I saw a dream. I took my dream and made a fold and it became a paper airplane. I walked onto a field and threw the paper airplane to the Wind. The Wind took my paper airplane where paper airplanes go. I won't go where paper airplanes go. I'll go where people go, when they go. But I did not want to go where people go when they go. I jumped on the arms of the Wind when it caught one of my paper airplanes, I lashed my tongue around the paper airplane's neck and rode the Wind to the land where paper airplanes go. In the land of the paper airplanes I unfolded all the paper airplanes and read all the dreams from which they had been folded. When I became strong enough, I called on the giant of dreams and became a flea in its armpit and threatened I would bite him if he did not take me home in his armpit. The giant of dreams sweated and shook and the sweat poured into a river and it became an ocean and I folded more dreams into paper boats that floated and became continents. I stepped onto a continent where orange trees grew, because I was hungry and I wanted to eat oranges. I went inside an orange, I peeled into it backwards through the yellow wet meat like a chicken embryo inside an egg, I sucked juice out of small yellow cells of orange meat, I had never done anything like that before. I came out of the orange and spat orange seeds from my mouth and they fell onto the dusty ground and I shat on them. My shit started to talk and prophesied that the seeds would grow into human beings and that the seed of my spit would be my destiny. I went away from that place, but my shit laughed after me so I came back and burned it because I was angry and the ash broke into dust and humans came out. Where my shit had been burned to ash humans climbed out of the ash like maggots out of old goat meat. Soon the human beings raised a great Western kingdom which grew and grew and the glassy towers climbed so high they caught the rays of the sun and the stars and they lit up the whole earth and the ocean. The whole earth and the whole ocean were now so bright there were no longer any dark places left anywhere, and no shadow, and no twilight. The glass towers of the human beings were bright and blinded me very much. Because the bright glass towers of the West made my eyes blind I went to the West and I put the glass towers of the West into my pocket, but when I was leaving the great navy of the Western sea came after me. I drank their sea empty and the ships stuck to the bottom. I watched the hollow ships, the booming floods of mud, and I saw how the breath of numberless generations left the surface of the waters like a coy, vengeful mist. A hundred years passes. A thousand. Time lost all meaning. I opened the locks and knots of my dreams, I made microphone out of a penis and I sang stories into it so they would be remembered. I sang of fire and ash and I sang of parched skin that peels away. For some reason the human beings were afraid of my voice, they did not dare listen to stories about fire and ash I had sung into my penis microphone, they were afraid that their skin might parch and peel away. A hundred thousand years passed. A million. I walked the face of the earth and sought stories to sing. I captured women and put a fence around them and a noose around their necks and I made many children with them to eat on my travels. We travelled over a desert and I struck water from the broken skull of the oldest of my women. I grew fat on the children I ate but my women became barren and I sent my dogs to hunt more women to make more children for me to eat. One day I took two children out of a woman. One of them said: You're afraid to climb into the heavens. This made me angry, so I made a ladder out of child bones and climbed into the heavens. When I had reached the heavens, the children broke my ladder. Then they went and fornicated with my women inside the fence I had put around them. I yelled for them to throw me some food but they wouldn't. I got angry and made a net out of stars and comet tails and caught the children with the net and threw the net into the ocean where they sank and drowned. My women got angry and threw rocks and burning coals at me so I took a big rock and hid behind it and stayed there.
Bildungsroman
The Circle of the Dragon
I have no enemies, no opposition, and as an actor and a professional I have no friends and I have no enemies in this industry, I believe all these terms are temporary in the industry, for I have sought inner peace. Jelly fish have plenty of reason to hate me. I like to taunt eagles, does
Penile Vanilla Death Bird
How to Talk to Girls on the Street
Pompous Amtrak Adoption Dungeon
useless !
