drunken words all are
the feel of cold nickles scratching up your skin
where they touch
I miss you
excuse me a moment but
was that your neck on my teeth?
could a sound be pretty, it seems
suddenly your body knows how
still I need to hold a bottle
else perforce to hold these thoughts
of you on my
tongue
but only I have to hold instead
the empty place where
lately I find you not
and that’s fine you know because I
am expected to be sober
anyway
in “A Different World”
he took dat sweater
and dem pants off
gotsa
juxtapose some
Huxtables with some
fuck holes
Quaaludes all in they
Jell-O brand puddin pop
fuck ’em like he can’t stop
make it last til they wake up
rufinol drool all
round dat black jock
slickin it down
wit dat ass up
painted it brown
wit dat ass up
hey hey hey
fat albert
gonna make you
can’t walk
no means no?
not if they can’t talk
There is a kind of unutterable dread associated with encountering a deity. It’s as though all of the things you thought might be true about the ultimate nature of reality are suddenly, starkly made to be true before your eyes. You need not be humble before a god, because the idea becomes laughable in the face of your inconsequence. There is no analogy that suffices except perhaps to compare the many millions of bacteria in your kitchen. You are as significant to a god as each individual bacterium is to you.
I was deeply uneasy after my lion dropped the spirtual equivalent of napalm on the extra-planar denizens of my house. He is terrifying and capricious sometimes, and I wonder if that is a reflection on me as his creator. (Side note: I can feel him chuckling at me as I type this.)
Anyway he made a mess of things and though I tried that night, I couldn’t dispel the negative energy, nor create a shield around the house that would last more than a few seconds. There was just too much carnage in the air, like shreds of red and black energy all drifting about.
I resolved to try to meditate to at least clear my head and get some sleep. I closed my eyes and began to close myself off from the spiritual world. That’s when I felt it approaching.
It walked in place, slowly, not moving but somehow materializing in the room to a greater extent with each step. To say it walked into the room with me is accurate, but it didn’t Come from anywhere.
The intensity of its presence is indescribable.
I was mesmerized at first, and so much so that I didn’t even have the sense to be scared. In fact after a moment I had no sense of anything at all except the beautiful silver-white being filling my world with light and power and glory.
It was overwhelming any pretense of self I possessed, leeching away my individuality effortlessly until all I wanted was to be absorbed and lost in its endless incredible magic. “me,” I offered, “please me, oh please me, take me please take please please please…” I lost even the capacity to verbalize that much and just sat there vibrating in pleasure.
Words cannot describe the clarity of perception I had as I sat there basking in the glory of a god. I watched it repair the constructs my lion had destroyed, like a gardener tending to his garden, the face things came back into being, their visages first taking on a tortured, horrified expression, but then immediately reverting to the serene, placid happiness of when I first encountered them.
In flashes of insight I saw their history, the people who called them into existence, who worshipped this god and had merged with it. I witnessed their rituals and lives in an overwhelming torrent of impression. It went on forever somehow and took no time, and then the god noticed me sitting there.
He turned toward me, and regarded me in both surprise and somehow recognition, and then he spoke at me. I understand now what he said, but I don’t know what he meant by it when he said it and that’s pretty much irrelevant because it killed me.
“Oh. Found you!”
I was dead and gone before the first word had completely left his mouth. How can I describe the voice of a god? The best I can do is say the sound was like the infinite metallic shrieking of every modem ever dialed in history, and it grew louder by the microsecond.
I just shattered before the crescendo of it. I felt myself come apart and was shredded and splattered across time and space as the pieces of me shrieked and grasped for eachother in a moment of helpless, impotent terror. Then I was nothing.
I came back to awareness as pieces of myself were scooped back together by the hands of the god. It looked on at me and radiated a sense of what I can only describe as embarassment tinged with mirth. He hadn’t expected me to die when he spoke to me.
I looked away from his endless beauty, wrenching my eyes away with the greatst effort.
