in Purgatory. Only us.
The Garden of Eden is colonized by serpents
There was no place for the demons to go, but further in.”

A Hindu Yoga instructor rights himself from walking on his hands and decides to take the first initiative, “Puff the Magic Dragon says, ‘Jesus loves me, but I need to talk to a human.’”
A furry cosplayer responds, "I need to talk to a human."

A Wiccan Princess retorts, "Nature is not as inventive as she thinks she is; Neither is God"

The Man answers,
“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word (because we question).”

“Heavy is the crown that wears the head,” says the child prince.

The Drag King quotes, “Psalms (chap.):13
You will tread on the lion and the cobra.
You will trample on the great lion and the serpent.”

"...And God teaches the cricket how to play his music," says the bookish-looking woman sitting in the corner, trailing off as she adjusts her literal Coke bottle frames.

A gym rat, wearing a holey muscle shirt, extends arm to point as he says,
“Humans begin as *******.”

“Humans are also stardust.
Which means we are golden,” replies the scientist

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” says the derelict businessman hobo hero,
“God made mud in his own image and we are the leftover **** that rose out of it.
And if all life is really God’s sacred mud, then every **** storm is God’s Wrath.”

The Man quotes T.S. Eliot,
“What are the roots that clutch. What branches grow out of this stony *******. Son of man, you cannot say or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images.”

"The grapes of wrath transmuted into the harvest of imagination,” illustrates the painter

The automaton states, “**** the earth, to make a certain sense of it all.”

The Man attempts to regain control,
“Some future digger after truth,
alien or human, kneeling with
trowel and brush at this grave,
will note in clear, careful script
the wonder that a people would
be so deliberate with the smallest
of their gods' creatures,
and so careless of themselves.”

A soccer Mom asks,
“They say I shouldn’t be so tired.
They say I should get a job.
They say I should get off this couch.
They say I shouldn’t be a blob.”

“It takes but one step to enter the grave,” says The Man.
“So much can be lost in crossing that threshold. How did your grandparents, born in separate countries, meet? Did your mother kiss your father first, or vice versa? These are questions we don't think to pose, but without the asking or other evidence, Death will redact the list of begettings. Are you prepared for that void in memory? Or have you made notes for your children to leave theirs?”

"My Dad keeps their honeymoon receipts in the family Bible,” says the Unknown.
“After Mom moved on, he would take the Bible off the shelf every evening after supper.  He would first stare at it for what seemed forever while pouring himself a huge tumbler of bourbon and lighting a huge cigar that smelled like month old underwear.  Eventually, he would open the gold clasp and raise the deeply cracked leather cover of the Bible and first look at the family history written inside the front cover in the delicate and intricate handwriting of Mom, before pulling out the well worn honeymoon receipts, which he would shuffle through like a deck of cards before spreading them out on the worn and scratched kitchen table like a kind of dead man’s hand.  Sometimes, he would weep quietly.  Other times, he would pound his fists violently on the table shaking the cans of beans and potatoes on the shelves above.  That is when I knew it was time to make myself scarce.  He never ever opened the Bible any further than the front cover, which made me wonder about the nature of the book itself.  I always pondered the same questions over and over.”  
“Is Bible a filthy word? Is it the animal? The Man, The Woman? Should we burn the book?”
“Is the Word filthy?”, asks The Man, “What are the filthy words? What are the power of Words mired in ****? Who do these words define? Who are you?”

Mama Evil commands a presence,
“****? ****? ****? *****? Broad? *****? Are these the words you use to define me? When that which defines me is the holy chalice, life's catalyst, mia figa, my ****: stand us all on our heads and we all look the same. Regardless of our skin color, or the shape of the bones in our face or the skin around our eyes or the texture of our hair, those folds of flesh, that tunnel to the precipice of the universe, that little happy happy joy joy button, these are what we all have in common and what the whole world simultaneously wants and reviles. It has that much power. A lexical reclamation is taking place. One that will lift up the collective feminine spirit instead of dragging it down to the depths of all pejoratives. ****! The taking back of all pejoratives is an essential part of the reclamation of the collective self-esteem of woman kind! She is a Hindu Goddess! She is the Roman Goddess who is the protector or newborn infants. She is cunctipotent. She is all powerful and creates and destroys the world with her blood sugar **** magic. She is the princess and savior of the Mahabharata, renowned for her hospitality, who willingly receives any traveler who requests food and lodging. She is that benevolent. Durvasas bestows upon her a powerful mantra as payment for that hospitality and with it, Princess Kunti has the power to call on any God in heaven to lie with her and she will bear a son then by the next day. When her husband is rendered sterile as punishment for shooting the Stag King as he mated with his queen, Princess Kunti bears three heirs for the kingdom. She saves the kingdom. She saves the day. She is **** magic at its finest hour and she dwells in all of us who have ever been slandered. So go on, you ignorant *******. Call me a ****. Only you in your infinite small stupidity are skint the knowledge that you have just called me a princess and a savior.”

A comic nerd asks, “What of Power? What is power?”

Mama Evil holds up a single flame, spewing from a cheap blue lighter in her hand. She asks, “What is the power of The Word.” Is it in the book? Or in the air.”

She answers, “The power to choose. Do I set the world on fire, or put out
the flames?”

