"THE OBELISKS OF BAALBEK"

 Thanatos and Eros wrestle forever
atop three caliginous Lebanese moons
and far surges the towers of Ba'al
above the mystical cyclopean masonry

great triangular henges of neolithic earthwork
prismatic to view from the heavenly sky
blesses the Phoenician travellers of Baalbek :
"take this cedar branch and bless the world with it !"

sturdy wire of  iron and spearheads made of bronze;
golden garments and copper ingots and crucibles;
crystal beads, bracelets, crests, pendants and sheaths
lie scattered about in the grass

celadon pottery, steatite and jasper figurines
being worked at in street-shops
and in the turquoise tents of merchantry
are fine in their craftmanship

ancient crockery of the Canaanites
and the beautiful works of Nubian ebony
glisten beneath the flaxen crescent scythe

the fallen obelisks of Baalbek soak
in a herbage steam of natural poetry
coarse, wolven and silvery lunar,
draped in the iron bell-rings of Heliopolis !

suffocated snippets of awful sounds
blare from the bent trumpets of Jupiter
as the dreary wings of Ba'al collapse
across the twilight Levant

"WITHIN THE SPIDER'S TESSERACT"

glitching winds of the fractal hornets
appear and disappear failingly
as if a veil or a mantilla of comets and stars
stuck in faulting dimensional bleedthrough

mystical errors of the grand machine
bend the circuits of reality

towards the edge
towards the precipice
towards the tesseract
towards the ultimate hazard of logic
we drift

systema of bugs and system bugs
clogging a machinal taxonomy
stuck in the mire of evolution

vistas of the most acute inferno
break the fourth wall
like a wonderful painting
or a poem out of this world
does

from years of rust, a cage as frail as a cassia-flower :
the spectral scarabs break their confinements
at last !

...and the spider discloses its hideous apparition

the planet rolls without aim inside
the spider's tesseract ! hulking forth without meaning !
through empty swathes rayless
swinging blindly in the fractal moonless aether !

a planet drunk from stardust and putrid honey
circumambulate the spider-curse-Kaba
withershins and forevermore-more-more-more
in endless cynical cycles

tied to the ankles of something once a deity no more
are the invisible ropes spun from the webs of the spectral arachnid –
eight legs, six eyes - eight times six dimensions deep and wide !

within the tesseract the once-deity teeters
in her ever-so-remorseful indignity above the eerie city of cubes
suspended upside-down to hang like a bat
in a darkness as total as it is timeless

time lost track of even itself
in this endless aeonic ennui

all the while
the spider spins its web
floating in the tesseract
in nauseating meditations
which are absolutely incomprehensible
and spiritually devastating

"THE WHITE JASMINE LORD"

         I

  first flowers open, seasons begin ! :
  bloom before doom
  as always

Rajasthani breeze sweet and scentful
fanning out to the sunset :
a caress ! across the ripeness of apricots

  curling trees
  winding downward foothills
  plunging downward slopes

  among the flowering marigold
  and hibiscus lushing aplenty
  vine has budded
  and the pomegranate is in flower
  finally : now, rejoice !

the scent of mandrakes and brambles –
sprout after sprout the lotus shall bloom !

  forests drown in seasonal swamping
  below the thunderous cloudbursts :
  beneath the leaden sky smiles proud
  the parent of this great outpouring :

  O white Jasmine Lord !

        II

all the while, i pray : let me go !  

let me escape through the burning funnels :
i am the exhaust of God !

i, whose rotting body is sodden with salt-water
and set upon by crabs and electric eels,
my blood is the saccharin which delights
the truest of our beloved poets :

   and when i am lonely,
   o white Jasmine Lord,
   my soul deepens with you !

   allow me loneliness from my demons,
   for i can not rid them :

this is a challenge of a life-time,
and a marvel beyond my understanding

   O white Jasmine Lord : fill my whole heart
   and make me plunge these deeper waters !

