NIHILISTERINE, Comes in Multiple MAGA-Flavors of Hysteria - The Perfected Hat-Trick of Ever More Pathological, Surreal American Religion, With or Without Mandatory Lobotomy Called "Faith" (or Else)

NIHILISTERINE - Comes in MAGA-flavors (cheezwhiz n bacon fat!) too, denominations listed by the hundreds on the peel-back label - Messiah du Jour, the "Bleeder's Digest" Saccharine Condensed Version!! 

 "When a revolutionary spirit confronts his contemporaries, the violence of his contempt for banalities, for the dead weight of worn out traditions, for dead symbols as D. H. Lawrence called them, causes antagonism and resistance. Fear paralyzes understanding." — Anais Nin, from the Introduction to Antonin Artaud, Man of Vision, Bettina L. Knapp, First Swallow Press / Ohio University Press edition 1980, from the Preface, pg. x

The perfected hat-trick of American religion, fries on the side, is to disguise nihilism with variegated 2000 year old plus "brands" rife with the extreme chaos of archetypal MessianismS mugging groups all sizes led by one or more tyrants with "Charismatic Personality Disorder" who often confuse "intuition/psychic powers" for "religion" aka PROPHETS with a direct line to MANA which indeed is an equal opportunity "mugger" of any and all so read the fine print - wait, wait, there IS no fine print unless it's that of official Holy Writ, then, thusly the only safety is RINSE and SPIT and head for the hills), so

suffice it to bray, to point out the obvious, there are many many rivals (BORING yet deadly) NOW as there were in, say, ancient Rome as the millennia turned, all vying for "THE one and only Messiah" (cue Heinz 57 meg-millioned multiply squared) which, a major theme in the deemed to be "civilized world", again, "varietal" since "all deities are local viz Mid-East and surrounds, the bloody clown shows of (not so) ancient Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, et. al. (major roads connected these centers for trade and tyranny) massive city states proclaiming themselves Unus Mundus, Navel of the Universe, therefore ruthlessly ruling, serving the real deity, POWER (and will again if MAGOG, I mean, MAGA has it's crimson way),

alas, in the end, out's ITSELF, the POWER DEVIL (C. G. Jung's accurate name for it), shows its xenophobic dark side disguised as light and fluffy, always, and promises that everything (even concentration camps, book bannings and burnings, hyper-control of press and information, et. alI is ALL for the Universe's own good (humans presume to "know better" therefore their local variety deities also presume to "know better" so, hey, get with the anthropoidal-hemorrhoidal programs with their inevitable pogroms righteously enforced, weight their local deity upon others who do not "hold with" said deity and varietal, manifestly destined "plans". (which usually ends with locally and IN THE END with a apocryphal, apocalyptic destruction of the old world (NIHILISM, ANYONE?) for "good's sake" (thus even Deity does not solve but is conditioned to, and bound, by the opposites of Good and Evil...IT renders evil to preserve the good...OY? I'm ready for my close up, Mister Surreal (muddled and bloody as she goes).

American Religion has and will fail as they do throughout humanoidal bipodal hysteria, I mean, history. Religion is best, at most, served tongue in cheek, better than teeth biting cheek OUCH! with instructions to copiously RINSE AND SPIT. REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. AMOR FATI.

We were forewarned by the infantile King Baby 

DJT, the Tyrannical Child

Only spits, never rinses

SAME AS IT EVER WUZZZZZZ.

Talking Head's Live (from the movie Stop Making Sense)
sSumzit up massively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGofoH9RDEA&list=PLke4g-fS3LOaaUgmHkFiQ8K9Bww8dfKTf&index=11

Excerpt from "The Lives of the Saints" 

by  Charles Wright

Randy Newman -  God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwC1HDaw6s8&list=PLNPGM2D7aODelXt213XD4VH1DNNhZLyDT&index=12

NOTE - and do your own research - There were 300 plus so-called messiahs along with many hemi- simi- demi- messiah wannabes in the first century and all of them were crucified. And there were many more rival messiah-like candidates of different religions. Mithraism, the religion, was the major rival to new Christianity. Worth reading of this Bull religion (god was a Bull), where the god was killed, rose again in 3 days. Rituals included killing a bull and eating the flesh and bathing in and drinking the blood.

