Written early in 2021, I think. I don’t really remember. I submitted it to a couple of poetry blogs/magazines & never heard back.
I envisioned the dilapidated stage
entropic theatre
tap dancing solstice
before the third act
Clacking soles
across the wooden slabs
Kicking as humans do
holes in the floor
to shine a limelight on hell
Second act lasted too long
broken every way being could be
broken
Nowhere I’d ever been had let me be
Decade of twenty teens
hard boiled dreams
immersed in misery
2020 hindsight
was the encore
Forewarned of the impending flood
I was prepared
this was nothing new to me
The audience had stormed the stage
floor fell through
Everyone was broken
so I felt less alone
Extreme isolation
the new norm
I was Noah on a life raft
2 dogs and 2 ravens
reeling in floaters in lifejackets
before they gave in and sank into hell
I Am
One red nose clown foot
Led one-eyed Wodan’s nine legged steed
riding the sky
giving the gift of eternity
St. Nick’s ceremony
Saturnalia
solstice
substituted as Christ’s mass
It was the holiday season
I was back on the 101
Solstice had always swayed my spirit
Seasonal pulse had always pushed and pulled me
Whatever poetry
that trickster Wodan speaks
for that which is beyond the senses
Breath of life
which suffocates without
the inhalation of new
or the exhalation of old
Throughout the past year
what changed was
I was taking notice
of those cycles
I had become more aware
when to inhale
Cosmic clock tick
macrocycles
Bipolarity was more extreme
at particular times of year
I remembered all the
Independence Days
and ghosts of Christmas past
June into July was always insane
December into January was always profound
Happened to coincide with the solstices
the post-solstice phenomena were intense
I had often been in some type of trouble
around those times of year
I started documenting the swing of mind, body, emotion
Swing of sleep, sorrow, sanity, sustenance
The science of self
Socrates’ motif
Montaigne’s mantra
It all started making sense
that which is far beyond the senses
Becoming more comfortable with the extrasensory
piled onto the bonfire of eternity within
My other five senses had led me to hell
Why would I let them lead me anymore?
So Rudolph the red nosed clown foot led me
laid on the gas pedal that Christmas
No matter how lost I was
I always had guides
Many guides
of spirit
which is the muse of art
spirit of creation
William Blake was to me
what Virgil was to Dante
what Dante was to Milton
what Milton was to Blake
His Poetic Genius guided me out of hell
Most misunderstood human spirit
of any human spirit I know
other than my self
whomever’s writing this
the self
whatever moves these hands
across keys
I haven’t figured it all out yet
I rediscovered ancient texts through Blake
namely the Bible
But I began drawing parallels
digging up words on spirit
Upanishads, vedas, Bhagavad Gita
teachings of Gautama Buddha
alchemy
St. Germain
who I discovered in New Orleans years earlier
seemed to have roots in Ojai too
he was everywhere
Rediscovered Allan Watts and Eckhart Tolle
In Ojai exists
one of the largest mystical libraries
in the world
I lived and worked next to it
Krotona Institute of Theosophy
Learned to meditate under pepper trees
past the orange fields
in the gardens of Krishnamurti’s home
I retreated into the Topatopa mountains
Los Padres National Forest
climbed rock walls
hiked through the canyons
I walked the labyrinths
soaked in hot springs
Searching for answers
my demons didn’t disappear
if anything
they became more apparent
I searched nonetheless
I dug up mysticism from every hole
Christ
Enlightenment
Buddha
alchemy
Turns out
it’s all the same thing
Aldous Huxley called it “perennial philosophy”
I call it: “it’s all the same thing”
Everything is everything
Even polytheism was just Oneness
expressing itself in different ways
Rudra is Shiva
Atman is Brahman
Oneness is God
the incandescent whole
I Am That I Am
That Oneness
expresses itself
in so many diverse ways
polytheism made more sense
Even Christianity split it into three:
Father, Son, Spirit
Experiencing God is an extrasensory experience
The experience and the experiencer
are within
As the perception of Van Gogh’s Starry Night
is the perception of an emotion
so the cosmos are the greatest work of art
the painter is part of the painting
And so I pull from every possible tradition
to paint this creation
The universe itself is the Poetic Genius
spirit of creation
roared into existence by Ruder
with a series of big bangs like a motor
timespace born
alas I Am
soham
verily verily I say unto you
seek and ye shall find
I Am
That I Am
