Confessions of the Last Man

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun;
And, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Fierce light from the sun
Through the west window
Spills down the hall
Glares on the floor with blinding brilliance
Pure white and painful on the backs of the eyes
As you stare into the glare
That is the prayer of silence
Caught in the instant
Before the light softens

         . . . . . . . . . .

I have my own philosophy
And I need no other,
Know no other:
The marketplace and knowing how
To manipulate the needs of neighbours.
I have made myself rich with instinct
For land acquisition, development, exchanging.
Why waste time with dead philosophy?
Dead stories?
...let the dead bury the dead
They were men; I am a man, end of story.
I walk alone and I am strong.
I roam the frontier I divide and sell
In a four wheel drive filled with new car smell.

. . . . . . . . .

Some ice cream with the family would be nice
But somehow not worth the drive.
Hard work got me where I am...
Pre-med., medical school, internship, nightshift...
Before this lucrative mercy I minister to you.

I will sell refrigerators, as did my father,
I, the master of the gentleman's C.
I will take over the store.
I will have children.
I will sell appliances.

I try to say what you want to hear
Without saying anything.

. . . . . . .

It is all a perishing
All a perishing
Not only death
Each breath, each thought, each moment
Is perpetual perishing

It is our value when all values are lost
To live in complacency of no values
Not trying to create, recreate or evaluate values
Final relativism and self-absorption
Where others are means and prosperity the end
Where people sleep on sidewalks and in doorways
Forgotten by the herd without unbearable compassion
We have lost the saint within us
We have lost the pure pagan
They no longer struggle within us

. . . . . . .

The scattered crystallized moments of perfection
Breed hopelessness
Because they are beyond touch
While what can be touched and hoped for is paled.
The only real life is squeezed into those snatches
Abstracted from their contexts of anxiety
And the guilt to which we are half committed,
The sun ancient and warm through your hair,
The brush of your loose, illicit shirt.
You were several people; in me shivered legions.
The stretch of time is habituation
From which these moments are plucked
As vivid lights from the dull boredom
Only perfect when dead, isolated, encapsulated,
Beyond sensation.
Yet, only this dream strength is worth touching
Only such height of sensation, comfortable bliss.
This is the evil and unrelenting sorrow of here and now,
Love, lust, grief and wishing are for the perished and perishing.
The home ached for is perished
And the time of ecstasy is a perished time.
The first touch of your hand,
Soft, warm yet cool, slight, uncertain,
Rushed with the power that is
The split second of creation.
Will we each relive those moments again and again?
Forever, without being able to live them?

. . . . . . .

We are cocooning----- spinning walls of web
Around ourselves----- we need walls and shelter.
We are getting as much as we can get
To seal ourselves within barriers of safety
Readying for the coming of the horror.
Readying for the collapse we feel coming
Like birds, cats and dogs
Feel the coming of an earthquake or tornado.
Readying for the collapse of economy, ecology,
Nations, politics, television and grocery stores...
Gathering money and food
And walls and hope
And the protection of isolation.

Our sins are pitiful
Lacking even passion
Even our greatest sins
Committed without guilt or conscience
Through bureaucracy and covertness by the few
Against people far away or near us who are not people

Against the planet
Against the future
Against the newborn and the not yet conceived
Against ancestors and descendants
It is still the Me Generation in the mode of greed


. . . . . . .

I will wear the hairstyle of your fathers,
Drive the car of your fathers,
Speak the speech of your fathers,
Wear the well-worn look of your fathers,
{All laughable to you, yellowing, brittle.}
I, whose only defense was eternal childhood,
I, the everlasting adolescent
Have fallen into the deep footprints of the old.
I will tell you I have been like you
And that you will be like me-----
It will be true and untrue.

. . . . . . .

Reduced to the buzz of silence
Late, between night and morning,
A window open, cool air, I float skywards,
Surrounded by seasonal decorations
Which forge an instant link to childhood.
Lost amid porcelain, glass, brass and crystal
Bourgeois hope springs eternal
Yet transcendent of middle class
By ties to a transcendent past
Of a working class clinging to moral aristocracy.

Tonight that childhood home, repository of recollection,
The Thanksgiving house, is dead,
Without people, without heat, without life,
Without the flicker of civilization
Or a TV set into the darkness of the surrounding wilderness.
Only cold and dark are there now,
Only the lake beneath the hill----- cold and unperceived,
Only trees creaking for miles around,
Only our ghosts walk there now
Performing years of action simultaneously.