Snakes on a Plane
Giant Bleached Whale Bones, or, Captain Ahab's Blues
Invisible Pink Unicorn War Porn
The Oak King and the Holly King
Vagina Horror Detox Yurt
Thou art Man, contriv'd by Art and Baleful sorcery
Thou art man, contriv'd by art and baleful sorcery,
truant with your bed, to wed it, thy general
is my gay lover, our daughter lusty love, wrought
with things forgotten. We are so friggin gay
it's not funny. We chase pussy all the time, a babe
moulded naked hummin on de vine. She holdeth
thee in awe, more than God or war-like acts
so much applauded through the realm of France.
Face it, you got milk. Why then dost thou pine
within, why still thy outward walls should fear?
Apparel wins against the day. Make my heaven
in a lady's lap, go karting, nightclub, hotel of your
choice, and deck my body in true beauty's ornaments,
the health and pets, to witch sweet ladies with
my words and looks, a guileless ingénue in the
woods, or some sexually attractive American
athlete, who loosen your girdle to see a star, right?
Well, I'm the star, and all of you are in the chorus
when my bosom's lord, hitting home runs, sits
lightly on his throne. Lie still therefore, you human
woe, and sleep! E'en tho it grieves me sore to see
some silly soul read ashes in the fire and tell you:
"Trust not the flattering truth of sleep, the world,
my great office, the gaudy day" - so friggin' gay!
On Becoming a Wizard; or, an Ode to Aleister Crowley, a British Mountaineer
I
Just because someone says something about which you do not agree this does not make them idiots. They may have experience which you do not have and they could be representing a very important and oft-overlooked reflection. It is for this reason that it is quite difficult to be sure just who is and who is not an asshole without substance. It is for this reason that along the path of wizardry we do not burn our bridges, even while we may place small signs near them which say 'Of Uncertain Value'.
II
Suckling at the teats of masters may be important at certain stages of our growth, yet eventually we must break away from the nest, we must try out our wings, we must take risks and become reservoirs of experience and wisdom ourselves. If nothing else, through such exploits we may become humble.
III
There are emotional and imaginative approaches, dry and intellectual affairs, those based on not much experience, those based entirely on it, those who prefer their magick in armchairs, those who prefer it in Hell, in Heaven, in Space, in the Dirt, some with connections to organizations, some to traditions and some way out there in weirdsville-whoknowswhere.
IV
4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L. What meaneth this, o prophet? If you don't know, then EXPLORE! Find out what tastes good. Do angels and bunnies and light just turn you on? How about Alien Infestations from the Horrid Depths of Space? Strange words and weird mathematics? Just swimming in cool ponds during autumn? Sometimes settling for what comes first is not the best means of attaining any goals you may have. Do things. Try out things and above all, FAIL MISERABLY. The failure is as important as is the success. The two are ultimately a product of warped thinking anyway. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Fly by the seat of your pants. Take risks. Just do it, dammit!
A Ballade of Efflorescent Tumescence
Heat waves, blacktop
bends, copper sun
lolling honey-scented
flowers ripened into
bright shimmer of
COMPASSION as if
you were a blue sword
and letting go,
laughter and the
children run, squeak
as pig, hiss as rain,
deep the drone
of insects' hiss floats
longer than cars.
Others oppose abortion,
whisper words of
wisdom, morning
chars the pitted sky,
hopelessness had
plagued him like
PINE-NEEDLES or
SLEEP IN THE
AFTERNOON, those
great fields of soft-edged
static; grasshoppers,
spiders, worms, the
swish of a tea kettle,
in the dark they
keep trashy big mouths
and speak about
anything! Their music's
made of memories'
cheeky toke en
route, goodnight,
goodnight, combat
baby-metric,
shimmer-fuel, the
world at large
i didn't even no the
ppl who r in my year
it's like whateva
i know it's just stupid
all round us
darkskinned males,
tall, six pack, fine
as Hell in tortured
death throes, burning
from the inside,
this is what you'd hear
in any small, rural
town: the earth is dark,
but the beetle guards
our holy ground.