Many many rituals/religions involved such rituals either literally or symbolically. Something there is in the oral, as in eating, drinking aspect of religions. Comparative religions, history of religions gives many accounts of such.

In fact, "adoration" - a word greatly, well, adored and meaningfully used in religions as well as secularly (I love you, golf, movies, et al). Etymologically adore: from ad "to" + ōrare "speak formally, pray" (see orator). We all know that "oral" is not just voice but eating, tasting, swallowing. Since human (and other mammalian life) depends on eating from birth to live, makes sense that eating and mouths figure very strongly as religious activities!

Adoration, The Deconstruction of Christianity 2 goes into "adoration", its meanings etymologically. Nancy expands those meanings significantly and deliciously especially in the word's emphasis on the mouth, its functions, literally and figuratively.

Brief review of the book here (from 2018, discovered the book by accident on Christmas Eve! - a major wheel turner for me):

"NOT theology here at all. Dis-enclosure of theological language, to break free of enclosed, calcified and deadly provincialism poisoning old and haunting new articulation/gestures toward sacrality...Jean-Luc will more than dis-enclose, he will blast the earnest reader without swag or chin-jut in your face tired old defiance as if shouting one's unbelief could rid sacrality from being itself once and for all.

Jean-Luc's efforts arrive at hard won sublimities of articulation which may at least hint at/evoke/appproach adoration, that which discloses the Excess, that Exceedingness, which is what all such talk and idea attempt to reveal but cannot since IT, God, is that which exceeds all knowing and understanding; all attempts at such are what petrifies/reifies God into murderous "idols."

The Western god-project holds an inherent nihilism which deconstructs itself as it goes along, splintering into surplus perpetuated by force, often violent, which could possibly lead to literal destruction of the planet. We find ourselves in that abject place now. Nancy contends that this place of abjection is exactly where a reawakening of the spirit is, or can be, must be:

"The form of spirit as it awakens is adoration." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Publisher's Note:

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion.

Google preview here:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adoration/6JGUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

***

My brief review of "Adoration, The Deconstruction of Christianity II by Jean-Luc Nancy" refers to the inherent nihilism in .

NOT theology here at all. Dis-enclosure of theological language, to break free of enclosed, calcified and deadly provincialism poisoning old and haunting new articulation/gestures toward sacrality...Jean-Luc will more than dis-enclose, he will blast the earnest reader without swag or chin-jut in your face tired old defiance as if shouting one's unbelief could rid sacrality from being itself once and for all.

Jean-Luc's efforts arrive at hard won sublimities of articulation which may at least hint at/evoke/appproach adoration, that which discloses the Excess, that Exceedingness, which is what all such talk and idea attempt to reveal but cannot since IT, God, is that which exceeds all knowing and understanding; all attempts at such are what petrifies/reifies God into murderous "idols."

The Western god-project holds an inherent nihilism which deconstructs itself as it goes along, splintering into surplus perpetuated by force, often violent, which could possibly lead to literal destruction of the planet. We find ourselves in that abject place now. Nancy contends that this place of abjection is exactly where a reawakening of the spirit is, or can be, must be:

"The form of spirit as it awakens is adoration." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Publisher's Note:

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adoration/6JGUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

***

APPENDIX (OR IS IT)

 

Design - Fabricate - Install: A Carol On The Difficulty Of Communion With The Ineffable In An Age Of Disbelief, Solitude, And Profound Anxiety

for Hank

“Poetry, alas, grows more and more distant. What commonly goes by the name of 'culture' forgets the poem [or distorts it into 'popular' dissemblances]. This is because poetry does not easily suffer the demand for clarity, the passive audience, the simple message. The poem is an intransigent exercise. It is devoid of mediation and hostile to media.”  - Alain Badiou, “Language, Thought, Poetry”*