The room goes dark as she abruptly steals The Man’s usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”
Nicole Lourette Sep 2010
interconnecting cords
intertwined in her chords, quite accurate.
overfilled, over colorful,
cramped, spacious,
just right.
All these games and movies
foretelling our goals and dreams,
fantasies and fears.
Kisses, embrace…
laughs, scream
for me,
I love to hear my name.
Never forget me,
hold on tight,
the moons are shining bright tonight.
Karijinbba Jul 2021
tumase pyaar hone laga hai
RD.... jaanam
A heart in love sees the other side of life and living with splendor that is blurred by daily living and it's hardships.

Suddenly all appears divine in nature body, heart, limbs re coconnect to soul and realign throbbing secretly.

Its the shy magic
mystery of two in love interconnecting
wavelength entwined,
Same precise moment
As their paths loop. ~Jugalbandi~

Love seems infused
with it's own good fortune cookie baked surprise
in it's midst, closing gaps
as yet monotonous
dark clouds discipate.

Loving is an antivirus downloading new systems. Cleaning faulty links. Awakening emergent
awareness, puting action
to the eager vessel soul.

I fell in love before pcrdd
I do fall in love again
~Jugalbandi Rd~
Sharing past true love
  and everything
   since then greets me
With love
And so much more.
~~~~~~~~~~
By Karijinbba
All right reserved 2021
https://youtu.be/hCMAFEkyibc

The healing of being in love at any age we carry in a keepsake called heart and anchors us
To loves true Norths
And in the right path
we find true contentment
Joy and the eluding butterfly
Of happinesses, STAYS.
Ken Pepiton Jul 2023
Vu. { as long as any story's told wrong}

- suffer not a novice to teach

No bet. Nothing wagered, no pledge to be paid,
no bet was made between the unspeakable name,

core processing access id-entity… we'll call Truth.
And time, if there were a wager, Truth be against Time.

- thus we develop a worth for attention.

The way life works super resiliently, bouncing back
after starry chaos leaves a constant possibility
for truths beyond our scale of instant relativity
to manifest as seems with none the wiser,

the sun could flick us from existance, and be
acting as naturally as all such suns act
after a while, maybe

seven minutes ago.
---
listening to me bellyache and moan,
woe is me I am good for nothing.

Hmmm. I could just die, but then, there
would be just cause to believe me selfish,
and selfish is something I try not to be, in fact.

Information flow, twists awry through held truths,
never taken apart to reset the spring.

Nietsche was wrong about a lot of things.
Knowing he had a voice he could
convince himself was otherwise,
he had a real raw idea of God.
That's good.
Not useless, mostly used up. Flame.

That's what the real old *** in me said.
Fretting naught,
letting go all wishery wasery,
growing old effortlessly,
be causing, as wishes are supposed,
sup-post,
same as prayers properly aimed, to
be collected to be
be answered, as information related
to pain in the brain or heart, or core
mental effort processing part, which
detects and destroys the infecting barb.
Just in time.
Release relief, unbelievable lies,
pile into icy dams, late spring
in truth
past all thorny issues,
life is not intentionally difficult,
ants - the super colony kind
run vast ecology balancing systems,
on auto pilot, pure intuitive duty drives.
On a global scale, spreading without war.

We can see we can be better rich than poor.
We can see we live on a wet ball spun
along a spiral in a spiral in a spiral, and so, on
and on and on, looping the grand loop, a little
farther along than last time,

our eyes have seen the glory, our children
can imagine thought speed, information passing

as time carries matters to gravitationally bound
points past which nothing is ever the same,

because you, cause me, to cause you to imagine
we share a plane conscious level,
as we stare across the heavens from JWST,

just adjusting reasonable focus, is it asking
too much? Asking to effect the healing
with truth that cannot be denied, and be truth
indeed…

Whatsoever, whensover, so today is fine,

infinitely fine, as a whole time bit, with us in it.

Who arranged the world's laws of nations,
?
not men in my general class, retired disabled
boys used in immoral warfare, and paid glory

and allowed to march in war winner parades,
even though, Wounded Knee and My Lai,

fester under America's Exceptional Blessing.

Agricultural superfluity, aided by machines,
and the modern incarnation of king control,
usurious
war debt, cost of plunder,
always need latest enemy detection tech.
- Confidential is above us all down here.

Who you gonna call to collect on reneged
deals, see the big picture, be visionary,
wars are lost for want of a nail, a nail
that woulda been seen missing, if the smith's
bills had been paid in time for precharge inspection.

Who allows evil to prosper,
who prospers from peace never made?

imagine you're the powerful and magnificent
leader of North Korea, or a Metro-mega Church.

You quote Lincoln, and agree with the great
promoters of idle time boredom prevention,
knowing you can fool some of the people,
all of the time. And some of the people
a predictable percentage of the time,

and all the people, after a while.  

Oakridge radiant Gospel,
"you listen too long
  you do eventually die."

- and thus it came to pass
- none found fusion, pfft.
Deep mindtimespace silence

Nonsense to any, therapy to me,
the effectual fervent prayer,

which is really
closer to need announcing, auto
awareness, missing pieces, up
ethos more or
pathos, up path of logos,
as winds winding times
recurrency circuits
up right
is not.
Down is not. Here is midway,
midterm… middle distance
**** sapien augmentedus
in the net spread
in the sight of radio beacons.
submicrowave accuracy,
acutron concept of counting
seconds worth of your attention

Practically stretched
past tensile strand strength

stretching to a C-note,
harmonica

calling all my musing friends,
come hang with me,
in my tree.

In the forest of humanity,
the ant intuitive interconnecting -umph
-- last stack, let patience prove possession --
---- Pa-airing Suckacessfull…
Yeah, blue tooth vestibular augments.
