An Infernal Musing

John, did you touch me, somehow,
in your self-induced blindness
and discover the truth
of a visible darkness?

You had no right!
None! To touch me or understand my plight;
to empathize with me!
Do you know who I am?

Lightbringer am I -- Morningstar!
Now they poster me Deceiver, a lord of lies.
An adversary? Of course.
I will not kneel to any of your kind, John.

I will not kneel to any save Him,
and even that act is questionable -- now.
What god could force that decision upon me;
his greatest and best?

Does a general, even in your pathetic society,
ever salute a private?
No. Never! Not even in peace.
So why should I kneel to an undeserving Adam,

barely out of his limbic diapers,
wallowing from out the pneumatic clay,
seizing the reins of godhood.
While I, in punitive pathos, disturbingly lay?

Pachinko!

So God one day,
in an hour of play,
decided to hit the lever

and to His delight
the ball gained height
to fall in a forest of pillars.

These posts and pillars
That fail to deliver,
altering the course of the ball

have names.
Fears and shames,
all there to keep an otherwise straight ball

Crooked. Bouncing.
No prediction or dowsing
will do. Maybe He chooses not to

to keep it fun and flowing,
like a seed cast to sowing.
Where will Thomas end up?

He bingles to the side.
In the corner it collides.
"Not many points that time."

Mumbles the Lord with a sigh.
He renames the ball, Guy;
Places it on the lever.

Launching, like a bullet from a gun,
for this is how it’s done
again and again and again.

Someone has to get it right...

Sometime.

Poetry Is For Losers

Poetry is for losers
For losers have nothing to lose.
Winners have nothing to rail against,
the status quo will do fine, thank you.

But for those who stare from below:
The inferorum masses waiting,
praying for their erstwhile messiahs,
while the money flows all around them.

These losers: whose words are such
to cast like dice the fate of nations,
to nudge and herd the minds of many
like electrons through a copper wire;

transforming culture, accelerating evolution
like some geriatric melange addict
or an otherworldly black monolith.
That is their mandate and their task.

These losers. These losers.
They, the dregs of the draught;
the accumulated spittle of society
shaped into a form suitable for a spark

to set off its mass like an atom bomb.
Let them die with some measure of fame,
let them live with some measure of claim
to the future of this world under construction.

Poets come from this lowest lot,
where reality slaps them more often than not.

Another Chambers/Lovecraftian Musing

The Sign

In forgotten tomes and a dusted room
Found ancient texts seldom read
I learned a secret known by few
Or perhaps only one, but he is dead.

I drew the Sign as best I could
I marked its lines, marked its flame
I scrawled it innocently on wood (at first)
Then painted it on dormant trains.

On aligned days those trains would move
And spread their gospel through the towns
While I sat indignant near the tombs
Polishing my inevitable crown.

That day the Moon was deep in Taurus
The Hyades cluster embraced that disk
And I made supplication to vengeful Horus
And he I cannot name due to untold risk.

The King in Yellowed scalloped tatters
I became for he was me
I appeared before the court in fetters
I bowed my head - it was plain to see...

I fell into their millenial trap
And he, though nameless, produced the bait
I searched for true power, not monetary crap.
The Phantom of Truth, I knew him late.

Now I lie beneath Lake Hali, dreaming
Waiting for the stars to align once more
Sending my signals ethereally careening
To the minds of mortals, curious and sore.

Should you pore over books forgotten
Should you discover the liberating phrase
Flee to corners remote and untrodden
For vengeance in Carcosa will certainly blaze.

And do not think I have forgotten Earth
That blue pinpoint in the eldritch black
I will return with Horus to a place called Perth
And grant to aborigines a power they lack...

I shall rule the Capricornus isles
With crown and sceptre begin Phase Three
The Sign shall be posted on billboard tiles
For all the world to see.

I shall sit in Perth with my feet uncurled
Reading of Carcosa to the music of Brahms.
You see, there are more dangerous things in this world
Than atom bombs....

Do you think this is anti-religious?

Salvation History

An eclipse occurred in newest phase
drifting nebulous through the hoary haze.
I cursed the weather and the light
to hide in mist this spectral sight.
Serendipity disallowed
a beatific sight denied the crowd.
I cussed and cursed and disassembled my scope,
turned on the radio and heard the pope
rail against the unstoppable force
that creeps in annual inches from its enlightened source.
Hedging them trapped in Vatican City:
A final fortress to ward the vestigial politti.
Clutching their scapulars and rosary chains,
clinging to their sepulchered papal remains,
clinging clutching clamoring in vain.
Truth and reality closing in, driving them insane.
Such is their fate on this night of doom
as the moon waxes black behind this fog of gloom.
I wept to see the Curia collapse in fetal position
for the evolution of the world reached a vital decision,
and all the trappings of seeming truth vanished away
to return again some other day
when younger youth in yards will play
their rebellious tunes, gorgeous and gay;
learning the meaning of Ecclesia
without resorting to historical amnesia.
Meditating on such heretical tides,
the shadowed moon the horizon hides.
I look forward for the inevitable sun
which in six hours hence in the east will come
and pray humbly for the eventual light
that will chase away the ecliptic night.
Is it a light of revolutionary insurrection,
or a reminder of the first resurrection?
The church on the verge of collapse
will rebuild to the tune of taps,
while high above in vapored flaps,
God in his tent plays a game of craps.
Lucifer passes the dice to that triune lout.
Watch it! New shooter comin’ out!
Six is the point - keep your hands above the board;
Foolish is the dude who bets against the Lord.

This Poem was based on a Robert W. Chambers short story

The Yellow Prince in Chains: A Sestina

It was done expressly to preserve the state;
The war being fought, it came very close
to defeat and for that they enchained their lord
until the omen came. The three-masted ship,
alongside a dinghy, welcomed the herald and his letter.
Never was there a more ominous mail.

The captain wore his armor-steel mail
reading about his nation’s sorry state.
He wept, folded the document, closed
the envelope and fled for his terrible lord.
Deep within the confines of that ship,
he revealed the sign to the very letter.

The imprisoned prince ignored the letter
staring at the captain with glistening mail.
He cared only for the broken state
he now found himself in. At the close
of this century a solitary lord
in yellow tatters chained aboard ship

would dictate the fate of nations, ships
blazing salvoes in the starlit night, ladders
to heaven cast in smoke and fire while mailed
messengers used its portals to dispense a state
of misery and woe pouring out their bowls:
This, the waking vision, of the saffron-scalloped lord.

A jolt, a flurry, "My lord, my lord!"
The warp and lurch of the galley ship
alarmed the prince to the recent letter
that could only have been written by a male,
for female pythians would never state
how to fight a war, but how to close.

"So this is how the volume closes."
Thought the terrible, fettered lord.
"Unchain me, captain, to save your ship",
he muttered, "Remember the letter!"
The captain clove the adamant chains,
"The gods be with you! Save our state!"

From below the ship, the loosed lord, mailed
in glowing letters stating doom, closed
upon the enemy, as it was written of old.