it’s ready to happen hours count down to launch, but the burners hum already the structure is taken up siphons slowly into the bloodstream
the catalyst, the moment the agonist, the imitator
the perceptual set is set, and it’s famished not even lit, and it’s waiting for more- the stimulant, the ignition the doctor, the system
like inlets of blood, the freeways carry us to the city like carcinogens, like poison medication like aluminum, like exhaust
i too am carried and when i reach that center i am deposited, and begin to take effect while i wait for my own poison to take hold of me blood within Blood and poison in Poison medication in Medication in MEDICATION we make sure all of our cancers are medicated
it has happened already but i am waiting for it to happen again the freeway now quiets itself in anticipation a new day to repeat the city is ready for more
renaissance San Francisco, a whisper in the wind tonight tells of rebirth not Beat or beaten down not beatific simply being
it is whispered that soon we will all see our visions and dream our dreams amidst the microchip mindbending screams can you really, really believe?
The true dawn begins tonight at which I woke, and was alight and the wind rushed through me like the rustle of dead leaves
San Francisco, I never knew you but I hear of your deeds of renunciation and renown they have echoed across time and space like starlight that is evergreen
I have seen, I see, I will continue to see me in you you in me I was born not anachronistically but just in time just in time
Beneath your vast oceans of sky
i trembled in wonder
And the veil was torn asunder
And for a time, standing still
I could see: oh, all my blindness to reality
The gears clanged together, shifting again
I was in the world of other men
And everything seemed so pretend
And even then
just when
I felt crushed to the crumbling, time would flow
Your oceans of time move fast, then slow
The currents in our minds that drift and blow
Listless so
Like our ego and spirit kaleidoscopes
Today we’re high, tomorrow
Low
And time, and time just seems to go,
And all the while we know
We know
That when we bid our loves farewell
Time can be our only hell
Time, on which our minds will dwell
Wasted years, and love grown pale
Life is never our story to tell
I don’t want to end this not so well
These lines are not my story to tell
They rush from under your waves who swell
And creatures beneath the deep who dwell
My spirit is stretched in the wind, my sail
Walk between worlds I know so well
Knew so well, unfamiliar now
Revolving doors to worlds abound
And feet never can stay on the ground
Not forever
Nothing is
Nothing could have been, or could ever be
Nothing at all, no, nothing should be
How could anything ever be? I shake my head in agony
Discarding others’ philosophy
That’s the glory!
Nothing compels to tell this story
Nothing, the natural state of things
From which something pure and holy sings
From which life and love and beauty spring
From which all this sorrow and suffering
From which come these broken and holy rhymes
And discords, and tempos
And faltering times
And wars and egos the size of dimes
That yet tread down the earth
Like Jehovas, endless lines
I cannot
My ego press on
My spirit stretched thin
I cannot
I cannot begin again
I can’t begin to make you see I can’t begin, for even me I can’t I can’t Not I Not I
blessed are the fools
who call themselves fools
for others will call them wise
blessed are those who cry out to the world with stammering tongues
crouching aching and sweating
over endless lines of gibberish that fall like drum beats from the tips of their frantic pens
for they will be called Earnest
blessed are the ones who suffer withdrawals
dope-sick
shaking and sweating
desperate for a drink or a fix
for I will make them High indeed!
blessed are the sexual “deviants”
cast away by the “holy” as unclean
for they know that no man or woman may call unclean
anything that God has declared clean
Blessed are those who shake their fists in rage at the heavens, cursing them for they will dance in the pouring rain
i was told last night, by a woman whose life was passing her by that the card in my hand indicated that i was to be reborn
now i sit with ink from a borrowed pen that i borrowed from a friend who also gave me his food as America was passing us by
and i so long to express this lovely isolation we are the light of a single star and no star is ever very far from my single thoughts they touch every one
i am so many colors when i divide myself in the water that falls poured by a man with no plans at all
death calls every heartbeat by name making each one the same
this is your life
this is your life
this is your life
this is your life
the metronome, calling me home, ticking away, fading the day
life can be so melodramatic
like watching static
with the volume on mute
and your mind on mute, numbed by the gentle static hiss of your own personal hell
and the waves that swell
the remains of life-forms onto endless beaches of time
all time is mine
all time is mind
i look out by night
at the vast ocean of Being
and the sand, as it slips in my hands
is not made for my counting
infinity is not comforting
i smell salt
sitting on the naked earth, i draw from a vast reservoir
a deep well
hoping that maybe if i bury my head
under the beachy sand
i will escape the tide by becoming one with the earth and the stars
i try to write perfect words
with the absurd feeling that if i get them right
they will work like a spell
that shatters reality itself
and places me somewhere else
where things were right the first time
after all, we cast reality with words
and all of our pictures come to life
and all of life is our pictures
and words are our entire reality
so we must not be saying the right words, thinking the right words
no one taught us the right words, we don’t have the faculty for those kinds of words
silence and sleep
thoughts of the deep
give no rest for me
they reek of the sleep i dread to sleep
i make noise so that the universe must keep listening
i banish sleep because a white gangrene is glistening
where the worm never dies
and the smokes always rise, blotting the skies
are we the children of Cain? cursed from the face of the earth
is it because of murder in my heart
that i am marked to die?