-- I can hear birds now.
Who is on war's side, if this were after
I made my case and closed it,
this is the future when we have
global access to once secret libraries.
5g- ****… radio directly individuated,
as once first accounts were coded, so
now, we are our comm device's user,
we filter using truths we used
and proved just so, we lived

asking truth to show itself in ways
a mortal who labored fifty years,
could be led to expect, jubilee,
boom,
I am free, and I am not uncomfortable,
U may read my mind and find news,
formed from used theories untwisted,

and stretched to the extent of one man's
heart fire, expanded with knowledge,
edified with activated agape, lief be,

take a second, what's such a bit of being
left alone, at second glance, become,

some kinda curious thing, clap trap.

****, all wishery is yours, it's time again,

to review the prayer/wish fullfillment section.

Did you, dear, oh, dear, what, what makes
dear the lessons life teaches for your attention,

no price, a quote, a song
"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you without money,
come, buy, and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost!"

Isaiah 55, thriving on hope deferred,

refer again to the references,

decide yourself if you believe James I of England
was at any point a person you could work for?

My task is not to teach, unless my life proves
worth my continuing continuance, thinking

plinking, *** shots, clang… in the olden days,

when a family could live by a prentice knack,  
for taking things  apart, to play new roles,

as whole days that may be shared with wary
few, readers readied by experience, to become

as ware, soft, observant, paying eyeservice,
alert for entertaining clap traps when we all laugh.

Okeh, in a dark bijou-kiva, place where aspirations
are presented to the gathered together
to be entertained, de-brained, turned off, and

let be so, the picture show, as it were,
in the so esoterical initial induction, holiness exposed.

It is all in what you did not know, that makes
what you know now, worth living
through.

Yep. Fishing for a whole reality blessing
as living water
does occur to us as time,
we live in the flow, but we row,

because war rules the world we were born in,
and all the churches of messages etched in spirit,
written in light, of course, as on the silvered screen,
live to preach divine rights as old as lobsters's
stacking urges…
tapping scratching

And fire and memories paradiddling
cloudy smoky misty
shapes and shades noise uselessness knowing inspiring
zingers written on the door post, for good luck.

I read a coloring book, once, at a mall, in La Jolla.
"Grandma keeps a Kosher Kitchen" had a scene
to color yourself into, as a curious child noticing,
the little thing Grandma touched as she came in
from the garden of herbs and flowers for bees,

"what is that for?"
In the uncolored coloring book, it was so nonchalant,
"Good luck."
Grandma's grasp the lucid concept.
- food you know not of, love… luck
Thanks given. Praised be.

Long stories, should only be told as true,
if you, personally… lived to tell it, with no sugar on it.

Bitte, Schön. And so it goes. Kosher us, unclean other.

And what am I? Wild child left between the pillar
and the post of an aspiring great man, whose hopes

were dashed, when he crossed a line, in other peoples
ways of sealing soul stealing redemption agreements,

with a shotgun one potential solution…

by the grace of good luck from any source such
luck appears to have kept me breathing, aimlessly

as I imagine a spirit might decide, in truth, one breath
let go , allows a sense to follow, as glowing cardboard ash,
as the teller zones across old causes fought for and won,

which winning needs another singing, which cheek
this time? Which last laugh is led upto, now,

as I acknowledge the precious readers who form
the recognostic think thank thing,
deja deja
This has a sunset with it on Facebook and kenpepiton.com
Chapter XXIII
Invisible Eclectic Portal

Installed in the Eclectic and invisible portal of the Evangelist Saint John levitates in his sacred basaltic cavern Katapausis, in the Patmos archipelago (Koumeterium Messolonghi, Chapter 16 / page 114. Editorial Palibrio - USA). They would be in communion with the clan archery, who would resemble them as their proper ectoplasm; Thus, each one will form a unique part of the masonry that will dictate to redirect them in their messianic tasks from this stage of ascension.

Vernarth; being aware that he will have to enter the cave, after having ceased his work on hold for three months. Skinny from the myriads of wars and parapsychological regressions, he remains dazzled to dedicate himself to the beautiful places open towards the horizon ..., neighbor to cave painting and astronomy. In the colors of his mathematical prayer, capturing the spiritual intensity that inspired Saint John to build the temple near his cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos. The saint appears only certain days looking at him from afar to encourage him in his progress, he is seen as a beautiful young man dressed in a robe of delicate pink tones, whose delicacy repeats psalms of the angel that normally accompany this Evangelist around him, with the colors Greens and blues of the landscape in the square of the sky that appears in redemption beyond the glory of the resurrection, rather super spiritual intelligence. In Skala's water, a shipwreck indicates the confusion of the men of its prophetic light, and on the ground a small pierced demon manages to divert the attention of Etréstles overwhelmed by digging it, so as not to stop the movements of the splendor of the effusions of storms in sacred sentence. This demon could be Tytillinus, who according to legends provoked bad thoughts in the clergy during religious services, and is the one feared by Saint John, who would not give them safe passage to enter and be able to entrust them with the task that they had predicted for him for the services in Katapausis.