God Is NOT In There
I had grown up searching for answers
in every other possible place
Religious zealot nuts
I grew up with
gave me allergies
to spirit
I searched for answers
in philosophy and science
practicing language to defend myself
against hateful hypochristian conservatives
in the Deep South
I took solace in arrogant pridefulness
thinking I was outsmarting my perceived rivals
Arguing against the majority
is the best way to fall
headfirst into the deep trench of identity
headstrong loveblind
I don’t recommend it
although it did lead me here
I couldn’t imagine a darker
more painful road
Thank God I also grew up with a keen eye
for allegory and allusion
hidden themes
hidden meanings
Credit my dad for turning me onto
“turn me on dead man”
“I buried Paul”
“jai guru deva”
One of my first memories
my Dad was showing me
how to push the vinyl needle
backwards
on the White Album
Showing me the Beatles
were hiding sounds in their recordings
words relative to sounds
could have multiple meanings
That was the beginning
of a lifelong love of esotericism
a profound love of the unknown
puzzles in plain sight
I wanted to reflect the world back to itself
I would seek the unknown the rest of my life
bigger and bigger unknowns
addicts are all spiritual seekers at heart
My family
we all loved Salinger
I was a teenage drunk too
why?
‘cause Holden
My family
would jokingly “shine” each other
from the Kubrick film
I fell in love with the kind of art
which could be enjoyed on multiple levels
the kind of art which shone beauty and wit
but also opened a door of inward expanse
a rabbit hole into new domains
pretty songs
pretty words
pretty moving pictures
which had something new to share each sitting
Music and books and movies
that hid their ultimate depths
but shone so brightly to be enjoyable to laymen
My love of the Sistine Chapel
is that which hides just beneath the surface
birth of Adam
God reaches through the third eye
of a human brain
Great art doesn’t fit into description
Great art hides its intention
perhaps because
Great art IS intention
Life in “meta” begins in art
being aware of the subtleties
meanings within meanings
layers upon layers
Mystics often describe
observing the thinker
Great art is exactly that
art observing artist
artist observing art
Great art points the Poetic Genius without
towards the Poetic Genius within
That’s the beginning of mysticism
Art is the beginning of everything
Blake is not so subtle:
“A musician, an artist, an architect:
the man or woman
who is not one of these
is not a Christian.”
Being one with Christ
or uniting with the Christ within
is a quest towards the authentic self
a path
which unravels itself over a lifetime
or perhaps many lifetimes
It’s the art of creation creating
King David was a singer
he was a kid singing
right before he slayed the giant
And he told the giant the whole story before he did it
“here’s what I’m going to do to you”
There was some truth
to the dramatic dialogues
in action movies
shit talk
like Muhammad Ali
The language of intention
is beyond mindless babbling
beyond psychological games
The intention of truth
is truth
hence God is the Word
Word really does lead action
intention is beyond limitation
Clarity of intention is
important beyond importance
I spent years hating the world
chicken or the egg isn’t important
What’s important is I was finally taking responsibility
One who’s entirely in control of their faculties
One who’s awareness is entire, whole
intention is entire, whole
Art is the language of intention
none more powerful than poetry put to melody
music has the power to move worlds
music slays giants
Music is a bombardment of all five senses
with extrasensory response
Music is intention
I had spent three decades writing music
about finding truth
through poverty, failure,
trauma and rejection
Once you’re homeless, nepotism flies out the window
no one wants anyone to know they know you
Poverty is nearly impossible to escape
Once you’re there
society wants you to remain there
But you’re only a failure if you quit
if you give up your principles
if you silence the voice within
if you blow out the light
I never have and never will quit
I’ve never lost faith in myself
the greater self
Thank God there was always a hint of hope
my darkest music
simply juxtaposes the light
like an M.C. Escher painting
if all you see is light
there is no contrast
My music was actually
hacking a trail towards that light
Born a thousand steps behind
my life took one step backwards
two steps forwards
Knowing begins with “I know nothing”
That’s authenticity
Who’s giving us answers
before we’ve asked the questions?