And here I sit, where it all leads, away
From home---- survival through the pursuit
Of necessary convenience---- survival.
We are the new nomads, mobile and nuclear,
Hunters and gatherers descended from farmers,
Mechanized barbarians who follow the highways,
Dispersing to gather money... career... survival...
Stalking nuts and berries; stalking the rarity of game.

. . . . . . .

Hear my prayer, O Lord,
And let my cry come unto thee.
Hide not thy face from me
In the day when I am in trouble;
Incline thine ear unto me:
In the day that I call answer me speedily.
For my days are consumed like smoke,
And my bones are burned as an hearth.
My heart is broken, and withered like grass;
So that I forget to eat my bread.
By reason of the voice of my groaning
My bones cleave to my skin.
I am like a pelican of the wilderness;
I am like an owl of the desert.
I watch, and am as a sparrow
Alone on the housetop.

. . . . . . .

I am not me;
Therein lies the problem.
I am me and not me;
I am who I am at any moment.
Each moment is now; each moment is the present,
Always the same and never the same,
Always the present but never the same moment.
And even within each moment
I am not one but many
Without a clear leader.
My living sprouting from the carnage and energy
Of the battles arising between demons and saints.

I was handed many worlds,
Shown worlds bouncing on strings:
Which will you choose?
Which lie will you live and be?
At what will you be proficient?
When will you ever do something?
It all becomes acting at some point:
Chasing that logocentric phantom,
Looking for that inexplicable essence,
The elusive me always escaping
The fingers that fail to pin it down.
Which world?
They are cloaked in exclusion
And none complete without the other.
Worlds to crawl into,
Worlds in which to hide and
Worlds to be hidden from.
One world in which to die.

. . . . . . .

Beneath the veneer of conforming
Beneath the talisman of clothes to work the spell of success
Beneath the buoyancy of shallow aspirations
Beneath the happiness of imagined idyllic life
(If not one of greatness, at least not uncomfortable)
Beneath the not caring for the plight of others
Beneath the drive of scarcity and need
Beneath the things I think I am
And the things you think I am:

An unexpected melody
Or a touch of sunlight, distant and cold
Pierces the mask and burns away the clothes and
The distraction of goals.
And I feel the great weight once again
Over and around me, as water.
And the melody and cold light are me,
All that I am or can be:
Thinly threaded through the increasing years
Is this incommunicable sadness.

At one time I longed for a touch or stare
Which would communicate directly what cannot be shared.
But there is no touch; there is no stare;
There are not words.
There is, instead, the intraversable gulf of subjectivity,
Never certainty, even with those you think are closest.

I cannot hold another tight enough
To ignore the patient waiting of the dark gate;
It takes me inside and shakes me.
I cannot relate such violence.
Are the ignorant as safe as they seem?
Or must each be overtaken at some moment,
Quivering naked in the falling away?

It is all a creating,
Each moment a creating,
From what was before,
From what may be.

It is all a dying,
Each moment a dying,
As what is, is no longer,
And never will be.

"Of all the Charlie Browns in the world
      you're the Charlie Browniest."

. . . . . . .

Only in the abysmal fall into unbearable compassion
Only in the radiant soaring into unbearable compassion
Only in the breakdown of unbearable compassion
Only in the unbearable passion of unbearable compassion
Do we step outside of the last man
And are inextricably bound to all last men
Do we glimpse the faint hope of the man
Beyond the last man
And touch the man who was before the last man
And know the despair of the last man

. . . . . . .

I die the silent death daily,
When I shake your hand, when I start my car,
When I look into your eyes, when I am rewarded
Or punished. When I close a deal
Or create a part of me to inherit me.
This is the slow death of passions:
Magnificent animals wanting blood from the world,
Wanting earth stopping, sky-shaking sex with the world.
Wanting---- wanting---- roaring out from my ribs----
These animals now beaten, broken, their bones splintered,
Cowardly, skittish, submissive, lying down,
Curling into themselves, whimpering.
Here are the dead with the dead
Brushing together, smiling, fighting, wanting to know each other,
Reaching secretly for the ultimate,
The trickster of promise within us,
The absence of fulfillment without us.
Save me. Have mercy on me.
It is too much to bear.
It is too much to bare.
The fluid writhing of bodies, two souls into one,
The affirmation of creation: potency.
The Holiness of the illicit
Then and only then
We know we are alive
The first kiss
Between aliens
The unrepenting, unrelenting always resurrecting
Need for the encounter of two animals, as angels,
On the birth floor of the savanna,
No promises, no teleology, only the moment
Outside of time
Of consummation, only that, nothing more.

