The Human Neurosis

A man had a relationship like no other. We’ll call him Adam.

He loved a woman who was so close to him she was a part of him.

We’ll call her Eve. Together they shared a garden of delight created for them alone.

Their time in Eden was paradise, unparalleled delight.

But someone else entered their garden and then there were three.

Eve was beguiled by this someone and soon was drawn 

to a part of Eden no one was allowed to visit.

There she gained a type of knowledge she wasn’t supposed to have.

She shared the location of this knowledge with Adam

and he too had his eyes opened and knew the forbidden.

Nothing was the same after that.

The knowledge made it impossible for either of them 

to remain in Eden and have the life they enjoyed before.

Outside of Eden they struggled to regain the feeling they once had.

But he knew that she knew that he knew that she knew.

Their counselor told them it was neurotic to dwell on it,

simply let it go, but how do you let go of a dream

that was more than a dream for once it was true and you lived it?

How could they let go of wanting Eden?

What in goddamn creation could they try to put in its place?

And the rest is history.

 

After the End

Razor future, sticky past.

A fuzzy now where nothing lasts.

Delusion of reference for all that matters,

Hallowed veil now in tatters.

Knot of eternity pulling tighter.

Light in shadow, darkness brighter.

Music swells, drowning the wails.

Memories to forget, lingering tales.

Making no sense, emotions strong.

Stuffing the soul, just go along.

Nothing to do to make it better.

Anima runs, so let her.

 

Dark Lightning

There’s nothing but cold silence after the battle. It rattles the heart.

Something ended and something is left eternal. Something has moved apart.

No one survived and only me, a ghost of myself, passes over the scene.

Not long ago there was passion and fury here,

passion of the body, fury of the spirit.

Both existed joyously before the battle started. 

Both continued achingly when hostilities commenced.

Both sides were right, both sides were wrong,

In the end neither side got what they wanted,

for war is not about redemption no matter what anyone says.

Each side had fervent soldiers who rallied and 

each side had civilians who hid away at home.

The soldiers were activating complexes of a feeling-toned drive,

they needed to risk all for the loftiness of their mythic cause.

The civilians prayed for peace in the now but remained conflicted

by a troubled past at odds with an idealized future 

that hope alone could not reconcile.

The two combatants were once united as close as can be,

they identified as one, they relished being together.

But then a dark wedge fell between them,

a bolt of black lightning, a crippling charge of horrendous fate.

It was nothing either of them could foresee,

but it was also nothing they would ignore.

A down spiral of attacks and traumas, reopened wounds 

and strategic retreats led them from argument to mortal combat.

They prayed they were fighting to restore the union they once had.

They felt they were fighting for the truth each held within. 

But their union and their truth simply could not coincide

with the dark wedge gouging out a space between them.

Overnight each night, traces of hope mixed with exhaustion between skirmishes.

They dreamed that victory or divine intervention simply had to appear

to rescue the situation, make a truce, and affect a miracle restoration.

But the stinging glare of morning always reappeared 

and the stone-faced ramparts were engaged again.

As before, slings and arrows were hustled into the fray.

Rage and shouts and bloody chaos escalated beyond all defenses.

Eventually, both sides outflanked the other and struck swift and true.

And now there is silence. No passion or fury to be felt.

The battlefield lays fallow. A dank afternoon fog rolls in.

Only ghosts are left to wander and dream of a love that once was. 

Shank Rainbow Fugue

My God, this is really happening!

In a flash, rancorous lucidity reveals the world as it is, as never seen before.

Crass illusions in this place are solid in a way that sticks to your bones.

Prescriptive Goo smeared on delicate private parts by strangers in lab coats 

fulfills wishes for deliverance, or so the television says. 

Clarity flows through cracks in fluid objectivity in search of transparency. 

There are bars on the dirty windows of belief and someone is scratching to get in.

Why do the dead keep making noise on the stage where we rush to have our encore?

Individual core meaning is stranger than can be supposed.

Certainty in intellect lacks the odd seminal attractor, the necessary opening

to the creative option. An open heart’s pathetic sensitivity as holy mission pales

in the glare of brass facts. Only fools cast aspersions on the insanity 

of the thornless hybrid rose. Dare to fathom the shallowness of daily reality. 