Beware false prophets
Religion and oppressive rationalism
beat us over the head
before we ever have a chance to explore
Don’t build a castle on quicksand
Oneness is irrefutable
moral virtue rule books
are full of nonsense
Science is irrefutable
scientists
are full of nonsense
Know thyself
Profound hatred for religion
may actually be necessary
for pure intention
Or at least an actively rebellious spirit
is necessary
for the spirit to hear herself
through the noise culture of
materialism
Materialism:
single most destructive disease of the spirit
Superficiality is the only sin
Authenticity is the only requirement
No one’s more perturbed at the bastardization of Oneness
than those who’ve gotten a glimpse of her
Everyone’s ogling
a copy of a copy of a copy of a Da Vinci painting
The guy who knows the real Mona Lisa
isn’t looking at the Mona Lisa
he’s looking through her
Art is telling you you’re looking in the wrong direction
“Turn around! Look who she’s staring at!”
Beliefs are shitty cover songs
when you’re in love with the original
Hate religion without hating people
Undermining nonsensical beliefs
doesn’t have to undermine
the people who believe nonsense
I actively love humanity
and rage war on society
simultaneously
I love the people I grew up with
in Alabama
Guy’s just doing a version of what his dad did
who was doing a version of what his dad did
game of telephone back in time
genetic complacency lulled to sleep
At the root it’s all the same thing
perennial philosophy
Oneness
the source
If everyone gets a glimpse
shouldn’t be surprising
people across the globe
are glimpsing it all differently
As a dolphin’s DNA is dissimilar to that of a bird
As an island species evolves differently
than that same species on mainland
Why would spirit be any different?
We don’t all live the same way
won’t die the same way
so why would we all assume
we’re all supposed to perceive
life and death
and creator, created, creation
exactly the same?
What happens after you die
is unique to your perception of life
and your intention within life
Experience of Oneness is custom-fitted
The only way to know for certain
who’s NOT experiencing Oneness
The only way to know who’s NOT experiencing God
is the guy arguing about a book
God is NOT in there
“Turn around! Look who the book is staring at!”
Plateau
Early morning stroll to nowhere
Gotta pay the toll just to go there
no plan
no money
Running away from an invisible enemy
misery
was chasing me
Lone wild sole clacking stage floor of eternity
guiding Wodan’s woeful steed
northbound to nowhere
desperate for a place to BE
Could there BE a place on earth
that would take me as I AM?
How many deaths need their be?!
before I AM would let me BE?
Pale light on the east horizon
This happen to everyone?
Getting run out of home every year
Conquered by invading forces
Each year rebuilding hope
reuniting
reformulating plans
beginning anew
Only to have it all crumble again by summer
or winter
I don’t know exactly
Winter was inspiring but I was also usually homeless
Everyone knows seasonal changes
emotionally
It actually manifests itself physically
the universe attacked me
as soon as I became comfortable
There was to be no complacency in this life
whether I wanted it or not
Living moment to moment wasn’t a conscious choice
it was a necessity
I was learning to be grateful for it
the waves of erratic turbulence
made it interesting
made it impossible to settle
Society wanted me to learn one dumb skill
repeat it every day
to pay off things
things I didn’t need
on a pretend plateau
Society would lend me a pretend plateau
I would pretend to owe society
for the place society pretended to own
couple decades later
I was supposed to have a midlife crisis
buy a Porsche
have sex with a 22 year old
then go back to my pretend plateau
I pretended to own
to die
The plateau of complacency and comfort
had eluded me
Instead I was forced to learn to climb mountains
jump off cliffs
swim across oceans
I experienced euphoric states
bliss
Words and sounds flowed through me
effortlessly
like documenting heaven
Like a profound knowing
that heaven needed to be documented
That was creation
creating was more like documenting
Like capturing something which wanted to be captured
like it wanted to see how it could be interpreted
in my image
my glimpse of it
through me but not of me
Seemed indiscernible from God
God is Curiosity
The universe is an art project
made from God cutting his feet into bits
like construction paper
in his image
self portrait
I saw myself in my art and my creator
creation, creator, created
When beauty flows through me
it reflects me the way I want to be seen
it feels the way I want to feel
Perfect art reminds its creator who she is
In that eureka moment, I know myself
more than the bum sleeping in his car
more than the monotony o poverty
more than the false eye
more than the bedbugs
more than the rejection
more than shame
more than failure
Art reminds me I Am the moment
I Am the intention
The moment is to be created
Nothing but the moment matters
The moment is infinite
The moment is the inception
The moment is the inspiration
Remembering the moment
is a remembrance of creator and creation
Remembering the moment
is beyond memory
It’s perfect
unity
What’s the Point?