Have you understood at all
Who I am where you don't see me?
I am Dionysus versus Christ;
I am the pain and darkness of the battlefield
Between the two.
I am the abyss slashed by their swords;
I am the space between the words.

. . . . . . .

The distant song of birds,
The strong play of the living wind,
Soap bubble prisms float over houses and trees
For the eyes of a child.
The sun on the trees which accept the wind
Brings a faint feeling of the garden,
A cool shade of paradise.
Dislocated and irreversibly conjoined -------
There are birds in the distance, like a far off jungle,
Beyond the horizon of haze-blue trees.
There is also the rising and falling sounds of a playground,
The squeals and shouts of children,
Hidden laughter ------- hard to hear.
Between waves of sound in the circling wind
There is peace in the horror now and then.
There is now and then a being lifted, a being carried on the wind,
Through tears in the fabric of the overlying oppression of reality:
A glimpse above the canopy.

. . . . . . .

From the mountaintop the madman watches the herd;
He must return below, his place is with them.
His place is not having a place among them,
Not in the laziness of grazing nor the terror of the stampede.
The mountain reaches near the sky
Above the thick stifling dust of the herd.
The falcon can swoop down from the sun,
With its gift, its prey of words, in beak and talons,
Snatched from that purifying fireball.
Rain falls on the mountain
And there is rare blooming, safe from the all-consuming herd.
It is time for the descent into the dust,
Distanced from rain, sun and falcon,
Down into the grazing herd, heads bowed,
Down to the prairie where the cliff cannot be seen,
As the herd ambles towards it, blocking vision from each other,
Where there is a faint tremor that rumors a stampede.

. . . . . . .

A longing for all that has died, irretrievably perished,
A stupid sadness: the song not yet heard,
Hidden in the bird, in the hidden egg.

. . . . . . .

How could we kill the sun?
How did we and our fathers cast he of many names
Into the outer darkness?
How did we hammer that weak link
Breaking the chain to the sun?
How do we live, dance and die on this plunging world
With nothing above, below or around but darkness?
How do we brag of this blood on our hands?
How do we laugh and devise clever games in a universe of madness?
How do we fathom answers that are not there
In this multiverse lost from meaning?
How do we learn how truly not to care?

The madman's news has still not reached
The distracted ears of the multitude.
Of those who listen, many don't understand,
Rejoicing in the murder they say:
"Here in this death is life. Here in this murder is freedom."
Tell me, how do we embrace this horror and call it friend?

. . . . . . .

Mankind has always been apocalyptic,
Our history a continual crying of "wolf!"
We will not know when the warning is real.
We will not know when or how to take heed.
We will not recognize the point as we pass it
From which there is no turning back,
When it is too late to make alterations
(Which could have been made)
To choose a course back towards the mountain,
To take a path back into life,
Preventing the imminent if not the inevitable.
In good faith false prophets rehearse endlessly
And we cannot distinguish madness from prophecy.
We live in bad faith; the dome of sky is inauthentic.

. . . . . . .

Preston does not know
The world in which he lives
His violence ignorant
His lust stunted and pathetic
Inside him but an arid rotting

. . . . . . .

I am the tension between animal and spirit
I am the graveyard and tomb housing victims of struggle

I am alone in this land,
Another thread in the motif of stranger,
Wanderer, recurrent through time,
Reduced to a voice crying words
By their nature unheard.

There are these irrational times
Of such an aching for this place
For all of it, for everything,
For what has been, for what is now, for what is yet to come.
Wanting to eat it all, breathe it all in, embrace it all,
Squeeze it all into myself, make it all more me
Than it already is through my appropriation
And internalization of all that I know
In the only way I can know anything,
By ingestion and assimilation into me
If I could squeeze it all into myself!
The anticipation of such deep reaching joy,
The dull and sharp aches of impossibility, futility.
I can never be close enough.
It can never be me.

. . . . . . .