Great crested mutes
hung limp in the
windless air. The bard
responds: "Let it be,
life's too short to get
so worked up over
things like this
and i was like,
whateva! cuz u
know im tight,
fool..."
To Recount the Cattle of the Sun, you must Be Wise
A certain man
puts rabbits
in a hut. Inside
the hut a hound
whose speed
increases chases
hares whose
speeds increase
as a spider
climbs the wall
each day and
slips back
down each
night. If thou
art diligent
and wise,
O Stranger,
compute the
number of the
rabbits of the
Sun the spider
climbs inside
the hut the man
is chasing in
his dreams, a
very hound to
hide the certainty
of speed.
A Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator
Princess Diana is dead. Who's to blame?
It's simple. Ghosts, goblins and bumps in the night.
Yes, it's that time of year again
I decide I wasn't going to fix it with Feng Shui,
drink tons of shit when society is to blame. What
is going on in Paris? Am I not concerned about the
everyday? Look: riots, muslims, gangs - I don't care.
And I'm not even going to bother fixing
the various oddities that crop up under
the field of social services, or editing,
proofreading, design, HTML, drumming. I am not in
terested in your democracy! My life used to be so happy.
I could smell candles in my dreams.
It was like watching a bonfire of world illusions
and listening to the merry crackle.
I didn’t know you could have smell recall
in your dreams. For once I had no idea what to say.
But then, this pops out of my mouth,
like it was my mother: "This world has the least
possible evil and suffering in it that there can be."
How can I say something so insane?
I WAS BLESSED WITH THE SENSE
TO SMELL AND NOW IT HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY.
I WANT TO THINK POSITIVE, BUT I'M HUMAN.
Don't Blame me, Blame the Doughnut!
Hear my story and listen well;
Truth is in all that I tell:
It's Not My Fault You Suck.
That's ridiculous.
It's not my fault
my parents wanted me to apply
my own bandaid & ask God:
"Please! I just want to
know 'why' before I die."
I had no idea this thing was televised.
I had no idea where New Zealand was.
Turns out it's actually
fairly far away
from San Francisco. Where you will
get nothing and like it.
Sometimes, people say
cringe-worthy things.
I can't be held responsible
for the choices others make,
I am not acting in any way
to send you this information;
you are choosing to receive it!
After all, I onle call myself a whore
after been treated like one all my life.
And why? It just came to be.
Selling crack through an alley where the fiends rally.
Where the dealer was the president.
I didn't choose my country,
life went over me and
from the start I have had a head full of weaponry,
partly by natural boyish inclination,
partly because I didn’t choose the sleepless nights.
Things happen for a reason...
After some time of relization,
I knew that a wolf angel is not a good angel
and when you’re being told “these things happen
for a reason”, they don’t mean
the cause sense. The only certainty: uncertainty.
That's the best answer I have for now,
personally.
A Child Is a Small Cylinder
A child is usually described as being
in top playing form between the ages of 9 and 15.
Something the child really wants
is mindless fat globules
released into the bloodstream.
A child is fully trained when it can be
harnessed for work purposes during daylight hours.
A pony is no less acceptable.
The opposite of a child is every american bought or sold,
a breed of its own in a balloon race,
but a true child of our heart's content
is a small cylinder scared of balloons
whose height having been measured
on a smooth level surface
does not exceed 148cm without shoes.
A child is an eating machine, a malleable,
clean slate, a wonderful addition
to a home with or without chickens.
A child is less of a threat to the resident male
because it is sexually immature.
A child in distress is considered "rare"
and doesn't necessarily mean
it is broken and cannot be fixed.
One only has to enter the following code:
"every time you masturbate god kills a kitten".
The Elves have All Gone home to Yon Western Sea-Shores
A Mouth, a Hollow, a way of Happening
Man is
dumb.
His tooth
is numb,
the eating
done,
but
memory
of meat
is null
if tongue
is glum.
Man is
a dumb,
unrun
gun,
a mouth's
murmur
that
murders.
