Darkness made Flesh is Dead!

Long live http://burningtheboatstohesperyon.blogs.sapo.pt/

Times Arrow

In front.
Always in front. Ahead.
In your face.
Always in your face. Before you.

Hours await.

The long procession of minutes (armed to the teeth with seconds).
They wait at the corner of now
To become the ever expanding procession of days.

An infinite throng of instants peruses menacingly,
as I finish a cigarette and look trough the café window.

And,
Then,
When you’re not expecting,

The Hordes of time storm the tower, to enforce the grim yoke of Boredom.


You light another cigarette, and hope it’ll pass.

But it won’t.

You were conquered by the army most ferocious.

…

Thunderous cavalcades of infinity,
Roaring armies of permanence
Ready and waiting to rip you to shreds and serve you to
Uncountable multitudes of moments,
followed by more ravenous moments…

Pulling in…
Pulling to….
To…

Immeasurable quantities of instants,
Armed and belligerent...
Screaming for the bloody murder of you.


Time’s arrow is taut and awaits release.
Its vicious murderous desire for oblivion will not be abated.
…

Time’s arrow is taut and you are the target.

There’s nothing left to do …

All your efforts … all for naught.

Nothing to do …
But grit your teeth,
And brace for impact.

music by

Youthful Indiscretions

The first of a (hopefully) series of poems on Emperor Constantine

My name is Constantine,
I’m a man blessed with destiny.

There’s purpose and a direction to my existence,

unlike the hapless fortune of most men,
void of fate and reason,
pulled only by the motions of the Universe,
no direction,
no goal,
being all that the Universe wants them to be.
Childish debris in the torrent of being.

The sons of time have no time of their own,
only movement.
Which,
belongs,
whole,
to Time.

But this story is not about those that make the flesh of Gods,
It’s about those who walk, head up high, among Them.


I move,
intent,
in my own life line,
Clear in the knowledge of myself.
pulled by the certainty of Fate.

There’s a reason for my existence.
and the reason is my own,
and the reason is me.


The Gods know my name,
as they know their own kin,

I’m alive since the beginning,

coexistent with Jove and Sol and the Ignoto Dei…
each of us a road in the map of Being,
where the rabble is but a moment of my path.

I exist, where everything around does not.
My trek is clear,
My spirit is sharp,
my will is keen.

Strong armed and quick.
I am now,
all the man that I was supposed to be.

My actions are weaved in the loom of Moira,
I have the certainty of rocks and the changing seasons,
I am,
whole,
the motor of history
and the reason for all becoming.

Constantine I’m called,
Known by name by the Gods,
and needing the love of none.

Titan

I’m plagued by the vision,
cursed by the light,
and shunned by the welcoming hand of God.

Mine is a desolate trek.
a path of blind hate and consuming love.

a voyage full of sound and fury and nothing else.
a blind resolute voyage to nowhere,
yearning to arrive to the end of all this being.

The roads are paved in pain and are all mine.

You

I’m talking to you from this place of silence.
From under the wreckage,
the debris
the soot and the stones and the iron ruins.

You,
all of you.
have chased me into this place of violence.
gasping and cornered,
I look horrified to the Your gaping maw of wanting,

You,
always sure,
always…
eager for more.


You,
all of you…
will be the death of me.


Scarring me with your love and attention
you…

You!

There can not be no greater indictment than being You.
And for this…
only this,
nothing is forgiven.

You’ve condemned me to my exile in this place of silence,
in the island of discourse,
the monastery of idle chat…
the graveyard of inane prattling about the heat…

This will not be forgotten,
I will excise upon you a vengeance most terrible!

Upon you will be unleashed questions about your health,
interrogations about the weather,
queries over your emotional well being,
and probings as to the exact nature of your dogs dreams.

No platitude to empty,
no question to stupid.

I will be the spirit of family talk and courteous words in elevator,
and the ghost of Christmas past and future.

I will be uncomfortable silences!
long pauses and puzzled looks,
the tense hand that twitches as you look for the time,
the nervous laugh that assuages the unstoppable current of imbecility.

I will forever haunt your attempt to take me in conversation.


You…
you.

YOU!!

Exhortation

I


Everywhere,
Every time.
There are men who lament the present because it’s not the past they foreseen.

They shun its crass materialism,
its crippling individualism,
abhor its rotting equalitarianism,

fleeing the diseased cities of the servants,
sickened with the stench of their baseness.
Longing to be elsewhere…

cleaner skies,
broader horizons,
an invigorating solitude.


Everywhere,
Every time.
There are men,
the best of them.
Who see History as an agonizingly long burial of the Spirit.
And as It drowns in Time they watch:
eyes wide with horror
the descent of Man into chaos,
and the following procession of foulness:

Lust and Chance as the new Love and the new Reason,
Man as the measure of all things,
Godlessness as Dogma,
Reason trapped alone in science,
Philosophy, a commentary on physics,
Religion as superstition,
Home as a place,
Nature as resources,
The how’s as the whys.