     make me panic
     in the calm weathers

     make me flee
     the warmest embrace

     make me strip
     every last sackcloth

     make me stray
     in the wild desert

     let me do with life
     what the dog does to the other,
     when it sniffs the others' ass 

"OBSERVANCE OF A KHLYST RITUAL"

     "God may only fill a heart
      already full to the brim –
     and the soul's corruption is a devilest art
     most heinous, dark and dim..."

white flaxen shirts, airy like the habits of nuns,
hang loose on their naked bodies,
and are stained with menarche – the crusty textile flow
in autumnal breezes of a Muscovian hinterland

spirited sermons of a dimlit cellar !
Khlyst prayers echo in the flickering candlelight :
from the basement of a peasant lodge
explodes the ritual energy…

   sacred chanting erupts in the half-light –
   corrupted verses of the Easter canon :

   "seeing, we are gladdened, for Christ has risen !"

an egregious laughter and a magical circle
levitates them into fixation, suspended within
the polygonal force-fields of the liminal  

an old man of the slimmest stature, with joyful eyes light-colored –
we call him the local Christ – burp and eruct his carols to a bevy
fear-stricken below the pulpit : he whips himself with birch and cane
until the blood appears and runs from the wounds of flagellation
and from his home-made cilices of penance

the choir chants their prayers : their voices rise ever more savagely,
ever more fervently, ever more fiercely with every breath and moment !

some of them are already screaming and sobbing in their Passion !

   the old man stops in his whirling and cries out wildly :

   “brothers! brothers! I feel it, the Holy Spirit!”

   “God is within me!”

and he begins to croak the wildest auspices,
belching incoherent tapestries of sounds,
mixed into which were the human words :  

     "Oh, Spirit !"
     "Oh, God !"
     "Oh, Spirit, Oh, Lord !"

extremist glossolalia in the Kostroma underground
spreads like a sickness or wildfire amongst
those whom the spiritual psychosis possessed, our Holy Flock !

   a thousand psalter pages turned
   within the confines of another existence

this total disruption of mundane circuitry
collapses the "local Christ" into mad dances of abandon
whirling and frolicking as if possessed
by some great power beyond us all

the masses tumble in disorganized dances
as the voices tremble across hysterical pirouettes
and the twirling of terrored congregants   
clawing, reaching in a kind of shameless desperation
for some iteration of a kind of Swedenborgian New Jerusalem !

“escapees from the world and its dull spiritual languor :
the nadir of human experience is to be found
amongst those who deal only in the mundane… “

    the vicious and spiteful attacks on Tsarist power and nobility
    and heretical blasphemies on the priesthood of orthodoxy
    are hurled without temperance through an air impenetrable,
    filled to the brim with unnatural energy

the worldly structures of a prosaic and temporal elite,
this illicit Tsardom of a false imperial idol :

   their values, their hierarchy
   and their doctrines of supremacy and conquest
   reek of the Devil’s piss !

their palaces and riches in amber and gold,
their systems of worldly power and control;
they all fail in this dimlit cellar tonight –
in the observance of a Khlyst ritual !

all the gold and glitter of Gehinnom,
all of its Mammon-fires, false lights, shines  
and shallow gleams and glimmers mean nothing
in the pitch-black tunnels of theology,
where broken men and women chase
the ultimate vacuity of Revelation,
the ultimate surrender to the inane and the insane
as methods of personal denouement and reckoning :

    depression, inwardness, rumination –
    solitude, asceticism and reclusion –
    plight and mental illness !
    psychosis – neurosis  – hysteria –
    reverence – ardor – duty – piety – faith !

faith is the highest passion bar none
in these wooden huts and dank cellars –
here is the conclusion of our sanctitude !

here is only the fanaticism of the true faith :
most won't travel this far – and none will travel farther !  

  faith is the only bridge
  between man and mystery –
  and the Khlystic ritual
  is the only bridge to connect
  man to his faith

     such was the devotion
     of the Khristovovery of Imperial Russia

     such were the means and reaches
     of their fanatic pietism