$ source ~/.bashrc
Done!
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Out of the blue - Back with a bash trick
So, you've just finished editing your .bashrc with a slick new alias and want to try it out in the same session? No problem, just source the configuration file:
Done!
Done!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Eye - Part I
Long ago, when the Powers of the Darkness first summoned the Living Planet from the void, they set in it a window into pure truth and enlightenment. This window allowed any spirit who looked into it to see in perfect clarity all the truth and beauty of the universe. Through this window, a spirit might even glimpse the Powers of the Darkness that had fashioned the window and set its place on the Living Planet.
The Living Planet was created to exhibit the character of Life that the Powers had devised. They knew that the seeds that they had planted would flourish on this wet and rocky Planet, and the Powers wanted to see what would emerge. They hoped that the seeds would would eventually bind with the Whispers, and the Powers wondered whether a Whisper could be gathered into a person. Always the Whispers had wandered through the void, and their fleeting messages tickled the ears of the Powers. Even with all their knowledge and ability to form things from the Void, the Powers could never gather a Whisper to listen to it speak. Only quiet and fleeting words emerged from the Whispers, and, if the Powers tried to confine a whisper it would dissapate like a vapor.
Now, the Powers had intimate knowledge of Truth and Beauty in the universe. There was no True thing that the Powers did not know for the powers filled the Void and summoned forms from it. Yet, the Whispers they could not understand. For the words that the Whispers lightly brushed against the Powers carried in them something the Powers did not understand. For Whispers spoke of things that were not in Truth. Whispers spoke strange and wonderful things, but in all of the Universe, the Powers could not find the things that the Whispers spoke of. Often the Powers guessed that if only they could gather a Whisper, they could learn of how it made words that were not in Truth. But, with all their might, the Powers could not gather a whisper.
Many abundant shapes and fatastic marvels had been summoned from the Void by the Powers. They had made countless immense Stars and had set them in paths around each other. They had swept dust through the Void to make splashes of color and light that were Nebulae. They had devised dark dense lumps in the Void that gathered Stars around them in paths as if the Silents (which the Powers called them) were themselves great Stars. The Powers had made large Planets and Comets and any number of large things. So, it was not hard for the Powers to make the Living Planet. It was a small rocky body, and the Powers set in motion around a small warm yellow Star.
The Living Planet was created to exhibit the character of Life that the Powers had devised. They knew that the seeds that they had planted would flourish on this wet and rocky Planet, and the Powers wanted to see what would emerge. They hoped that the seeds would would eventually bind with the Whispers, and the Powers wondered whether a Whisper could be gathered into a person. Always the Whispers had wandered through the void, and their fleeting messages tickled the ears of the Powers. Even with all their knowledge and ability to form things from the Void, the Powers could never gather a Whisper to listen to it speak. Only quiet and fleeting words emerged from the Whispers, and, if the Powers tried to confine a whisper it would dissapate like a vapor.
Now, the Powers had intimate knowledge of Truth and Beauty in the universe. There was no True thing that the Powers did not know for the powers filled the Void and summoned forms from it. Yet, the Whispers they could not understand. For the words that the Whispers lightly brushed against the Powers carried in them something the Powers did not understand. For Whispers spoke of things that were not in Truth. Whispers spoke strange and wonderful things, but in all of the Universe, the Powers could not find the things that the Whispers spoke of. Often the Powers guessed that if only they could gather a Whisper, they could learn of how it made words that were not in Truth. But, with all their might, the Powers could not gather a whisper.
Many abundant shapes and fatastic marvels had been summoned from the Void by the Powers. They had made countless immense Stars and had set them in paths around each other. They had swept dust through the Void to make splashes of color and light that were Nebulae. They had devised dark dense lumps in the Void that gathered Stars around them in paths as if the Silents (which the Powers called them) were themselves great Stars. The Powers had made large Planets and Comets and any number of large things. So, it was not hard for the Powers to make the Living Planet. It was a small rocky body, and the Powers set in motion around a small warm yellow Star.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Sight - First Attempt
Most animals are born blind. They emerge trembling into a world of strange darkness. It is not the darkness that had shrouded the sorcerey of their development. No, this darkness is large, airy, and distant. They are born squirming with nothing but the touch of their mother to anchor their place in the new reality.
We are born with our eyes open. Almost immediatly after we spring upon this world, the light and vision of our startling reality pours in upon us. We are given no buffer between our new empty souls and the terrible vastness of our universe. We look out into an old world from a brand new perspective, and the first meaning of our world is the face of our mother.