I realized what had happened slowly as my ability to think returned. I had the memory of what it felt like to cease to exist and I think I started to lose my mind because of it. I existed in two realities and in one I had just been destroyed, in the other I was just fine. I felt a great horror welling up inside of me and was about to open my mouth to begin shrieking in incomprehensible terror – and then the god did something and it just went away.
I looked over and my lion was there. He was clearly conscious but his eyes were clenched shut, his paws were wrapped around his head and he crouched on the floor in a state of supreme tension. A gossamer thin net of silver-white energy extended from the god, and appeared to be crushing him to the floor. Floating in front of his face and extending out of his forehead was a cone-shaped energy vortex facing the god, and it came to me that I was witnessing the darkest, thickest psychic shield I’ve ever seen. I saw the gods lips move and I panicked for a moment, remembering my demise, but I heard nothing.
A visible force washed over my lion, and his teeth gritted as he was battered by the god’s words. I saw pieces of his vibrant green energy blasted away from the edges of him behind the shield, and I heard him project back at the god. He addressed the god by name and the hearing of it was terrifying and exhilirating, and just the thinking of it made me intoxicated with power. I could move mountains, boil oceans – reach into the depths of the cosmos and pluck out a star!
Then the god edited me and I cannot.
It’s there in my mind, his name – and I can see the shape of the word, but I have no capacity for cognition of it. I have no other words to explain that. If I try to think about it I start to unravel mentally even now almost 20 years later. I tried to explain this to a friend once and attempted to force myself to speak it. I ended up sobbing uncontrollably.
My lion said one thing after the god’s name, “thank you, your mercy will be remembered”. I still have no clue what that means. It seemed the god was pleased, and then he turned around and began walking in place and just fading. When the last vestiges were gone, my lion collapsed onto the floor, his enormous head half outside of the room as he panted and whimpered.
“Help me.” He projected at me, pitifully. I could see the problem. His energy was leaking from everywhere the god’s net had touched him, so I did something I hadn’t done in many years. I meditated and projected my energy into the shape of the construct I had created, and I whispered his name until the bleeding stopped.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“I didn’t.” He responded with pain clouding his thoughts. He sent me a picture of what happened and it was bizarre. One moment he was playing outside with with an impish dark haired little girl, and the next moment he was as I saw him.
I tried to process that.
“He was so beautiful,” I said wistfully, broken-hearted.
“You LOOKED at him!?” My lion radiated shock and for a moment I swear there was awe as well. It passed quickly.
“How does this keep happening to you?” He asked finally.
“What do you mean?” I asked in confusion. He grunted in pain and annoyance and got up, then gave me that look that meant he didn’t know either because it hadn’t happened yet.
It’s funny having a higher dimensional companion sometimes, because causality is hard for them to deal with.
“I guess we’ll find out.” He shrugged and for the first time ever instead of jumping away and flying, he just started limping gingerly away back toward the north and his girl.
“Are you okay?” I asked as he was retreating into the distance.
“I’m fine,” he said grimly.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“Don’t be obtuse.”
did you know me?
look at the time
has it been only a minute?
I did not think it could hurt more
were I a man striding
across an unknown frontier
in the hope of finding you
I’d have an excuse
but
this device connects us
across all the distances between
where I am
and whom I should be
and it reminds me with the passing of every
silent minute
that I have lost you
and I have no excuse
suddenly
so pretty and so penitent
what, a god or goddess this?
Please.
You. Wanted. To Submit.
Now I, the god of your release,
suggest that you appease-
NO. I command!
you to your knees
and quid pro quo
you’ll worship me
Come.
For me, your faith (and dignity)
are insufficient offering
and your paltry prayers are
WEAK.
But…go ahead, I’m listening.
confess your god is ardent pleas
poured forth from
dripping lips.
I’ll sip and savor it
with my hands upon your hips
pinned down and tightly gripped
and my tongue upon your altar
like some sinful sacrament
feel my breath upon your breast
now my teeth upon the tips
prayers like moaning
from your lips
think I’ll have another kiss
rain my blessing on your skin
and absolve you of that sin
This unedited photograph was taken in a well-lit room.
