Deliverance is out of time into eternity, and is achieved by obedience
             and docility to the eternal Nature of Things. We have been given free
             will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence[.]
                                                           —Huxley¹

A Faustian slip of the tongue
off the top, on down the shaft of
the pinnacle of some temple—
what god thought was not possible
became inevitable when
we stopped to talk as if all was

alright but our hearts walked; it was
beyond foresight—prophecy’s tongue
had been working its way in, when
heaven’s own messengers all of
a sudden made it possible
for men like us to fly. Temple

stumbling blocks up windows temple
guards cannot; opened to what was
once all-seeing, eyes possible
but not probable flicker tongue-
like their lids, shaking off all of
god’s tired divine posturing when

salvific lies blind one—so when
you mined from my mythic temple
of sleep an avenue out of
asphalt dreams you cut deep, I was
unbound; when you drove us, my tongue
wrapped around love made possible.

It’s that ‘anything’s possible’
played hard: ‘hit me’ double-downed when
rock-bottom isn’t far off; tongues
tie and trample atop temple
spires, capable of what once was—
tasting what mortals won’t speak of,

that sweet apotheosis of
hurts all cleansed, pure if possible;
gnosis turning up where filth was,
each closest to heaven’s height when
we fall out of our old temple,
cold hearts trembling like pills on tongues

saying, ‘What good is praying when
it’s your body that’s the temple
where nature’s reverenced by tongues?’

__________
¹Aldous Huxley, “Chapter X: Grace and Free Will”, The Perennial Philosophy, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009; page 165. Originally published at New York by Harper & Brothers in 1945, in a first edition of identical title, division, and pagination.