Be Drunk, by Charles Baudelaire

The only way by which we live our lives?
Vocation: state of constant drunkenness.
The only method by which we avoid
the dreadful feeling of the wheel of time
that breaks our back and bends us to the earth.
Maintaining our inebriation how?
Wine, poetry, or virtue as you wish.
We never ceasing in our drunkenness.
And if sometimes, upon the palace step,
the green grass in the ditch on which you lie,
within your dwelling’s mournful solitude,
you wake again, your drunkenness decreased
or disappeared in its entirety.
Go ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird,
the clock. These things that fly, that groan, that roll,
that sing, that speak. The question you must ask:
“What time is it?” and this is their reply:
“The time right now, when we must all be drunk!
So not to be the martyred slaves of time,
be drunk, a state that is continuous!
Wine, poetry, or virtue as you wish.”

Unless You Seek To Worship Ev’ry Way

Capacities are universalized.
The glossalalia can be induced
It’s inhibition only that prevents
our use of dance, to worship, exercise.
The visions, mystical, upon demand.
Deny that I, a co-practitioner.
No problems, singing Sundays in the church
so long as your demeanor is reserved.
The checks we write, our bundled energies,
into the plates they pass from aisle to aisle.
Your signature, the most revealing act.
The debit authorized from your account.
This place where we devote our energies.
A building where, the youth, we educate.
A hall where all these worship means employ.
These kinds of places must have real estate.
Unless you’ve sought to worship ev’ry way.

Hail Satan!, or To Screwtape I Aspire

Would give these answers for Satanic friends:
these better arguments against the Christ.
Those men with straw I stuff for tortured ends.
The measured value, how my soul is priced.

The arrogance a single man would show.
Are we not sons and daughters, all of us?
That to himself, supremacy bestows?
Belief in miracles is ludicrous.

That he would claim supremacy like that,
that to himself supremacy bestow.
and work the miracles we read about?
Just as in heaven, also here below?

He said no man but through him may approach.
He claims himself the gate to the divine.
The arrogance, my liberty encroached.
That he demand, with him, I must align.

The arrogance, that he would die for me.
That he create a debt that I must pay.
That he demand, in myth, I must believe.
He disappears when my belief allayed.

The infinite, how can I think of that
unless instilled in me from outside source?
The universe with me does interact.
That it directs me on specific course.

The gift of the divine it implements.
So insecure that my attention needs?
If that’s the case, it’s less than infinite.
Reality dependent on my creed?

The resurrection claim, ridiculous.
The miracles are too convenient.
Our science renders faith superfluous.
Believe what I do not experience?

Was Lewis right in what he wrote of him.
Conclusion wrong, but premises commit.
You take him at his word, the chances slim.
Or else asylum, place where we admit

as lunatic, no more this argument.
that muddle-headed sophomores always make.
“A teacher, great, a prophet with intent,
the many paths to top of mountain take.

“I’m sure he’ll be there at the end of days.”
Reject them all except the one I see,
when to the mirror I direct my gaze.
My only god is me, what I believe.

The many paths up mountain top you see.
If I would bow, each is a path to hell.
I won’t submit to any god but me.
And in the end, against myself rebel.

If true to self, would never be a liar.
Recursive nature of ontology.
My master, no communion, he desires.
The paradox in each cosmology.

The Sale Of Bumper Stickers Has Declined

The pain of living at the bleeding edge.
My mother doesn’t like my poetry.
She had a stalker back when I was young.
A diff’rent era, Nineteen Seventies.
He sent her letters, poems in the mail.
The writings of a nature, sexual.
I think that he approached in public once.
When all this happened, I was unaware.
She only told me at some later time.
Not sure if a restraining order signed.
Back in the age before the Internet.
My poems posted here no triggers, make.
My wizard mother, Facebook, doesn’t use.
The factor of my creepiness, reduced.
The sale of bumper stickers has declined.
Now in this medium where we express.

The Prayers of Amalthea’s Horn

No fairer daughters on this earth than Job’s.
The second set of children that he had.
Around his deathbed gathered siblings ten.
His seven sons, inheritance he gave.
To plaintive daughters, this alternative:

“It’s clear, their value, you don’t understand.
These items taken from my treasure chest.
Hear this then! When the Lord reached out his hand.
When fin’lly he decided to relent.
The plagues and worms, my body, did infest.
He healed me of those awful maladies.
Once my affliction passed, he called to me.
Three triple-string’ed girdles gave as charms.

“These girdles, three, now take them, gird your loins
As men for battle, manhood, binding up.
You’re jealous of inheritance they have?
The value of these girdles far exceeds.”

The three-stringed girdles to his daughters gave.
No earthly fashion, were celestial
in their design. As diamond cords, the light
flashed through them like a glinting rainbow beam.

Yemina, first to wear her father’s gift.
At once upon her donning of this garb.
Departed from her body, heart transformed.
As if she never cared for earthly things.
She danced while chanting hymns, angelic praise.
None understood the languages she spoke.

Kassia next to don the girdle gift.
Just like Yemina, her experience.
Her heart transformed, all earthly cares forgot.
Angelic dialects, the hymns she sang.
Ethereal, the space where Archonts rule.
The High Place has its own doxology.

The last girl’s name was Amalthea’s Horn.
She girded up just like the other two.
Just like her sisters, she transmogrified.
Ecstatic dancing, glossolalia.
The praises that she offered up to God.