Each of us is an opaque sphere
Uttering syllabic sound as symbol
Never able to glimpse directly what is inside any other.
The universe is inevitably known
Only through its internalization by each of us
And so, inevitably a personal, subjective universe
For each who knows it
There is no certain bridge between us
There is no way to ever know the success or failure of communication
There are wispy tendrils of smoke between us attempting communion
Dissolved by random winds, arising and perishing.
There is a universe for each point of consciousness,
In this universe of multifarious universes
An arising of bubbles reflecting light and dark
When the fragile shell around life pops there is nothing inside revealed,
There is only the sudden absence of the shell
We cannot know each other but must act as if we can
While knowing only our perceptions of each other
But let us talk..... let's try to talk.

. . . . . . .

I am the space between:
Affirmation or negation of life in the present,
Embracing or rejection of transient temporality,
Complete immediacy or timeless transcendence,
Never one or the other, but the fissure or tear of the pain between,
From this is created what can be created in an imbalanced uncertainty.
There is a glimpse of momentary transcendence of the dilemma
In the religion of the animal kiss as well as the angel visit,
Both so rare to our timidity.
The pressure from above to be one or the other,
We cannot encounter or invade each other,
And when we can, the escape is fleeting, and we fall back into ourselves.
Stranger reaches out hand to stranger, trembling lips anticipate,
But eyes turn away; eyes are averted, faces shielded in shadow.

It is the stranger in the other that calls.
Not the familiar or familial?
It is the unthinking communion,
The meeting of masks,
The racing of strange hearts,
It is the slippage of strangers between our fingers,
It is the passion we have forgotten which drives us unknowingly,
It is the sacred holiness, which must be stolen.

. . . . . . .

In this strange world
Is the encounter of stranger with stranger,
The torment and ache for surrender
Of stranger to stranger.

We face each other in the garden
Where the air is cool and moist
In the soft light of the late sun,
The colours bright, yet calm.

I shiver.
Give me escape from time in time,
Give me escape in time from time.
Give me sanctuary in you.
We tremble in the explosive silence,
Confusion of pain and ecstasy
That cuts to the bone of reality.
Stranger reaches to stranger,
Each seeing the other as a door.

The encounter in the desert where the air is hot and thin
In the hard light of the high sun, the colours feeble and burning,
In the stony garden, the asthmatic, suffocating garden of death,
Remember the cool garden of life and birth,
Place it inside the stranger.

I come to you for escape and sanctuary,
Glimpsing paths and windings to the garden,
Winking then hiding behind your eyes.
They will not lead us there, to the ultimate peace.
If there is even sanctuary it is momentary.
We cannot stay in that lush, cool comfort.

We can almost touch but there is no contact.
There is always the space between
And instinctual recoiling before the space is bridged.
We cannot feel what the stranger feels,
We cannot see what the stranger sees,
Nor hear what the stranger hears,
Nor perceive their perceptions.
Locked out we knock at the door,
Stranded between garden and desert.

. . . . . . .

Gilgamesh, I am in your shoes,
In your fossilized footprints I cross the wilderness.
My friends follow your friend; my brothers follow your brother,
They are dust as we shall be...
Dust, as we shall be.
No one of us lives the life he intends

. . . . . . .

A chimney swift, small and high,
Between the green treetops and ceiling of sky
Playfully traces circles and spirals.
Another bird sings, hidden in a tree.
I stare at the leaves and the shadow and light between the leaves.
The peace keeps growing, melting and flowing into everything,
Into me, {and, although the days seem longer and the sun stronger
Than ever before}
At this moment
I let go,
Let myself sink,
Breathe and drink this peace of wind and light.
I am not doing and time is suspended
{This may be the only truth I find, from time to time}

. . . . . . .

We talk about the disintegration of the world
Falling apart from the center outward
Home, childhood, family, friends dead or lost
Concentrically extending entropy consuming the neighbourhood,
Community, continent, land, sea and sky
Reaching out beyond the stars
The web of the universe unravels from the center to the circling edges
The gulf between each of us widens in the expanding chaos of decay
"This is growing up," you say, "and an increasing awareness of self
and world, self and not-self, being-for-itself and being-in-itself."

. . . . . . .