Our eyes should only truly close once. We should never stop letting the universe pour into us, filling us, rinsing the out the clutter of the small world we keep in our minds, and carrying with it the life giving breath of novelty. We should never shut out this stream. Even in our dreams, our eyes should welcome the visions, the reflection of our world that swirl around our minds when we are truly open.
What a shame it is that so few of us actually greet the wonder of life with our eyes open. What a waste the wonder of being is on we who go about with our eyes down-cast, and our hearts closed to the ungraspable vision of this perplexing reality. There can be no greater crime than shutting out that which begs to be held within our gaze. No sin could be more dire than to reject the gift of sight bestowed upon us by the universe that greeted our very first awakening with a shower of lumniscent gifts.
Yet, there are so few that truly look out upon the world. Instead, we are persuaded, begged, and bullied into shutting it all out. We are warned and frightened away from looking upon unfamiliar sights and new visions. We accept the lie that there is nothing new under the sun, and, falling in with our self-blinded leaders, we trade our birth-right for blindness. We accept that greatest imaginable curse with eagerness, and we believe the lie that the universe is small and certain.
How can a person go about for scores of years and countless days with his eyes open yet see nothing. What fear beguiles us into the surrender of that great gift that separates us from our beastly cousins.
It is not fear that shuts our eyes. It is not righteousness that blinds us. No. It is greed. It is jealousy that makes us avert our eyes and convince others to also turn away. Our great gluttony for touch drives us to render void all that is not within our reach. Only by screwing our eyes tightly closed may we finally forget that some wonders and terrors of this world may not be held within our hands.
(ugh....this is going nowhere)
We are born with our eyes open. Almost immediatly after we spring upon this world, the light and vision of our startling reality pours in upon us. We are given no buffer between our new empty souls and the terrible vastness of our universe. We look out into an old world from a brand new perspective, and the first meaning of our world is the face of our mother.
Our eyes should only truly close once. We should never stop letting the universe pour into us, filling us, rinsing the out the clutter of the small world we keep in our minds, and carrying with it the life giving breath of novelty. We should never shut out this stream. Even in our dreams, our eyes should welcome the visions, the reflection of our world that swirl around our minds when we are truly open.
What a shame it is that so few of us actually greet the wonder of life with our eyes open. What a waste the wonder of being is on we who go about with our eyes down-cast, and our hearts closed to the ungraspable vision of this perplexing reality. There can be no greater crime than shutting out that which begs to be held within our gaze. No sin could be more dire than to reject the gift of sight bestowed upon us by the universe that greeted our very first awakening with a shower of lumniscent gifts.
Yet, there are so few that truly look out upon the world. Instead, we are persuaded, begged, and bullied into shutting it all out. We are warned and frightened away from looking upon unfamiliar sights and new visions. We accept the lie that there is nothing new under the sun, and, falling in with our self-blinded leaders, we trade our birth-right for blindness. We accept that greatest imaginable curse with eagerness, and we believe the lie that the universe is small and certain.
How can a person go about for scores of years and countless days with his eyes open yet see nothing. What fear beguiles us into the surrender of that great gift that separates us from our beastly cousins.
It is not fear that shuts our eyes. It is not righteousness that blinds us. No. It is greed. It is jealousy that makes us avert our eyes and convince others to also turn away. Our great gluttony for touch drives us to render void all that is not within our reach. Only by screwing our eyes tightly closed may we finally forget that some wonders and terrors of this world may not be held within our hands.
(ugh....this is going nowhere)
Identity - Part I
Today we talk in terms of identity. Everyone wants to know what we are identifying ourselves as. We have a category of identity for everything from race to gender. What is your gender-identity? Being humans, we follow the rituals of our father. Our first father Adam must have doomed us to an existence of classification. But, really, what do all these words mean? When we talk of identity, we are not discussing who we really are inside, and what we believe ourselves to be. No. Instead, we are discussing a version of ourselves that we want to present to others. Your identity that you insist be recognized by one and all of your human siblings is a carefully crafted facade' by which you insist on being acknowledged. The fact is, these identities are just a fiction that allows us all to push ourselves into categories where we only imagine that we will feel more comfortable. It is as simple as that. We believe if only we could be recognized by a simple word, the tedium of our existence would carry greater weight, and then we might not swoon before the gaping maw of inexistence.