Maybe the point of life
is to remember there’s no point
Does God know why God exists?
Result of all Socratic questioning:
“who made God then?”
Creation like creator
Like manifesting a song
in my image
I don’t know where the song came from
I don’t know why it came out of me
I’m glad it exists
it’s a part of me up to interpretation
Existence is more like a game
a game of remembering
Whether it’s called God or the universe
it exists for accompaniment
The world’s religions are all pretty hazy
on answering “why?”
As Dog is man’s companion, so Man is God’s companion
dog thinks he’s a lot more important to man
he was bred to perform tasks for humans
in dog’s mind, these tasks are absolutely necessary
if we don’t get that doggone ball back the 37th time
there will be doom in dogtown
Unless it’s a border collie herding sheep
the dog is probably just man’s company
actually more of a pain in the ass
dog doesn’t have a purpose
just accompaniment in existence
Dog’s love for man
affirms man’s love
affirming the love within the all
A palindrome to drive you home:
“mirror rim dog god mirror rim”
As Dog thinks he is profoundly necessary to man
so man thinks he is profoundly necessary to God
Nearly 8 billion humans
Nearly every single one of them
thinks they’re important
Tasks and chores NEED to be done
very important
Specs of consciousness collide and crawl
spawning Fibonacci’s sequence
Zero plus Adam equals One
Adam’s rib begets Eve
procreation equals Three
Walking across the little globe like ants
“No, you don’t understand
this is really important
I’m late for a very important thing”
Go get your ball and bring it back
roll over
and you’ll get a bone
Life is an absurdist art project
An indiscernibly small piece of God’s toenail
believes itself to be very important
And it’s exacerbating suffering
pretending to be important
it’s stressing other people out too
stop that
Just put on this red nose clown shoe
won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?
I’d really like you to see that it’s all a show
Identity
Is normal to wake up in a human body
follow protocols of fathers’ fathers
without question?
Is normal avoiding the question?
or is normal actually not curious?
It’s quite abnormal to be a piece of consciousness
in this strange maze of creation
This labyrinth of wonder
sees normal in the mirror
latches on to an identity
and rolls across the plateau
unto death
Is normal worried about mowing the lawn?
Is normal arguing about sex and money?
Is normal yelling at the rival political party?
Is normal entertaining reality through reality tv?
Does normal crave
corn syrup and tortured animal lard?