Stroll among deep fake constructs grooming feckless souls for their blessed seduction.

They will never realize they’ve been seduced until they lie bruised and bewildered

oozing spunk and blood from places they usually hide from the world.

To save themselves from admitting shame they will proclaim the violation love.

They’ll harbor that love in a dear and wounded part of their shadow’s heart 

then shout the same guttural love into the face 

of the one who dares to bear witness to the crime.

There is no healing for the prescient divine madness of proclaiming 

psychotic profane indulgence as the standard role-model for a feared future.

Genuflect before the horny false idol of loving embrace. 

Revel in the phantom appreciation you make yourself believe in.

Feel how complete all of it turns out to be after being so completely a romantic delusion.

Rub your nose into yourself, six square inches of fetid shadow soil tumbling 

through a bottomless hole in route to a fabled Source advertised as everywhere. 

If something touches me I must go to the root of it, chasing a complete picture 

of attaching to non-judgment with subject matter that fails to logically focus. 

Allow the cut from the fine edge of allowing, a surrender of disassociation.

Wallowing is not finding balance yet off-center creative immersion be praised, 

be brave enough to assault your variations in valueless social toxicity.

The sympathetic magic of mercurial mood countermands an epidemic 

of boundary thickening spasms in light of finally found but wounded hidden places.

A whisper becomes a fading call to moral responsibility no longer recognized.

The insight is stark – fabled individuation is but the first step of shamanic initiation.

When achieved, one’s wholeness must next attempt to discover something authentic.

If nothing lasts then the value of seizing the authentic is a genuine distraction. 

My Self as Soul, if it dares to reflect on itself, is eagerly remanded to a clique of experts,

their cleverness abounds in the ruined temple of reflexive self-absorption.

If we’re all asleep and need to wake up then we risk losing the dream.

While sleeping we watch, while dreaming we expand,

deep magic or madness appears as tragic love held too close within.

Soul becomes a vacuous character in a passion play bent by delusional trauma.

The third eye looks within into spaces made from dimensions unable

to be understood by a wandering mind confined to itself and its projections.

Push where there is mush commands the manipulator.

Double-down-on-stupid rolls up and loops on the teleprompter.

The Ergriffenheit of dictated ideology is stamped on hypnotized consciousness.

We’re ruled by damaged children playing God with their genitals

as instruments of manifested will. Sacred predilections of our once holy magic 

disappear with formulation of an ego equation too long 

for people who live in the now to follow into their unconscious.

Teleology asserts quips from bygone sages, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Delysid hits a glide path along 5HT2A in stormy crosswinds of delayed panic.

Shock impacts the cortex. Simplicity is realized as being most complex, 

complex in manifesting a removal of all that is not simple from its process. 

There is no easy way to affect simplicity and so easy is not simple, 

therefore simplicity is out of reach. Nothing remains but false starts of everything 

randomness has in store in another timeline we once wished for.

You can’t go back but nothing will let you leave it behind.

Try telling yourself you merely stray into your destiny as you rationalize your impulses.

Believe it simply because it’s absurd. Resurrect your hope that hope is more than wishful thinking.

Analogs of enlightenment only require a synthetic litmus test of faith.

Shout into the void where past lovers wait for you with eager sweat and groping satisfaction.

There is no escape from fate when we relish the prison of our desires.

Turn back to your future, make the attempt to leave the eternal now.

Now is the sticking place where all that you were makes you the one who loses yourself

when you succeed in letting go of the pain and bother in shame and regret.

Nowhere in this place exists the star that guides to the ideal state of contentment.

Cast aside your romantic illusions that one day such things can be realized.

Everything here is intent to prove the opposite. Everywhere time moves you

reflects the folly of your dreams. Give into the resistance pulling you apart.

Only by letting life have its lustful way with you will you have a chance to feel its love.

Life will convince you that such love is real and if you surrender your intimacy to it

you might be allowed to journey through your days in a mirage most pure.

For purity in life is coarse and raw, it exists only as a joyful euphemism that’s expedient.

It feigns as the hidden magic no one speaks about for it has no use here 

except when making wishes. It flows in jagged channels of sticky desperation. 

It feeds our dreams but starves our experience.

