Breathe On Me | Tumultandbliss

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BREATHE ON ME

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Dust clings, humming low of deadly indecision

Singing soft the sighing pain of mortal imprecision

last night was a special occasion

I cried in bed a bit

the ghost of God hovered over

I didn’t cry with relief

or because I thought it was a haunting

but because I thought it was a mist of my own mind’s making

I think I think too much

–

(excerpt from THE LAST END)

THINK I THINK

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT CROSSES ARE STRONG

CATATONIA

BREATH

BEAT

THIS MIGHT BE OUR MEAL

NAMING TO KNOW

–

EVERYONE KNOWS

THAT CROSSES

ARE STRONG

–

the five wink brights of the Southern Cross

bestride the sky with staunch eyes upon me

I watch them back for reassurance

people cross wooden beams for strength, after all

people put them atop graves to hold death until death’s dawn

people join brow, breast and shoulders with a shaking finger

people lean their doubt upon The Cross and pray that it will bear the weight

this cross is not that great cross

I wonder what it thinks of me likening its blaze

to a cross and man whose light has faded by fault of many copies

this cosmic cross seems now greater to me

greater than the earthly cross I have tried to love and failed

greater because in mere visibility it assures a simple wonder

while the other demands more faith than I can muster

this Southern Cross has glistened countless nights with bright blessings

it has seeped into the dark of lush forests

where trees as round as an emu is long

have ached up to the stars for aeons

it has guided the pointing arms of many nations

who have ached for a way to bridge the gap

to converse with whatever wisdom the stars secrete away

as I gaze upon those glowing guides

unchanging and inerrant

the lowermost star begins to shake

and slides slowly down the deep, deep sky

the other stars begin to shake

and so do I

–

CATATONIA

–

i am snared in everlasting suspension

strung up in every single gap between my synapses

every single one of me in simultaneity

curled up in microscopic spheres in interstitial fluid

internal catatonia

afloat and glitching in recurring transmissions

frozen in every gulf

o º o

i have displaced the finite round adrift between the sun and moon

earth had only been hesitating all this time between the worth of which to choose

sun or moon, or some other distant star?

earth is tired, undecided, and i am hired as cosmic surrogate

so i am hung

hanging by the wrists between my praying palms

hanging by the feet between my knotted brows

hanging over and over in multitudinous parallel cosmologies of double suns and double moons

but still i am walking down our concrete pathways

still i am smiling around our lines of reasoning

still i am butting my head against my incomprehension

still i am looking into us with over-swollen compassion

i have always loved the music of our heart strings being stretched too far

and they stretch

both arms out s t r e t c hed

i am not alone in my wretched outstretchedness

on one of these planets outflung palms nailed to opposing realities already tried to reconcile them

but the sun didn’t stop for me and i haven’t gone through the trapdoor and back again

though maybe that sun did stop for me and i can go through the trapdoor and back again

but that’s just the planetary body i cannot reach

both arms o u t s t r e t c h e d

always suspended again in a centripetal centrifugal dichotomised cosmology

pulled in and flung away with equal force

fingers trembling along the line of magnetic gas, magnetic stone

the first and last dichotomy when all parallel cosmologies have hunted theirs into extinction

and i have burned up in every one of those atmospheres

so always i come back to the recurring frozen instant where

o º o

i am snared in everlasting suspension

strung up in every single gap in understanding

every single one of me in simultaneity

curled up and unable to land on an assertion

–

BREATH

–

Is the thickness of the stars amidst their blackness

really the embrace of your cupped hands fused around us?

Maybe divine hands glitter

or perhaps you’re wearing evening gloves.

It looks like space to me.

You evade and tangle me

standing small on this tiny earth

Your breath brushes past my ear

when I have lost mine

and I lose mine

when I look at the sun, that inextricable elixir

gazing life and glaring death

when I watch bees slung low with pollen

sharing whispers across blooms

when opaque eyes clear into galaxies

and the soul’s breadth sings

when a lofty peak bows its head

permits me to stand upon it

and behold

But is it not simply my own lost breath

blowing back in my face?

Breathe on me.

Take off those illusionist gloves

Let me see your palms patterning the sky

–

BEAT

–

Beat

drums me down somewhere

trapped against dry rasping walls

the penultimate corner before the floor breathes its last

and yawns into a colourless despair without plaster or pillars, a stretching succourless space

perfect for a sucker like me, delighted as I am with desolation

I am clean of hallucinatory fevered veins but all the same

looking up from the bottom of myself in perverse bliss

Until the 42nd song of praise makes the bile rise

Where are you?

You’re a busy bee

matter and space and disastrous races clamouring for your time;

but don’t you dwell outside that ticking circle?

There is where human rhyme dismembers all comprehension of Divine intention

so we bare our teeth in injured snarls at the aloof Outside

with impotence faltering down our cheeks

looking wide and raw into the nothing

begging for the something promised

I have lifted my eyes so many times

I have repented and presented and waited for the Ghostly Gift

What is you and what is not you?

If life is just life then you’re just paper

Where are you?

Why are you so far away?

You are there, where we are not

you are here, so some say

so you were, so some said

in a beaten land bruised by foreign hands

You came

with ever burning flame

with sandaled feet and sweaty brow

you came to lift up the beaten ones

and give an Outside hope and power

Where are you now?

Why is what you were so shattered?

Now your power diffuses, confuses and demands showy chatter

Now you are Outside, sheltered by the haze of time

cluttered by critical hallucinations

unreachable and irreproachable

Now you are only cobbled in poor human rhyme sieved from the Outside beyond time

only accessible through dull ink and paper pressed nice and thin to fit within it

all the truths thicker than the things we see and somehow must imbibe alone

deciphering contradictory inscriptions through time travelling cerebral encryptions

Where is your Outside power now?