A good name is better than precious ointment;
And the day of death than the day of one's birth.
It is better to go to the house of mourning,
Than to go to the house of feasting:
For that is the end of all men;
And the living will lay it to his heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter:
For by the sadness of the countenance
The heart is made better.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning;
But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
So is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.
Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad;
And a gift destroyeth the heart.
Better is the end of a thing
Than the beginning thereof:
And the patient in spirit
Is better than the proud in spirit.

. . . . . . .

As quickly as it comes, desire can vanish;
All hands and lips are cold.
Alien and alien will not touch.
Resign yourself to karma yoga,
Chopping wood, carrying water, eating, reading, writing,
Watching the light fade across the lawn

Sisyphus, we are in your shoes,
The bottoms worn through,
Pushing, climbing, descending, climbing, pushing,
Getting nowhere.

All that we have come to know, all that we are acquainted with
Is the changing hue on the chameleon's skin

Icarus, we wear your wings,
Wax dripping down our elbows,
Water spinning and rising to meet us,
Our heads pointing towards earth,
Our feet spinning in the sun of chaos.

. . . . . . .

We believe in one God, Technology, the Almighty,
Taker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, the Scientist,
The only son of Technology, Eternally begotten
Of the Accident, Technology from Technology,
Scientist from Scientist, True Knowledge from
True Knowledge, made, not begotten,
Of No-Being, with the Father.
We believe in the bureaucrat, the Lord, the giver of life,
Who proceeds from Technology and the Scientist,
Without the Father and the Son he is
Worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the profits.
We believe in one holy catholic Science,
We acknowledge many baptisms for the granting of sins.
We look for the decomposition of the dead
And the death of the world to come. Amen.

I am the struggle between saint and supreme pagan

I am lost in such complexity of opposing thought and feeling,
Contradictory desires, despair despairing itself,
Suffering which suffers itself, lust lusting itself.
The complexity of confusion grows with each day and year,
The winding and tangling more inextricably meshed,
The patterns more hidden and confused.
This is all I have to leave you,
This nothing,
This that all of us have had before, from century to century,
This that has had all of us,
Confusion, chaos and the drive for order.
We live in the space between the Apollinian or Dionysian,
The gash between the darkness or the light,
Between the temptations of control or abandon.
Burning on the desert floor
Praying to a small white cloud
Up above the straying flacon

. . . . . . .

Let us wander errantly together (you and I),
Two strangers, let us stray from the straight path into secrecy,
Break our respective eggs of perception,
Break these shells and a new shell will grow around us,
A nest will grow around us,
If only in moments.
Let us writhe in this fire of fires, this rose of all roses,
Bloom of all blooms, which opens, takes us and closes around us
As we are enclosed in our souls like two rooms (or tombs).

I tell you
This is the spark and explosion of creation,
{Although time will continue before and after each time}
I howl feverishly to you in the joy of aching and torment.
I trace the Tetragrammaton of your hidden name
On the inside of this shell of secrecy.
Let us surrender on the altar of hunger
Where this madness is blessed,
Where the pain of this pleasure is sacred, the holy of holies,
Rolling in these replenishing flames,
Turning together in this water of life,
Turning into each other, coupled in the accident of discovery.

. . . . . . .

Ishi, we are in your moccasins,
Starving, thirsting in the desert,
Wandering on the margins of extinction
But unconscious that we may be the last of the tribe.
Over these mountains are no more of our kind
And in all valleys we are alone.

Siren sheathed in amorphous beauty
From glittering penurious lips let flee
A madrigal melodiously mephitic
Hastening you