It gleams as a shard fallen from a rainbow and lodged in the heart.

It will stake you to the ground of being even as you feel chosen by it

as if sacred grace was destined to make you feel so complete.

There is nothing more special than desire fulfilled when the fulfillment is believed.

While belief is the key, believing ourselves is the magic trick without purity,

for however we manage to make ourselves believe in the elusive magic is good enough

to spark the illusion alive in a place such as this, a tortured realm 

of make-believe for everything that pretends-for-real something it wasn’t.

In time even the illusion fades and passes away. Passing days steal precious meaning 

from painful memories of that pure love in life that haunts us as the source 

of our neurotic tears. Of course we have no choice but generate it all again. 

A slave to wishes, we hold onto the new belief that the magic was real.

No no, it couldn’t have been oozing spunk and blood on the spreadsheets of our ecstasy,

It was true love connection (that wasn’t lasting), 

it was tremendous intimacy (that retained no depth).

Each wish begets another as the shard of purity falls from the sky above us.

Whisper to ourselves – the rainbow was real, for a while it truly was a part of our now.

Turn your back on where it went and why it faded even if the wound in your heart persists. 

Try to realize, one dwells on anything but the shard at their peril. 

There is nothing to do but await the penetration of belief again, the piercing of the veil, 

the promise of the joyful euphemism striking the heart in a way only life can manage, 

a moment when bruised and bewildered you slide on icy roads and shout inside 

to the manipulating ghost of your ironic wish crashing over you,

My God, this is really happening!

Imago Guilty Soul Innocent

I enter an elevator on the 66th floor only to find 

a complete criminal court 

squeezed into the space and awaiting my arrival.

The proceedings are clear – I have to represent myself, 

no one else will stand up with me.

In the time it takes the elevator to descend to the lobby

I must make my case for why I feel about my life the way I do.

Feelings need to be justified, 

thoughts need to be analyzed, 

actions reviewed in gory detail.

I stammer through an opening statement, 

mumbling to myself, overwhelmed and dismayed.

I try to explain – my life has been a one-legged ballet in a war zone,

a muddy operating room at a country carnival, 

a bad psychedelic trip atop fornicating hippos,

a sacred initiation in a pirate ship’s rape room, 

a delirious pixie flight into a supernova,

a spinning waiting room without furniture, 

a fiery tornado at the eye of a hurricane,

but that’s not the half of it, my life has been so much more, 

the chaotic motion of it took me by surprise, 

so much energy, I don’t know where to start.

I only have dozens of faded 3-by-3 black and white photos

tossed haphazardly in a moldy cigar box to present as evidence.

There is no way to convey my story, 

not so the sweep and impact of all those years is felt by others, 

not with such blurry snapshot trivia, not in the time allowed.

I fumble through the faded photos; they drop in bunches at my feet.

Part of me braces with anxiety as I call myself to the stand.

I cross examine myself and trick the truth out of me.

The irony of it is raw – this world honors no oaths 

yet I cannot find it in me to perjure myself.

Part of me wants to go to the roof alone and gaze at the sky.

I feel a sinking feeling, going down, the quickening reminds me

of a repeating theme in my dreams, a haunting motion sickness

of dropping into a dark void where things appear, 

they interact with me in confusing but heartrending ways.

I know when I get to the lobby nothing will change.

I will still be guilty of not being understood, 

not by others and not by myself.

I will still have to face the verdict of blind and deaf and dumb justice.

The elevator stops, the doors open, 

my debit card is swiped for the use of the court,

I’m forcefully ushered out of the building and given a warning 

– follow the rules, you’re under house arrest.

But I have nowhere to go, no place that’s home.

I stand on the sidewalk and start singing a song, 

my upturned hat in hand.

People pass every which way, they can’t be bothered.

As I sing I try to translate the words to my song.

It’s no use – I don’t understand them even if I feel them, 

it’s just something in me I have to sing.

Some clown across the street snaps a photo of me 

then hands me a print on his way by.

I stuff it in my hat. He’s laughing with a sad painted face. 

Immediately the image starts to fade.

I don’t know why I feel I need to keep it. 

It’s a pale imago without a soul.

It doesn’t prove anything. It’s not evidence of anything.

It’s a snapshot of me singing, an idealized specter hinting at a meaning.