They are just words. Fundamentally, what is different between these people that carry their large cumbersome labels? Genetically, physically, psychologically we are all remarkably similar. We are, as I have heard it put bluntly, little more than 28 feet of gut. All of us. My fire and brimstone neo-conservative father in reality is so very similar to free-wheeling Lady Gaga, that it takes an eye carefully trained over millions of years to tell them apart. And, that must be the crux.
We must be able to tell each other apart. There is a sort of latent tribalism that pervades our psyche so deeply, it becomes almost unthinkable to imagine yourself outside of some sort of loose familial construct. Whether it is actual shared genetics that binds you to your clique or some sort of synthesized ideaology, it is this little group of people standing behind us that makes us feel big enough to carry the weight of our chosen identities.
What if we refuse to carry these signs, these slogans promoting our little circles of life? What if a person says, "Fuck all this, I don't care what little group I'm supposed to belong to...I just feel like being human?"
Too bad. You will surely have an identity thrust upon you. Anyone who has attended elementary school could tell you this. That's right, our innocent, wide-eyed, promise-of-the future children are busy crafting and impaling each other with identity before they even know that boys and girls piss out of different organs.
So, let's be both humble and bold. Let's try to both shun the pomposity of a self-chosen, designed, glorified identity and the humiliation of a publicly affixed branding of ourselves. Let's take some ill-concieved stamp meant to lump us into a pile of undesirable human dross, and instead of bearing it like a burden, re-afix it as a sigil.
I. I am a sissy.
Now, there are lots of people who would argue whether I was born a sissy, whether the odd minutia of my childhood formed me into a sissy, or I chose in some intensely sexual cathartic moment to be a sissy.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is this. I am a part of a social group that is largely spurned mostly because it is mis-understood.
Let's flash back to the school-yard once more. Remember that foreign kid that joined up with your class part way through the year? Maybe ___
[ Necessary aside: The english language is devoid of any pronouns that are gender in-specific. While I tend not to get caught up the femenists crusade to make the masculine the non-default gender, I do find the lack of an appropriate pronoun decidedly imprecise in certain situations....like this one. So, voila, I'm creating my own neuter set of pronouns that I will use henceforth. Ve, vem, ves, ve's. These are my new pronouns. I have created them. So shall it be ]
Now. maybe ve wasn't actuall from a different country, or even a very different culture. Perhaps ve was just from some far away state that was a bit different. It doesn't matter, because to your small little eco-system of the classroom, ve was a foreigner. At recess, this new child was not accepted, and, as is most likely, was probably tormented for the most part because of ves actually minute differences. The distaste and seeming ire of the school children was not born from any carefully considered critique of the child's mannerisms. Neither was ve shunned because his state was "unnatural." God did not call all those snot-nosed kids to set hem apart as a judgement for ves sins. No, no. The child was hated by ves classmates only because they didn't understand vem. They looked at vem, felt confused, and, being that confusion is an unpleasent state in which to remain for very long, displaced their confusion with aggression. They gave vem a label. That label said, "Ve's not one of us." And then, digging deep into the misty red pit of human instinct, they circled and descended upon vem to eradicate vem from their habitat.
So it is with we sissies. It is so much easier to fix a label like a bright red target than to actually think about us. Aggression requires no reason, just cold, pre-scripted action. Resistance and isolation hail from an age before language. Here, within the flow of primal agression, anyone can find peace even in debauchery.
They are just words. Fundamentally, what is different between these people that carry their large cumbersome labels? Genetically, physically, psychologically we are all remarkably similar. We are, as I have heard it put bluntly, little more than 28 feet of gut. All of us. My fire and brimstone neo-conservative father in reality is so very similar to free-wheeling Lady Gaga, that it takes an eye carefully trained over millions of years to tell them apart. And, that must be the crux.
We must be able to tell each other apart. There is a sort of latent tribalism that pervades our psyche so deeply, it becomes almost unthinkable to imagine yourself outside of some sort of loose familial construct. Whether it is actual shared genetics that binds you to your clique or some sort of synthesized ideaology, it is this little group of people standing behind us that makes us feel big enough to carry the weight of our chosen identities.
What if we refuse to carry these signs, these slogans promoting our little circles of life? What if a person says, "Fuck all this, I don't care what little group I'm supposed to belong to...I just feel like being human?"