we stand shivering outside, in chains and shackles, all in a line
with brothers and sisters in front and behind
and every so often (we never know when)
our captors pluck one of us out of the line
and none of us can stop it
and we are forced to watch it
while they stand our mothers and fathers against the wall
and open fire, but not at heart or head
on stomachs and bowels instead
so our loved ones expire slowly, writhing on the cold dirt
pleading eyes upturned
begging our love to save them
but we can only wait our own turn
it seems that no Mind would dream up such a dream and give it as Life to its very offspring
i tremble to blaspheme
but i am questioning
doubting
whether Love has ever tread these tangled paths at all
whether Life ever begot life
whether we are not in fact just the spectacular fireworks
of passion and sorrow
that the universe has cooked up with
its chemical sorceries
which paint once the sky
for an instant in time
Father! Father!
do you even remember the name that you gave me?
do you remember the night you pulled me violently from my resting place
where it was dark and warm and secure?
and you cast me into a cold, hollow womb that continually miscarries
and i was born in a tomb
too soon?
it was winter
do you remember?
the dying of embers
O, wanton December!
Who pierced me with sorrows
and gave me tommorows
but stole all my todays
*
i inquire into the science
of infinite gaps
of gaping synapse
i investigate the substance of Being
poking at it from every angle
demanding that it yeild fruits fit for our consumption
that it justify itself
must i remind you
that i never asked to be here
and i never consented
to this form or this figure
riddled with cancers
i am the eternal thought
thinking itself
watching with terrified attatchment
these bodies which i inhabit
my haunts, my accostomed places
my ethos, my habits
my character, a socially constructed facade
my self, ever putting itself
into the eyes of others, looking on itself
imagining itself playing the roles
of each of the other children in the schoolyard
*
but at last, the primitive state of nature overtakes me
i’m going to sleep now, do not awaken me
and when i awake, Love will wake again with me
and all the smoldering, dying wreckage of this day will forsake me
ah, i remember now, the sound of Love, walking in the cool of the garden
when each day seemed to stretch on forever
and the night was full of magic
the infinite gaps can only be scaled
in the space of one instant, no more and no less
working its way back through every other instant
time, since it is a function of mind, is also subject to language
i stand back from the bodies of the dead i inhabit
i am the universal singularity, the one thought
throbbing and pulsing in the erotic heights before explosive creation
i
howl
the body electric
and rise, orgasmic over Moloch
whose mind is pure machinery
and whose children drown in their insanity
with a cold and broken hallelujah
i hymn the blessed race immortal
and rend the fabric of reality from top to bottom
entering in the place most holy
and die, writhing on the warm, welcoming earth
the place of my birth
the place of my hearth, where the embers glow and spark
December has now heard a lark
Hades, required to return to her mother
the goddess he has stolen for a season
and the Bird rises wreathed
in flame from the ashes
baptizing the Forms of our collective unconscious
with the blessed and holy power of life
and coming to life, all of our pictures bring us to life with them!
*
one can not blaspheme what is not
for one can not think of it
look again at what Love gave us
in the space of an instant, which extends on forever
since time and space alike are a construct of our symbolic processes
i pull out my tabula rasa
i am written on the tabula rasa
all is white on the tabula rasa
all is white
all is white
the waves now are dragging me in
to the ocean without beginning or end
and the depths are alive with the wind
of warm currents and of births and of sand
and death would appear now a friend
leading me in by the hand
calling me into the land
Justin Aptaker 