I might as well be dancing in the dark on an alpine ridgeline.

I might as well be making love to one who shouts at me they love another.

I look to the sky. It’s still striking blue for now. But night is coming. 

Soon stark neon will burn the darkness into starless ashes. 

The elevator doors will open once more.

Then it will begin again.

 

Bleach In The Gravy  

The roadside guru said life is a meal,

a banquet in a take-out box meant for on the go,

a portable super-sized snack too big to finish,

best enjoyed fresh with all your senses, 

feel how good it is going down.

You have to be willing to get dirty,

warm grease and hot sauce on hands and face,

savor or gulp, it don’t matter, it’s all good.

Sure, there’s gonna be some bones

and raspberry seeds in the wisdom teeth,

you might even get scalded when you’re in the soup

and some things mixed together just won’t sit right,

But who thinks of that when they get icing on the cake?

Who’s gonna complain about that when the caviar arrives?

There’s only one problem that’ll turn your stomach good,

that’s when one dish becomes your gotta-have favorite,

something you absolutely need or why eat at all,

the prime delight that gives meaning to the whole shabang.

If you find you just have to have your favorite, say it’s gravy,

or you’d rather not eat at all, it just wouldn’t be special,

then you’re gonna starve when one day you find

somebody put bleach in that gravy.

It’s still gravy of course, but it’s not the same,

and just forgetting about the bleach, putting it out of your mind,

won’t take it out of the gravy, you’ll smell it a mile away.

Some things leave a bad taste in one’s mouth, the guru confessed,

some things aren’t even edible and yet they fall on our plate,

but sooner of later you’re gonna have to decide,

what are you here for – gravy or a meal?

 

More Evidence COVID is Smart  

Incredibly, the COVID virus can count.

It knows the difference between 99 and 100.

It switches off and becomes incommunicable in companies of 99 employees or less.

It switches on and threatens the safety of everyone everywhere when one employee is added.

COVID is smart enough to know the reverse too -- fire the 100th employee to make it 99

and immediately there's no need for the previously applied preventative action or a safety alarm,

despite the fact we're in the worst pandemic in the history of humanity

according to those allowed to speak.

Thankfully, those in power know this. This makes sense since they also know the smart COVID virus is so deadly walking through a restaurant but it becomes incommunicable when you sit down and take your mask off to eat, or when you take it off to take a bite or sip but then put it back on in-between bites. Smart COVID also is insidious in targeting certain buildings, like county government offices or Social Security Administration offices, so extra cautions and closures need to be taken there, but smart COVID isn't so concerned about what goes on in Walmart or Costco so they never need to close.

This also applies in airplanes - masks on when smart COVID is deadly during boarding and normal flight but masks off when normal flight includes a served meal. Smart COVID also knows when you're in an airplane terminal too, so social distancing plus masks are mandatory, but get on the plane minutes later and you can sit close without distancing as long as you have the mask. COVID is smart enough to respect the need to keep the nation moving, and the airlines in business.

The COVID virus is also smart enough to take into consideration social and political nuances. A wedding or a church meeting or a birthday party is a condemnable super-spreader offence but the USPS, a company of 495,000 employees, can be exempt from mandates, even though its employees spread out across the nation and go to everyone's house and business daily. Of course, they also are part of a union that represents large campaign donations. 

And for sure, smart COVID knows to attack a gathering of motorcyclists during their yearly get-together and spread far and wide so this kind of activity must be banned, but it shies away from riots in the name of fighting systemic badness so as long as the cause is deemed just, smart COVID is on the side of justice and won't attack, so the riot or demonstration may proceed as densely packed and maskless as need be.

And if you are an ex-President, then smart COVID knows better to show up at your birthday party when the Secret Service is around, so the ex-President can have as big a party as he wants and only the service staff need to wear masks, naturally, because they are not elite enough to be passed over by smart COVID.

Continuity of government is so vitally important during a global deadly crisis, and yet the COVID virus is smart enough not to affect Congress so they can be exempt too. That also goes for the congressional staff, the Judicial branch, and the White House staff, all of whom are essential to government and yet not essential to be inoculated due to smart COVID's discriminating intelligence.