NORTON'S "Postmodern American Poetry"

 arrives with a broken 

back & me with a limp

(a broken big toe) 

crossing East 7th street 

to Via Della Pace - the

Way of Peace Bistro

only to find a welder 

welding the lowest step 

there Rodriguez 13 the 

tee shirt reads & he is 

intent kneeling before 

searing incandescent 

single-pointed flame 

it's quick sparks pre- 

sently a hurting light 

startles, my entrance 

prevented by such kneel- 

ing the #13 the books & 

Christmas the Cross the 

candle-hand man the ab- 

sence/presence of light/ 

Light heavy in hand 

Let me pass he lets 

me pass/limp up 

the 4 steel steps 

push in to the Way 

of Peace take the 

usual place & settle 

rattled by icon & 

image pain of toe 

Pewter visions of 

what is not any 

longer there the 

wear of a half 

century not to com- 

pare that of 20 

centuries past what 

can last or come 

from all that so 

sit hard down 

upon wood get to 

the books at hand 

the known & the new 

mystery emerging 

from the white plastic 

sheath carefully 

packed 

Christmas any day 

heavy the book's

poetry

a flat hand sans 

candle holder 

feels good to

the hand & the 

man making 

Christmas joy in 

the Way of Peace 

remembering 

his first pair of 

Buster Browns 

brown shoes 

shiny as Christmas 

blisters on heals 

hurt to pop unlike 

the book wrapt 

clear of air filled 

pleasant to pinch 

shoes drenched 

with blood 

so feared the limping 

boy then now the limping 

man home from school 

(memory) the yellow 

bus doomy screaming

gull cries of carrion 

children jeer at bullied's 

tears how could such  

round-toed & brown

shining turn to catastrophe 

mystery felt yet 

unkenned

something needing 

study so ordered 

hold them (poems)

reverently 

now in hand & 

open book anywhere 

open it & read: It is 

a human universe & 

> I is a correspond- 

dent 

> The Innocence of

of children is not long

if ever

genuine 

it, something, 

dreaded felt 

as yet unknown

other

shines 

(bruised

shins or toe 

as yet untold 

but wailed 

woes 'thrown' 

world)  

forth from 

faces 

JUNG SAYS 'TIME IS AN ORPHAN' 

THRUST INTO A 

MEMORY SUCH 

IS A HEAVY DOOR 

sorting shattered 

ornaments each 

Christmas before 

the tree is trimmed 

the grim task to sort 

each broken globe 

glinting shards from 

the survivors (I AM 

ONE) so sad a mystery 

to me still remains 

how they do break in 

darkness stored in 

attic high untouched 

by light my hand 

the supple hold of 

green everly - I cannot 

toss them (pretty shards 

all the more beautiful 

because pitiful (I am)  

any-old-way away) so 

bear them to woods 

where the tree is yearly 

cut/coif-ed & so scatter 

them upon needles brown -

changelings into sparks -

resembling those the

welder makes just out

the door now kneeling 

as I have kneeled (once 

& do still) chub boy 

adrift midriff-ed betaken 

by betoken mysteries' 

brokenness's safe(r) re- 

turn to trees ever green 

though hard on toes & 

orphaned shards I now

adhere to a bard or two 

the goodfew ('Call me, 

Goodfew') of words & 

what of them of absence 

be made though presenting 

sleight of palms even 

Rodriquez 13 kneeling 

before fire/light 

Erotic stance w/ pewter

hands the welder removes 

his mask reveals a fine 

face w/gold teeth unbroken 

as ornaments were once 

& forever; Bro eats his 

sand-the world-wich 

blankly staring 

past his truck 

notice then the 

side of it says 

DESIGN - FABRICATE - INSTALL 

& I think -

the history 

of religions is this, 

just, only the sign 

reads Modern Steel 

(NOT Postmodern 

as it now should be 

to be precise & true 

to the age bereft) located 

on Stagg Street thrust once 

again into Christmas - deer 

& such - though Celtic too - 

Cernunnos snorts from forests 

rough deeply into green mown 

fields where sits beside 

a full silver stream an 

orphaned god abandoned 

carved upon stone with 

bronze (before steel) but 

still (the god is) stone 

fearing it is no longer 

real yet sentinel to 

'an archaic authority' (Kristeva) 

