And you have forgotten this too,
                         that every man’s mind is god and
                         […]that all is as thinking makes it so[.]
                                        —Aurelius¹

· – – – –
     Creation

                    Man is a monster hybrid of soil and soul, / self-reverential—impermanent / and impertinent—sour sensuality / pumped hard through strong veins burns through me as / lead drips into gold, emerald tablecloths / of wisdom torn by the thorns of the / moaning rose under the hush-fingered whispers / of which and in whose home devils dine //

                    on dust, our kind turning this crucible stoned / hearts roll out of, whimpers of wind and / hoarse torrents of thunder poured on the tongue with- / out recourse to the purity of / faded virginity’s former versions, no / system restore points to select from, / no blind innocence to revert to after / learnèd in misery & mysticism, //

                    eyes like thighs pried wide opened, a corsair’s voice / plundering the bone’s brittle course as / it coasts throughout my corpus and tours my throat / before accomplishing in my mouth / its greatest work, a dark pennyroyal art / democratizing & polarizing / in its seditious output, vomiting with / superlative force toxic talk of //

                    such intimate touch taken without any / promise of, or compromising my / lust’s drive for, love making of last night’s pillow- / books anachronous fluff, torching to / ash saccharine soft-core harshest critics of / my vision will scoff at and call snuff— / the hardest stuff no one admits gets them off— / this is talent wasted on taunting //

· · – – –
     Formation

                    a nonexistent audience, the spendthrift / of my own genius killing it for / another brand of canned laughter, a dextrous / troubadour’s obstreperous passion / extinguished by too much to express and not / enough interest, decadence for / its own sake feigning the making of a bold / statement, straining vitriol I spit //

                    for some universal solvent, determined in / my undermining of unrefined / society by social aversion to / find nothing at all about it worth / preserving, the culture against which I hurl / my words is inappropriate, one / unable to endure or interpret what / war I pour forth since few of its herd //

                    have seen performed before what things I say with / such audacity & without any / shame, a shaman shifting before a stranger’s / gaze from ancient libraries ablaze / into the shape of a sage, trading a name / for fame as if to say I spite my / Self by shunning my own advantage, being / alone is objective and being //

                    lonely is subjective, with a glow like the / light of dawn, being suggestive makes / one more symbol than person, crass images / raking up every crude coal of / atomized taste into one smouldering pile / of two burning questions: ‘As we fall / deeper into our own black holes, will we float? / When the teeth of stars slit our throats, will //

· · · – –
     Generation

                    light pour out?’ Psyche manifests into its / physical form through words, truth’s boundless / energy at the cost of mind and soul, fall / upon a broken mirror so that / its splintered silver no longer doubles your / solitude, that lying smile whose pain’s / piercing glimpse within is worse than any sword’s / or vendetta’s dagger stiletto- //

                    ing with the rust of a whore’s kiss into your / well-traveled and tarnished soul, at the / border of chaos & order regain control / by removing from the corsets of / outworn constellations those meaningless but / malignant burdens you shoulder—lo, / never again do what I did then & mistake / the shadow for the substance, launch your //

                    ego, instead, deep into the abyss that / exists between these lips, make of my / wound a door whose password is a kiss, a voice / in the mouth’s wilderness only the / silent are conversant with, this is that self- / deification which happens twice / for him who once fled his kin to find flesh more / worth wearing than that of humans whose //

                    existence is a condition, suffering / in great pain their strange diseases they / cannot name, in the shadow of second-sight, / by the white of the eye in the black / triangle, antinomian as I sin, / wandering from my tribe into the / desert home of an older form of life, I / am desire haunting the nights of men, //

· · · · –
     Incarnation

                    my touch brings fire to clay, burns flesh to stone, I / mould them but never mourn them when I / blow them, returning to dust fists of dirt which / reverses this curse when my spit’s gift / performs for filth’s Panic-afflicted converts / a ritual that resembles at / once entertainment and an exorcism, slaves / unable to contain themselves when //

                    pleasure, after a chiliad of censure, / resurfaces, a voice rising up / as a beast out of the sea, panning like a / panting chorus, crying from the siege / of infidel shells sputtering in double- / track harmony fired from channel to / channel, a wealth of melody hand-over- / fist, dexter to sinister, right to //

                    left-right-left, an enemy among friends in / the realm of the Qliphoth, hung like the / tree underneath, when the stars of Orion / are blinking, you are the star who falls / into the sea, the serpent of old, son of / Typhon, a one-eyed monster, a third / leg on the cusp of two worlds whose ivory- / horned abominations flood over / me, and I call you Arcturus, your verses //

                    reminding us there are only four / ways to come into this world—following the / majestic magnetic drift of the / precession of the stars, art always has to / cost us something, sometimes who we are— / until only by sound can our old earthen / faces be seen again, smiling like / cracks in the bowl of heaven, coming down hard.

__________
¹Marcus Aurelius, “Book Twelve”, [Paragraph] 26, in Meditations: Translated and with Notes by Martin Hammond: With an Introduction by Diskin Clay, published at London by Penguin Classics in 2014; page 169.