a life is conceived;
extracted, transformed, loaded
to be consumable

born;
abstracted by nature
for myriad use cases

dies shortly after;
de-instantiated
yet still invokable

hearing the host of angels in a traffic jam

i feel mercy in being halted.

heaven fits inside a plume of exhaust

a plume of exhaust fills my spirit

i exhale

and am exhaled.

my fear of rot subsides.

am i still?

we passed the school where children strove

at recess in the ring

am i still? am i, still? or do i ride

at eight thousand five hundred miles a minute

around the archer in the void,

praying to be marked?

oh loose the bowstring,

and find your target in me.

k6

Laying down one sees the ceiling
Standing up one sees the door in the wall
To assess reality:
Confirm or deny one's eyes are closed
By gently activating the eyelids to press down
The distance they traverse and responsive pressure will reveal:
One's eyes were already closed
Revealing the visions are not optical

Beware false light

The pulsating room
The deadly enclosure
Is of the mind
By the mind
In the mind
For the mind
To constrain cognition
To fetter the self
And avoid the panic of unfathoming
Boundless no-self no-where at no-time

Another evening of driving rain whispered dreams of cleanliness to me in my sleep. I woke in a start, a vision of a shattered padlock in the cellar, the echoing thunderclap of iron chains snapped, the instantaneous achievement of loss. Through the window, the frost white moon blazed amidst a thrash of soaked branches and curtains of rain. The storm's frenzy was naked, unsheathed in the moonlight. In the dark mirror across the room, I sensed myself, watching the watcher, the eye beholding the beholder, wondering what does it see, who is the one toiling in the cellar, scouring scrolls of Baal, listening for eternity's secret in the screams of the penitents, letting the blood of angels, opening the wound to close the circle. "It is I, lord," I called to the puppet master in the mirror. He met my rapt gaze. As the exquisite sensation of holy judgment rushed over me, mounting me like a steer, the rising wails of the storm outside drowned out the cries from the cellar below.

The Way

One day many years ago I went on a long journey to a faraway place and after many obstacles and missteps and tremendous suffering, I found a marvelous treasure. It was truly wondrous, the kind of abject beauty one doesn’t know to look for or how or when it even comes to be, yet there it is, perfect and complete. It wasn’t a shining stone or an ancient spell or powerful sword or anything one could use or sell. I’m not sure what to call it now, but back then it was the most important thing to me, because it was rare and splendid, meaningful and hard-earned. And most importantly, because I couldn’t take it home with me. It was firmly rooted at the end of that dangerous, fantastic journey I had undertaken. 

Eventually I had to leave it and returned to my homeland. I cherished it for years and years in my memory, and even as its image lost its luster and refined edges, I didn’t worry because I had held it once, and I had a map, so I knew the way back to it. 

And indeed one day, a few years ago, I did return to marvel at it once more. The map served me well, and as I unfolded its tattered edges, large flakes of paper fell away, and it somehow revealed a new shortcut to me. Before I knew it, I was back in that foreign yet familiar land, back at my original destination from years before, basking again in the treasure’s brilliance and warmth. At the time, I remember it looked and felt different from before, slightly duller and smaller, but I didn’t mind because I was just so happy to have it once again after so many years via the map’s shortcut.

Many more years passed, and I’m sorry to say that I nearly forgot that first journey I took that revealed the treasure, and the treasure itself and how overjoyed it had made me. Although my life had become very busy, and some might even say prosperous, I started to think about how lovely it would be to study the map, travel that nostalgic path, and behold that glory once more. It almost felt like I should do this not for my own sake but for the sake of the past, or the sake of beauty. 

I resolved to do it. Just a few days ago, I set out on the journey one more time. As it turns out, this will be my last. I’m writing to you now in a lost and bewildered state of mind and time and place. The map has dissolved into a black fog that now obscures the light of the sun and moon. Both the original route and shortcut are concealed from me - so too is the way home. I don’t belong here, and I realize now how blind I was to think I ever did. To my horror, although I have not found the cherished treasure, I am certain it’s ruined beyond understanding, effaced from my memory, not just today—my last day alive—but in all of my yesterdays. I held it not even once. The sum of my life has decreased. These, my final words, are a stillborn attempt to convey the beauty and profundity I didn't experience but might have.

Light-hemmed waves

glide against the glistening lakeshore

like silk on glass

Summer cicadas cry

A fat dog rolls in the grass

eyes wild with joy and oneness with his owner

who pauses to absorb the radiating bliss

The sound of the waves are the ticking of a clock unheard

Terror of death sleeps behind every shape

Each glorious day is buried under the one before

There's no one

in heaven

All's right with the world

death death death

death death death

lay down the white book, unread

devein the petals of life's flower

swallow body

eat and be eaten

envelop self

recursively into nothing

Hanging on the cross in great suffering,

Jesus cried into the heavens:
Woman, behold your son!

Ceaselessly she beholds all,

Yet none can hold her gaze.  
Time is her filigreed looking glass.
In her reflected eyes:

Now is here.

Here is everlasting.
And here she is.