Too bad. You will surely have an identity thrust upon you. Anyone who has attended elementary school could tell you this. That's right, our innocent, wide-eyed, promise-of-the future children are busy crafting and impaling each other with identity before they even know that boys and girls piss out of different organs.
So, let's be both humble and bold. Let's try to both shun the pomposity of a self-chosen, designed, glorified identity and the humiliation of a publicly affixed branding of ourselves. Let's take some ill-concieved stamp meant to lump us into a pile of undesirable human dross, and instead of bearing it like a burden, re-afix it as a sigil.
I. I am a sissy.
Now, there are lots of people who would argue whether I was born a sissy, whether the odd minutia of my childhood formed me into a sissy, or I chose in some intensely sexual cathartic moment to be a sissy.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is this. I am a part of a social group that is largely spurned mostly because it is mis-understood.
Let's flash back to the school-yard once more. Remember that foreign kid that joined up with your class part way through the year? Maybe ___
[ Necessary aside: The english language is devoid of any pronouns that are gender in-specific. While I tend not to get caught up the femenists crusade to make the masculine the non-default gender, I do find the lack of an appropriate pronoun decidedly imprecise in certain situations....like this one. So, voila, I'm creating my own neuter set of pronouns that I will use henceforth. Ve, vem, ves, ve's. These are my new pronouns. I have created them. So shall it be ]
Now. maybe ve wasn't actuall from a different country, or even a very different culture. Perhaps ve was just from some far away state that was a bit different. It doesn't matter, because to your small little eco-system of the classroom, ve was a foreigner. At recess, this new child was not accepted, and, as is most likely, was probably tormented for the most part because of ves actually minute differences. The distaste and seeming ire of the school children was not born from any carefully considered critique of the child's mannerisms. Neither was ve shunned because his state was "unnatural." God did not call all those snot-nosed kids to set hem apart as a judgement for ves sins. No, no. The child was hated by ves classmates only because they didn't understand vem. They looked at vem, felt confused, and, being that confusion is an unpleasent state in which to remain for very long, displaced their confusion with aggression. They gave vem a label. That label said, "Ve's not one of us." And then, digging deep into the misty red pit of human instinct, they circled and descended upon vem to eradicate vem from their habitat.
So it is with we sissies. It is so much easier to fix a label like a bright red target than to actually think about us. Aggression requires no reason, just cold, pre-scripted action. Resistance and isolation hail from an age before language. Here, within the flow of primal agression, anyone can find peace even in debauchery.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Whiskey - Part I
Like some sort of ethereal fire, it descends into my body, leaving behind it a trail of warmth and pain as delicate and brutal as an angry woman's toungue.
I first decided that I would like whiskey when I was 17. My mom and I went school shopping or something. We sat after dinner in the Marble Slab creamery and talked about life. We went over, of course, her wild young days when she conceived me with Ben Nichols and had to return to her family with shame and failure. She wanted me to understand that her life had been so empty when she tried to find bottom; she thought if only she could show me a glimpse of the carnage that she had found at the bottom of her despair perhaps I would avoid such a pitfall. So, she told me about the bad old days. She talked of the dank inside of dimly lit hick bars in Cheney Washington where she served rednecks and white-trash the answer to the limitless despair of their marginal lives. She told me about the viscousness of angry men, and she told me of her love for whiskey.
My mother likes to drink beer. She will even enjoy a nice glass of wine every now and then. But, for her, the key that turns the tumbler of her body is a cold, clean glass of straight up Bourbon.
She told me this when I was 17. She meant for me to understand that at the bottom of emptiness you can find solace in a bottomless bottle.
Instead, I noted that serious drinkers don't fuck around. They go straight for the straight whiskey.
I started drinking when I was 20. I had been brought up in a very fundamentalist sect of Baptists. In fact, we called ourselves Fundamental Independent Baptists. That meant that we didn't trust any sort of central organization to tell us how to translate and interpret the scriptures. Instead, each one of us was expected to mull over the Word of God daily and understand it as a personal and very literal directive for our lives.
I knew more details of Fundamentalist Christian dogma by the time I was 16 than most normal kids know about their favorite musical group. We took this shit very, very seriously. For three consecutive years at the Christian School that I attended, I won the award for memorizing scripture. Typically we would memorize somewhere between 3 and 5 chapters of the Bible over the course of a year. At the end, we would recite it for the principal and a teacher, and they would grade who recalled it the best. This was a k-12 3 room school. When I was 8, 9, and 10 years old I mastered the scripture better than every single kid. Even the high school kids couldn't touch me. This is the sort of serious we are talking about.