And of course, smart COVID is too wise to hang around the very scientists and Big Pharma goliaths tasked with controlling and out-smarting viruses, so the following entities also get exemptions from the 100 employee mandate -- CDC, FDA, NIAID, Pfizer, and Moderna.

Smart COVID is also sensitive to the difficulties of collective bargaining. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have encouraged all teachers to get vaccinated but their policy leaves room for local unions to negotiate these requirements with their school districts. Both organizations say they support vaccine mandates but they stop short of demanding it. This is because it’s very rare for national unions to do anything that would tie the hands of their local chapters. National unions don’t want to usurp local bargaining power—if they come out in favor of a mandate, that could weaken the locals’ positions in bargaining. Regardless of the science of epidemics or the threat of death for millions of school children, the national teacher's unions are not included in the 100 employee mandate. It's a very involved, sensitive matter and of course smart COVID is insightful enough to back off its deadly scourge in response. 

And naturally, the smart COVID virus has a social conscience and switches itself off for the more than 1 million immigrant crossings of the US-Mexico border in the first seven months of 2021, so all border crossings without due process or medical screenings can be exempt too, even though great numbers of these people will be distributed by the federal government for settlement in communities throughout the country. But smart COVID knows better than take advantage of this as a super-spreader event.

But what about the 40 million Americans who have had COVID and have natural immunity? Israeli researchers discovered that natural immunity is 27 times more effective than the inoculation. So should natural immunity be an exemption? Well, in fact -- no, since COVID is smart enough to detect you haven't received an inoculation so it will attempt even harder to infect you.

And if you work at a company of 100 employees or more, you'll either have to be vaccinated or test negative weekly in order to work; of course, getting vaccinated does not prevent you from catching the COVID virus and getting sick or spreading the disease, so one might wonder why aren't all employees -- vaccinated or not -- required to test weekly. But no, the COVID virus is smart enough to know that you've been vaccinated AND that you work for a company of 100 employees or more, so it will just pass by those vaccinated employees while regular vaccinated people could still become sick and spread it to others.

It'll be a lot easier if you realize how science and smart COVID work together. Just remember -- the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn't protect the protected.

It just makes sense when you follow the science and realize just how smart the COVID virus really is. It's amazing how in so many ways COVID appears smarter than the people it infects.

And that's the most worrisome thing of all.

 

THE TAO OF WOW

A seeker climbed high in the mountains

hoping to be worthy of a soul secret from the spirits.

While sun and moon both glowed fortuitously in the same sky, 

the seeker was rewarded for the pure intention and unflagging effort shown.

At a precise celestial alignment a lesson was given on the wind. 

The breeze whispered around and through the seeker –

There is a place within that turns golden when touched.

One cannot touch their own place within, another is needed for that.

It is the pull of Yin meeting the push of Yang, it is the full overlap of the opposites,

it is the central fire of the Vesica Pisces, the holy spark of the fires of creation, 

it is the receptive principle desiring to be taken and the possessing principle desiring to take,

it is the glory of no place and no time in the divine vibration of eternal fulfillment. 

When this place is touched, the original opening of heart is experienced in its pristine glory.

From this splendor emanates inceptive joy, tender intimacy, a feeling of being finally seen,

an excitement of being fully appreciated, the release of an open and vulnerable comfort, 

the pleasure of genuinely being loved from outside in, to a depth never experienced before.

In that moment a flash of the celestial, the sanctified, the transcendent overwhelms.

A shared completeness is felt so deeply it overpowers the senses, fusing the opposite principles,

spinning Yin and Yang in a blur of conjoined ecstasy, causing the little death. For a moment one’s breath is taken away as the Earthbound soul melds with eternity, senses bliss, and perceives what true union means.

Upon hearing the spirits whisper and feeling the message of the sublime breeze uplift the soul, the seeker flushed with excitement, all at once satiated with the nectar of a profound understanding. The seeker exclaimed to the sky and mountains, to the sun and moon in alignment, to the heavenly hosts and nearby spirits, to the ancestors and the imagined future images of oneself – “I know now, I have only one gift I want from life!”

The spirits started to say more but paused as the seeker’s heart attempted words to approximate its ineffability. “The gift I want is to give such a gift! Let me be the one to give the golden gift, to ignite such joy in another with a special touch. I now live only to be someone’s other, the one who makes such a thing possible for another. Let me be the one to always be someone’s primal imprint of such inceptive joy!”