Once I ventured outward into chaos, seeking something I had lost. My hubris astounds me even now, and there are not really words for what I found there.
In the Stormland
I believed that I would find you here
out on this tortured coast
that somehow we would stand together
and I would hold you close
but this is the Stormland
and it is greater than I
here there is water and wind
but no life
here is the thunder’s home
where lightning dances
on steam and melting liquid sands
and I can scarcely manage a crawl
let alone the hope to stand
Battle at the River Tiber
the river bears witness
the city is fallen
even the memory is dark
of that future
where the one path lead
tread upon by the inevitable Etruscan
here there is no city
amidst the illusion of action
there is no path
only the Tiber’s catabolic eddies
swirling until the madness falls
like the unprotected skull on pavestones
it beholds (with dimming eyes)
the mendicant of mercy
a dried vine, wispy
skittering across the stones
with half-formed chrysalis attached
quasi modo geniti
beauty broken in the act of becoming
lost now, as the city and all who stood
fighting there at the bridge that day
valiantly dying to defend the good
Midnight in the Garden
in feline demeanor,
I stalk languidly through the deep
Purpose,
phantom fallacy of the untrained mind
troubles me not one whit
I do not require meaning
gratification defines me
time passes, but the night
remains
knowledge flows
with the touch of the forest
I am intoxicated
in the pleasure of the now – I
walk, for darkness appends
to the senses – animal acuity
and I desire it greatly
I, feel
the shape of the land in the leaves
crushed beneath bare toes
breathe
the smell of the night wind
is an echo of the places
we have been
the breeze caresses me lovingly,
and carries her voice
I see
and shadow
cleft from shadow, parts
to reveal her beauty
the ebb and flow of the nocturne
in this moment
this darkness is why I exist
there need be nothing more,
for the night is sweet and I
taste her pleasures
like an ardent lover,
consuming and completing
Lost in the morass of day-to-day living, we might lose sight of the fact that humans do not hold primacy over the earth. It is too easy to look about and see only the work of humans in front of you, and thereby forget that we are very small. When we think ourselves important, it is a deception that robs us of the ability to experience the universe as it is, and by extension to influence it.
A friend of mine once wrote:
“Remember that this earth is but an atom in the universe, and that thou thyself are but an atom thereon, and that even couldst thou become the God of this earth whereon thou crawlest and grovellest, that thou wouldst, even then, be but an atom, and one amongst many.”
I am a technologist by profession, and among the most powerful of them. This allows me some insight into the capacity of man for ingenious artifice, and for the material technologies and capacities of power that we attain thereby. From where I stand, I can tell you that despite our progress, size still defeats us. We are small. Even comparably small. Amongst the endless worlds that touch or overlap this one, there are those beings for whom we are as insignificant as a grain of sand.
Know your place.
We are subordinate to the universe and contained by it, even as we delve its mysteries. The thing we transcend as we gain in magical aptitude, or scientific knowledge is not our place in the universe, but the limitation that our corporeal form imposes on our ability to perceive and interact with the universe as it is.
In the case of a simple meditation, our perceptions of self are often clouded by the clutter of our senses and thoughts. What many experience in the world today is a similar impediment to perceiving the enchantment of the world and their place in it. We see the clutter of human occupancy, and are overwhelmed by the sensing of it so that we are unable to see beyond it. Concluding that enchantment has gone out of this world, causes you to see what you expect, rather than what is there. This is a problem of individual perception and can be overcome by reaching for the spiritual even in the things that seem most material.
Archaeologist and anthropologists know this: there is magic even in material endeavor. If you have ever placed your hand upon the stone of an ancient building that was set by the hand of a person some hundreds or thousands of years before you, you have felt this too. The energy that caused its placement is at once physical and spiritual. Look around you, and marvel at our modern works with the same reverence that you have for those ancient works of humanity. They are exactly equivalent expressions of the enchanted nature of man, and by extension of the world we live in.
