Prologue (to The Christ Vexation)

out of delirium i come
and they are here to guide me
i lay close to the edge
the eternal draw smug remarks
in concrete
but my eyes are closed
i cannot read
or see
kill me quickly
i scream to blackness
my lungs burn with saltwater
tears
i thirst for clean air
in dungeons of flesh and water
drips softly in the background
hold me my dear i cannot
live within this life
without you

I.

i have screamed too long
and now my throat is parched
lean close
i whisper quietly
and hope
those who listen now
will hear
and understand

my age is beyond numbers
i have been returning
to this place like a swallow
but to what end

i once composed a symphony
and have played it many times
but there was beauty
that i never knew it had
until i heard you play it differently
there was an infinite variety
that i had never heard
until you played the notes
i wrote

if you had seen me then
i thought myself masterful
controlling creation
but there is never a time
of mastery
unless it is the future
the only place we can be better
than we are now

II.

there is a randomness
that does not exist
what does all this mean
the answers are written in
the sky and on the ground
and in our blood
and though the many years that intervene
the answers are still here
as we have left them

i have searched to find
these answers and the questions
but seem no better for the finding
better it would seem
are the ones that do not ask
do not seek

but could i live without this hunger
live inside a space never knowing
a larger space exists

there is a happiness in childhood
that is hard to capture in maturity
ask for no future
youth says
while adults
ask for no forgiveness
children cannot comprehend
the contemplating parent that
does not understand
ignorance is bliss
bliss is ignorance
what joy is there in knowing

IV.

a lightening flash fades
to photoscopic ghosts on aging retinas
two three four miles
as i count thirteen
a shot
penetrating darkness with light
and light with a darkness greater still

then came the horror of the hunt
not death
but a greater cycle
created for destruction
and creating in its emptiness
a time for us to die

to claim the past as rectitude
for the blood
is both arrogance and folly

we have evolved beyond but
in out bodys haste
we left our mind
in an adolescent way
to find solutions for the flesh
but no slake
for the all-consuming
carnivore
we feed inside

III.

i sit lonely on the shoreline
watching waves fall down
and i wonder why they crash
upon the sand smoothly creating
a continuity with our past
for i sit as countless others
who have hope and death and wonder
in the waves we share
though eons lie between us

there is a communion described
upon the stars and in the sea
each drawing us to fascination
to wonder and to draw the same answers
as countless have or will

the ocean calls with amnia
cresting waves and the stain
of salt in my hair
i am free
and pound and beat the surf
giving my sins to the earth and sea
and claiming new life from the rip tide

reborn
covered with salt
and dripping water

providing answers
to questions never asked

V.

my life has been
a series of fault
line dances
hiding vast realms of
imperfections
for the beauty

the solitary beauty

of that pendulous moment
before the castle falls
into the screaming sea
and a thousand imperfections
mark the land

for this
i must create
must move forward
and dance another time

VI.

god is weeping
god is dead
god is waiting in that hollow
space that drives you mad

we each have chosen
this game
with its rules and
its faults
and each must take
credit and responsibility
for those decisions that we make
while we are here

is there no exit
have i not played
for a greater number of years
than was required
there is no time of reckoning
but merely a continued tally
of sins and counter-sins

then i will live this time
as the prophets have decreed
not only for myself
but for those i love
everyone
that i have included in my world
and in the end
may i ask forgiveness
and blame myself no longer

VII.

i stare at you
a thousand miles above me
watching me with patient eyes

i was there once too
in orbit
staring at the multitude of clouds
and sheep
and angels swooning in the morning light
this was company and was love

but there have been changes
i find the sky is crowded now
everyone that i created lives there
playing the games that i invented
telling lies i have told before

i reside in palaces of stone
white marble to remind me of the sheep
and onyx for the night

they were in these chambers once

i stare through windows now
i stare beyond and through the crowded sky

the sky seems grand
when righteousness is hollow
but earth looms ever close
children fly with wings
that tire in old age
infertile stone seems solid
to aging feet and
wings that now must rest

VIII.

in haste
we build landmarks
distinguishing areas
with obvious staements
and do not realize devastation
when we create it

there are features enough
in the face of clay
and in the face of water
features left undisturbed
for times when rules change
and history provides the answers
to the problems of today

these guides are simple and are few
that atoms bind
and everything must change must die
bring lye and water to your face
and to your eyes
to burn away
the pearlesced layers of stone

everything is bound
and measured
every page preserved
frozen in the essene air

IX.

they told me not to do it
that it could never be done
or maybe never should
but i laid the fragments of my blood
in two straight lines
and found that there were elements
that wandered through and across
the patterns of regularity
spelled out in complex acid

maybe i should never have done it
should never have found the answers
for on a wandering element
much smaller than was known to exist
i found a world
inhabited
and held it in my hand

i looked carefully and on the nightside
of this atomic world
i found a man gazing quietly into his hand
at a particle
too tiny to be seen

the man looked up and stared
at the complex acid stars
his tiny element wandered through

ive spelled my name
with my own blood
and watched the stars
singing in their complex regularity

X.

these days i write
long love letters
pining in the mist
for a lovers footfall
on drying leaves

knowing changes everything
familiarity breeds
not contempt
but a greater appreciation
for those things alien

deadly nightshade
awaits my third return
but i have never left
twenty five thousand
grains of sand have fallen

we always know
and always lives
but sometimes not enough