Gathering clouds moved overhead, drifting west, borne on the breezes. The seeker ignored them, no longer able to restrain continuing cries of enthusiasm and sudden purpose, “Somewhere in the world there is another who awaits their golden moment. They dream about it, they anticipate it, they ache and pine and thirst for it with a soul hunger that only increases, never abates. They need to know such magnificence within. No matter where they go they are destined by their nature to long for their fulfillment. They can’t help but wonder what such bliss must be like. Their hopes soar on the wings of believing there is someone meant for them, someone to bring this to life, to make this true, to give them the one thing they absolutely cannot give to themselves. Oh spirits! The gift I want from life is to be the one to give such a gift! What joy it must be to be the one to make such an essential thing true for another! Giving such a gift is the purest, most intimately active expression of love for another. It’s a gift of such magnitude it changes people into expressing their fullness. Giving such a gift would be the completion of my purpose!”

The sun had moved. So had the moon. The alignment was over and the clouds were crowding the western horizon. The fading light of day fell behind shadow and a new coolness added sting to gusty winds. The spirits swirled around the seeker in a circle, whipping up a dust devil from feet to sky. 

And once again they were heard –

There is a place within that turns dark when touched.

One touches their own place within, another is not needed.

It is the pull of desire meeting the push of surrender, it is the split in things imagined to be one, 

it is the frost on the rose, the lack of shadow when darkness is complete,

it is the receptive principle already taken and the possessing principle already occupying,

it is the despair of all places and all times remote from satisfying the now.

When this place is touched, the heart recoils and is closed in reflex to the anguish.

From this upset one is delivered from their wishes, their dreams, their gifts.

With eyes shielded against the whirlwind, the seeker cried out, “Why are you telling me this? Your first words have shown me my purpose. Why do you now lay pathways for it to be taken away?”

The dust devil disappeared but the sun remained hidden. The far wind and near breezes quieted as the message of the spirits returned in silence. It was a silence the seeker could only experience in the heart. It was a silence that was dreaded, but one that completed the circle of the possible, the square of the necessary. In the overawed but anxious hush, the seeker knew without hearing the words –

It doesn’t matter what you believe is your purpose in life. 

Some things are meant to be, some things are not.

It is not up to you to ask to give or receive gifts from your life.

You may feel your purpose has meaning,

but life is true to its own ways, not yours.

Do not seek a gift to give a gift meant to transform another.

Do not pursue a meaning that depends on anything outside yourself.

What happens in your life will happen, you cannot force a meaning upon it.

Be in life, be in the world, but be transparent to desires that entangle.

If you cannot give such a gift, what will be your life?

Some get to experience the place that turns golden when others touch it.

Some touch another’s place and turn it golden.

Others struggle with the place that turns dark when they touch it.

Touch is a conveyance never wholly our own, rarely under our control.

Forces within and without are transferred irrespective of our most earnest whims.

Never forget, soul secrets in the wind are like the wind.

They clear the skies and they bring the storms.

When the wind dies, there is stillness.

Let all your purpose go now and be still.

Let the stillness touch you in heart and mind.

Then there is peace – until the wind comes again.

Too unsteady in the fullness of heart and mind, the seeker descended the mountain 

changed by the experience and now hoping to be worthy 

of a respite from a troubled but greater inner spirit.

For the first time in life, a strong purpose had been felt 

but then a dispassionate wisdom had warned to let it go.

It was strange, it was unsettling, it made clear a deeper truth –  

that the seeker had felt more whole and assured before the mountain visit.

The secrets of the spirits had only left one restlessly divided of heart and mind.

And so the lesson had been given, the deeper inner truth shining forth.

The seeker would return to seeking, for there was unity of being in that.

 

A WANDERING CHILD 

In the dark

I came upon a wandering child

too numb and bewildered to know it was lost.

As soon as our eyes met 

I knew there was an angel in the child

with a fallen angelic spirit.

Behind the child’s numbness was a grief,

beneath the bewilderment, a desperation for relief

that would never come.

The child was too stunned to cry any more

and so it spoke to me of what had happened,

how it had found the happy and sad that is in everything.