Bring the Outside here

help me shed some contrite tear

for my blissful beaten mind unbeating and my wasting hands

are unmuscled and unboned upon a faux-leather tome

the paper body that contains the ever-burning flame,

never warming, never lighting

But when the Timeless One did step into time

when he was warming, when he was lighting

when he flickered–

those snatches of cold and dark

were the most wretched, ravenous, resonant spark with the human heart

When God was flickering out, he said

eloi eloi lama sabachthani

When God was flickering out, God said

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Oh God, my God, why have I forsaken you?

You, the untouchable Deity flaming with the brightness of all existence

you beat yourself further into the darkest corner farther than any of us

you shivered yourself into a sputtering coal and switched out the lights,

you dropped through the floor of reality; sobbing, silent, breathless, helpless, friendless

looking up through the bottom of all you had made, distraught and alone and afraid.

But you, your love blazed up, broke through, you flared an inferno of limitless life

you stretched down a hand to me, trapped and beaten against the floor

Looking up, looking up, looking up, looking up

But your hand is lost in heartfelt haze and dust and mazes throughout the ages

This could be ever warming, this could ever lighting

if you are here

Would you be here?

If I clasped up uncomprehending brain halves together to scream one totalised strain

that you return

Not as you’ve promised, not for the end and the beginning of

everything we cannot understand

No, not for that, and

not as you say you did, at the end and beginning of

slaughterous chosen histories and corrupted murderous mercies of the Years of Our Lord

not for that, for that would be to say you didn’t do enough

and the underdone appearance has used us ever since

No, I won’t say that exactly

but to give me the time of day

and show me what you did is still being done

I am beaten into a corner by the ritualised idea of you

and I am in need,

in deed

in need.

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NOTES

“Beat”

ie.

(beaten down)

“beatific, blissful”

Jack Kerouac

“You know, this is a really beat generation ... More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and ultimately, of soul: a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself."

John Clellon Holmes (November 19, 1952).

"This is the Beat Generation". The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

–

THIS

MIGHT BE

OUR MEAL

–

To the God who defies me

why you little

I am a little fool

But without you I can’t be other than what I am

yet the abundant grace and rebirth built into the earth

(he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross

so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness)

To you I turn my bent back

Weary with the weight of waiting for you to hold me

yet the unswerving arms of many friends and family

(seek and you shall find)

To you I raise my broken fist

Too long I’ve punched your faceless curtain

yet your smile is in the soil, your laughter in the galah

(since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities

have been clearly seen through what has been made)

To you I show my heels as I walk

These feet keep walking away despite every question every way

(if we deliberately keep on sinning

after we have received the knowledge of the truth,

no sacrifice for sins is left)

choosing you over and over has been all action and no heart

To you I close my mind

For once closed it can’t be opened; I have tried

these mind games broke the gaming mind

(if you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,”

and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead)

To you I open my heart

Just in case you can still show me yours

(here I am! I stand at the door and knock

If anyone hears me and opens the door

I will come in and eat with him and he with me)

open sesame please open please

(help my unbelief)

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1 Pt 2:24 / Lu 11:19 / Rom 1:20 / Heb 10:26 / Rom 10:19 / Rev 3:20 / Mk 9:24

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NAMING TO KNOW

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The Anchor of the Ages

The Generator of Existence

The Linchpin of Atomic Structure

The Mother of Mother Earth

The Subcellular Inventor

The Smiling Mystery

The Cranker of the Sunlight

The Rhythm of Orbital Symphonies

The Treader of Dreams and Reality and Super-reality

The Exploder of All Gauges

The Giver of Every Single Word

The Lover of Humanity

The Lover of Humankind

The Ripper of Space and Time and Nature

The Descender of the Divine Ladder

The Truth in Skin

The Moral Human

The Fleshy God

The Unfractured Soul

The Mate of the Mediocre

The Sitter with the F***-Ups

The Hugger of Untouchables

The Waiter for the Slow-Witted

The Sobber with the Sobbing

The Debater of Intellectuals

The Seer of the Grey

The Shamer of Corrupt Religion

The Rebuker of the Self-Satisfied

The Condemner of the Greedy

The Confounder of Philosophers

The Herder of Fools

The Perfect Rascal

The Eyebrow-Raiser

The Overturner of Oppression

The Tricky Truth-Teller

The Metaphor Maker

The Ever-Turning Cheek

The Supreme Death-Hater

The Weeping God

The Wearer of the Cutting Crown

The Carrier of the Leaden Cross

The Lamb Pierced and Pierced and Pierced

The Crier of the Impossible Cry

The Shattered Being Wholler than Whole

The Willing Walker into Utter Blackness

The Sufferer of Eternal Loneliness

The Sharer in Undying Thirst

The Taker of Untakeable Wrath

The Humbler of Hell

The Most Blatant Escape-Artist

The Righteous Revenant

The Champion of Losers

The Crusher of Manacles

The Cracker of Glass Cages

The Gate in the Brick Wall

The Bridge over the Real Lava

The Bearer of all Believing Bodies

The Regrower of those Missing Limbs

The Neverending Stream in Dried-Up Suburbs

The Washerman of Souls

The Beautician Extraordinaire

The Revivifier

The Purifier

The Eternal Resuscitator

The Salve for Every Sting

The Wounded Healer

The De-Paralyser

The Stairway to Heaven

The Butler with Peace on a Tray

The Smiling Usher

The Gardener of Hearts

The Priest on the Throne

The One Who Lives-in and is Lived-in

The One we Have Fainted in Waiting For

The Son of Man in Blinding White

The Son of God with Equal Rights

The Receiver of All Human Filth

The God-in-Man

Jesus the Messiah

The Only Saviour of every Sunken Soul

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