Vernarth; he was with everyone working in the masonry of the Temple near the extramural wall of the Cavern of San Juan, he was Etréstles Eurídice, Raeder, Petrobus and Alikanto imbued with the flutes that sounded, over exciting his ears with royal denotes, which he always had of a special quality when he remained in Kalimnos. Everyone knowing that the threshold of proximity to the cavern was flooded by the enigma of the gloomy presence of Tytillinus, all rearranged themselves towards the poles of the tangible etherization of the psalms from 120 to 132, thus giving fire to the antipode of Divine Mercy, to repair the crown of the fifteen hours in the afternoon, thus disintegrating those that coincide with that of fifteen hours in the morning. Somehow abstaining from the northern confrontation with Tytillinus, center of the hooks of bewilderment and evil thoughts. Thus, the best way is to be swallowed by him and reside in his caustic stomach, making him believe that you will be consumed by him, and then fall close to himself when vomited, confusing him so that you yourself are one of his calves.

Vernarth manages to capture the upstart image near the grotto, seeing that of Tytillinus; where all attentive listened to the words textured by the saint.

Narrating Saint John: “He was also and will be a God of the Bressans in Italy, his image was disfigured and unearthed near Bresse. Le Rossi, who had it engraved on his Brassian memorials, says that the statue of this divinity was smashed in 840 by Rampat, Bishop of Bresse, and that it only had the name of the god in whom it was consecrated. This statue was made of iron, with the head crowned with laurel, resting the right cake on the skull of a dead man, and holding in his left hand an iron pike, finished at the top by an open hand, in which we see between track and thumb the egg that a snake entwined in his hand that got to bite: these are symbols as dark as they are mysterious. Is he resting on a skull and on a gloomy laurel potion, marking as certain defeated conjectures of Father Montfaucon, that Tillynus triumphed over death? But who will be the antiquarian or mythologist brave enough to explain the meaning of the serpent that throws itself into the egg that holds the hand that is on top of the pike? Let's admit that mainly among the topical gods they were hardly known, except in some particular cities that had chosen them for their patrons, there are always inexplicable symbols.

Saint John continues, in the face of the unmerited event, I will protect you here in my shed so that everyone is released first before entering my sanctuary, where everything is obsessed with visions after those of the Roses of the ultimatum, full of aspirations rather than subjugating in the aroma of purity and righteousness. Diverting the lurking Calluses and Dans (desquamation epidermis) of the eyelids, itchy in which its internal part is ulcerated, with cracks and callous hardness. Tyllinus the symptomatic form of the demon Tytillinus begins at the edge of the eyelids, although this edge then ulcerates; but generally it begins with a heat and itching that increases day by day, until they become  uneven and rough, and eventually end up causing stiffness, cracks, hardness and small ulcers. It is then because this demon not personified declares latent and obstinate disease of very difficult to cure. Not allowing before the scant light of the cavern, not being able to erase what is clarified in a look of solemn meditation and sacred silence. In its healing, general remedies are required, a soft and refreshing diet, bloodshed, if there is a large amount, as well as purging, when the disease is habitual. Regarding topical remedies, we will first use those that moisten, soften and moderate the acrimony of humor contained in the eyelids; then we come to those who are detergents and dry the ulcers, essentially, seeing him hesitate with our deep meditations digging his dark fermented soul.

Vernarth, insinuating to continue with his labors, sees with optimism to escape from this calamity, calls everyone to be close to the law ..., once they continued taking the steps towards the cavern. Tremors appear to them by all the edges of the cave, leaving everything dark and with airs of end of the world. In the intermission, Saint John towards the response of Psalm 120 to 132, interfering the fiery bellow of the playful Tytillinus, banishing the movement of his tail to outlaw the serpent egg, avoiding creating a pseudo monarchy on them prostrating them, as almost being being beheaded repentant.

They all open their arms and surrender to this pseudo demon, being swallowed entirely, to later reside in the intestines of this pseudo monster. Subsequently everything happens as predicted by the hermit, who would be expelled from his ruminant stomach, believing to be creatures of their own nature, confused by how their children from beyond for their intro demonizations. Thus it would have existed in mythologies to tempt and dismiss the work of any unit, essentially of San Juan. It will inhabit them from the hierarchy of Evil, as it appears in grimoires and occult texts, each demon has a precise name and function. Transfigured will be the epochs in dowries for the naive people, carrying them out for rituals to protect themselves from them, since it was believed at that time that every individual who was harassed by them, would continue to stalk them waiting for a moment of weakness to attack .
Saint John is and will be an egregious demonologist, collecting thick volumes with the names and attributions of each of the demons of the infernal hierarchy. This in perfect symmetry with that of Aion, interconnecting sublime times where the concept is lost on the human temporal scale and the genotype of Satanism or satagenesis, in austere precision ranging from Satan, head of all demons, to Ukobach, in charge of maintaining Long live the infernal flames. So that freedom of slavery finally reigns before one's own demonized moral individuality. The price of such an invocation is always the soul of the individual, who will end up going to hell, the demons invoked themselves and they will invoke themselves as a light to walk on their own darkness, in the past, present and future through Special enchantments found here on the Invisible Eclectic Portal.

Under edit / continue
Invisible Eclectical Portal
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2014
so many