The child was never prepared for the shock about it all,

how the deeper the experience was, the more intense it became.

At this point the child could say no more but the angelic spirit

spoke silently to me through the child’s eyes.

It showed me the angelic fall, how some experiences are so profound

the intensity of them manifests both heaven and hell.

One could only hope for a life of profound meaning,

but that hope, if it came true, was fated to manifest the extremes.

The more one lived fully, the wider the extremes would stretch.

The angel had fled into the child for comfort,

for only a child’s innocence could shelter the angel’s awareness

from the hellacious truth of how profound was its gain and loss.

I held a steady gaze with the angel as tears now filled the child’s eyes.

What possibly could affect an angel so much, so deeply?

The answer was felt between us as bitter nausea, sinking ache, and hopeless yearning.

A flash heat from the angel’s fallen nature shocked all awareness with sadness.

In the flash was a blistering insight borne from experience and I felt the angel’s pain –

It cried out – there is something far worse than a dream never coming true,

it’s a dream coming true then being taken back, proved wrong

after one spends so long feeling they’ve lived it, for they’ve experienced their dream

only to find it never was, it wasn’t what it seemed, it never happened.

The deepest hell is reserved for the heavens that only thought they were real.

If one never had their dream, they grieve what never was and they never felt.

But if one felt they had their dream only to have it undone, 

then everything one thought and felt it was would have to be grieved as being lost,

everything that was would need to be revisited and accepted as never there. 

To feel one has achieved their dream only to feel it fade as a mirage

is far worse than having a dream that simply never came true, even in one’s fantasy.

This was the fall that made angels cry, that drove them into children to hide.

And the child, numb and bewildered to be carrying such a load

wanders in the same dark as me.

The angel pulls the eyes of the child away from me as I ask,

Is innocence enough to hold back the rest of the fall?

The child turns and walks into the darkness, needing to be alone

with the angel it now perceives is there. As they disappear I feel myself alone,

and the child that I occupy and hide within wanders on,

and I go with it, needing its comfort.

 

DOUBT AND MOVE ON  

I need to figure out 

the connection between a digging earthworm and the passing clouds above, 

how stars may disappear at night when black holes are not around,

why feelings overlap in ways that blend emotion until neither can be expressed.

I need to figure out

if the horizon line recedes or is firmly in place and it’s only the world that moves,

the validity of the scientific method theory when the observer is the most limiting factor,

the edge of sight where imagination, memory, and conjecture inform awareness and judgment.

I need to figure out

why needles would be in the haystack and why horses aren’t concerned,

how many wishes does it take to manifest a world where wishing is not necessary,

the calculus of differential values, integral limits of morality, and multi-variable expressions of meaning.

I need to figure out

how air breaks the meniscus of a bubble leaving liquid but the fluid it’s in can’t penetrate it,

what matters in this world when being in the world is a quick and temporary stay of an illusory ego,

why trauma is wise and sorrow is intelligent and despair signals the point where recovery begins.

I need to figure out

how walking counter-clockwise winds energies up and walking clockwise winds energies down,

where is the way back to a state of innocence after experience has taken its toll,

the proper comeback to my devils when my angels get too transcendent and are at a loss for words

I need to figure out

how many fingers it takes inserted into a dilemma before credulity stretches into a paradox,

the proper valence of truth when there is no absolute truth and those who say so are absolutely correct.

why the idea of soul mates is delusional pathology but living in a world without one is healthy.

I need to figure out

why yawning starts as early as twenty weeks after conception and is contagious in adulthood,

when is the best time to start living in the moment when a past need to do so is required to start,

why promises of intimate special exclusivity are so emotionally charged and necessary in marriage but one marries after sharing those same intimacies with others without being married but that’s OK, even expected.

I need to figure out

how many steps there and back again are enough to feel satisfied I’ve accomplished a journey,

why people accept the existence of loaded dice but conspiracies are the realm of wackos,

how subliminal symbols pervade the cultural landscape and yet we’re all certain what we know is real. 

I need to figure out

why plants sold in nurseries are difficult to grow whereas plants labeled “weeds” are easy to grow,

why having something uniquely shared between two people is highly valued with great emotion unless it involves physical intimacy then to value something uniquely shared may be reduced to retrospective jealousy,

what is the best way to find the best way when the internet is controlled by profit-seeking, agenda-driven corporate algorithms.

