Recreational Methods

I, the ghost who does the haunting.
Mine, the spirit that possesses.
Now I move between the pages,
in among these words I listen.
All would speak into the ether.
All would tell their secret yearnings.
Only single page before me?
Spirit fingers straight through matter.
Reading books is not rewarding.
Never see the end, beginning.

Flaming pen that’s isn’t melting,
even though its ink is molten.
Golden words inscribed by scarring,
written by his hand on my heart.

I am privileged with a hall pass.
Here from Hades as a mercy.
Have ascended to commend you.
To give unique apprehension
to words spoken on this stage here.
All these people, they are living.
I discern such through the vapors,
magick smoke that from my nostrils,
rising, scares the Pentecostals.
Wine and beer liked by the Lutherans.
It’s the dancing makes them nervous.
Don’t you grasp your many blessings?

Do not ever stop your dancing!
Don’t you know this of the demons?
In their lifespans, they have heard them.
Under sun, there is no new thing.
Neither are there any new words.
Action that does most surprising:
Music mixed with athlete’s movements.
When they see you dancing thusly.
They can see inside your spirit.

Does inner joy ooze from your pores?
That emotion thus expressing?
Are your actions only mocking?
Dance for joy and you defeat them.
Can’t comprehend the joy through pain.
Once it’s death you have defeated,
nothing scary. What can man do?
What else can man do unto me
that he hasn’t done already?
A little nervous at the challenge.
I’m sure there are many tortures.

It’s the voices in my mind, though,
I believe that I can silence.
With these words, and with some others.
I would share them, but remind you:
you have your words, must be speaking
your own words. They do have power.
It’s yourself you are convincing.
Turn your back upon the darkness.
Ignore all your inhibitions.
Your life is what you would possess.
Tell yourself: keep dancing, breathing.

I am only parrot, mimic.
I repeat those echoes, listen.
There is nothing here inventive.
This is easy. You could write it.

All you do, read each word written
on the side of beating muscle:

“Witness means I use to recreate.”

Thucydides Hilocometoot (“T.H.”) Chalm died in his sleep in the early morning of December 19, 2015. He was age 48 at the time of his death.

Born in 1967 on a Queensland, Australia kangaroo ranch, Chalm was educated in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Prague, ultimately settling in Languedoc, France. He loved racquetball, rugby, cooking tacos, and watching television. Chalm had no surviving relatives.

In his will, Chalm bequeathed all his worldly property, comprising his meager possessions and approximately one thousand (1,000) unpublished poems, to his friend and attorney, Roland Wiederaenders, of Austin, Texas, in trust, requesting that the poems be published posthumously in the discretion of Mr. Wiederaenders. Memorial donations may be made in Chalm’s name to the charity that he supported for many years through his time, talent, and treasury, the Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies.

Chalm’s favorite poem (that he did not write himself!) was by Dylan Thomas and serves as a fitting memoriam to Chalm’s life and work, which will never be forgotten:

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Chalm requested cremation and that his ashes should be cast into his beloved Barton Springs, in Austin, Texas. His wishes will be carried out by Mr. Wiederaenders at a brief memorial service to be held there January 1, 2016, at noon. Everyone who loved Thucydides (or “T.H.” as he was known by his friends) is invited to attend!

Thucydides Chalm is dead!
Long live Thucydides Chalm!

(Image Attribution: Elijah’s firey ascent into heaven. Огненное восхождение Ильи-пророка в небеса. Pskov School, 16th Century PD-US)

Thucydides Ascending

As I sat in meditation,
thinking of my life in bondage,
in an instant he descended
with mad flapping on my shoulder.

The Raven King, large for his kind.
My full effort for his perching.
Bearing message on some paper
he was on a purposed mission.
Even though I wasn’t starving,
was directed by Apollo.

Asked permission, then I took it,
from his beak, the folded letter.
It was Chalm’s, same kind of paper
that he kept on kitchen table,
always handy, at the ready.
In his scrawling script he wrote me,
words of hope that I share with you:

“Roland, I have reached my limit
and the universe is calling.
I would fly to resurrection.
With the ravens flying with me,
revel in my exultation.
Would you witness me in passing
through the air in cart of fire,
drawn by flying, flaming horses?
Blessings be upon your living,
trusting in your righteous mission
that the universe commences,
and enables, its intention.
You’re a vessel, take my message
to your brothers, from the ether.
Witness ascent to the heavens?
If you do, a double portion
of my spirit come upon you,
will invest you with great power
and whatever power lacking,
there is compense in your purpose.
If I see you looking skyward
from the ground that’s underneath me,
I will cast my magick headgear
from the side of flaming chariot.
It’s bright red, you’ll never miss it.
Catch it in your hand while falling.
It will be your magick totem.
Not for you alone but many!
Farewell, brother, I do love you.
Never fear, I will be with you
in my spirit ever after.”