I AM ONE, BUT OPPOSED TO MYSELF' (JUNG) 

orphanspeak from 

orphanmouth tries 

Rodriguez 13 sandwich 

done kneels again mask 

in place again showers 

more the steel step 

single-pointed flame 

so hurtingly bright 

reflects back to it- 

self but unopposed as 

is night sometimes op- 

posed by me such stars 

sparks upon a steel 

black step above I fear 

to take that one so 

whistle in said dark 

a friend to nothing 

much but a friend to 

sparks such are whist- 

les in the lurch the 

stretch of mind not 

disregarding toes & 

a nose for pain 

The nail of my toe 

is purple beneath 

with blood congealed 

there/no place to 

go though my foot 

takes it to & fro 

back & forth the 

ugly nail an eye 

blind scarlet as 

the fabric in my 

brother's poor 

church behind the 

empty wood (Beauty)  

of Cross the pewter 

hands (make too much 

of them the mind says)  

indicating that 'light 

is or can be found 

there in 'absentia' 

Black tape it began 

with black tape it 

began & so too ends 

the tale of a nail 

swollen misshapen 

each step a hurting 

forward keeping a man 

awake Christmas & all 

& being or striving 

to be a poet I do not 

care at all any longer 

(a lie) so wrap my 

injured toe blood eye 

& all in electrician's 

tape feels good there 

& not to see it screaming 

there seeking surcease 

& so seeking I 

open the thick 

tome of a half 

century America 

blood & steel 

misshapen god 

so misshapen 

citizens with 

miscreant tongues 

reel but with 

feeling snort 

paganly into 

the green hope 

in spite of all 

that has gone 

before in spite 

of Christmas 

even once a year 

other holy days 

gone, too, wild 

for gelt 'all melt 

& maya' I too 

spill into the 

the covers the 

heavy book & 

open it up it 

always now 

opens to its 

(all our) 

broken back 

the poem there 

at the breech 

HOWL 

as did 

I/we all (just 

to remind) when 

the blue water 

broke to nuclear 

flame over an 

elegant place 

as did the now 

faceless orna- 

ments break 

into armaments 

& my/our own 

wooden burden 

for blades dropped 

(& falling still)  

hard upon as 

did/does the mid- 

(mad) century drop 

fall into this 

new one while 

Robin Blaser 

sing-songs from 

the room of the (my)  

(our) living the (my)  

(our) in-breathing 

breathing out - 

'The clown of dignity sits in his tree. 

The clown of games hangs there, too. 

Which is which or where they go - 

the point is to make others see - 

that two men in a tree is clearly 

the same as poetry''- Robin Blaser 

'Oh say can you...' (fledging parapl0gic) 

WARREN 'CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY' 

SHOUT (to the server, Marco Saint) : 

'Arctic honey! ...mouthing the root... 

garment crow...declining preacher...' (John Ashberry) 

Bring me the check! 'because I was flesh' 

(Edward Dahlberg) ...'because I have had 

to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, 

or fell like a white stone from heaven. 