Down here in the valley is an idol of steel
Guarding the mountain, his shadow growing longer and darker
Covering the plains and the sides of the hills
Blocking the mountain from our consideration, from our sight
The chrome stainless god is the eater of trees
The drinker of seas, each footstep annihilates a forest
One scalpel-clawed hand ripping the thin veil of sky
Around his neck a necklace of skulls
One hand spawning birth the other extinction
Clapping a thunderous violence between
His metal feet surrounded by the carrion of animal and machine
Twisted, rusting skeletons lying in the spots of their deaths
Sacrifices which no longer placate but fuel his violence
How are we complacent before this voice of thunder?
Before this appetite laying waste the world in increments?
We will not recognize the point as we pass it
This inverted death-egg looming over all visions, hopes and strivings?
This sacramental creed of imminent/immanent/eminent destruction?
This giant, faceless, metallic Vespasian dismantling the world
Stone from stone?
Our prayers cannot penetrate this god's steel skull
Deflected they fall back into our raised hands,
Onto our bowed heads, scattering over our failing magic,
Across monuments of impotence and lakes of sterility
This god is followed by the herd who worship
Only dominance, ignorant of implications
Ignorant that we are his children by complicity
Complicity without borders to offer escape
Complicity growing tangled and web-like across
The planet in all directions and ways
Complicity that is original sin
How will we be extricated when this contagious infecting
Does not recognize borders and grows into us
Setting down roots, seeds, tendrils within us
The parasite of death in life
The parasite casting life as lifeless, garden as desert,
The fluidity of life replaced by the rigidity of steel
Hunched on silver haunches shining coldly in the sun?
The mechanistic spider hauling in its nets,
Spinning, always spinning
Our lives simulacra of the lusts of the machine:
All such words the herd has not heard
But accept as the only reality that upon which they were suckled and weaned
The games and toys, the daily news, as we learned to tie our shoes
We were cutting our teeth on the thin skin of the bomb
Bred and raised in the Lebensborn of Technology

And later I encounter a more secret and sinister destroyer,
The cold eyes of a stranger in the beloved's face, an alien,
Who brings the greatest and most feared betrayal
Which undercuts the hope and needs of a lifetime.

. . . . . . .

Slipping between clutching fingers
Slippage and disintegration

I looked across and said to him:
"You have become a strange
assemblage of personages."
He replied with a cautious smile:
"That is my true madness,
    and why I am always locked outside
      never truly in and of the circle
        a stranger to myself."

You have come to know intentional disguises
And instinctual masks of which I, myself, am not aware
Or half aware, as in a hazy dream
I have come to know and not know the same

I walked outside beneath a smooth sky
Offset by an apocalyptic moon
The absent half more profound in its absence
The absent half more strangely pronounced
Set amid thin ragged clouds, staring absently

. . . . . . .

Our philosophy should be conversation more than argumentation.
Throw out the syllogisms, truth is not formulaic,
It is light, darkness and silence always in permutation.
The analytical ones are not so perspicacious,
Throw out the microscope, the P and ~P,
Pull off the mask of the scientist,
Extricate yourselves from retentive philosophy,
An obsession with systemiticity,
And the metaphysics of Technology.
The time has come for colloquy

. . . . . . .

Stranger and stranger, alien and alien, minds reach to one another.
I feel the minds reach and this is the image:
The pull, the pull between strangers,
The obscuring between by other bodies
The eyes reaching around these other bodies
To reconnect with the mirror of the other.
Stranger, I do not know what I want from you;
I do not know, I do not know. On this edge of ecstasy,
Almost breaking through, feeling the margin in which I am trapped,
Winding the spiral outwards towards chaos, the ache for and fear of
The mad leap into chaos... Do I feel the call of mind to mind?
Do I feel the call or is it always a lie I tell myself?

. . . . . . .

Can you not turn your back on your sin?
Can you not walk away from the evil you are lost in?
Some distinctions get confused in ambiguities and shades of grey,
But this is not one of those things; this has definition, black and white.
Before it's too late, for time does run out, before it's too late
Please let yourself see what you do.          Remember, as you sow
               So shall you reap.
A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign;
And there shall no sign be given unto it...
      . . . . . . .

Fear and trembling
Fear and trembling before the universe
Before the face of this great mystery
Before the complexities and immensity
Before the unknowable, the unnamable,
Before the unthinkable, the unspeakable
I break beneath the weight; I shatter like a mirrored wall
Raining down a multiplicity of worlds reflected
Raining down to unification in blackness
I pray you are real
I pray you can hear me

Living always with an aching
For things I long to do but cannot do
For the possibilities never realized

An habitual constant suffering
From instinctual internal tension
Leaves me hollow and without hope

The intricacies envelop me
Leading always to the same crisis
Almost voicing the most crucial question that might tear
The impenetrable veil

And as the inevitable stares into your face
You avert your eyes and turn away

No matter how I wish or try to be authentic
I am inevitably inauthentic
A rewriting of things already written
A revising of visions already envisioned
With the consolation of some degree of uniqueness
A pinpoint of perception, a particular perspective
Yet so completely interwoven and bound up in
All that was before and all that is to come