crossing natural boundaries
unreal, imaginary but oh so
real-ity to you
and me

interconnecting contacting
differences, divides, chasms, canyons,
lies, complex and barefaced

bridge creatures
steel, rope, tree branch, eroding concrete,
sturdy shaky, securely dangerous,
each a different irony

this poem,
is of one such bridge

you cannot see its picture
on the Internet

only one or few
can cross it,
only one
can pay the
toll, reap beyond belief
so hefty steep,
when paid, garners
transversing permission,
but tourists in groups can
sneak- peak

this poem~bridge connects
the image I see of myself,
first look, awakening brought,
and the inner poet
who word passages across
the rickety rope one for crumbs of truth,
while throwing his secret shames
over the side

let us leave it here




http://list25.com/25-of-the-worlds-most-unique-bridges/
July 12, 2014 10:23am

Langkawi Sky Bridge, Malaysia
My favorite, see banner photo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua3yqIa_sIA

For Ernesto
Cadence Musick Nov 2014
the ******* city is lit up
like the headlights
of a single vehicle
transitioning into yellow
illuminated mist
in the dim shadows
of the parking lot
a concrete
interconnecting
web of cracks
and
cigarette butts.
my eyes droop pink
into a breath of suffocation
pillow over mouth
face a mask of
idolistic worship
religions ******* tight
passed to holy hands waiting for an offering
that stings and burns the skin
i looked through my eyelashes
wishing to taste
your sin
Ryan P Kinney Oct 2019
Lords Temple Basement Men
The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Dr. Benjamin Anthony, and Ayla Atash

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

“Come in and be amongst our broken people (pieces).
Mingle with our shards.
See which cut is the deepest”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out.
The people in the room greet one another, then swarm around one woman,
“You are a good worker.”
“You will be missed.”

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

The woman swarm, Mama Evil, pushes her way to the front to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The (holy) Word is debated, discussed, dissected, compromised, altered, changed, shredded, reused, updated, recreated. It is burnt to cinders, then rises as a phoenix, built out of the broken pieces of all that was said before; what used to be true, but is now casually agreed to be fallacy. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. We are just people. And he, is just a Man.”
“Dual Spirituality is a possibility. In fact, it is encouraged. Multiple realities are possible. Poly-spirituality is acceptable. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason’.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”
The Man explains,
“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word because we question.”

Let me start with a parable,
“Once upon a time…
There lived a shy little boy and a chatty little girl. Though the two lived really close they never knew each other. That was until one day, the girl entered high school. They met for the first time on the school bus. The boy eavesdropped on her and for the first time spoke to her. Although she was especially irritated, the boy responded. It was with those words that a lifelong love blossomed…
‘You love me, you just don’t know it yet.’

Through the many trials and errors of high school life they grew together. And so, They lived happily ever after.”
“…Except, she didn’t. In this reality, she ran off with a rich older man while taking care of his dying wife, 5 years after those high school sweethearts were married.”
Years later, he would lament,
“It started with a broken heart. Through the crack seeped liquid fire. It engulfed me, burning away all that I was. The flames shall purify me. Boil me down to my base components, and then rebuild me. From the ashes will rise a new entity.
Who am I?”

“What can we learn from this,” asks the Man.

The first interrupter states matter-of-factly, “You are fire. You are love.”
A tie-dyed burnout rants, “Love is fire, Man. It burns. But it also warms and protects… Praise Allah.”
“Amen.”
“Bless you my son.”
“Hail Satan.”

“The last time I hear my heart…” says the bookish-looking woman sitting in the corner, trailing off as she adjusts her literal Coke bottle frames.
Now with ignition to her words, she quotes, “The last time I hear my heart was like a galactic ******. The ****** that made you and touches everything you made. Faith is attempting to live as though we are loved.”

A Drag King high fives her and says, “I liked the galactic ******.”

A torn up, steel-studded, leather clad punk continues, “Promise me you will live…
For nothing…
But the next moment.
No forgiveness, no damnation, only the match I strike on the heel of my boot.”

And then the automaton asks, “What of the devil: the original corruptor, the source of all evil?”

A gym rat, wearing a holey muscle shirt, extends an arm to point as he half sings, “The devil is a wicked man and wears a suit and tie. The devil checked in at noon and asked us, ‘What is the sleep of reason?’ You woke the devil I thought you left behind.”

“The Devil is due; the Devils do,” coos his boyfriend, the semanticist-*******.

The Man answers, “Is not the source of evil the same as the source of creation. Is it not evil to be so selfish as to create, with no concern for how creation will change everything.”

The Wiccan Princess retorts,
“Creation can be bought and sold.
Motherhood is a commodity.
Venus is for sale.
The nativity is shrouded in black.

We've streamlined your desire.
She was only offering an apple anyways.
And filled in that hole in her heart.

Here, we give her to you totally domesticated.
This one is costly, but so worth it.

You never will be worth it.
Earn enough
Be enough

Taste the salt of her tears on your tongue;
the salt of the earth.
She refuses to wear this crown of thorns.

In the eyes of your maker.
You should be ashamed.
To look your Maker in the eyes.”

Mama Evil attempts to chill her blaze, “Dear, the Anger is caged. It is the custom to call children who go to war, men…children of war die like men.”