So, when it came to the "big" issues of morality, I did not waver much as a kid. I did not drink, try drugs, or have sex. Of course, like most young boys, I rebelled by using as harsh and colorful language as I could imagine. But when it came to the big three I obeyed.
I even went to a Christian University after graduating from High School. This was a bonafied, certified, real-deal engineering university. However, it was certainly centered on the Bible. Drinking, smoking, drugs, and sex were expellable offenses. So, for the first two years of my college experience I sewed my wild oats by pulling pranks on the school's security guards and rough housing with other guys in my all-male dorm.
Then, something happened. As I considered the world and compared it against the dogma that I had been living and breathing by since just a small child, I realized that the hard-line positions taken by my church really had no basis in the doctrine. The fetters were unlocked.
The school I attended was in Longview, TX. This was about 200 miles east of Dallas and very close to the Loisiana border. Most people from my area flew down to the college, but I had just bought a new car over the vacation with my summer's earnings, and I decided to drive down to school.
I have a dear friend, Holly Thorsen. At the time, she was attending Stanford University. Her life's path could not possibly deviate farther from my own! She was attending one of the most liberal schools in the nation, and she was pursuing a degree in the arts. Well, I decided that I wanted to go visit her and see what her college was like. Little did I realize that this journey would fundamentally change things for me. It was this 4 day trip half-way across the united states that would completely change my outlook on life, crumple my faith like a cheap aluminum can, and open my eyes to a wider and more colorful world than I could have ever imagined.
I first decided that I would like whiskey when I was 17. My mom and I went school shopping or something. We sat after dinner in the Marble Slab creamery and talked about life. We went over, of course, her wild young days when she conceived me with Ben Nichols and had to return to her family with shame and failure. She wanted me to understand that her life had been so empty when she tried to find bottom; she thought if only she could show me a glimpse of the carnage that she had found at the bottom of her despair perhaps I would avoid such a pitfall. So, she told me about the bad old days. She talked of the dank inside of dimly lit hick bars in Cheney Washington where she served rednecks and white-trash the answer to the limitless despair of their marginal lives. She told me about the viscousness of angry men, and she told me of her love for whiskey.
My mother likes to drink beer. She will even enjoy a nice glass of wine every now and then. But, for her, the key that turns the tumbler of her body is a cold, clean glass of straight up Bourbon.
She told me this when I was 17. She meant for me to understand that at the bottom of emptiness you can find solace in a bottomless bottle.
Instead, I noted that serious drinkers don't fuck around. They go straight for the straight whiskey.
I started drinking when I was 20. I had been brought up in a very fundamentalist sect of Baptists. In fact, we called ourselves Fundamental Independent Baptists. That meant that we didn't trust any sort of central organization to tell us how to translate and interpret the scriptures. Instead, each one of us was expected to mull over the Word of God daily and understand it as a personal and very literal directive for our lives.
I knew more details of Fundamentalist Christian dogma by the time I was 16 than most normal kids know about their favorite musical group. We took this shit very, very seriously. For three consecutive years at the Christian School that I attended, I won the award for memorizing scripture. Typically we would memorize somewhere between 3 and 5 chapters of the Bible over the course of a year. At the end, we would recite it for the principal and a teacher, and they would grade who recalled it the best. This was a k-12 3 room school. When I was 8, 9, and 10 years old I mastered the scripture better than every single kid. Even the high school kids couldn't touch me. This is the sort of serious we are talking about.
So, when it came to the "big" issues of morality, I did not waver much as a kid. I did not drink, try drugs, or have sex. Of course, like most young boys, I rebelled by using as harsh and colorful language as I could imagine. But when it came to the big three I obeyed.
I even went to a Christian University after graduating from High School. This was a bonafied, certified, real-deal engineering university. However, it was certainly centered on the Bible. Drinking, smoking, drugs, and sex were expellable offenses. So, for the first two years of my college experience I sewed my wild oats by pulling pranks on the school's security guards and rough housing with other guys in my all-male dorm.
Then, something happened. As I considered the world and compared it against the dogma that I had been living and breathing by since just a small child, I realized that the hard-line positions taken by my church really had no basis in the doctrine. The fetters were unlocked.