The Black Immanuel; Or, How Three Spelunkers, 1994, found Deep chambers filled with Paintings, Engravings and Drawings created some 35 000 years Ago
Ravenna's
Christ-Apollo
famed
for
working miracles
has
flaky hair
like Alexander
in the
Issos jigsaw.
In
his
gaudy purple pallium
the bastard
Nazarethan
is
a Roman demigod,
an
alchemical
priest
come to bless
us with
a host of fish,
bread
and prayer,
transmuting
coiffured
Saviour
into
hairy
Norman
king.
A picture's map
will
edge its maker
before
pictured world;
a
time
lends from its
time.
It won't be long
till
the jewish corpses
shuffle
in their misty tomb
with
modern man
in tow,
snapshot flash,
the guard
is blind,
he turns
the boulder
over:
inside
the
king of apes,
black
Immanuel,
spits
on his haunches
into
stone
the image
of an ox
that works
a colored
miracle.
Judge him,
for he knew what he was
doing.
On Quietude & Belief in Unfounded Matters; or, Witness, O Lord, my Heart is not Haughty, nor Mine eyes Lofty
If confession is a paltry thing,
some written words upon a page,
how then shall man delete the whim
he has to turn a feeling into print?
I have no answer, nor am I in need
of one. Explanations turn sour in the end.
One cannot know what to defend
when no one says what they intend:
taste has made us love confusion,
in order to confound the critic
bent on making a conclusion.
Poetry is not the language of the heart,
ink not blood, blood not meaning.
Why do the paltry millions keep believing?
And lo, Helios told the Grieving Demeter that Hades was not Unworthy as a Consort for Persephone
The leaves race through the junk
of winter's piss as it recedes,
a drunken driver from the scene
of crime; soon gravel's squeaking
under sneakers, the football
gleaming on the grass as you sit
on your new verandah reading
letters from an ancient past.
”I don't think that anyone can
ever love me like you do". A worn
phrase began the story of your
Grecian conquest: how a prince
with white shoulders bled his
sacrificial roses on your hostel's
out-of-season discount bed of thorns.
I lost your tracks, my huntress
Proserpine, when growing reasons
with their outward-spinning wheels
crashed into me. Nothing but
this letter left, a broken branch.
I no longer trust the chance
correspondence of the skeins of
fate mapped on the veins of fickle
days that stem out of a moment's
needs; I do not miss the princess
whose arrival in my Hades freezes
trees. My Hell is me, and I am free.
Grammar; for Who Among Yourselves Is Not an Exercise in Sonnetry?
Grammar, you are nothing like the sun
that blooms our Physick. You generate
no wheat, no Hawking radiation, yet losing
you I lose lumière, gain shark death:
what use am I, if my heart bails me?
And how to understand what stupor ails thee,
if inner monologue cannot tutor
a talking cure the brain believes in?
The context of this speech is vague.
I do not know who listens, where to turn,
I've no conventions left to flesh an ear
in the abstract res of verba. No center
here, the gravity of narrative is void.
I have to stop confusing words and things.
The Garden Wall; a Variation of a Theme by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, 1230 and 1275, Respectively
...tutta la vita e il suo travaglio
in questo seguitare una muraglia
che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.
Eugenio Montale
The snail that tears
its ligaments is
deaf to pain, if not
its chemicals - our
difference lieth not
in the wound
but its infliction,
for death is no prison,
& sincerity won't
purchase entrance.
The walled garden,
where roses swoon
in ennui, buds
stuck tight in stolid
hope, that one day
a hand, in bloom,
will answer all the
questions that
the palm's seed
proposes... No luck.
The garden's closed,
the soil mute, grass
has no cool thumb
to press on my hot
forehead, for walls
do not encircle or
out-gird. Fences
herd. Here, on the
wall you watch the
snailing human ocean
waving, like winds
taking sparrows
flailing hither, tither.