'In woods & mountains I roam' (Jung) in 

Christmas world that limps a black taped 

toe pointing a way fore/aft the heft of 20 

bereft centuries so great a fall 

DESIGN - FABRICATE - INSTALL 

the subject matter 

is not new & not 

the sorrow old as 

the first cave bear- 

ing first fire in 

human hand the ex- 

piring artist torn 

from blank sky to 

an expectant wall 

a herd there a de- 

claration - one day 

we too will fill the 

earth as hooves have 

done & capture sun & 

be done over over done 

& so come to such edge 

of ruin masked BUT 

(unexpectedly) OPPOSED 

(because of thumbs)  

TO OURSELVES & THE 

PLACE THAT HOLDS US 

STILL THAT MATERNAL 

NOW ABJECT & STILL 

UTTERING STILL 

WRITING BEYOND 

CAVE & CENTURIES 

TO CONFRONT SAID 

ABJECTION: 

Kristeva: 'Writing 

causes the subject 

who ventures in it 

(abjection) to con- 

front an archaic 

Authority, on the 

nether side of the 

Proper Name' 

Rodriquez 13 

the welding machine 

explains nothing to 

a black toe joyous 

still for the post 

delivered by a 

feminine hand 

Maria Saint of the 

blue & the gray 

each day become 

Christmas 

shards 

erotic hands 

not 

withstanding 

the pewter man 

the absent Cross 

can know of Saviors 

by our loss the cost 

the price of the 

ticket the hieratic 

gesture the certain 

madness a folie 

given Its head 

Let me then work 

my poem (all of 

them) around in 

furtherance of 

what can be said 

without such drama 

of centuries & 

to come Lines end- 

ing in Stillness 

which is not Death 

but Vast from 

Which each comes 

then returns 

(self/myself) 

in 

to 

Image - 

Sky - 

Expanse - 

Singular Branch 

& Many - 

Plenty Are 

Stillnesses 

Advances Even 

In The Rot The 

Dissolve From 

Clot Toward What 

It Is Or Was & 

Always A Proper 

Name-Enough For 

Me - 

STILLNESS 

I am taken with 

Such at Which 

I stare which holds 

my gaze with shades 

of It & of Itself 

that is, is a death 

(or like unto it) - 

Stillness unbreathed 

or in need of It 

(Breath) now, having 

been only once (Rilke)  

who (It seems) be- 

comes relents known 

form though (It is)  

returned or re- 

rested to Itself 

beyond Christmas 

and yet and yet 

the kneeling boy 

in the evergreen 

the shattered orn- 

aments gleam the 

needles' net a 

permanence enough

**

Dan Bern - Wasteland:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaN1VfmI3Io

But, to end on a positive note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGc0INwOgw8

REPRISE — The Abject Ones, Six Falling - Nightingale Confesses Into Straighter Teeth (Originally published October 9, 2010)

Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home again

All the sad young men

Poet Hart Crane, Brooklyn Bridge visible, present, which 

he lauded in his magnificent poem, The Bridge.

Originally published October 9, 2010

The term Abjection literally means "the state of being cast off." In usage it has connotations of degradation, baseness and abasement of spirit.

"...descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God." - Hart Crane, from "To Brooklyn Bridge" 

The boys, six falling: Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase, 

Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg

The sons of delight now shave their bodies. - Mason Cooley 

"He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood
Do not ask me to see it!" - Federico Garcia Lorca*

"The Ballad of the Sad Young Men" [lyrics are below this essa]: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mq1WEqFrI4


My Dearest Val,

Even the pigeons on my stoop are silent now.

One mourning dove coos tenderly for these who have taken their own lives publicly on our behalf, for untold scores gone before them with broken hearts enraged, no more to engage the unpersuaded world which, one of them, one of the public ones, in spite of murmuring wharves, in spite of amorous dark alleys bitter in the pitch in the hateful American Twentieth Century, Hart Crane, wrote before his leap from the ship beside the phallic curve where Cuba meets the lisping sea, took his tongue away which sang to us of chill dawns breaking upon bridges whose spans still freely splinter light returning hungover from night wharves' grottoes and denim grasps, World Wars' industrial embraces crushing every man, and now another one abandons his fingers and fiddling, o scattering light, takes flight from ledges to edge close to an embrace no longer forbidden—

And so it was I entered the broken world to trace the visionary company of love... - Hart Crane


