Dear Cruel World,
Enough of this depression shit.
this is WAR!
Nature wants me dead,
but I will fight it
and love it unconditionally
because it keeps alive all that I love
even while trying to kill me.
Bring it on, I say!
I have been fighting and winning for 43 years
and I will go on for another 43.
DAMN YOU, LIFE!
YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME!
I have a mind that works wonderfully
and enough high-quality pharmaceuticals
to keep me going indefinitely,
and I can still breathe, albeit badly.
My wife and son love me
and need me in spite of my cost
and I can still make a difference.
I have words, and I use them well.
As a sword, my words can cut with the best
and they can heal, console, and teach
and if my body fails, my mind can still find purpose.
and even momentary weakness and self-pity
WILL NOT END ME!
I will fight, and on my own terms, I will win.
When my ending time comes,
I will not die of hemmorage
or of asphyxia
I will die by my own hand
on my own terms
proudly and happily.
Unless, of course, I get hit by a bus,
or some other unstoppable unavoidable calamity
but that will still be a win
for I will have escaped the slow agony that nature holds in store for me
and should there be a part of me that lives after death
I will hunt down that spirit that has tormented me throughout my life
and kick it in the nuts, laughing.
If there is a supernatural entity responsible for my life
be warned:
I am NOT amused by the trials you have presented me
and I am going to kick your ass for it.
I will awake in the morning.
I will see my son off to school
and my wife off to work
and in the alone time that follows
I will stay alive
just to spite life
just to spit in it's eye
just because I am too stubborn
too willful
too nasty
too evil
too ME
to let this shit kill me.
Adversity, go fuck yourself.
I AM LIZARD, I LIVE!
[insert annoyed primal scream here]
lizard
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Despair
Can I stop now?
Every day it is a struggle to breathe
a struggle to move
a pain to stand,
it even hurts to lie down
and it is becoming harder and harder to simply be.
I am half a man, or perhaps less
in a world of athletes I can barely crawl.
I am less than everybody I know
less even than I permit myself to acknowledge
and I don't want to be
If I were not the person I am
I would have given up long ago
and realised that there is nothing here for me.
nothing.
I am a weight on everybody I love
a constant drain on resources
a neverending vacuum
that eats money, love, patience and sympathy
and spits out nothing but pain, obligation and loss.
Can I stop now?
Can I just cease to be?
slide away into the darkness
that has been eating me alive
since the spark of life came into me?
Can I not wake up tomorrow?
Can life just be finished with me?
They will cry, yes,
but their tears will soon dry
and in my place there will be an empty bed
but the bills will be paid
and another will soon fill the miniscule gap I leave behind.
If I keep on, my fate is pretty much certain
I will die gasping for breath
turning blue slowly
Or I will die when my blood vessels explodes from the pressure
and blood leaks into my brain, leaving me paralysed
or retarded and drooling.
I am damaged beyond repair
and I am so fucking tired.
But I can't do it. I can't stop. I don't know how.
I fight, always, every minute.
But today, I don't know why.
Today was a very very very bad day.
Lizard
Every day it is a struggle to breathe
a struggle to move
a pain to stand,
it even hurts to lie down
and it is becoming harder and harder to simply be.
I am half a man, or perhaps less
in a world of athletes I can barely crawl.
I am less than everybody I know
less even than I permit myself to acknowledge
and I don't want to be
If I were not the person I am
I would have given up long ago
and realised that there is nothing here for me.
nothing.
I am a weight on everybody I love
a constant drain on resources
a neverending vacuum
that eats money, love, patience and sympathy
and spits out nothing but pain, obligation and loss.
Can I stop now?
Can I just cease to be?
slide away into the darkness
that has been eating me alive
since the spark of life came into me?
Can I not wake up tomorrow?
Can life just be finished with me?
They will cry, yes,
but their tears will soon dry
and in my place there will be an empty bed
but the bills will be paid
and another will soon fill the miniscule gap I leave behind.