 
From outside side itself,
She beholds her son,
The son of a lover long-gone,
The son of some god.

Vastly and immaculately she sighs,

returns to her looking glass,

and reclines into all creation.

The dunes are dead and so am I,

encased in wind. The desert sighs.

It longs for life but not for me,

for I have joined its vast debris.

In No Time we'll be as one

swept, dissolved under the sun,

too dispersed to be displaced,

too undefined to be effaced.

Philsophy of _____

the night stars cascade across the velvet sky

like a goblet of diamonds spilt by god on the dimensionless black curtain

that separates the earthly realm from the heavenly abyss

o, what stain!

beholding all its milky extravagance

atop these violet windswept dunes i'm overcome

by retroactive loss that blackens the hourglass 

my life has been so long

yet how will i ever finish it

the wind and snow won't relent
my eyeballs feel nearly frozen, i stare at my feet
as i march toward the darkening horizon

the white landscape turning to ash as the sun rolls away
let me check the mail - just junk
let me empty the dishwasher

i empty the dishwasher

i try to meditate i am emptying the dishwasher now

but i'm so very tired

i should leave here but i don't know the way

another hour of video games, feeling near frozen

stare at my feet, when did it start snowing

the streets are already white

and all the people hurry toward the darkening horizon

i can barely see the snow

all i see is snow

should i bother to clean this window screen

when spring comes, as the sun rolls away

i take a seat on the couch and wonder why i

should leave here but i don't know the way

don't know why i should keep this place nice at all

should i water the plants or did i already

turn to ash, ash for miles and miles

freezing ash that burns my eyes

I'd nothing left

before I quit

I took a breath - 

and released it

into a Life

as living proof

I took a lie

and made it truth

I took one moment

then many more

I took a visitor

behind locked door

I gave him all of

my scarcity

And all my taking

he took from me

the fated gnostic genesis

proceeds at no behest

the human family burns itself

alive, from birth to death.

revolted blood engorges

the severed spiral brain

afar a star unborn unlinks

from earth's celestial chain.

the lock is a door

the corpse is a lamb

the heart is a whore

the way is a dam.

I was experiencing the future now

now

now

now

It will be, is, and was miserable.

Never was I always waiting.

In the final sweep,

Nothing is revealed

in Its immaculate entirety.

I am not called but I will

go to meet my maker.

I go to take revenge.

k5 / Briefly be

Orbiting a void circling half-sloped
blacked-out arcs of abyssal light,
formless placeless
the wordless path written in the stars,
instructions for the mechanism,
the balance wheel and gears of fate,
perfect and perpetual.

No out, only in.
I want to escape
not disintegrate only to reintegrate
in fractal cities rising and falling

and rising into cities spinning

and hollow then solid,

like I too am built and rebuilt

by no one with no one's energy or matter,
a single glint from an infinite mirror.

Begin to end,
a tear waters the seed
and ancient red cells spill out their color. 
I am, briefly.
Darkly I see
fluttering lashes of light empty
all light into emptiness.

---

Perceiving perception reveals blindness.
Dimly see, briefly be.

let there be dark

and sound and touch

and dance and sex

let light penetrate dark

let dark receive its perfect beam

a ceremony

in exquisite dappling

let the tempo of life be

waves and beats

breaths and thrusts

risings and settings

cycles and orbits

contracting expanses

expanding contractions

i know this day
the aches of time -
stopping is dull pain
going is sharp
try to do neither
as minutes sag into days
days stretch into minutes

i know my goal
has a goal of its own
we both want to survive
hunger has teeth -
hunter, prey
hunter, pray
for my moment -
going feels like waiting
then waiting and waiting
and waiting to stop

k4

arm stretched like chewing gum, legs melting upward

as the painted dome rises from above and falls

from below - it's here.

there's circuitry in the vascular walls

pumping existence thru tiny corridors - it's this.

the neon caramel navy turns septic, then polygonal, then filigree

matching facet for facet the violin strings which drop like dead birds

to sweep up in a gyre, breaking and threatening to break

breaking and threatening to

and all the while the dome reverberates and rotates between

past and fiction and song and place and person and touch

and planet and particle and part - it's now.

the cave

my wrists are tied - 

the light is high

on the face of the world -

and all my loss - and all my life

are blurred

i see my future lover

as a flicker on stone -

dancing with my corpse

and am in bliss

alone -

and rapt, apart -

my heart is young -

and in the dark -

my hope is hung -

Some ways out

Some ways out and closing, across the arc of horizon a bulging mass of black thunderclouds erupt and seethe like night made corporeal or all-annihilating miasma spewed from the void's cauldron, and I stand in wait watching it crash closer, churning the vast wasteland into revolted particulate adding unto itself, feeding and enlarging as if for brood, faster and louder roaring an ancient proclamation of arriving at the end, stampeding all, oblivious in its destruction, engorged in self-perpetuation, now nearly upon me, blindly ravishing the sole and still witness to its coming from some unmeasured abyss to here, to heed, its empty heralding signifying nothing save Nothingness, not even to me, its casualty, its dirt, its ecstatic supplicant.