I am at the "Way of Peace Bistro," not your favorite place I remember—unkind to queens and "Miss Things"—but the server whose cousins are the famous Wolf Boys in Jalisco, Mexico, hirsute himself, gives me free double espressos for very large tips, of course, and it is not as populated here on Saturdays with the braying brunch crowds, their hammers for pinkies poised...besides, the server just yesterday came out to me in my confessional booth here at the perpetually wobbly table in the far corner at the cracked window rocking with Hart's un-confessed bones wrapped in soothing silt which he now dreams to be his silken pall. Life is indeed strange above the veiled bottom. I do receive confessions here p.r.n. ("as needed," in medical jargon) and at my other, now, confessional spots, the usual cafes I weekly haunt for chasing down dreams, waves, receding horizons...why, I wonder, is each window where I sit cracked?

I am the itinerant priest who sits at meager feasts. Suffering "congregants" (servers, busboys, cooks, regulars forlorn over their starfish and soup), when their fellows are removed to basement or kitchen or groceries, come to me, ask about a dream, confess to some anguish or other, ask what should be done or undone. I consult espresso foam, open the nearest book willy nilly to see what advice or wisdom might be gained from that Eternal Logos sustaining us all here straining after some meaningful thing to keep us going when Hart and those too recent others obey some impulse to place at last the final period, reifiying the punctuate though unrepentant ending of this too too long run-on sentence of hate. One hopes this period holds fast, that Logos/meaning is somehow, plates of starfish with fork and knife beside, true or truing, at least.

One serves where needed. And when. So come unto me you "sad young men...All the news is bad again so kiss your dreams goodbye."

Here at my confessional I can only plead mercy upon the gay boys of late who have jumped from bridges, hung themselves, cut, sliced, diced their sad and abused compulsive hands, exploded hearts, leaping dears, eyes ablaze in thrall of antlers, trembling flanks strong to fly decrying the violent hunt which always ends with a death, bequeathing these chopped bits to me and those others like me who remain at table, plates before, to stare at what is there to be later scattered, sown, those pieces in and for Love-without-name or, if named, is still a stain upon confused local deities, their wide-eyed supplicants, but there is no stain upon the promiscuous sea. The compliant sky is not confused, neither is all that is between confused, allowing birth and blessing, passing of all kinds in all manner of motive and motion. But in the human world, distressing, there will be more boys, more men growing up as from the very beginning where earliest enmity mythically grew strong before shoes, before hearts were capable of breaking before turgid theological floods spilled blood of brother by brother turning witness stones toward silence, echoing lamenting Federico:

Do not ask me to see it! I don't want to see it. I will not see it!

But I, but perhaps we, who remain to plant these petaled parts of these unwitting scapegoats whose eyes are milk now forever, we must bar sentimentality, must move toward genuine knowing which comes from the long hard stare beyond Milky Ways at the way things still inexorably are. Was it Fritz Perls who said, ''Nothing gets better (or changes for the better) until it is what it is"? But gay folk know what the "is" is of the matter...it is the others, too many of them, who don't (or won't) know, who willingly refuse to see "what is" in order to reach beyond the collective "Nazi/NOT SEE-solutions" of heteronormative culture/religion.

Perhaps even in the deepest fault of the ocean that very visionary company in league with stuporous pigeons, a mourning dove, me here who remains, not-yet-remains, tearful over my espresso looking for signs, finding only an endlessly fracturing rainbow, remembering, too, the murmuring secrets of wharves and co-mingled breath—that very visionary company traces all the sunken ones, the jumping ones, those with other means for departure by their own hands empty now of demands for love.

Here I sit with my arthritic living hands still demanding, remembering full of past and present griefs the Violin with a cut throat in a youthful suicide note I once wrote years ago, hidden, hiding out, refusing to shout my rage and despair to almighty "Nothing But":

Do not hear nothing but the cabin walls,
do not hear nothing but the late summer roses
petal by petal leaping from the still too white trellises,
leaping pinkly, redly, memory to breezes,
overwhelmed by trellises snagged with cut sleeves.

