Spiritual Hymns for the Underground Railroad

I
Behold this Underground Railroad!
Many in my nation want to deny
the existence of the Void, but
nonetheless its oily tentacles
are slowly strangling us all--
I politely refuse.

II
This Railroad exists only
as a way to vanquish, make
love to, embrace this thing
that is at the center of every-
thing. Some call it god, others
call it void, but in truth (others
call it that too), it has no name.
Only

feeling. To deny this feeling
is to live happy, unknowing,
illiterate. To acknowledge
the feeling is to fall into despair,
underground, warmth turning to cold,
light to darkness.

Lose all grip to the ground,
fall upward, surrender to it.

The dark of the tunnel becomes
light itself, and the Void, merciless
and the merciful, becomes the
only thing worth living for.

III
Everything else becomes color-
less. This pay-the-bills existence
is a drop of water to the Void's
ocean of fear.

The Railroad will carry you.

Serenity sears the back of your throat

when you inhale all that oxygen

for the first time, breathing in

out, in out, crying all

bloody on the table.

Umbilical cord cut, you are

free to move.

Simple like sitting in
five o'clock traffic just
for fun.

Simple like peanut
butter on
everything.

Simple like taking
life easy, the Dude
Abides.

couple months ago

It does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom,
or bow down and pray for their god's eternal kingdom.
They used to sing of the sweet chariot swinging low,
but now they suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau sowed it, now it's time to reap it,
break our bread and remember the struggle to remain awake,
that it doesn't behoove slaves from reasoning about chains
either-- it's time to shake this, import fists,
time to join the hope and let this saga unrip.

Astronaut

The kid with the addiction

fails to articulate her loss

of the world around her,

the sea spray calling from the

shoreline rocks. She stays

at home and smokes til she

can’t see straight. “Fuck it,”

from the under the covers,

“it’s too cold.”

She makes an exchange.

The world passes by without

her knowing it, she passes by

without them knowing her, her 

timely escape from Planet Earth impeccable,

but oddly not timely enough.

That’s really what all of

this is, isn’t it? A thunderstorm
makes its way along the coast, a burly

shoreline mainland suburb, with

its pines and birchwood and oaks,

the lighthouse on the harbor break,

a break beyond it, waves minute, seagulls

galling and everyone’s in

big coats.

If only fantasies were reality,

If only she could escape, become,

for all intensive purposes, a

Mothertrucking astronaut,

then maybe there would be no need

for substance abuse, religion, greed,

and envy. But hey, sin is earth and

we are of it. The kid with the addiction

knows this. She accepts.

Eventually she'll wonder what it would

be like to be fire instead, above earth 

and everywhere. 

The Letter I

Die, id, drown
in Allah's
most merciful ocean.

Die, cease, stop, yield,
so the alphabet becomes one
letter less. Wiseman says,

"He who takes himself
too seriously denies
our Lord."

Ode

The Hindu goddess Kali and Jim Morrison are up on a hill.
They stare at each other til they have their fill.

Ted Nugent and Stephen Hawking are on a bus,
Nugent bangs some jail-bait right in front of us.

Vladimir Putin and Simone de Beauvoir
fuck all the way to California for some pinot noir.

Dennis Hopper and Sarah McLaughlin
have BDSM next to Dracula's daytime soap opera coffin!


But some make sex unenjoyable, some pretend to make it celestial.
Warren Jeffs several years ago tried to make it incestual.


You know what they say about these kind of things?
Nothing matters until you put on that wedding ring.

Queen Latifah and Teddy Kennedy?
How about the Dalai Lama? He's about seventy.

Once you imagine Hilary Clinton and Nicolas Sarkozy
getting down with Anne Coulter and Bill O'Rielly to have an orgy,

You're gonna wish you were blind and
driving a Nissan.


One more thing, before I go,
a movie turned up with reality tuned low.


"The physical act of lovemaking, coitus, do you like sex?"
"You mean coitus?" You inquire, with DGAF basic respect.



She says while fixing a drink, "do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?"
You say before thinking. "I'm talking about my rug-- excuse me?"