When Job expired, and body to the grave.
Procession, daughters three, they marched ahead.
They wore their girdles, singing hymns of praise.
Unto the Lord, who rules the universe.

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I Am A Poet Ranked As Second-Rate

I am a poet ranked as second-rate.
Was Oscar Wilde who gave these thoughts to me.
I must pick either life or poetry.
I can’t have both. I must make some excuse.
What kind of life I think I’d like to live?
In honesty, I’m thankful for this pass.
Accept less freely from a mortal hand.
Before I turn my back on poetry,
a first-rate life is not to be assumed.
Are life and poetry both second-rate?
The curse that gnaws at ev’ry artist’s mind.
I am a poet ranked as second-rate.

I Want My Lover To Be My Friend

Your qualities possessed that I desire.
I can’t deny they are significant.
I made my list and so far you alone.
Criteria in writing specified.
Your beauty isn’t only physical.
What could I write to make you love me more?
Each method of expressing your affect.
There is a way that I would love to share.
While we might also find some other means.
Activities in which we might engage
because of all those qualities possessed.

St. Vincent

Critique the laws that evil men enact
in building made from granite that is pink.
Two men, but only one, his mind in tact.
Insane and saintly, from their wheelchairs think.

One man will think of how his pockets lined.
The other now who sits at Jesus’ hand.
The first, morality is undefined.
The other, finest herb, in Canaan land.

The thoughts that Vincent had inspired me.
I didn’t know him well I must admit.
The laws against a plant, idiocy.
This Vincent Lopez message I transmit.

He said that we must try to educate.
The men whose willful ignorance constrains.
No laws they pass, our lives illuminate.
In darkness, they would keep us locked in chains.

Through silence, with his thund’ring bravery.
St. Vincent, cannabis, his spasms eased:

“What further evil can they do to me,
their laws, my broken muscles, dystrophy.

“The dragon whispers softly in my ear.
A trial that I face each living day.
Reminds me of the things that I should fear:
‘When will you fin’lly break, no man can say?’

“Dear dragon, do you know what you have done?
My pain will motivate to greater cause.
For future generations yet to come.
I speak the truth, and open, break the laws

“that say a plant’s possession, criminal.
War is malignant, prisons that we make.
Disease and idiocy, typical.
The pain they cause, the mercy they forsake.

“Beyond the telling, explanation give.
No meaning found in needless suffering.
My time here short, much longer, will not live.
Beneath his wings that give me covering.

“Was not aware, my heart and eyes now see.
Not just myself, but others here as well.
The words I speak give hope if they believe.
Deliverance, what I would take from hell.

“No longer could I live, my silence keep.
The stiffness and contortion I endure.
I lose my appetite, each night, no sleep.
That cannabis, an answer, is for sure.

“No longer will I live alone in fear.
A sickness sure, kept from reality.
Beyond myself, the places where I peer.
My courage, how I speak, veracity.

“No longer will I live with secrecy.
The closet door, its hinges I destroyed.
From now on I proclaim unceasingly.
Against your lies, the canons now deploy.

The truth that they convey you can’t ignore.
Now is the time, your goodness, common sense.
The universe, your mercy, it implores.
The canons speak the truth of innocence.

That children suffer for their profits sake.
The prisons and the pharmas, their intent.
The poison they prefer that you would take.
The dragon’s curses never will relent.”

I wept when Vincent’s words, I heard him speak.
Four children of my own, responsible.
Invoke his name, protector of the weak.
Conditions we endure, deplorable.

That he now lives inside me, can’t deny.
The inner strength that Jesus gives today.
Confront our demons and their vicious lies.
If Jesus here in Texas, would not sway

and neither should we with injustices.
Our liberties would die, the wretchedness.
Consumption of disease, our practices,
no help they give to save from consequence.

We win this journey by our magic words.
Immortal, they divine, our channeling.
St. Vincent, advocate for blessed herb.
Now is the day of justice, reckoning!

King Cobra

No longer is my poetry an end
as if it really ever was before.
It only is a means, how I attract,
that she allows my words to enter in.
No longer words are all she wants inside.
Persuasion to a wider audience.
I keep them bound in volumes in my head.
The pen I hold, archaic instrument.
All spiral bound, the notebooks where I write.
The spiral coil’d just like a jungle snake.
King Cobra, hooded, standing six feet tall.
Come eye-to-eye with darting tongue as well.
Last instance right before she strikes your face.
She knows to puncture closest to your cheek,
the softest place. Your skull, her fangs may break.

The Infinite Is What I Hunger For

The spell I scrawled upon a used receipt
and stuffed into the pocket of my jeans.
Each day to hell is where I will descend.
The entertainment that distracts my heart
exceeds the joy from heaven where you dwell.
Each day the words to speak ‘lest I forget.
The magick that transports me back to you.
One day, to fire, will burn my saving note.
The only link from this world to the next.
Between the worlds the passage that I make.
Dimensions that each day I will transcend.
Please tell me why I should come back to you?
The final trip much like the one I’m on.
The trip I take, expansion of my mind.
To fit the box, just started to explore.
I realize that this box is all there is.
If outside is the place that I seek out.
Another box within which I am bound.
I look into my heart to find the space.
My heart, the seat of my divinity
The infinite is what I hunger for.
I close my eyes, to universe expand.