The school I attended was in Longview, TX. This was about 200 miles east of Dallas and very close to the Loisiana border. Most people from my area flew down to the college, but I had just bought a new car over the vacation with my summer's earnings, and I decided to drive down to school.
I have a dear friend, Holly Thorsen. At the time, she was attending Stanford University. Her life's path could not possibly deviate farther from my own! She was attending one of the most liberal schools in the nation, and she was pursuing a degree in the arts. Well, I decided that I wanted to go visit her and see what her college was like. Little did I realize that this journey would fundamentally change things for me. It was this 4 day trip half-way across the united states that would completely change my outlook on life, crumple my faith like a cheap aluminum can, and open my eyes to a wider and more colorful world than I could have ever imagined.
Fire
My love is strewn about the ground.
It is dried up, husks, debris of
something that was once tall and beautiful.
Now, it litters the space,
crunches underfoot, and seems to
dry your throat as you tread carefully over it.
I once thought this love
would build a great edifice.
I thought it would span the
spaces between my heart and my fear.
Now, it spans the space between our feet.
It is fallen, misshapen, and twisted by
the heat of our contention.
Well
Let that heat rise, then.
Let my fury emerge, let it break free.
Let my rage surge up, let it lick
the bones of my passion and the husk
of my heart.
Let it pour over the ground,
let it blast across this space.
There is no altar for my broken heart
to lie upon,
raised and open, exposed for you.
No, my heart is strewn over the ground.
Humiliated in it's undiginified exposure.
It feels the open air like a wound, and
there is nothing gained in it's decay.
So, let my fury rise and touch it.
My heart may have died, but it is no
involatile husk.
That fire kindled in my anger, watch it
rage over the remains of our love.
Watch it pick up the shreds of my passion,
watch it make the tinder of my heart dance,
surge and scream.
Let it crack the dried bones of what was,
let it boil over the ground.
Then, let it catch you by the ankles and
drag the flesh from your feet.
You, who would carelessly walk over this place,
this boneyard of my love.
You who would make a mockery of my
new emptiness, and my emaciated hope.
Let my fury stir my husks into a whirl wind.
Let it swallow you up, and render you
and your over-spiling heart,
your open soul, and your birmming passion
into dry ash.
At least, among the scattered ashes of our
love, we can lie, used up, together.
WORST POEM EVER
It is dried up, husks, debris of
something that was once tall and beautiful.
Now, it litters the space,
crunches underfoot, and seems to
dry your throat as you tread carefully over it.
I once thought this love
would build a great edifice.
I thought it would span the
spaces between my heart and my fear.
Now, it spans the space between our feet.
It is fallen, misshapen, and twisted by
the heat of our contention.
Well
Let that heat rise, then.
Let my fury emerge, let it break free.
Let my rage surge up, let it lick
the bones of my passion and the husk
of my heart.
Let it pour over the ground,
let it blast across this space.
There is no altar for my broken heart
to lie upon,
raised and open, exposed for you.
No, my heart is strewn over the ground.
Humiliated in it's undiginified exposure.
It feels the open air like a wound, and
there is nothing gained in it's decay.
So, let my fury rise and touch it.
My heart may have died, but it is no
involatile husk.
That fire kindled in my anger, watch it
rage over the remains of our love.
Watch it pick up the shreds of my passion,
watch it make the tinder of my heart dance,
surge and scream.
Let it crack the dried bones of what was,
let it boil over the ground.
Then, let it catch you by the ankles and
drag the flesh from your feet.
You, who would carelessly walk over this place,
this boneyard of my love.
You who would make a mockery of my
new emptiness, and my emaciated hope.
Let my fury stir my husks into a whirl wind.
Let it swallow you up, and render you
and your over-spiling heart,
your open soul, and your birmming passion
into dry ash.
At least, among the scattered ashes of our
love, we can lie, used up, together.
WORST POEM EVER
Touch
The night moves in swiftly. Without pausing or contemplating, she descends upon them, her children. Deliberate as a wolf upon its kill, she seizes the cities of men and pours herself upon them. They are her children, for the pretentious beasts rose out of the shadows to claim fire and iron as the Sigil of their name. Though they deny her now, none can escape her. She takes them all, and in the moments of their finest calm, when they have ceased to struggle against her, she wraps them in her cloak and holds them against her breast.
She loves us. Though we burn her flesh with our beacons of the day. Though we worship the puny Sun and his cowardly silver servant. Though we pray against her. Though we quake in fear before her. Though we would push her back with all the magic and all the secrets of the false light in all our books. Though we would banish her from our homes. Still, she fills our lives.