Gonzo and Dostoevsky share a drink
in the corner of this death-end bar,
they talk alcohol and Marilyn Monroe
and Gonzo takes Dostoevsky home in his car.

But the car swerves off the road,
killing a mother, outright mowed her
down; no way can you die in the land of the dead--
"At least," says Gonzo darkly, "not when you're sober."

Dostoevsky admits that they went a little far,
taking death for a joke and a mom from her daughter,
"Here, take this," Dostoevsky says while laughing,
as he hands Gonzo a present, one Russian revolver.

Gonzo asks, "What do I do with this?"
The reply was, "You know what you have to do."
Gonzo thinks for a minute and takes the revolver--
he shoots Dostoevsky, then turns the gun on himself too.

That's when the Devil shows up
after he watches from his blackened tower
the event transpire-- he steps foot on the scene
after everything went sour.

Kick the gerbil,
miss the refrigerator.
Listen to a song
summoning the terminator.

The terminator.
The terminator.

The pillars of the world not withstanding,
they feast on ash and slosh down Michelob
Ultra, the men and women in these great
Tolkienian mountains chirp with glee as
the many bearded godman sits down
for a pail of chicken wings.

godman takes his fee of chicken
and delivers a half- baked sermon
on light, what it means to become light,
but it is all lost on the people of the
mountains. You see, they have
no idea what light is.

You, too, the reader of this poem--
me, three, the writer of this poem--
have no idea. Light, light, this light,
light, godman's light, Light, light, light
cannot be reached by eyesight alone.

Inertia
creeps into
every sitting
corner.

Shadows of
this second
room cannot
be trusted.

Where's the
door to the
third? Where
is your teacher?

December 2012

Perhaps the bow of Arjuna,
or maybe the belt of Orion,
will grace our international
presence with its
overbearing arrows.

If such a mythical
event were to occur, Times Square
would swell and pop
like a bed bug who's had

its fill.

If poems were air conditioners, my bedroom would be an icecap.
If poems were houses, I'd have a city in my fingers.
If poems were teeth, I'd be the fucking tooth fairy.
If poems were television sets, I'd be the thrift store down the road.
If poems was oil, imagine the war in the middle east!
   It'd be fought with graffiti and pencil marks,
   and our cars would run on the misery of Sylvia Plath.
If poems were eyes, this world would be blind.
   This world is blind anyway, sweetheart.
If poems were binary they'd be 1.
  Everything else, 0.
If poems were french fries, you'd be covered in cheese.

This anteroom stinks of failure. This anteroom stinks of the failure to outlive my life, hypocrisy rampant like a firehose, but jesus life outlives me, it outlives us all and who am I to say no to the hole I'm standing over? Moreover, the many-mouthed Ego, in this poem Ego is Kali with her eight arms holding up eight different middle fingers, Ego must have taken my brains, because they're here, on the sidewalk, ready to be made into scrambled eggs. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant pleads.

Hey guys! This story I posted on Rumble Fish back in May, and now it's published here, with an illustration. Check it ouuuut.

http://thestoryshack.com/2012/11/12/the-dervish-and-the-little-girl/

Myth of the Mad King

The myth takes various forms. Some of the better known variations on this theme are the story of Nebuchadnezzar leaving his palace to eat grass with the beasts, Plato's story of the prisoners in the cave, the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son and the related story of the wandering prince contained in the Gnostic allegory called the "Hymn to the Soul."

This old myth, in its essence, compares man to a king with a sumptuous palace at his command. But the king went mad and insisted on living in the cellar surrounded by rags and bones and other worthless objects which he called his possessions. If any of his ministers reproached him for this behavior and tried to remind him of the palace and its splendors, he indignantly replied that he had never left that place. Such was the nature of his illusions that he saw the wretched cellar as a palace and the rags and bones he had collected as precious jewels.

Today we can rephrase this old myth in terms more precise and in more accord with our new knowledge of human nature. We can say that man is a being with great powers at his disposal, which are his by virtue of his large brain and, more specifically, his huge cerebral cortex, an organ he has not yet learned how to use. Be­cause he does not know how to use this powerful machine it tends to operate in ways not beneficial to its possessor, to generate a host of illusions among which he wanders like a babe in the en­chanted wood, frightened and confused, a prey to terrors that he himself has created.

