The Magician

“He who [awakens] must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us, by the awful grace of God.” Aeschylus

..

“Alright,”
I said,
With a deep inhalation, and
Exhalation
Of breath,
Cleansing, gathering the
Calm
Swell of
Immutable force,
That would be
Necessary

Let’s talk
About then,

A single
Solitary
Moment,

To which my
Wings
Are pinned

Stars boiling in the
Black,
Dehiscing
Radiation from a
Churning
Maniacally
Episodic
Core

Currents
Serpentine
Susurrations
Coiling
Circuitous
Avenues,
Across
The hewn,
Driven
River
Bed,
As if lowered
There,
Exactly
There,
By some
Lunatic
God’s
Titanic
Arms

Her radiance,
Reaching through
All the worlds
Obtusely
Gruesome
Blindness
And
Across arbitrary
Increments of space
Time,
To magnetize,
In polarized
Alignment,
To burn and
In a perfectly
Reciprocal
Mirror,
Finally
Resonate

Beginning

A beginning,
Many,
One,
Is reliant upon certain
Presuppositions,
A presence,
Within
A pathway,
Within
An arrangement of physical
Environs,
Which are confluent,
Within
A system of sequences,
Which are predicated upon
Circumstances,
And the awesome
Creational vector
Of choice

Book I,
The Principle Force of Manifest Time

Consequence

Once upon it, I
Who, in youth, was
Akin to Troilus, whose
Perfect moment
Wears the shadow
Of subsequent
Sorrows,
Even,
As it
Unfolds,
And too soon
Lost, and is
An oft sequenced
Reiteration,
Oh my brothers

Cressida, she was
Not,
She
Was herself, that I
Could perceive
Only
Within her relation
To me,
As was my
Myopic
Folly,
Oh my sisters

Wind
Upon the waters,
Sweeps our
Hair into
Dervishes,
We kiss
And kiss
Right through

Cold
Prickling
Goose pimpled
Flesh,
Ignited by
Some
Inner
Fire,
Gaining
Momentum,
As it
Breathes and
Reciprocates

All those
Autumnal
Stars,
Laughing in their
Distant
Hollows,
Daring
Guesses
As to which,
Had already
Expired

All those stars,
Akimbo

Lets talk about now

I come across a well
Made sign,
Offering a thousand
Dollar reward, for the
Return of a cat,
Great detail given
In appearance,
Closing with,
“Don’t hurt him
He’s all I got”

And I feel
Pain,
To an extremity
That,
I wonder,
Is it normal
And
As I continue
On,
I wonder
Is it normal,
If it should
Fade,
Into the background
Haze,
Just as quickly

Let’s talk about now

Instead of walking
Well
Around,
I stop
And talk
To a homeless man
Who’s called out
In greeting

I am afraid

Not because he may be
Desperate,
Diseased,
Unhinged
And otherwise dangerous

I am afraid
Because, in a few short
Minutes of
Discourse I will
Soon
Discover,
That his choices
Are not unlike
My own,
Our circumstantial
Fortunes,
Have varied

It is not long
Before
I see him
In myself
And myself
In him,
It is not long at all
Before
I
Awaken

I walk into the store
And buy a sandwich
We split
And when I hand it
Down, his
Smile
Through the leathered
Surface
Skin,
Splits wide to
Reveal
A jumble of
Battered teeth,
Haphazardly spaced and
Angled in various
Directions,
Reminiscent of an
Ancient graveyard,
Whose earth has since
Shifted,

And his smile
Is as beautiful
As an infant

I am afraid,
Because love
Swells me to
Bursting, and if
I should
Die,
In this instant,
Perhaps I’ll wake
In paradise, or
In the same place
As always,
But with an
Entirely
New
Perspective

Perhaps I’ll become
Someone else.
Someone
Unafraid

Lets talk,
About the girl I saw
Sitting on a
Swing set,
Sitting so
Swathed in
Alone, that
The metallic
Creak of the
Chains,
As the
Memory
Returned
To me,
Later, within the
Contemplative
Absolution of
Silence,
Seemed
To be
Coming from
Somewhere
Inside me,
As if
My heart
Were composed
Of rusted cogs,
Of interlocking
Teeth,
Grinding through
Their designated
Labours,
Without passion,
But,
Without
Pause

I am a paradox of
Once lived moments,
Superimposed,
Upon living moments

I am fearlessly
Afraid
And I wonder
If that resonates,
I wonder if I am beautiful

I wonder if you can see his
Smile
And her melancholy
Pendulum

..