Even the sun must rest.
I have always felt the night moving over me. The terror I felt in bed each night with covers pulled tightly about my neck, their edges clamped between my sides and the bed, it was always mixed with a certain form of ecstasy. Perhaps I love the night because I know that one day she will drive the last spark of light out of me and take me back into her midnight womb. I am her child. All my days worshiping the God of the light could not quench that lust for darkness from the center of my heart. All my oaths, all my rage, all my tears, all my fervor, it could not lift her finger that has traced circles upon my soul since the day that she surrendered me to the world of the evening.
What it has taken me years to understand, I have always known. There is no evil in the night. Evil is a fable concocted by men who fear death above all things. Sin was a tale devised to make all men fear the night as the cowards do. In the palm of the evening there is no righteousness and there is no wickedness. In the darkness, all things may only be as they are. There are no games to play, no shadows, no tricks of the light. No, in the darkness, things are only as they are, and you know this because the touch of your fingers cannot be deceived.
For eons of time, we have trusted our primal senses. First, touch. We knew the edge between our bodies and the darkness first when we were but worms writhing in the night. Even then, we used this, the testament of truth, the tactile judge. We knew how things were because we felt them against our very bodies. No lies could pass beneath this, the most basic of our instruments. No, this, the skin, the flesh, the touch, it requires us to approach all things, to know them with our very matter before we can pass judgment. And, in the touch, there is no lie. There only is that which is. Lies are a folly to the fingers.
Touch a liar, and watch him squirm. Despite the greatest cunning of our cerebral cortex, we all know. Beneath a feeling hand, lies are brushed away like a snowy feather. Somewhere, beneath the coils of our new brilliance, there is a little piece of that first worm that knows truth is known beneath an outstretched finger. Here, in our first and most carnal meeting with the world, we all know all there is to be known. This power, the finger that caresses the truth, even the very gods fear it. Why else would our father the serpent tell our mother to first touch the fruit. The wiliest tricks of YWEH could not persist beneath the Woman's finger.
She loves us. Though we burn her flesh with our beacons of the day. Though we worship the puny Sun and his cowardly silver servant. Though we pray against her. Though we quake in fear before her. Though we would push her back with all the magic and all the secrets of the false light in all our books. Though we would banish her from our homes. Still, she fills our lives.
Even the sun must rest.
I have always felt the night moving over me. The terror I felt in bed each night with covers pulled tightly about my neck, their edges clamped between my sides and the bed, it was always mixed with a certain form of ecstasy. Perhaps I love the night because I know that one day she will drive the last spark of light out of me and take me back into her midnight womb. I am her child. All my days worshiping the God of the light could not quench that lust for darkness from the center of my heart. All my oaths, all my rage, all my tears, all my fervor, it could not lift her finger that has traced circles upon my soul since the day that she surrendered me to the world of the evening.
What it has taken me years to understand, I have always known. There is no evil in the night. Evil is a fable concocted by men who fear death above all things. Sin was a tale devised to make all men fear the night as the cowards do. In the palm of the evening there is no righteousness and there is no wickedness. In the darkness, all things may only be as they are. There are no games to play, no shadows, no tricks of the light. No, in the darkness, things are only as they are, and you know this because the touch of your fingers cannot be deceived.
For eons of time, we have trusted our primal senses. First, touch. We knew the edge between our bodies and the darkness first when we were but worms writhing in the night. Even then, we used this, the testament of truth, the tactile judge. We knew how things were because we felt them against our very bodies. No lies could pass beneath this, the most basic of our instruments. No, this, the skin, the flesh, the touch, it requires us to approach all things, to know them with our very matter before we can pass judgment. And, in the touch, there is no lie. There only is that which is. Lies are a folly to the fingers.
Touch a liar, and watch him squirm. Despite the greatest cunning of our cerebral cortex, we all know. Beneath a feeling hand, lies are brushed away like a snowy feather. Somewhere, beneath the coils of our new brilliance, there is a little piece of that first worm that knows truth is known beneath an outstretched finger. Here, in our first and most carnal meeting with the world, we all know all there is to be known. This power, the finger that caresses the truth, even the very gods fear it. Why else would our father the serpent tell our mother to first touch the fruit. The wiliest tricks of YWEH could not persist beneath the Woman's finger.
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