In psychological language the myth of the mad king means this: Man's ordinary state of consciousness is not the highest level of consciousness of which he is capable. In fact, it is so defective that the condition has been defined as little better than somnambulism. Man does not really know what he is doing or where he is going. He lives in dreams. He inhabits a world of delusions and, because of these delusions, makes dangers for himself and others. If this is accepted, then we ask the next questions: What can be done about it? Can man really awaken? What other states of consciousness are possible for him and what must he do to attain these states?

Robert S. De Ropp

Just too wacky to ignore

Cancer, white lipped,
sniggers from its trans-
sexual throne, covered
in extraterrestrial slime,
could also be called
celestial slime, God's
cum all over the place.

Socrates lassos tumors
littered around Lake
Las Vegas before speaking
at political parties, but
in the middle Socrates
drinks a little too much PBR
and sloshes around at
the podium before becoming
a total Belig toward Cancer.

Cancer's eyes narrow.
Socrates, you old-ass sonofabitch,
your liver's mine.

But oh ho ho! Something came
before God did (see what I did
there?) and killed him first--
and that's the power of democracy,
muthafuckas.

The power of democracy came
all over Socrates' face, leaving
a huge ball of Plato behind.

Drool leaks from
your mouth
when you

read this particular
snorefest. Hey,
look, another poem.

Lao Tzu

When you find the Way, others will find you
passing by on the road. They will be drawn to your door.

The way that cannot be heard will be reflected in your voice.
The way that cannot be seen will be reflected in your eyes.

Here here, mademoiselle, take this neo-
liberal doctrine and spin it into rings,
hoops for dogs to jump through.

Koan for the night

the carnival clown show isn't--
The Dude Abides somewhere but
I'm no frigging alien. 

Me and you, 
owl-minded you, 
Spongebob Squarepants.

God, I'm so naive

cus the only thing I know

how to do is write frigging poems.

savannah split

elephants, african and post-pubescent, dis-entwine trunks at
the watering hole, krsna imposing a thunderstorm on the
savannah

split

no water to drink nor shade to be found
on this african plain

one elephant used heart when brain was needed
the other used brain when heart was needed

let this be known, krsna jesus buddha boy baby herakles
luke skywalker superman joan of arc jim morrison charles manson
God's son osiris ganesha bodhisattva saint michael saint
patrick saint peter saint thomas mother theresa gandhi
jfk dionysus romeo juliet john lennon kurt cobain
daniel johnston lovers fighters martyrs betrothed

mistakes made are humane and should
be regarded as the path to wisdom, if one were to use them
as rungs on a ladder

this elephant's problem is that he's afraid of heights
this elephant's second problem is that she isn't

Some moments are holy like the Klondike,
missed my chance but still gotta fight,
need to fight but oh man I'm scared,
terrified that life is happening and my
dreams might not manifest themselves
into specific realities, but oh well.

Just as soon as you think you're done,
some big ole mess falls into your lap.
Or you, the mess, falls into chance.
Either way, gravity's the culprit.

It's November the fourth, my reasons
be changing like the seasons, Guy
Fawkes charged with treason, god
oversoul whatever it's called a liaison
between Ken Kesey and mastodons,
hear me saying that the fight is on,
this battle of self and selfless, worth
and worthless, love and loveless.

primum vivere

sardonic and suspicious-looking, our hero winds up burning down trees and pushing down bridges, leaving uncrossed tunnels to the rats at st. marks. the downfall of boys is in not being a man, a coward. the path does not tolerate cowards who spill milk all up in jerusalem. or the east village. whichever. the full phrase is primum vivere deinde philosophare.

live first philosophize later. the phrase should be extinct. orion says no regrets, i say i gotta cupful.

There's a bear in my
bathroom! There's a
Lizard, big, eating it.

Queen of light touches
her vulva, springs and cogs
lost in her Dairy Queen
blizzard, her sunshine
loft, dancing Russian

swan embraces bear.

Lizard eats from his
underground lair.