Why is normal doing normal
when normal is so stressed
so sick
so sad
so discontented by normal
Normal is an identity to which I cannot bare
I come from a long lineage
of humans
who didn’t do what their fathers did
Zero contributions to society
or so says society
This is the hole society dug for me
to be buried at the end of the plateau
My epitaph would read,
“I was but am not any longer”
This is not my identity
Identifying with
race
gender
sexuality
creed
That’s dangerous
I live in a culture which feigns compassion
by overtly identifying
small factions
of humanness
A society which forces a gay black man
to identify entirely and wholly as gay and black
is a corrupt and oppressive society
no matter whether the society
defines black and gay as good or bad
That is no one’s identity
The impetus of desire
to latch onto limited identities
is oppression
Race
Gender
Sexuality
Creed
Compassion isn’t pretending to know
what it is to be black
what it is to be trans
what it is to be female
or religion, whatever godless thing that is
Compassion is acknowledging the sacred in everything
For God’s sake
Compassion doesn’t dive further
into that limited identity
Exemplifying abnormal quickly becomes normal
new definitions and new terminologies
quickly exemplify the same limited sensibilities
that led to the oppression in the first place
That rabbit hole of self-defining
based on skin pigment and sexual organs
Freedom is not yelling pride on the streets
Freedom is identifying beyond identity
The spirit of rebellion is strong
with the oppressed factions
But verily verily I say unto you
That is not your identity
That is not my identity
That is not our identity
Doubt has led me here
skepticism is the tool
rebellion is the spirit
to which I desire to inspire
in whomever has the audacity to explore
We are but explorers in a vast unknown terrain
Whomever you are
wherever you are
do not do what your father did
do not do what your mother did
You are not a tradition
You are not a culture
You are not a habit
You are not your skin
You are not your body
You are not your gender
You are not your identity
You are limitless
The history books aren’t finished
the church is stuck
scientific community is stuck
ethical structure is stuck
Life cannot be institutionalized
leave the game
leave the rules
unite
rebel
explore
All I desire to know
I desire to share
Confines of identity are limited
except that with which
identifies with the unlimited
that is my identity
that is life’s identity
Infinity is true normalcy
Limitlessness identity is true normal
The Spirit of Rebellion
Spirit of rebellion rears its head
at a tipping point
of which the experiencer
is rarely conscious
A truly demonic society
knows exactly where the line is
and rides it unto oblivion
As long as small factions
caught up in arguing identity
social dogmas
society gets to keep raping us
Spirit of these United States
rebellion
Spirit of the south
rebellion
Spirit of Jesus Christ
rebellion
Irony is
I associated it all with oppression
Growing up
the Southern American Christians
were to blame for all the world’s problems
They institutionalized rebellion
The spirit of liberation
became the oppression of consciousness
The spirit of freedom
became slavery
The spirit of infinity
became stuck in small minds
The spirit of America
isn’t a white guy on a white horse
The spirit of America
is the Poetic Genius of Thomas Paine
and the simultaneous persecution of him
The spirit of America
is Godly idealism
sharpening itself with science and industry
to stab itself in the heart
Roots of oppressive medieval Christianity
had an affair with oppressive rationalism
inbred bastard paradox of rational moral spirituality
where virtue is a landlocked death grip fear vice
reason is an anchor in a sea of eternal potential
Reconciling rationalism or spirituality seem lost
to the big, dumb void of identity at the heart of it
sharpening its wit to continue stabbing itself
Hypocrisy is the game
and America is winning
What is a culture which only unites in rebellion
and rebels against union
yet somehow maintains itself?
My favorite part of the Bible is where Jesus
flips tables and kicks cages
The people turned sacredness into a product
Poem Within the Poem, Relatively Speaking
Three hundred thousand years
consciousness
in human form
in human body
in human mind
stares across the sacred sky
with ancient fishy lizard eyes
seeing the infinite mirror of space
seeing space in time
“As above, so below”
it knows
Everything is everything
I Am everything relative to everything
it knows
This is Truth
Perception of everything relative to everything
consciousness perceiving consciousness
spacetime perceiving spacetime
in human form
in human body
in human mind
it knows
this is fucking amazing
it’s a goddam miracle
Conceive the ultimate sin
Only sin within an ancient human skull
to be uninspired
to become identified with the thing which perceives
in lieu of the perception of perception
I Am recalls a thought which doubts it is
a thing within itself
recalls God isn’t Dead
the thing is dead to God
God is I Am
Millenia roll by