I need to figure out

the various gender identities of bees and if the queen is a closet tri-curious fluid libragender drone,

if pendulums were guillotines could The French Revolution have ended sooner,

if others get to define what special and sacred means to me or do I get to define it.

I need to figure out

how everyone can be certain about the answer and yet the same problems abound year to year,

why when some first times are no longer possible they no longer are meaningful but all other first times when they happen are meaningful exactly because they’re first times and should be celebrated,

how time heals all wounds and water wears down all rocks but some feelings never fade.

I need to figure out

why serotonin agonists should proliferate in plants that give humans mystical experiences,

where to go from here when here reduces to less than what is necessary to be a place to thrive,

why can’t I shake the things that bother me if what bothers me impacts what has meaning for me.

I need to figure out

how will we ever move our shit to distant planets if we can never get our shit together here,

how true love persists across time no matter how many we love yet polyamory and polygamy are wrong

if what matters to you doesn’t to me does that give me the right to claim you need psychological help.

I need to figure out

how a human soul exists in eternity but still manages to have serial lives in karmic time,

what’s the best thing to do with the little time I have left on Earth,

which ideologies and religions have ever benefited the planet and not gotten people killed, 

I need to figure out

why I need to figure all of this out but more importantly

why most of these things I could be content perhaps to doubt then move on from but

why a few of these things I can never pass by and the need to know will always be with me.

– I feel the thing I most need to figure out is why is there this difference,

why I feel this difference is core and holy to my life while others think it signals a problem,

why does this difference define me in a way 

that transcends the need to figure it out.

 

WHEN WINGS WERE IN FASHION 

Lost on a journey of coming home, a path to who I am,

I face my shadow and freeze in shock, finding all my light behind me.

A warmth radiates on my back, a mere memory of holy truth.

Burned by an old impression of relatedness beyond the hidden door to wisdom, 

I sense the portal through which visions of higher order 

once spiraled me aloft into rapt romantic co-invisibility.

Now I must focus on the all-consuming line of demarcation, 

my shadow and light on either side of a line infinitesimally thin.

The bleeding edge becomes the point of entry to my last but never storied beginning.

I waver unsteady, my breath taken away by a swooning state of being 

captured so well by the arcane art of synchronistic heartbreak.

I stumble forward leaving in my wake complaining, revenging shadows.

In somber cadence an unsteady voice hides within mumbles 

a bothersome chant to the irregular drumming of my heart –

Cubing the circle through the density of useless tears, 

squaring the triangle in a flash of all final fears.

Force and form uniting across the twisting emotive abyss, 

a direct reflection of loss from the stillbirth of Faustian faux bliss.

Flailing in the hidden desert of needing to be there and back again, 

flowing up the tree of love in all its naked sin.

Mediating primal spirit from one to many to one, 

confined in sacred matter, water and fire, dead mother, prodigal son.

Sleeping in lustful flesh until the ascending deity is lost, 

mapping the grating nuances between indifference and frost.

Finding the beauty golden in blinding rays of unconscious umbra, 

full-circle energies trapped in a vortex of analytical blah-blah.  

A tension of vital opposites, a transcendent third and hidden fourth, 

guided by falling stars, but none from true north.

Sophia whispers her warning, a blood moon and rising serpent, the spiral becomes a cube, 

specters dance their trauma, quicksilver in a bottle, the wounded child in the wise old rube.

Light has a shadow and it casts its burn on me,

I’m blind to my joy, what I’ve lost is all I see. 

The lightning path burns branches that once held the fruit of me.

The serpent path is hidden inward where stymied roots encounter the boiling sea. 

No one is sorry for the one with a purpose that seems to make them weak,

Condemnation comes quickly but in ways tongue-in-cheek, so to speak.

It would serve one better to not think too much about how one really feels,

admit such things and bear the brunt of being the one to open the inner Seven Seals.

Live out your time just to see what happens along the way,

Gather no flowers for no one wants your pathetic spiritual bouquet.

What became of the one so long ago who dreamed of wondrous things?

Were they ever there? They must have been for I remember wearing their wings.