The gates are open,
freedom has been
given. The fall
was not the end,
redemption was no
act, man at last lies
without depth,
a frail bag of bones
upon the circle's
ledge. Who shall loosen
our tight muscles?
Prove false the
factoid geometry of
flesh? I tied the
knots myself, sat
smiling down in my
equation, and so,
for the measure
of this wall, my
right shall seek
my left, search
and turn upon
itself, with Persian
spears hither, Greek
battalions tither:
the needle's loop
the camel's leap.
A Conference of Birds; Or, On Attending an Art Exhibition in a Ducal Palace in Genoa, June 2003, During a Tour of Southern Europe
Strange birds stalked our route across
the map, odd twitters frittered sleep
in the humid climate of the hostel
beds where the ear would hear
a mimic note in them: cellphone tones,
power drills, man's plastic noise
and beeping toys interpreted by
winged, weightless minds. But man,
too, adapts to new environments
by translating the real in imitation,
as in the ducal palaces the chiaroscuro
portraits of the sprezzatura courtiers
hide sweat under the shadows of
their poses, smile at new perspectives
gained; today their citta, ancient
port of pilgrims, courts technology,
as africans are broiling in an aperture
of house and sun, gutting fish for
chinese restaurants, under bricks so
graphic black and paper white they
seem etched, not built by early
modern chisels, & centuries of smoke,
cars and birdshit, & when a timid
delegation from a conference on
deficits stops in the marble hall where
dank satin smells waft amid the artful
tension of Il Duce -lookalikes, their
pockets sing the latest ringtone hit:
Europe, a conference of mockingbirds,
a made-up map sung in the sun.
The Ducks, an Evening in July, the 1990s, a Hillock, & Details
Dog-breath July whips
our faces as
we're swishing past the
barn your dad
conserved, a souvenir
from history he
failed to live up
to. The horses in
our noses, bicycles
making awkward
noises, we pass under
the oak towards
the cooling afternoon of
pine faint through
the sloping hay into
a copse of ash,
the pond with shadows
of the ducks under
the leaves. The gun
you bought with
stolen coin is still
against my cheek,
trajectories of childhood
deeds, teenage
weeds on schoolyards
swelling with new feet
and what's between,
the certainty of
meaning that we
lived. The bullet tense
of then is echoed
in botched images
that memory is copying
in verse, forged
evidence against the
mind as master,
but no sense lasts
time's anger, the
round of ordinary
intercourse; mother
in the kitchen getting
worse; just the
darkness of the
dying birds.
Upon Reading the Poem by Auden and the Rejoinder by Randall Jarrell, Struck by a Car on October 14, 1965
A crow sits on the
scaffold of
Golgatha's collar
in the painting
by the elder
Pieter Bruegel.
The to-and-fro
travelling
of humankind is
something
in the background
of what's
happening, like a
portrait of a
count whose title
passed
onto an uncle,
but the foreground's
taken over
by the sable
fur with silver
clasp. I do not
know if the
old masters
knew of suffering.
They knew
optics, the geometry
of gesture,
what the eye, purblind,
projects onto
a canvas, but
suffering?
That's
beyond our
debating. All we
know
is this: the hangman's
mule is
scratching its behind
on bark while
the guillotine is
raised upon the square.
Further back
are
children skating.
On the
tongue of art
a taste
is forming,
an ever
refining picture
of an incidental
detail in
the scarlet
cap of the
ambassador,
a blown up
skull that
cannot be
deciphered.
"Remember
me", it grumbles,
but the
children
go on
skating, like
bits of
embalmed
lentils drying
on the canvas
tomb of
a stomach
buried in
the coffin of a
pharaoh's mummy,
and
you have to
decide, right now,
if the joke's
funny.
The Treasury of Satan, 1895; Or, on Such a Sun That Will Overcome The Evil In Our Breast
Two girls, 5 yrs
old, talking in
the swings. Do
you think
they care about
the tilt of this
our spiral
arm of stars?