Their daughter, the littlest girl in the world, coughed. A runny nose explained it, she had the sniffles. Nothing to worry about normally, but here, now? Right now the end of the world was in front of her. Flying saucers were floating down to slaughter the entire world with burning laser jelly. She coughed and picked up a remote with a wheel shaped dial.
“i drank too much pop and i gotta ***.” She said to no one in particular.
She turned the wheel shaped dial and a chorus of voices sounded. The chorus formed itself into an immense wall of sound made of bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians from another dimension. The littlest girl in the world kept turning the dial and saw the bureaucrats wash over the saucers, sending them back into space. The earth was safe, the littlest girl in the world smiled in relief.
And coughed.  

“It seems where demons fail and monsters falter, angels may prevail,” her mothers laughed.

Still incinerated, a goddess queen shouts, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you failed to burn.”

The crowd jostles and pulses like a living being. They are moved by the words they have heard. A chatter rises from them, much like the midnight sounds of the forest. "Who does she think she is?" "She said it. She sure said it." "I'm going to tell Moira all about it." An old woman near the back takes a swig from a bottle of wine she carries under her coat before passing it to a young woman in front of her.
"From fire, new life is born, too," she smiles, a crooked twist of the lips.

Rendered speechless and impotent, The Man abruptly closes this meeting with the usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”
Pearson Bolt Feb 2016
i stare up at the same spot on the ceiling
desperate and restless beneath sweet sheets
the fan groans incessantly in my right ear
a drone that can't quite drown out the internal din
a cacophony simmering infernally within

gossamer strands shimmer in the moonlight
spider-webs interconnecting above my head
trapping my hope and retaining my dread
until naught is left but undead recollections
nascent nightmares and frightening images

a half-dozen dreamcatchers spin on twine
suspended intermittently throughout my mind
serpentine figures intertwined in the twilight
adamantine revelations of eternal return
dragons chasing their own tails ad infinitum

sleep is a tease that whispers gently like a breeze
death shares the coffin that doubles as my bed
she ***** everyone but she returns in the end
and when my time comes i'll meet her as a friend
relieved i need no longer pretend to be free
Ryan P Kinney Oct 2019
Lords Temple Basement Men
The first Book of The Word
In Nonsense we Trust

Assembled from pre-existing works by John Burroughs, Ryan P. Kinney, Jack McGuane, Cee Williams, Don Lee, Susan Grimm, Joe Roarty, Russ Vidrick, Dianne Boresnik, Mitch James, Tanya Pilumeli, Julie Ursem Marchand, Vicki Acquah, Terry Provost, Adam Brodsky, Lennart Lundh, Raymond McNiece, Hannah Williams, MaxWell Shell, Tim Richards, Ayla Atash, RC (Bob Wilson), Chuck Joy, Katie Daley, Solomon Dixon, Mary Weems, and Gordon Downie
Mostly taken as quotes during live poetry readings. Some stolen from other sources.
Additional content from predictive text by JM Romig, Linkin Park “Powerless,” “Saga of the Swamp Thing” vol. 1, T.S. Eliot, Amalgam Mythos, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Smith, John A. Kinney Jr., and Psalms (chap.):13
Added original content by Ryan P. Kinney, Eli Williams, and Kadie Good

“Lords Temple Basement Men,” it says on the door in a badly photocopied sign, replaced freshly each week. The original was built from torn up pieces of bootleg band vinyl stickers left plastered all over the windows of some teenager, surely passed into decaying adulthood long ago.

They gather in the bottom of an abandoned house in the heart of mostly warehouses. Something, someone long ago forgot to bull doze in the wake of morbid industrialization and the zeal to just get more men more jobs while giving them no life, no place to live. They built in their own obsolescence.

A Man stands outside; half catcalling, half showman barker; daring, tempting, bribing people to worship with him. In paint stained torn jeans, long shaggy hair with the bald spot landing pad directly in the center of his head, and shoes barely hanging together on his feet, he bellows out The Word. Somewhere between slam poetry performance and theology lesson, he entices and seduces people to enter. Here, they do not call him Father, or Brother, just person:  Man.  “Hey, Man,” is how they great him.

"God not only loves a sinner, he prefers them.”
“Come to my parish. Sinners only”
“The lostness of the found, the blindness of the seeing, the spirituality of the atheist, the silence of the spoken.”
“The Covenant of the Sacred Heart.”

People enter a crooked doorway. The Man pulls the peeling door behind them, scrapping the ground as he does so, and leads his flock down the concrete stairs to the basement. Some newbie looks nervously into the stairwell.
From the rear, a maternal voice coos,
“You will be used to the treatments.
Don't worry about it.”
They come to a dingy dirt gravel floor and spread out; filling the space like gas expanding into a cylinder.

The Man steps upon his usual milk crate to open the service. He intones the Capitalist Mantra,
“God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies”

And the people chant, “I will not kiss you. I will not bow. I will not bow. I will not be moved.
I love the idea of what I have to be”

The maternal voice steps up to explain their purpose here,
“This is a strange, mad religious service. Everything is out of place, nothing and no one seems to fit together. We all gather here, but no one seems to-gether. This is less a sermon and more a discussion where the gospel is debated. The Word is critiqued, modified, discussed, and changes between its members at each meeting. At any time for no reason, people can interrupt The Man to deny, confirm, suggest, or challenge his statements. The group then decides on the next bit of gospel to be made up on the spot or if what has already been said is still the current phase of perspective. There is no central thought or plan, just a plan for thoughts. We, people, call this Faith. Our membership makes up a multitude. There are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists, Buddhists, Capitalists, hippies, goth kids, Starbuck’s sipping bloggers, just plain weird kids in the back working on their latest D&D campaign. Dual Spirituality is a possibility. In fact, it is encouraged. Multiple realities are possible. Poly-spirituality is acceptable. The only interconnecting philosophy among us is, ‘Anything is possible at any time for any reason’.”