Abandoned, left alone on the vacant shore of time
Washed up, left to dry in the indifferent sun,
Weathered by indifference, I watch life receding from me.
Abandoned by the one whose absence wounds the most
Abandoned by even the flimsiest of faiths
Or the possibility of faith
But having minor intimations of ambiguous promise
From time to time                but the gulf is too wide
I ask the sky for answers to questions half formed
From the core of my empty being, from the marrow of my bones,
I stand back from myself inside myself, create a space within myself
From myself and ask why I or anything exists
Rather than there being a nice, simple Nothing
Then, looking myself in the eye, turning the eye upon the "I",
I must ask: "Why the why?"
Who is that asks? And of whom is it asked?
That is the question. Yet I still ask the sky for faith and salvation.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing;
I am come into deep waters, where the floods
overflow me.
I am become a stranger unto my brethren,
And an alien unto my mother's children.
Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink:
Let me be delivered from them that hate me,
And out of the deep waters.

There is a suffering loneliness
Infinitely deep beneath still waters,
A reaching out with no one to reach to.
There is something of an angel in you
Or, at least, the role you play
(Hard to explain without sounding trite)
A presence of God underneath the skin,
A link to tradition which is a comforting home
But out of reach
Yet you are but another stranger
With eyes uplifted, fixed on the cross,
Your white robe glaring, like timelessness in a shaft of sunlight,
Like the unseen point where time and the timeless cross.
My soul is always peripatetic
But having nowhere to go

. . . . . . .

I want to believe
{Not knowing if I believe that is possible}
I want to believe the unbelievable
But everything is, in the end, unbelievable
Everything is miraculous and incomprehensible
Everything defies certain knowledge
Nothing is known with certainty
Everything is the Great Mystery
Which gave birth to me, which haunts me,
Which will snuff me out with sudden darkness.
I want to believe that the absurd supercedes and transcends the rational.
I want to believe, but cannot know, and without knowing
How does one believe?
Just those moments of glimpsing between waving leaves
When the breeze hints at the garden and stirs the world
Awaiting the question of the mystery behind that whispering wind.

. . . . . . .

The words of the wise man are heard in quiet
More than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.

The metaphysics of technology
Master/slave dialectic between man and nature,
Being-for-itself standing over and against
Being-in-itself, attempting to control and subdue the world.

And God said, Let us make man in our image,
After our likeness: and let them have dominion
Over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
And over the cattle and over all the earth,
And over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

That separation is a suffering
How can that tear in Being be mended?
How can that chasm of absence be bridged?
The mystic longs for reunion, homecoming with the rest of existence,
Not me and it----- just being... just being.
Returning to the tree of knowledge
In hopeless hope of learning some secret key, turning some secret key,
To unlock the gate of separation and return to that lost unity,
Where the sun is not a cold sun pinned down by astrophysics,
And the world is not a dead world but one more deeply living,
Just as beneath the object is the power of Being,
A mystery, invisibly humming.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
For whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption;
But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit
Reap life everlasting.

The Last Man, the pale criminal, sits amid neglected ruins,
The peace and beauty of their timely and timeless whispers not heard,
The breeze of promise blowing from past to future not felt, not recognized.
Before buildings can come of age they are knocked down
Brick from brick, stone from stone, into a pile of dusty rubble,
To make room for another fleeting, faceless strip mall.
Ideas and sentiments receive the same respect
His pilgrimage the vacant road
With imported plastic faithless relics for sale along the way,
His cathedral the casino at the end of the road.
...for ye are like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward,
but are within full of dead men's bones,
and of all uncleanness.

The universe broke down in cold night sweat
The sheets cold, wet, nightmarish
Wrapping around the weak arms and legs, like snakes,
Or the intrusion of the overbearing reality of existence.
I lay on my back it seems forever, floating in fever, floating away.
The answer seemed so near, yet just out of reach,
So far away.

A lifetime of accomplishment, a life's work,
Heaped into several scattered piles of junk,
Packed into unlabeled boxes being eaten away by mold and mildew.
I will try to save what I can ( for what reason I am not sure )
I will do what I can to forestall the inevitable,
When all ideas, words, creations
Feed the termite and the moth,
The silverfish, the mold, the mildew
And finally breakdown
Into dust

The circle is the symbol of eternity, that which never ends,
So, what is meant when the circle is broken? How do we begin
To mend the broken circle? For the sacred must be mended,
The circle must be whole and unending world without end
How do we begin to mend the broken circle
Before the breakdown
Into dust