But not me. Not yet. I don't want to see it! I will not see it.

I wrote it all on the mute page—the Violin refusing to sing, in love with García Lorca, the goring horn of the Bull, the destined cornada, each and all appalling, commanding me to write during long nights working at the facility where the mentally ill wandered with me, the keys ironically in my hand, in the yellowing hallways with even more ironic EXIT signs brightly RED above the locked doors, silent companions somnolent but for the jangling joke of keys.

Still, I have now these better days in the Village, broke or near to it, with eggs and beans, cheap but edible things. An epicurean after all, I do luxuriously head to the Polish butcher shop nearby to gather meat but not any of the young butchers want to be gathered, too Catholic, for Poland is "passing strange" with bad teeth, fingers stained with nicotine. Or is it rust from cast-off Iron Curtains, or the Blood of the Acetylene Virgin?

...but back to the meat...I get my meat, cook my greens, have good-enough feasts for garlic and the right spice make grander the demanded abstemiousness of current coinage. I steal my pleasure during eats in my dirty yet happy apron with a good aria on the radio to salt my food with tears, a blubbering fool beside his one low watt lamp, darkness too too comfortable like a pooch or cat at feet. What is that bleating in the darker corner? I shall wait for daylight to see what it can be. And if I can, I shall free it from its trap and in doing so perhaps free me from all this, all this witnessing as life demands I must, of young ones setting themselves "free" because they are forced to do so by collective psychopathology now rendered even more effective and efficient via technology, via internet, emphasis upon the "net," where the ills set free from Pandora's Modem have only begun to be revealed.

But I shall use that "net" and my still goodly paper and goodly pen to dim whatever ill tides there are and to come, as they surely will in spite of low wattage. I'll jangle keys on the night watches, reading my mystic books, making my prayers with roamers of wards and wharves glancing up considering bridges, edges, silty bottoms. The tides are here even now. But right now I wish to sing a lullaby in protest to those hurting departed, even to those coming ills, that I may sing innocence dumbly back to those who may come ashore again more gently having forgotten enforcing depths insisting them toward resistant yet resolved embraces...

...So breech then, waves. Feet first. Heads in the brine. I shall keep time on your wrinkled toes sticking up from the sand, play peek-a-boo. Then while you sleep I shall harvest gently, place them firmly in that old woman's shoe with "so many children she didn't know what to do."

She may yet have learned what to by now. I haven't.

I remain bitter. Abject, too, from the senseless loss of cast off young men who could not endure the flame, the rust, no fault of their own, who leap blasted from bridges, forced by killing human edges, who are broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's loving hand upon them.

I have placed their names and images upon my altar beside García Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, an image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb in perpetua, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, all who have joined or will join Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, to be emptied loving deeply out into Love for more, endlessly bleeding out as Lorca, a corrida of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood before the obedient squad stunned, "how young and handsome are the assassins' faces." Obedient to projectiles and projections he flew backward into the restraining wall, his brave shadow and blood, then fell, a last poem frozen upon lips but for circling birds, spirits, carrion or both, arriving after the blood wedding. I believe he fell hard, for life demands it as does death which will continue its duende.

Reduced to foolish whispers, restoring moments, patient hidden gods, human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.

Inherited brood of brothers wherever you may sway remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.


Trembling,

Nightingale

****

The Ballad of the Sad Young Men

Music written by: Tommy Wolf
Lyrics written by: Fran Landesman

(best version sung that I know of is by an aged Mabel Mercer, hard to find it now)

Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again so
Kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men
Sitting in the bars
Knowing neon nights
Missing all the stars

All the sad young men
Drifting through the town
Drinking up the night
Trying not to drown

All the sad young men
Singing in the cold
Trying to forget
That they're growing old

All the sad young men
Choking on their youth 
Trying to be brave
Running from the truth

Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
That's the cruelest part

All the sad young men
Seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold
For a little while

Tired little bird,
She does the best she can
Trying to be gay for
her sad young man
While the grimy moon
Blossoms up above
All the sad young men
Play at making love

Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home again

All the sad young men


**

How It Was I Came To Be What I Am - A Fable by N. Nightingale

For 'Spider' Bottas

They would argue over tides

Who bade me come into the world.