Three sisters of
Time, stir
Their still
Wrought
Iron
And transubstantial
Magnesite
Cauldron,
Which
Burbles it’s many
Circular
Throat of
Miasmatic
Voices
Across the
Bow
Of both
Dimly
Demurring
And fiery
Combative
Constellations

Book II,
The Principle Force of Manifest Awareness

Contemplate

The metaphysics of presence
Are beyond the
Establishment
Of fixed points,
Up is
Black,
Down
Is central
And the purpose
Is manifest
In timeless
Being,
In birthless
Birth,
In deathless,
Dyings,
In laconic
Coils,
Within a sheer
Skein,
That confounds
Our
Collectively
Tautological
Thumbs,
Fumbling
Attempts,
To unravel

We kittens do so
Love
To chase our own tails
And limber up
For a climactic
Pounce
And we are so
Beautiful
In our frail
Garb,
Hands
Clasped
Around his
Grail
Cup

And I am here,
With you,
Aching specter,
In this,
Living
Moment

..

Kettle drums
And a circle of
Souls
Are humming
Vibrational resonance,
That
Begins at the
Eternal now and
Returns
To the most
Recent
Ekpyrosis
Cycle

Book III,
The Principle Force of Manifest Intention

Concentrate

The form emerges, in paradigmatic
Dimensions, from a specification of
Focus,
Exactingly
Dispelling the
Myth,
Of coincidence

Hi, folks

When it comes to anything
That you
Will ever see
Of me,
Within
The crisply
Folded
Confines
Of a document,
I, am
Utterly
Fucking
Fearless
And I am love
And I am broken
And full of terrible,
Passionate intensity

And I am misunderstood
And I am overlooked
And I am love
Rising,
From the wreckage
Of everything
That broke me,
Was everything
That woke me

And I have a voice
And I am
My voice

And I am awake
And I am
You
And you are so
Fucking beautiful
That it guts me,
To look at you

And I,
Am that
Vessel,
Which holds
Nothing

My love,
No fear has

And I,
Am no longer
Sitting
Amongst
The Lotus Eaters,
Sweetly
Dim
And
Stupefied
By ill
Advised
Consumption

I choose

And I,
Am the fire elemental

..

Books are lying
Supine,
Upon their mortuary
Shelves,
Beneath the
Train of my
Trailing
Fingers,
Which lovingly
Trace their
Spines,
Leaving,
A bit of acid
And trace
Oils,
Behind

Poetry,
Sings its
Musics, lifts the
Fluted bones to
It’s avian
Appendages
Lovingly crafted by
Daedalus,
For some ill
Fated
Flight, to lips
Which, kiss
With unmoored
Fury,
With fires
Of
Terrible
Intensity

Waters are
Burst cocoons
In every instantaneous
Resuscitation, that
Occurs,
Without pointedly
Intractable regard for
Timeless
Time or
Swiftly
Overswam
Swarms
Of crescendoed
Preambling
Birthless
Birth

Waters are deaths,
That leap
Like children,
Eroding
Every
Obstacle,
With manically
Episodic
Persistence

And airy
Airs
Are playful
And destructively
Creative,
In their palatial
Corridors,
Ripping
Thunders across
A hairline,
Of plasmatic
Unmoored
Photons that
Flash across my
Grin,
When I recite
The oaths
Of the augury,
Returning with a smell
Of
Ozone
And wisps of
Willows,
Trailing

And hoary
Earth with an
Aged frown,
In whose
Gnarled fists
Are ground
Our bones
Into meal,
Within the hot
Houses of the
Potters
Hearth,
Beneath the labours of
The potters
Centrifugal
Wheel

Book IV,
The Principle Force of Manifest Elements

And wheels,
Lace their cog
Teeth
Within,
And wheels
Upon
Wheels
Are
The most
Efficient
Energetic
Composition

Cycles,
Circles,
Circuits
And confluences
Of sequence and
Consequence,
Acting,
Reacting,
With systematically
Intrinsic
Force