The People are ready to receive The Holy Spirit and his unique brand of performance poetry,

“In the beginning, there was only The Word, a word. And then more. Which were collected into a story; The Story. And from The Story came creation.
And then came the questions. And The Question was man. Who are we? What are we? Why? Who am I?”

The Man explains,
“The whole point of The Word is to make up new ones. To defy God’s Word by creating ourselves.”

The first interrupter asks, “How do you say No to God.”

The Man answers,
“You don’t like The Question. You are The Question.
We are relearning how to get lost, hoping to return to the birth of The Word.
Worship yourself and serve only humanity.
No one made you.
You created yourself.
It’s all the same story. The Story of I.”

“We are a beautiful blasphemy to God’s word (because we question).”

“How do you say No?
You don’t.
By understanding there is no such thing as,
No, I can’t. Only I won’t.
It was.
It is.”

A torn up, steel-studded, leather clad punk responds,
“we see others as they are
we see ourselves at every age
and all at once”

And the Man once again responds,
“All that we can think. All that we can imagine. All that we can write, paint, create, feel. All of this is real; somewhere. Depends on which universal perspective you are tuned to. Don’t like the current program playing. Change the channel.”

The professor sitting on the floor, shoeless, begins to riff,
“Yes, this is like that piece about imagination being the genesis of other worlds. About how imagination, all thought, is really tapping multiple frequencies from other universes. Our imaginative creations spawn, tap into, and play back all alternate universes in a non-linear time sense. Cause and effect are not in sequence. All that we think, all that we can come up with creates new worlds, but also accesses those already in effect and plays them. We create worlds that already existed by the time we come up with them in our imagination. They were already there and human minds are organic quantum analog receiving-broadcasting devices. We randomly switch channels with nonlinear frequency, simultaneously, and with varying signal strengths of each universe. We receive, but also feedback into a greater signal. So, we unknowingly create these universes, while also being fed from our own creations. Never, in order. We are the Father and the Son. Our own creators and creations. Our words are the genesis of all the other worlds, but also speak the gospel of the programs already in progress. All that we can imagine is as real as we can conjure.”

A black goddess queen asks, “Then, what do you call God?”

The Man retorts,
“You don't need his name, because you remember the man.
The idea of a memory of a man.
Perhaps the idea is better, stronger, more important than the man.
The idea of a man.
Sometimes, people are the absence of themselves.
And the absence of man is God.”

The semanticist-******* unzips its mask and chimes in, “When you name something you separate it and take ownership of it. We never name ourselves. So I ask you, what is your name? What do you own?”

A tie-dyed burnout rallies a battle cry protest chant,
“Who's the Boss?”
“You.”
“Who's God?”
“You.”
“Who are you?”
“I am (me).”

Another voice screams from the crowd, "I'm a monster, I admit it."

Like a rolling wave, the chatter once soft, “I’m a monster” becomes a chant. Faster and faster the adrenaline rises up, the voices rise up, thunderous shouting fills the room, threatening to burst through the walls and escape into the sky. No longer fearing what others might think they raise their fists and beat their chests, unleashing the monster they tried so hard to hide. Shrieks and guttural instinctual roars, animalistic crawling and seething anger, move through the crowd like a pack of wolves ripping apart a coyote.
The screaming voices spill out,
“God has left long ago and has taken no pity on the lonely wanderer.”
“We are not Abraham or Jesus. We are forgotten.”
“We are the forgotten demons pushed out of Heaven.”
“Or maybe we never belonged there in the first place.”

The maternal voice returns, feeling the scorch of the unrequited emotion, seeks to soothe, “Thus mollified she goes, harsh words forgiven, down highways in the dark by demons driven.”

The Man, the original instigator, adds more fuel to the fire,
“And what drive does she possess that we do not?  To seek out, to be blind to the trapping of the darkness within this corridor? We must look and see how we too can move past the shame and blame of others.  To move past the trappings of our own guilt.  To take within ourselves, our demons, true, but take and guide and build the new.  A new life that we can’t ignore, and when we fall, we feel the scorn.  We feel the bad faith and lies that keep us entangled in the want-to-be-with, the fear to be-without. But we also have a fear to be, to exist in the place of a true “self” and live out our dreams. Though time keeps happening, we remain stagnant, we remain in the place of an inauthentic being, a being-for, not a being-with.  We must seek to be-with.  To be-with our demons, our past, and our temptations toward the dark, toward the place in which the I becomes.  To be. To exist. In this.  That is the place where the divine can breathe.  Though we must remember to always embrace change, for everything is temporary, including our own pain.”

Having spent all his feeling and words carelessly and frivolously, The Man abruptly closes this meeting with the usual send off,
“The Word has evolved, my friends.”
Alex Zhang Jun 2018
I see life through a crystalline window
Colorless so that my vision is untainted
Yet ironically still deceiving in its transparency
For through the many facets of this jeweled facade