Is destiny a
thing to them
like gravity,
are they alike
to seas and
moons, are men
like prawns
inside a tank
that sails adeep
a vacuum steep
adrift on
currents alien,
pawns to planets'
energies, lumps
of fleshy
animals whose
forcéd breath lifts
us and puts down,
as in a desert
full of dunes
the forms of sand
are threatening
to drown the
sand. Inertia,
things
within each other,
wholesome like a
father in a
mother's brother.
But you are
thinking
of another kind
of sin. This thing,
a girl's verve
that can serve
the gestures
of the men, curling
hair like desert
winds on shining
banks of drowning
pebbles in the sand
that we are
always trying
to find a sunken
ruin of a well
in, that's insanity.
It's like
saying only
the right kinds
of arms and
elbows lean
you tight
into them, as
if, when in
galaxies beyond
the depths of
interstellar
dunes of gas a star
is lit, that in
that unseen
geometry a
burning sword
to churn the
evil from
our breast would
form: this is
the worm, this
the great Adversary.
Only the girls
who swing
know of something
differently,
until the Great
Satan of our
Groin will claim
them as his Coin.
Ekphrasis upon a Refridgerated Piece of Meat Observed Closely One Day Last Year
You want forms
when you lose
form. Plato knew.
He loved the
idea of you, not
you. God is
in the denial of
detail, like summer
retail in the winter
wholesale.
You want forms
when you get
worms; then
everything must
go. & so religion
falls away
in July; but the
fruit runs
through. The rose
in my fingers
remembers being
fit and limber. A
tree dreams
of being timber,
sap cinder. Blood's
thinner. Spine
slimmer. Eyes
dimmer. But
Plato's through,
he's food brains
chew, like cud
buying it's way
back to corn,
ideas form in
a thousand
heads like sand
becoming gravel
of mountains
past. Deny him
this feast of the
general, death's
camouflage
universal. Dejection
needs particulars,
a heart
conditionals. Trust
not the images
of evening,
downward motion.
Death is beautiful,
a pink tongue
for breakfast.
Wrap it up and
put it in the
icebox for
later.
How We Find Ourselves Caught in the Middle of Some Things Hard to Fathom Precisely
He wanted a telescope,
or a microscope.
He wanted to be
both far and near
and to know both things
exactly. He said to me:
we must learn a new,
a whole new way of
feeling. But why did
he turn to those hoary
things, pentametric
truffaut machines
with their observation
decks attached to sub-
conscious valves of
hushed dirty zen sex?
I mean, where's the
gay bar, you ask, but
then, suddenly, you hear
something like a guitar
arpeggio, and it has
nothing to do with
anything that's come
before. And that's
why you felt as if
words got lost while
you were yelling to
the far about the
near, like other times
it's also true that other
people's emotions may
be hard or impossible
to understand. Look,
do you want me to be
consistent or do you
also find this mixture
of barely sentient and
profanely generic
moralities arousing in
a bad or good way?
I know I know... You
have no, absolutely
no idea where they are
coming from, like a
guest seated at the table
may suddenly get up,
go out, untie the horse.
But consider: a human being
can do something like
that. This kind of an
event would not be
for example when a dog
needs to pee. It's more
like when suddenly
one asks oneself whether
Norway is self-sufficient
as to oil? Crude oil?
Do I really know that?
Do I really know
which scene I'm in?
I was trying to be that
other person I was in
2004. But he's dead now,
in my brain, just like
these scenes can begin
in the middle and end
in the middle of things.
Art, perhaps, is behind
everything? Or is it just
conversation, bits of things,
pity, lint, and tears? But
is that really more than
to live? Like in a musical
when everybody starts
to sing? Yes: you can
sometimes fail in life, yr
knots can come undone,
tonsels lose their grip
on teeth & lo are words
spread out for all to see,
this bowstring that can snap,
will do, just like that, crack,
while you were stringing it.
How's that feel, champ?