If I keep on, my fate is pretty much certain
I will die gasping for breath
turning blue slowly
Or I will die when my blood vessels explodes from the pressure
and blood leaks into my brain, leaving me paralysed
or retarded and drooling.
I am damaged beyond repair
and I am so fucking tired.
But I can't do it. I can't stop. I don't know how.
I fight, always, every minute.
But today, I don't know why.
Today was a very very very bad day.
Lizard
Monday, September 24, 2007
Harvest Night
Harvest Night
Black silk-clad, barefoot
Steel knife, sharpened carefully
blessed by the water from the stream
that flows through and under the sacred patch
In the center, the canvas spread
will hold the bodies I sacrifice
in the name of medicine
green medicine, good medicine
Gifts of life, freedom from pain,
communion with the green.
No moon, utter darkness but for the low, dancing yellow
of the lantern flame
making the shadows of the tall plants dance wildly
as the gentle night breeze blows the flame
For this sacrifice is forbidden
and darkness is the domain of this green teacher.
For now.
Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, wipe it clean on the black silk of my garment
place the green lady on the canvas, bless and thank, move on
kneeling, from tough stem to tough stem
Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, stack, move forward.
I bind the bodies in bailing rope and canvas
For they are made of her, too.
Her perfume is overwhelming
The green goddess' musk
covers me
and I lay a moment beside her,
under the stars
in her place of birth, life and death.
and I feel her spirit commingle with the pines
and the goldenrod, and the coyote heard faintly and far off
Winter is coming,
and through it, the tendrils of her smoke
will carry my prayers and thanks
to those stars, the coyote and the pines
and each breath will be dedicated to the prospect
that in all things, The Green holds an answer
and I hope that I may continue to have a hand
in speaking her truth..
My poem is but a poor repayment of her sacrifice.
Black silk-clad, barefoot
Steel knife, sharpened carefully
blessed by the water from the stream
that flows through and under the sacred patch
In the center, the canvas spread
will hold the bodies I sacrifice
in the name of medicine
green medicine, good medicine
Gifts of life, freedom from pain,
communion with the green.
No moon, utter darkness but for the low, dancing yellow
of the lantern flame
making the shadows of the tall plants dance wildly
as the gentle night breeze blows the flame
For this sacrifice is forbidden
and darkness is the domain of this green teacher.
For now.
Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, wipe it clean on the black silk of my garment
place the green lady on the canvas, bless and thank, move on
kneeling, from tough stem to tough stem
Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, stack, move forward.
I bind the bodies in bailing rope and canvas
For they are made of her, too.
Her perfume is overwhelming
The green goddess' musk
covers me
and I lay a moment beside her,
under the stars
in her place of birth, life and death.
and I feel her spirit commingle with the pines
and the goldenrod, and the coyote heard faintly and far off
Winter is coming,
and through it, the tendrils of her smoke
will carry my prayers and thanks
to those stars, the coyote and the pines
and each breath will be dedicated to the prospect
that in all things, The Green holds an answer
and I hope that I may continue to have a hand
in speaking her truth..
My poem is but a poor repayment of her sacrifice.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Gun
The gun chafed.
It chafed my armpit when I wore it
it chafed my soul when it lived in the glove compartment
it chafed me raw with every alarm call
It was there for a reason.
I did not tell anybody about it
not the guards I supervised
not my wife
not my friends.
My boss mentioned it just once, after handing it to me.
"Can you use one of these?"
I gulped. "Yeah".
"Take it on the alarm calls. Here's the permit"
and I looked down at what had to be a forged permit.
We were both clear on what was not said
and that it would never BE said.
I knew he was telling me that the new job wasn't as safe as the old one
and to get certified to carry was long and cumbersome
and knowing him, probably expensive
so screw the state and it's requirements
but he wasn't going to leave his employees naked.
He knew I had the I.Q. to know it without being told
and that was the only reason he gave the top job to a dirty fucking hippie
It lay on the office table next to the keybox
as I wondered.
For six hours.
Then, the first alarm call.
A bank.
It went into the keybox
and into the patrol vehicle
and it began to chafe.