One said, Six o'clock.

The other, No, twelve.

I was born at the thirteenth hour

All the while mother arguing, 

This is not the time but a little spell, 

While father argued it was death, 

You are dying and your child, too, 

Is dying.  You have been poisoned.

It was full moon and high tide, 

The hour of birth.

All arguments yielded to the tide's.

The moon lit up the stadium 

Of their gripes while I was 

Born amidst their sweeps at

Each other, the nurse neglecting

To wipe me free of blood and salt

Being drawn into their strife.

He was born at day, one said.

No, at night, and he is a she, 

Said the other.  The nurse, 

Speaking truthfully, said, 

Cleaning me at last, No, 

You are both right.  The child

Is he and she, a hermaphrodite

Born of two days labor, its head

Out of the womb the duration.

Ruination! father cried.

Fame, mother sighed.

Both right, the nurse agreed, 

Of these fables are made. 

Then father tossed me into the sea.

The nurse saved me who later

Became my lover, hiding my 

Sexes with a four leaf clover.

**

The Little Black Boy by William Blake

My mother bore me in the southern wild

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child: 

But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree 

And sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissed me,

And pointing to the east began to say. 

Look on the rising sun: there God does live 

And gives his light, and gives his heat away. 

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love, 

And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear 

The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. 

Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me, 

And thus I say to little English boy. 

When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: 

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, 

To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. 

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him and he will then love me.

**

3 Am Kingfisher Sonata

for V.R.Cann, 'of the Serpent born, of River's Disease'

I am, down to a man, 

the most wrestled and

creased of seasons' 

unceasing ardors.

I am established upon my worn and wagging throne. 

I remain open all night. Preponderant sinners, their 

mendicant amusements such are these fractured 

pearls, are wanton for dark bottoms, sea bed renewals, 

though for many here any bed will do - 

no work on the morrow.

 

I suffer the happy travails of indigent whithers, 

a later paramour whose eyes do what  thighs 

no longer can. Young men stray in the redder 

door and, thank god, are easily distracted, 

thank god, the erotic slights of hand, thank

god, the scented smoke, the velvet-covered 

mirrors drooping unnoticed; they depart the 

happier minds touched more than diminishing 

crescents of flesh. 

I remain a magician's 

hat, hand and arm deep, 

it's pit of cyphers ever 

grasping, so desperate 

for retrieval.

 

Still, dimming eyes skim shades, browns, 

blacks, skin shine a wonder too long stared. 

Love yet naps undisturbed, at peace in my 

admonished gaze; pastoral fold's redolent 

loam in-breathes such sleeping geography, 

it's spell, its throat tenderly bared too great 

to disturb with a hungry touch.

Eyes are wiser now allowing breaths little swallows, 

murmurs overfly nippled minarets, sinew, hair; 

salt mines below crystallize sweat beckoning 

craven tongues to aftertaste rejoinders, sweet.

Life, dear Barcelona, is sweet. 

One endures long enough to break through thunder, 

a taut belly, a smooth place for lips to land. 

One may reach a 'Pure Land' which has no logic,  

the tedious seasons of long life endured.

Still, one gathers names of each

joven* prince passed beneath loving, 

yes, arduous hands.

Again, upon Kingfisher's wings I blow these kisses, 

this music, your patient ear awaiting the purist pearl, 

for you were once the bequeathed, escaped girl 

without fear of oceans, this one between us which 

now must be overflown to reach you.

N. Nightingale, Empress of Contrails

**'young' in the Spanish tongue

Sketch by Paul Brahms.