And I thunder along
In my black
Magic
Garb,
To give you the
Glorious
Contemplative
Pause,
Of purely
Distilled
Fear

And I never tell you
Why

And I cast my
Sweet
Spells
Of white magic,
For your amusement

Because I love you

And I am dancingly,
Consistently,
Concentric

But the museum of the
Mind, is so much more
Than recollection,
Than a dusty and carefully
Swathed
Catalogue,
Of mortuary
Shelves,
It creates from the available
Elements, it anthropomorphizes
The unfamiliar
Into the beloved
And the terrible, it
Casts
Its innumerable suns
Into the black
Boil,
To generate
Completely
Miraculous
Abstractions,
My sisters,
My brothers

The most elementary concept
Conjures,
Abjures,
An intricately woven
Network of related
Reasoning and
Elaborately assembled
Logical and logistical
Architecture

The mind has a language
Developed,
To examine
Itself
And the fabric
Of the interconnected
Consciousness
Of the cosmos

And we are the light
Reaching
Outward
To the light

We are discovering
Ourselves

..

Lets talk about
The last time
We were together
Before the quarantine,
The bangless
Whimper of our
Poor time,
Called us to the
Four
Corners,
To this,
Global
Contemplation

Book V,
Aggregate Force, Under the Purposeful Auspice of the Magician

Conclusion

A conclusion,
One of many,
Is reliant upon quantum
Superposition,
An amalgam
Of purposefully rendered
Elements,
A bricolage,
Of the astrophysical,
Psychosocial
And supermundane

The bonfire was hissing
As it bit through
The bark,
Its rough scales,
Yielding, into
The deeper saturation,
Of the decapitated
Tree,
When my stepbrother
Decided
The hour had arrived
For children
To find their beds

I hand him another from
The freezer and scoop
Them up, under
Either arm,
Squirming and wailing
Protests,
Before subsiding to
Enervated
Mutters

The boy burrows in from
The foot, of his
Bed and his
Phone light
Shines out,
Beneath
The covers

I let it be

Carry her onward
And
Sitting Indian style
With
Female child,
She says,

“Tell me a story,”

And it was
Less
A request, than
A statement of the
Inevitable,
The amalgam
Of time,
Awareness,
Intention,
Manifest,
In this moment

“Alright,”
I said,
With a deep exhalation, and
Inhalation
Of breath

Ever the showman,
Ladies and gents
;)

“Let’s reach back
Into the dusty halls of
The musee’ imaginaire
Once again,”

I pause and assume a
Hyperbolic
Pose of serious
Contemplation

“Once upon a time, I
Caught a shooting star
Between my palms”

I raise my arms, and
Slowly bring my hands
Together

She reaches up and
Yanks my elbows down,
With sonorous peels
Of laughter

“She came to sway,
Came to sigh, and
Of course,
She came
To shine”

I, who, in youth,
Was something
Like Troilus,
In my poor
Tattered
Raiments
Salvaged from
The sporadically
Savaged
Fronts,
Of former
Wars,
Appropriated,
Appropriate,
To my
Particular
Iteration,
Raise my palms
To the glow
Stars, glued
To the ceiling
Overhead,
Arranged
In constellations,
Of our
Own
Devising

I slowly draw a finger
Across,
From
The Winged Lady,
To
The Magician

“Against my chest,
She
Came
To rest,
And I wish
I could say
That she had come
To stay,
But, alas
It was not to be,
So, for a spell,
Instead,
Of a lifetime,
I held
Her close”

I took and held her hand, then

“And lamented, even then
It’s sweetly winsome
Temporal
Ache
Of impermanence,
As I was listening
To the calm
Immutable
Force
Of the river”

A few more details,
Snatched
From memory,
Rendered, with a bit
Of artistry,
As she lay down
And got comfortable

And into slumbers
Rabbit hole
She slowly
Fell,
Soon after

And as I sit
Swathed
In contemplative
Silence,
I swim
In the wake
Of that laughter

..

The Magician
By
The Fire Elemental

“We are approaching the time when the artwork of all the world of [humanity] may be looked upon as one, as infinite variations in a single kind of mental and social effort.” Ernest F. Fenollosa. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design