I did not hand it off to the next shift,
The boss said "keep it. Graveyard shift only"
and never mentioned it again until I left his employ.
I hid it in the safe to which only my boss and I had keys.
God, how it chafed.
an insectoid irritant in the back of my mind
constantly buzzing about my conciousness
it's inherent danger omnipresent.
Two years later, my successor on the graveyard shift
got a call, midshift.
One of his sons, 7 years old
had shot and killed another of his sons
with one of his guns.
Accidentally.
I do not know where MY gun went, after I left,
and I hope I never find out.
It could have been, but probably was not
the gun that chafed me so badly
that killed his boy
The gun that I never used
nor even contemplated using.
It chafed my armpit when I wore it
it chafed my soul when it lived in the glove compartment
it chafed me raw with every alarm call
It was there for a reason.
I did not tell anybody about it
not the guards I supervised
not my wife
not my friends.
My boss mentioned it just once, after handing it to me.
"Can you use one of these?"
I gulped. "Yeah".
"Take it on the alarm calls. Here's the permit"
and I looked down at what had to be a forged permit.
We were both clear on what was not said
and that it would never BE said.
I knew he was telling me that the new job wasn't as safe as the old one
and to get certified to carry was long and cumbersome
and knowing him, probably expensive
so screw the state and it's requirements
but he wasn't going to leave his employees naked.
He knew I had the I.Q. to know it without being told
and that was the only reason he gave the top job to a dirty fucking hippie
It lay on the office table next to the keybox
as I wondered.
For six hours.
Then, the first alarm call.
A bank.
It went into the keybox
and into the patrol vehicle
and it began to chafe.
I did not hand it off to the next shift,
The boss said "keep it. Graveyard shift only"
and never mentioned it again until I left his employ.
I hid it in the safe to which only my boss and I had keys.
God, how it chafed.
an insectoid irritant in the back of my mind
constantly buzzing about my conciousness
it's inherent danger omnipresent.
Two years later, my successor on the graveyard shift
got a call, midshift.
One of his sons, 7 years old
had shot and killed another of his sons
with one of his guns.
Accidentally.
I do not know where MY gun went, after I left,
and I hope I never find out.
It could have been, but probably was not
the gun that chafed me so badly
that killed his boy
The gun that I never used
nor even contemplated using.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Science and....
Yeah, okay, I call myself a mystic and a shaman (depending on the audience and subject), so a staunch defense of science might not be what you are expecting, but here it is nonetheless: Science, as a philosophy, is always almost right. The set of rules ("scientific method") and the application of reason to obsevation to produce theories, continual refinement of theory to observed phenominon, will always give you an answer that is as close to 'right' as it is possible to get. Generalizations based on an ignorance of the philosophy of science are almost always wrong.
Since the quantum mechanical discoveries in physics, (I hear the scientific absolutists groan) science has been unable to make fundamental claims about how the universe works without caveats. "It works one way if you are talking about really big things, and it works another way with regard to really small things."
I understand what the fundamental contradictions in quantum mechanics are as well as a mathematically illiterate writer can (which is not, very), and I find sufficient non-understanding to allow for many philosophies. Every time I look to science to relieve me of the burden of mysticism, it fails. It cannot succeed, because in order to say what is not, science must be able to say all of what is, and that, science has never been able to do, even in theory, much less in practise.
There is a state of being that was first explained to me by a marionet/pupetteer at a carnival at which I was making a living as a tarot reader. He called it Bilocation when he was sober, and he called it Possessing the Puppet when he was in an altered state (he was very fond of hard cider). He said that in his late teens he had had one episode with a marionette in which he had felt his conciousness shift, and his perception of the room (that he could not actually see from his position above the stage) was from the point of view of the marionette, and he had the sensation of his movements while controlling the puppet as if the puppet had muscles instead of strings. He said the experience only occupied perhaps 30 seconds of time, but he had spent the next 30 years chasing that one state again, acheiving it many times. He clearly viewed this as a mystical/religious experience, but was acutely embarassed by the fact he knew it was all his own psyche, no magic involved. He had, in the best tradition of scientists everywhere, conducted an experiment when 'in' the state. He had looked at the audience from the perspective of the puppet, and fixed it in his mind, and coming out of the state, looked at the audience. They were not the same. He was not "actually" seeing, getting information, through the eyes of the puppet. He really felt he was going crazy then, because the experience was too vivid, to real-seeming to be anything other than real. He doubted himself, and the value of the gift he had discovered, because it wasn't "real".
