Altered States

We are worship, every single one of us
a lifelong sacrifice to the Lord of Loss –
& if the gods pry the soul from flesh & bone
I know not for sure & I am not alone.

Yet there is Eternity in the Now
which ever we need navigate – somehow
afloat on tynes & between altered states:
the feeling of matter divorced from its shape.

& light does something odd to Time,
crossing Infinites in one leap.
Without the eye I’ve seen a clime,
a country full of us lost sheep

& the tune we sang was not
music, not grief, not the waves
of radio static, not
old Solomon’s nor Dave’s –

but the song of the spheres.

Broca, Wernicke, Papez

Words, words & the fire behind them –
& again words, sibilant sounds all the same –
έκστασις oh that terrible dread
that stumbling we might fall into the flame;

words, words & the heavy toll of names.

Sleeping upright I have dreamt of worlds
unseen by Broca, Wernicke or Papez –
places where everything is not a process,
where unmediated the Spirit pours itself
into space – & dreaming I have walked

forward in time, & the continuous

friction of days has consumed
the friable dross of Error:
έκστασις the death of Pride & manners –
the long & the short of it,
the bulk & the gist of it,
the sullen certainty of grit
thrown into the cogworks.

Absalom

Blood diamonds in every place sprout
wherever thy litter was borne
as brutish Joab gave thee rout --

Oh Absalom, oh Absalom!

This night Ushai sheepish will come
before the throne bearing the tale.
Oh Absalom, oh Absalom;
in Giloh hangs Achitophel!

Ancient David ever shall mourn,
grim HaShem His favour bestow
not to the first or second born;

unto the third the crown will go

& upon that accursèd head
Hokmah shall trample it with glee.
Oh Absalom, oh Absalom!
There is mankind’s True Enemy!

Eingeschlossensein

In childhood days I would feign
push reality away
with childhood hands – & lo! those
hands upon the worn, tattered
canvas did but scatter dull
colours. For these were my own
appendages upon the
tarp – my own self seen & felt
as someone – or something – else.

‘I’ is but an observer
lost in grim contemplation.
Durst I retire into
Reason? My very thoughts are
pigments, yes – pigments only,
gross & foreign, the figments
of Daemon logic breaking
against my tired senses.

The noise in rapid, vapid
fluctuations: smooth, jagged,
butchered lives we all beg the
question. The problems recant
or recidivate; we dream
another hour while we
wake, but sleeping remember
everything which soon after
October takes place: the way
that our bodies run from us –

to afterlives we’ll never see –
far into mute Eternity.

Under Siege

Published in The Poutine Press, October 2009.

Autumn at the Asylum

The mountains burning – it isn’t so bad;
like kindergarten perhaps – I am glad.
Here having all the best answers means squat.
The funny-faced man chewed & chewed & spat,
fruit out of their season dribbling down a
flat chest.

Autumn at the asylum is
all of the joy one can contrive from words –
young words, short words, words that everybody
knows & idioms that remind us nothing
of passing time & the oncoming snow.

Autumn at the asylum is hallway
scuffles on the way to nicotine breaks
& the mercurial moods of shrivelled minds
before the long, all-dreaded winter takes.

Published in The Poutine Press, October 2009.

Like the Chink of Coins on an Offering Plate

"There is no such thing as a hard fact.

Facts are fluid -- turbid, more often

than not -- sluicing down the fissures of

our beliefs & working at the

old foundations until whole

edifices come tumbling down in

great cataracts."

My bleary-eyed angel stares from the

other side of the sky. The night is

an unseen colour or the touch of

cold glass. From out the yawning abyss

there come sounds like the chink of coins on

an offering plate. The moonlit harvest
is plentiful but the labourers

are fast asleep -- as well they should be.