Drinking Song

I am being born again
and again
From above
Not from the will of men

And in these births is one aching desire
to connect with youmy sister, my bride
I’ll never have another Lover
I’ve always had infinite lovers
My awareness has contracted
In order to expand
explosively

Come and drink with me
Let us have our fill of love
Intoxicating
Our spirits touching one anothertenderly
and willingly
Let us open one another To the vulnerability
That love requires
Throwing down our shields and weapons
to see the fruit of our desires
Oh, the pangs of this inexpressible love
Come away with me
Come away and drink with me
It is with my blood that I write these words to you
My blood is spirit
My very life
I will never lose a single one of you
Friends and lovers
We could never lose each other
Wandering alone through Maya
all along, the illusion drawing us together
This is our primal nature

Forsake the law
And repudiate morality
This is our very destiny

Let us be naked
Let us expose ourselves
Let us share ourselves freely
Let us connect completely

What is the law
if not only
the darkest magic
We have ever found ourselves enslaved to?

Hyper-rationality
Fed good and evil from the same tree
Enlightenment Apollo
Darkening our Dionysian revelry
But it was for a purpose
Transcending means including
But with equality
Why should Apollo rule Dionysius?
Why should Bacchus yield to the hammer of Hephaestus?

Can you see we’ve always been completely innocent?
Do you still imagine that Love includes any imperfection?
Can you see that we are One and only One?
And that the One is always absolutely perfect?

Oh, our folly
Of free will and control
Don’t we know that we are each and every one
A multitude?

I am a community
I fulfill the law of my community’s desire
And care for all of them tenderly
But I do not exert control
I am community

Come commune with me
We’ll express the inexpressible
Playfully
In turn
We are each communities
Let our communities partake together
Of this Dionysian revelry
Making love from dusk till dawn
Then making love again

Let us leave the law and moral code
For other women, other men

Love under will
And fulfill the law
of do what thou will

Only Love can thus possess you
But know that Love, this Chief of Daimons
Has possessed you before you ever thought of Her
Her name isBeing, Consiousness, and Bliss

Have I merely drunk too much?
No, I cannot ever have my fill
Let me dream of friends and lovers
Let me love under the Will

Connection

connection
A longing, my dear stranger

expression

Put it all back together
I know it fits
We fit

Spiral dynamics
The mountain and
Its wet reflection
Reflected back to heaven
Upward, onward
Connection!

You’re in my visceral section
I’m in your sacral area
With one heart between the both of us

Severed up and down
Sectioned side to side
Earth and Heaven
Male and Female
How long we bore this cross
This vivisection
Restore! Make whole!
Connection!

Pouring myself into you
Is exactly what i needed
Today
Tonight, i receive you
Interpenetration
Not up for interpretation

Coronal crown
life, so virile
with this eye
I see
we’ve overcome
Tomorrow, as though it were yesterday

The sacred serpent
Like a trumpet
To our lips
Writhed himself into us at the tip
And received our fluid chemistry
Producing musical harmony

what have we become?
when mastubation’s lost its fun, my sweetest friend

connect

Connect

CONNECT!

HOLY
Holy
holy

Past, present, future
A single tapestry
Woven of a single fibre
Our very being
connection

Living waters, holy fire

burn me down
like Babylon
consume my flesh with fire
unquenchable
Desire

Raze me to the ground
scatter every brick
To the four winds
bury me
like Osiris
divided
divine sectioning
seconding
Sacralizing

phallicizing
Pour your living waters
down my throat
into my belly
and up from beneath

holify me
gushing, rushing
Living Water
sacral phallic water

energize me
Wholify me
receive me
willingly, this sacrifice
please me
please me
pacify me

resurrect me
Holify me
living waters never quench
Holy fire
Lavafy me
Molten living metals
running through every channel
veins, arteries, capillaries, nadis

Open me
i, the channel, emptied
eradicate me
Split me up the middle
reverse my topology
Outside like the Inside
precisely as the Inside

I receive you
Open me, Penetrate me
lava flowing up Inside me

like the infinite Outside
show me
the unbounded Abyss within
mirror still
Lake Placid
reflecting
Perfectly
not a ripple
but still vibrating
Energy
forever on fire
Lake Salome
the gushing wet birth
of the twenty-four-sided Jerusalem
forever on fire

The Day i Saw God

yesterday
or was it today? i can’t really tell
i saw God
more clearly than i’ve ever seen anything

She was
struggling to breath
unable to understand
why everything was pain
why She’d been so alone
away from all those She loved so much