THere is a state of being in the practise of most traditional animist shaman, the 'journey'. (christians will recognize the state as the state in which John the Evangelist enacts the book of Revelations). Astral Projection may be the same state, and it may be different, I don't know. It sounds similar.
These states are psychological, sure. They are not "real" in the sense science requires, because there can be no external verification of a completely internal process.
Are they useful? Obviously I think so, or I wouldnt be paying this kind of attention to them. It is the question of HOW they are useful, and there, I must say that I am still working on an answer.
I am a mystic because I have experiences that require me to ask questions that science has not meaningfully addressed, and probably cannot meaningfully address, because of the nature of the experiences (occurring entirely within my own mind, but possessing a claim to reality as strong as does the consensus reality. That is, in the words of science, I experience voluntary hallucinations which I claim have significance to rival or exceed 'reality' yet are obviously different and subjective.
Since the quantum mechanical discoveries in physics, (I hear the scientific absolutists groan) science has been unable to make fundamental claims about how the universe works without caveats. "It works one way if you are talking about really big things, and it works another way with regard to really small things."
I understand what the fundamental contradictions in quantum mechanics are as well as a mathematically illiterate writer can (which is not, very), and I find sufficient non-understanding to allow for many philosophies. Every time I look to science to relieve me of the burden of mysticism, it fails. It cannot succeed, because in order to say what is not, science must be able to say all of what is, and that, science has never been able to do, even in theory, much less in practise.
There is a state of being that was first explained to me by a marionet/pupetteer at a carnival at which I was making a living as a tarot reader. He called it Bilocation when he was sober, and he called it Possessing the Puppet when he was in an altered state (he was very fond of hard cider). He said that in his late teens he had had one episode with a marionette in which he had felt his conciousness shift, and his perception of the room (that he could not actually see from his position above the stage) was from the point of view of the marionette, and he had the sensation of his movements while controlling the puppet as if the puppet had muscles instead of strings. He said the experience only occupied perhaps 30 seconds of time, but he had spent the next 30 years chasing that one state again, acheiving it many times. He clearly viewed this as a mystical/religious experience, but was acutely embarassed by the fact he knew it was all his own psyche, no magic involved. He had, in the best tradition of scientists everywhere, conducted an experiment when 'in' the state. He had looked at the audience from the perspective of the puppet, and fixed it in his mind, and coming out of the state, looked at the audience. They were not the same. He was not "actually" seeing, getting information, through the eyes of the puppet. He really felt he was going crazy then, because the experience was too vivid, to real-seeming to be anything other than real. He doubted himself, and the value of the gift he had discovered, because it wasn't "real".
THere is a state of being in the practise of most traditional animist shaman, the 'journey'. (christians will recognize the state as the state in which John the Evangelist enacts the book of Revelations). Astral Projection may be the same state, and it may be different, I don't know. It sounds similar.
These states are psychological, sure. They are not "real" in the sense science requires, because there can be no external verification of a completely internal process.
Are they useful? Obviously I think so, or I wouldnt be paying this kind of attention to them. It is the question of HOW they are useful, and there, I must say that I am still working on an answer.
I am a mystic because I have experiences that require me to ask questions that science has not meaningfully addressed, and probably cannot meaningfully address, because of the nature of the experiences (occurring entirely within my own mind, but possessing a claim to reality as strong as does the consensus reality. That is, in the words of science, I experience voluntary hallucinations which I claim have significance to rival or exceed 'reality' yet are obviously different and subjective.
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