As I read his final writing,
I at once formed my intention.
I would hurry to the valley
where it was that last I saw him.
So I ran, my knee was aching,
but I had to see him flying.
I remembered secret passage
hewn in rock straight through the mountain,
and the raven kept on leading
so I only had to follow.
I kept breathing by the lungful.
Not his cap but exhalations:
if I missed the magick headgear,
from Chalm’s breath, possess his pneuma.

As I ran into the valley,
in an instant, saw him flying.
Golden carriage drawn by horses,
from a battle he was leaving.
Chariot of fire burning,
but the flames did no consuming.
As he drove the horses upwards,
saw him lean out o’er the railing.
On his head, I saw it clearly,
its cone top was pointing forward.
It was red, he did remove it,
and he dropped it from the carriage.

There was little wind resistance
and it dropped straight from the heavens.
I continued with my running,
like a player with a fly ball.
Didn’t think that I would catch it.
At last instant with my diving,
my great effort in the jumping,
it was almost supernatural.
With Thucydides was flying,
but my journey always downwards
or at best was horizontal.

Hilocometoot

Have you heard of a Hilocometoot?
(Pronounced “high-low-come-toot”.)
That special beast, the place where you must go to see one:
you must journey to your mind.

“Did you read in it the papers, T.H.,
they spotted one out west of town!”
Unsuspecting strangers, he would ask in total seriousness.
Red-faced while overhearing, must suppress my tell-tale smirk!
And he in fact would go so far as to commence a sketch!
Not first a graphic artist, would create a crude abstraction,
with specific motions. Still possess some of these drawings
that he drew with his own hand,
and reproduced it once by my own hand.
I have drawn a Hilocometoot!
Copied to you with this poem.
Even skeptics would believe his tale.
Mike’s joking was convincing.
His special marks, the proud, denied their lack of knowledge
of this creature that Mike’s dad did conjure clean from his imagination.
We would laugh and laugh at their absurd pretension.

Here is a ticket to the zoo, I hand it to you now,
take it, completely free, but you must listen to my words,
comprising breath and modulation of vibrations
infused with meaning, massive processors housed inside our skulls.
My cannabinoid receptors fully charged with rocket fuel.
I tell you of Hilocometoot, but acknowledge this up front:
comedic talent lacking, but I have a great desire,
and am losing inhibitions.
Become a magick actor, would channel them in secret séance,
men who passed just for your entertainment
if through my possession you might be moved
to start to listen to the stories you can tell,
the ones that move your heart and mind and groin.
Invite me to the zoo in your imagination.

His father took him and his brother too,
to zoo in father’s mind,
with words at bedtime, spoken sweetly to his sons.
Lights in room have dimmed.
Illuminated by a single lamp upon the nightstand.
I do have pictures, paintings that reflect
what I imagine of this creature.

I wear Raymond’s ring upon my pinkie.
The man who gave a special gift to me
in Mike, of course, but through him too.
The best, I would suppose, this story of a beast
most rare and imaginary.
Like Chupacabra or Sasquatch,
but this one, more of a cross
between ostrich and velociraptor.

At the moon, would howl a lonely howl
in the dry, west Texas nights.
Maybe like the whistle of a train?
Raymond for a time lived as a hobo,
and looked out from his seat on boxcar threshold,
rolling through the moon-lit landscape,
travelling to see his love, Mike’s mom, Miss Kitty,
imagining that he may have seen one
dart beneath the cactus.

I peer into the past and what then would I see?
What then would appear before me but this beast?!
Would channel this man through his ring,
I wear it now, would turn it twice
and conjure up a secret spell myself
to draw into the light this creature that retreated once again
into the cactus, fleeing from my probing sight!
I would display Hilocometoot to you,
from within my special zoo!!
Invite you in, I will describe
just as Mike’s dad did to him
and to his older brother, Robert.
These brothers, I see my sons in their two faces,
photos of Mike and Bobby when they were young.

My sons know of Hilocometoot.
My older son knows better.
My younger son, not grasped it yet.
I guess became an older man before the age of one.
Doesn’t hunger for the stories,
but I always will be present.
When those pangs might tear through stomach into heart
and move him thus as I move now.
Would reach out to them somehow, love them,
just as I loved Mike and Bobby,
and their father through them,
though I never met him.
Just as I do love my father,
and I know him quite directly.

This bedtime story Raymond told them,
imaginations invigorated for the sweetest dreams.
Pecking ostrich head made out of howling puppet hand,
with fingers joined together,
with glee would tickle each boy’s neck
and make them laugh, and love their father dearly.

Mike loved his father, I know that of a fact.
Just as I would love my sons (and daughters), so did Raymond love his boys.

Just as Mike was loved by his own father,
I am deeply loved by mine.

Secret Yoga

Would you teach me of your yoga?
How much would you charge me?
I want to learn your secret yoga.
Would you charge my soul?
Not too large a price to pay.
Would sign that contract right away.
Give me a pen, open a vein,
to access ink that I would use
to write this poem to you.
A gift of words of how I long
to join with you in secret sharing,
or at least, together in our common breath,
fuel that would feed our constant motion.