My sight scatters into many dimensions
Unable to focus on a single aspect
So that something as simple as an iron needle
Becomes a cage of interconnecting rods
Binding my thoughts in an imaginary jail
In the matrix created by the morphed glass
My eyes: where simplicity is corrupted
To a kaleidoscope of unwarranted complexity
Lucas Scott Mar 2020
Ink
I want to be
   your tattoo
              skin deep and meaningful
          a complicated design
                     of interconnecting lines
      forming an image
a symbol
                       expressing an intimate
          part of
you

I want to be
        what you need
passionate red
        for a setting sunset
calming blue
        for a starry night
invigorating yellow
        for a vibrant sunflower
darkest black
        for the wisest quote
always moving with you
        when you dance
                when you laugh
                        when you cry

But if regret comes to be

I want to be
                        your mistake
                        covered up
                        a hidden memoir
             of your past
                                           guiding your future
                          an ink-stained lesson
                          lingering curse
                     but I will still be
          part of
you
Bob B Apr 27
We often hear about karma and think,
"My karma is all about me."
And it indeed is personal,
At least to a certain degree.

But when we think of all life forms
And how we interact,
Karma's a much, much grander thing--
Unfathomable, in fact.

Societies have karma, too.
Let THAT idea gel.
And all the nations on this earth
Have their karmas as well.

Because of causes and conditions
All of us are here,
Inhabiting a planet that
Resembles a giant sphere.

What we do affects other people
In ways we can't always know.
And we are currently reaping what
Was sown long ago.

But karma, instead of being a system
Of punishment or reward,
Is more just knowing that consequences
Should not be ignored.

We can't undo the past; we can't
Change it in any way.
What we CAN be mindful of
Is how we behave today.

Therefore, it's incumbent on us
To think everything through.
Mindfulness should always influence
All that we say and do.

The karmas of all living things are so
Intricately intertwined,
That trying to understand the connections
Boggles the human mind.

-by Bob B (4-26-24)
Mara Apr 2017
Maybe being alone is too comfortable
I don't know what I was hiding from
Or scared of
I do know that the silence has
Grown on me
He is special, but I must label
Him ordinary to keep my
Heart at bay
The truth is,
I daydream of our being
Interconnecting to make a universe of possibilities
To experience the happiness,
Sorrow, frustration, and ease
That cannot be experienced ever just alone

Just alone
Just alone

But I don't want to drift away
With the idea that I am never just alone
To give my whole existence to him
Keeps my mind tranquil
Yet chaotic
Brother Jimmy Aug 2017
The branching connections are vast
All pervasive
Connecting me to you
Interconnecting all beings

We are all here made of the same stuff
The stuff of stars

Your ancestors,
Your progeny,

Your friend,
And enemy,

*I-am-you-are-we-and-they-are-us
I wasn't really a person to pay attention to the seasons changing.
There was a set time for each, I knew that much. I also knew they left, but always came back. It wasn't until you left, that I started to realize how beautiful the seasons actually were.
They knew nothing of dominance or greed.
They knew they would get their turn to freeze over swimming pools, change the colors of the leaves, help the flowers bloom, & melt popsicles.
They would swiftly ease away from one another casually interconnecting at times.
All of this of course fascinated me.
You leaving wasn't like the seasons changing at all.
It was more of a drastic change above anything else.
It doesn't happen often, but when the sky is angry, it'll take away all sense of happiness & safety you felt on that warm spring day & replace it with a freezing abyss.
Then that's it.
I grew very fond of the seasons after you were gone.
Odd situations when we try to surpass
our own expectations
expecting a little bit more than being shown once
again the door,

I know what doors look like and
I don't need to be shown one.

Tell the truth they told me only to
scold me when I did,
a case of do as I say and not as you want.

My coat hides despair
that's why I keep it buttoned
and
witness my own prosecution.

Limbo is where we go when
no one wants us,
it's the place in-between
where we've been
and
where we want to be,
but it's lonely
here.

interconnecting events that prevent
me from leaving while breathing,
holding my breath
while they're holding the door
open.
Travis Green Apr 2019
When I thought about you and me
as one, the light of your soul
interconnecting with mine, the stars
aligned with the moon and the
celestial inventions above,
I wanted your existence even more.  
I wanted to feel my flesh
dive under your world and uncover
all the mysteries that lied within
your nation, to move my hands
gently across your bronze skin
and seep inside your stillness,
seep inside your bones of intense
rhythms, veins of high rises and
starry delight, sensual shoulders
reaching up towards the sky,
sleek dimensions and angled shapes,
jazzy chests and rocking *******,
smooth hairs of infinite surprises,
the planets coming alive inside
your captivating masterpiece,
the wheels of your hips merging
next to mine, brown feet
resting peacefully on my thighs
like the cool rising seas in the
night.  I wanted to ride inside
your mountain of timeless labyrinths,
explore the tunnels of your life,
following the streams of your
seamless engine, arriving at deep climaxes
and hot sweaty passion.  You were someone
that I loved, someone to call home as I
drifted inside your arms, my eyes
marveling at the bright countryside,
your thin fingers like musical melodies
playing inside my cells, like city lights
illuminating my frame.  You were a galaxy
of midnight jams, another galaxy
of drumbeating rhymes shimmering in the
moonlight, a brilliant destination, a scenic
cityscape, a serene place where I could escape.

— The End —