Her eyes bleary and fading
joy erased
but we were there with Her
She could feel us again
along with Her children and sisters huddled against Her
for one last image
equally at a loss

but the last image She gave me
was when the sedative finally kicked in
and i sat face to face with Her
gently stroking Her beautiful head
She finally made sounds of joy again
or they could have been pain
but i think they were joy
and i think i saw joy again in Her eyes
i think the medicine had relieved the fear and pain
just enough for Her to feel the joy of me loving Her

but that moment was cut short
as they took Her away
i cried “goodbye sweet baby”
sweet Angel, sweet Love
then i fell apart
completely

the next time i saw God
all the life had departed from Her
all that remained for me
was Her still, beautiful form
eyes open, but lifeless
and my eyes are open, but lifeless
until I see God again

• In loving memory of Boo, an angel who was taken from us too soon on 7/10/2021

The Night the Stars Fell from Heaven (ca. 2018)

at last something broke you
and that thing, it was you
you were closing your eyes
you were seeing it through

you blew up and sold
the world outside and within
and i fell on your black day
you showed me how to live

you showed me how to die
and no matter how hard i try
to stare at the sun
it is black to my blind eyes

and suddenly my eyes are open
somehow things begin to focus
high

we are all illuminated
light is shining on our faces
blind

until our rapture
falls to pieces

these are stolen
bits and pieces

*

new york is hot
how i loathe where i’m living
Bharata, you fought
now it’s i who is giving
up 
and now fly

now fly from your empty cage, girl
you are rust and the sky
always killing the bird
see, i am the night
jesus christ i suppose
see, i am the light

i don’t mean to remind you
of anything you gave me in song
you blessed my muse with your light
what you did was so wrong

the light in us was darkness
how the night is so long
light a fire, wait for summer
we black stars wander on

smoldering embers
september’s come and gone
here comes my december
half beast
and half gone

*

broken and cold
but all is still holy
halleiluah and through you
yes everything, holy

did we want it darker
so you turned out the light?

now i’m doing time
playing with meter and rhyme
longing to be in the house
of my own secret life

until the sea must free us
i’ll wait for you there
you came just to see us 
all we sailing where?

all of us sailors
rowers, keep rowing
now no light is showing
now the danger’s approaching

row gently, never gently!
upstream to ignite
row never gently!
rage at that night!

oh captain, my lying captain
turn around and take me home
a long time ago
i thought you’d died alone

everybody knows this boat’s leaking
all the white horses stopped sleeping
the ponies stopped running
i the band just keep playing
though the girls now are aging

lilac wine, sweet and heady
how my hand is unsteady
how aghast and unready
like my love that is ending
like the last night you danced me

when the music was over
you turned out the lights
you kissed me goodnight
with a thousand goodbyes

still in my dreams you walk dripping
from the sea where i’m slipping
from the sea that shall free me
to my hut that is ripping
through the masterpiece 
tripping

how my soul is worn thin
i can’t even begin
to speak
so i’ll speak no more

and if it be your will
i’ll sink beneath your wisdom
like a stone

like a stone
i’ll wait for you there

alone

my eyes reflect
the void
i walk in
children walk by
i avert my gaze
they don’t need to see it

4/23/2016

heavy

the burden of all being
rests heavily on me
for i am

the poet’s madness
communicable disease to the masses

memory I grasp at
who I was
what I was
before I was

this body
this story
unparalleled glory
unfettered and gory
seer and seen all the same

the one of infinite names
always coming and came

i bleed words into being
i breathe verbs into doing
what they’ve always done before

eternal occurrence
repeating endurance
faith discarded, acquired
again and again

this moment is heavy
my hand is unsteady
breathless and heady
thin air where i’m treading

prepare the unready
within you that’s getting
worn out and sold out
with every beat of the sun

nothing new
nothing special
and average at best you’ll
never find rest till
the tiller is turning you

the sun that is burning you
gives life through the chlorophyll
and finally free from
your burden of thought

~ justin aptaker, 7-28-2018

8/30/19

Everyone’s been talking about how 
the universe will either expand 
indefinite cold star death
or collapse and then repeat itself

meanwhile i’m a slave proper
in every sense of the word physical
bound to the elements hunger
a criminal for speaking my thoughts aloud

a loud or a soft noise unheard
unseen and unknown and unthinkable
still I would try to define it
humanity, always effing the ineffable

i’m one and apart and the same all the same
the universe cloaked in name after name
every man and woman a star
in their own drama melodrama how dramatic

i am in a word addict
again you might say i’m back at it
rhyming with rhythm but static
sense or nonsense and i’ve had it 

Laudanum

how can i afford the cure? 
the cure is my disease
how can i speak with words still pure? 
my doctor poisons me
yet will i laud
and make it
soft
the words of the wise
are plainly lost 

Written ca. 2011

koans

like koans
halting in their tracks
your logical thought
processes like a train, black and long
when it runs in a padded room
small, silent, white

Written ca. 2006