Defying Gravity – The Shining Nigredo 

What do I do 

when my whole world is turned upside-down, 

when a core value, a precious meaning that gave life vitality 

is swung in surprise impossibly opposite, 

when a cherished dream that for so long I believed had come true, 

abruptly reverses as not true, is left shattered in a single painful shift, 

shocking the psyche with a saddening jolt to the heart, 

an emotional body blow knocking balance itself off its axis, 

when grief and loss, spinning through chaos, are now the only wellspring 

life has to offer, my future lying desiccated and hollowed out, 

abandoned by lost passion and emptied of heartfelt drive, 

when potential itself no longer holds promise for my broken spirit?

What do I do

when a useless suicide is the wrong question

and a senseless life is the wrong answer,

when a melancholy pall hangs over the colorless sameness of passing days

and everywhere reminders of what was lost compound and re-injure me,

when enjoying the moment cannot exist as each moment expands

into remembering the past while reminding me what is not present,

when ageless time and searing memory

collide with tattered dreams and entrenched ideals,

all mixing with unholy circumstance

and thwarting my every attempt to let go and find a way through?

Everything tumbles to a catastrophic point of no return,

living the hell of no solution while holding firm

to the heaven of what is still valued, no matter if it’s gone.

And yet, despite it all, I awake once more to a darkening new day.

I arrive at a point of too much to bear, at a tumultuous point

of pathological sanity where I exist in both worlds while a convulsive state 

eggs me to accept a sublime surrender to my redemptive pain.

Standing firm in my duality fuses blood raw soul and transcending ego,

a trauma bond that announces itself like a carnival barker

declaring this gnarled mass as the path of transformation.

Facts twist mythical and I sense from a nowhere elsewhere 

a heralded noble calling beyond myself, a calling that shouts 

there’s nothing else to do when my world is turned upside-down

but to defy gravity, to assert impossible alchemy and defiant magic

for no other reason than to hold firm the suspicion

that for as long as I decide to stay here I have no other choice.

At the still point of the turning wheel of the defining dilemma

lies a shrinking void of paradox and into that void must go all of me,

the light of my triumphant suffering and the shadow of my delusional love.

Some may claim that defying gravity is inflation, is bare white-knuckling it.

But what’s their point? And what does it matter?

Do they not recognize the squirming white snakes peeling back my flesh?

Can they not see the spiraling, razor-sharp tesseract sanctifying my trauma?

It must be so for all in the know announce it as simply the way.

It is the devil in the details as the beatific vision unfolds.

It is the nature of the erect beast in the presence of the moist beauty.

It is the nature of what I must do now,

now that all is upside-down, now that all is different,

now that all that once mattered is gone.

It is the path ascendant, the way through, the unholy sacredness,

the culminating answer without a blessed solution.

It is the final terminal lucidity awaiting me

on the other side of the death-rattle of despair.

It is life fully engaged - in all of its profane glory.

It is the filth that falls from heaven

and nourishes the unconscious faithful.

It is the descending grace of depraved excuses

that tempts one again to unreasonable hope.

It is the masturbatory salvation act of a tortured soul

destined to feel the lustful karma of a callous world.

It is the unused eggs of the Virgin crying out for their fulfillment.

It is the nocturnal seed of the sleeping holy man spurting into the dirt.

It is the forceful bloody consummation

in the violent marriage between me and my soul.

It always was, always will be a soul most pure, most open and trusting, 

so connected to a place where foolish ideals are real as being as such.

But now its most intimate secrets will be fully known

in conscious exploitation.

Its divine body of truth will be eagerly possessed

in great groping excess.

Its tender attentions will be hugely used without mercy,

all in the name of climaxing upon wholeness.

And while the piercing act of full appreciation is being so enjoyed, 

one question repeatedly thrusts forward

as my overwhelmed soul yelps and sighs in pain and joy –

Whom does gravity serve?!

Whom does gravity serve?!

Whom does gravity serve?!