do you like to worship yourself better than worshiping anyone else? do you look at any glass except the ones that show yourself?
haven’t you heard? the towers have fallen! haven’t you heard That towers can fall?
and then, just when I thought I had seen it all…
i found myself sitting in a different room it looked like a palace but it was a tomb like a bleeding, barren womb like a child born far too soon and it was dark and i was scared and adults were gathered in a far-off room
and there were things in there with me that the adults couldn’t see and they were dark and they were small with the sharpest little teeth
I’VE LOST SOMETHING something’s been taken! they tore something out of me i knew the moment i awoke and saw the daylight flee
do you paint pictures of food to donate to starving children? do you max out your credit card to profit off God’s business?
the towers shining like mirrors we see our reflection then all is just shattered then all that once mattered is a column of smoke in the wind and angels descend from mansions pretend to caverns below where old Titans stow away awaiting the day that Chaos will arrive their savior and swallow Earth and its deepest recesses and them along with it all and Vishnu sleeps on the endless serpent
i insist on suffocating slowly still i refuse to die imposing my will to weakness avoiding applying the “why”
implications are closing in, oppressive my mind is open, fluid suggestive interposing meaning and form with the spoken and written letter
the light source filtered through all this wreckage the squeaking moving in, oppressive regressive, the way my vantage remains a disjointed unit-whole
you persist, and i suffocate quickly you ask so nicely for me to die deposing my God damned will to power why do i seem to avoid the “apply”?
THE SYMBOL ON MY HAND IS BURNING
into the flesh, and back out from inside illuminates Prison, a chasm, a prism dividing a spectrum of impossible light
we wholly refract the soma, the psyche The Panic transforms into beauty inane compulsion, obsession, redemption, addiction we know we’re alive we perpetuate pain
awake now!
Recite!
Write it down, letter by letter
the house of Holy is being built
brick by brick, letter by letter, gem by gem
my Spirit approached me by night
with a vision of gladness
a triumphant tiding
born on a warm and powerful wind in the dead of winter
Say, “It is finished”
Say, “The city has fallen!”
Say, “Come away with me, my love. Come away, and taste not of her poison delicacies”
as in a dream, I watched
while a mad-woman
a maenad
ran through every street and back alley
a lunatic
possessed by the moonlight
holding in her left hand
a magic wand that she had retrieved
from a children’s magic kit
a plastic wand
and everywhere she ran
she swung her wand
pointing at each and every thing
and shouting
HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!
Holy, the cobblestones of the street! Shining in the moonlight!
Swinging her wand and pointing up
HOLY the dark clouds which move to block the moonlight
and move away again to reveal!
Swinging and shrieking and crying
HOLY! HOLY!
Pointing the wand at the gawking passerby
who stopped to stare, clutching their children tightly to guard them from her madness
HOLY the skeptics, the blind, and the deaf! For they shall see! They shall hear!
Holy your children, whom you shall not keep from me!
They will follow me through the streets, singing and dancing to my merry tunes!
Holy the children, for they believe in magic wands of plastic
Holy the plastic, no less than the gold with which you adorn your temples!
Holy the darkness, which falls over your land!
And with those words
the Lady flung her arm
pointing her wand at the moon itself
which turned red-black
like congealed blood over a wound
and darkness fell over the cobblestones in the streets
and panic fell in the hearts of the passerby
because the light was gone
and screaming terrified, they tried to drag their children with them back inside their homes
where the cold hum of electricity kept the incandescent status quo glowing from the ceilings
but the children would have none of it the Lady had begun to dance under the darkened moon through the black streets singing a merry tune (holy holy holy) and the children each broke free from the terrified death-grips of their parents and danced behind Her into the streets
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 