Everything remains everything
til one day
it reaches out and grabs a part of the whole
to own a piece of the infinite sacred
distinguishing it from its opposite
giving it a title and a definition
building a fence around it
with a “no trespassing” sign
Children of paradise become slaves to memory
memory born a sacred gift
which becomes a blasphemed cage
Dissection of self is conscious curiosity
curious consciousness
Identifying with pieces of that dissection
is the Original Sin
Soon as a thing is a thing
it’s no longer everything
Soon as consciousness identifies itself as separate
it’s no longer whole
Soon as consciousness identifies itself as a thing
it’s no longer consciously everything
Soon as a thing is defined and owned
it goes into the rot coffin of “certainty”
The river isn’t a different river each time you visit
you are a different you
each time you visit the river
The human ownership phenomena
we might call it greed
it happened once before
history does repeat itself
Billions of years previous
life on earth was sludge
sludge sharing evolutionary gifts
with its neighboring sludge
If Mountain Sludge gained the gift of cool sensation
it would share that gift with Desert Sludge
If Susan Sludge gained the gift of breath
she shared it with Steve Sludge
Millions of years of sharing
Til one day a piece of sludge decided
“I’m not sharing this”
Sludge from every corner of Pangaea scoffed
“You’re a dick” said Steve
“Is he even allowed to do that?” asked Susan
“My dreams are shattered” said Mountain Sludge
“I didn’t think we had dreams yet” replied Desert Sludge
“Matter of fact, what language is this?” asked the writer
“Oh, you’re so ‘Meta’” consciousness answered
The roots of separateness
are literally roots
That’s how one thing photosynthesizes
and another thing eats its fruit
That’s why the tree breathes out
what the human breathes in
Why the human breathes out
what the tree breathes in
But the tree won’t be fooled
no fool like an old fool
Nothing on earth thinks its a thing on earth
except that goddam human
Oh the irony of human thinking it’s smart
for thinking it’s separate
while the tree ever consciously
knows its own treasure
Only fruit of the tree which is forbidden
is one who thinks the eater is separate
from that which is eaten
Millennia fly
a poem within a poem in rhyme:
Once upon a time,
consciousness
recollected
Light reflected
upon its primordial past
entered into human FORM
a shadow which saw its true form
a form which called itself Plato
Poetic Genius Panpsychic
sacred muse spoke
of Saint Socrates
who never wrote
wisdom knew nothing
which warned of the danger of words
wise as it was
it was memory which filled them
the minds of misled children
memory which knew it was not wisdom
like all separate things
which realize they’re not separate
separateness killed him
Millennia fly
a poem within a poem in rhyme:
Once upon a time,
consciousness
recollected
Light reflected
upon its primordial past
entered into a human BODY
which called itself Darwin
orthodoxy’s dogma of separateness starved him
dreamed a dream which mirrored sludge
spontaneous mutations
random anew
as is always the case with partial truths
random anew dogma born by irony’s gate
bio-orthodoxy required a huge leap of faith
mutations are not random
life requires consciousness
consciousness knows its environment
before life begins
read carefully on the origin of it
Darwin is clear on this
Time flies
Once upon a space,
consciousness
recollected
Light reflected
upon its primordial past
entered into a human MIND
which called itself Einstein
which recalled an ancient space pastime
perceiving a treasure
if light could be measured
the mass of the mind
is displacing spacetime
relatively speaking
all that is known
everything is relative to everything
to assume the speed of light is constant
is an ant assuming a pile of earth is the earth
These are the laws of science
Like the laws of man
laws of physics
force the infinite majesty of potential
into 2D prisons (Blake’s Newton)
The writer exists in the largest generation
of humans to ever walk the earth
This human stems from a lineage
of lacklust stardust
walking the empirical plank
unto the endless stream of objective hogwash
A generation of humans
who’ve had the wonder, awe and majesty of life
systematically beaten out of them
They call it “knowledge”
and its taught in “schools”
where children “learn”
“truths”
Remembering “truths”
paradox of memorizing past proclamations
proclaiming memory to be “knowing”
Pluralizing “truths”
innately oxymoronic
its sees?
My generation who sit all day
eating garbage staring at a screen
“working”
while wondering “why do I suffer so much?”
Convinced art is something people do in their spare time
after the real work is done
Generation who inspire guilt and shame
by comparing their own lives to others
convinced their own suffering is unjustified
and irrelevent
It’s no coincidence a nihilistic society
produces humans
who can’t sit alone
without destroying themselves
Thank the false God of nihilistic materialism
art is here to remind you
of the singular Truth
the singular muse