To all these Men.
everywhere…
Hiding in the mountains,
living in the darkness of the woods…
scorning humanity and keeping themselves pure,
I say this,
calling it “Waldgänger" wont make it less cowardly.

For today is the day!
The day before the great wheel stops,
for so long spinning only by inertia
and – finally! – time ends,
turning even our tainted being into a purer nothing…
and,
as time runs out of time
and acceleration becomes history,
We should be remembered of this truth…

There is no protection from becoming.
There’s no truth higher than destruction.
as no Gods were ever higher than Fate.


For all this…
and for the reason of Pride,
We make this last call to you,
Hoping that your soul will do the Black Work that lies ahead…
and needs to get done.



II


Brothers!
Don’t sail the boats to Hesperyon,
Don’t long for the western shores where the Ancients wait.

Forget the first days,
forget the unity of the beginning,
before time,
before movement,
before being.

Forget the chants of the sirens,
although they speak nothing but the truth.
The golden age is dead,
The Gods powerless,
all eternal truths are present lies.

Even our disgust is but affected snobbery when we watch the carnage of the universe.


It’s time to bury the last remnants of the Logos under the crumbling towers of today.
Because,
Each second inside us lives the spirit,
it’s a second more this diseased universe lingers on…
regardless of Reason,
or Right.

Its our being that still gives movement to this corpse.
We’re the maggots in the dead flesh.
And,
all this,
must have a stop.

It’s not the decadence of lesser men that is responsible for the grotesquerie of this living carcass.
It is us.
For clinging to the truth,
For not capitulating,
For remaining true…
For being men among ruins,
when we should be the harbingers of destruction,
raising to the ground every last vestige of Spirit.

So that, from that unknowable silence,
where all that is now, will be nothing,
will come something new.

For all this,
brothers,
I urge you into this crusade against being,
against everything,
against each other.

To cleanse the world of the old truths,
and bring forth the time before time.
Tiamat,
Uranus,
Chaos.

And hope,
not know, but hope,
for in the darkness of this cesspool there’s no place for knowledge, only faith.
That the cycle begins again,
and that the sacrifice of the Will is not in vain.

Making Sense

Trying to eek out sense of all this …
Living.

Trying to shape the unruly indiscipline of existence
into an organized structure of ideas.
Making sense of everything by making it something…
Objects to be looked at and understood.

This is the first moment in the carnival of seeing.


They’ve polluted our eyes with beauty,
Soiled our ears with music,
Fouled our mouths with food,
And tainted our skin with love.

drunk with now,
infatuated with becoming
we become time’s obedient mistress..

Our senses now,
Pasture to the sickness of thinking.

Looking and then choosing,
Feeling and then reasoning,
And thus making of everything…

smaller.
Controllable,
Understandable,
Useful…

Knowledge if you will.


Questions who will fit the answers,
Answers who befriend easy questions,
taking us trough the bonds of empathy
that common men call logic.
Finding truth in similarity.
As if closeness was creation,
As if proximity was certainty.

Our intellectual journeys have taken us from the bedroom to the kitchen,
And we exult in the small steps taken … and called it Odyssey.

We’ve never left the cave.

And unable to know in any form but this sorrowful stumbling,
We’ve became trapped inside our answers,
And found closure in the cells of reason.

Monk-like eunuchs droning mantras of intelligence and discourse,

Keeping the devils of complexity and uncertainty safely at bay.

Howling alone in science.
Trying ceaselessly to break the bound that binds us to this dead knowledge.

The Glass

“I’m done with drinking!”
said the glass.

“I’m done with the loud bars and the loud hearts,
with bragging souls and fighting spirits.

Done with the coming and the going of wayward travelers of the late hours…

I’m done with the night!”

Said the glass almost blushing…
awkwardly masquerading his unease with a smile.
He paused, gathering himself, and then he continued,
as if reading from a book,

“I’m done with the silky invitation of the dark and the smiling complacency of the moon.
I’m done with all this wanting and all this being and all this aimless meandering.
cruising blind and fast,
hither to thither,
from here to there,
from there to here again,
and then to nowhere.”


“I’m through with nights,
I’m through with days that are still nights,
and I’m through with days you wished were still nights!”

“I’m through.”
Pondered the glass…

“I’m through being half filled and half empty,
I’m through being drunk , spit upon, cried over, spilled and left on the ground…
forgotten.”

…

“All the things I could be useful for…
all things that I can do for me and others,
all these things,
all good.
Are nothing to me.”

“all the things that I am,
all the things that make me, me…
are things where I see me no more.”

“There is no more of “me” that I can do.
I have become weary of existing.
I’ve grown unaccustomed to being,
I’m a stranger to living…
none of this is mine anymore.”



“All that I am is elsewhere,
differently,
in places unseen,
and probably,
in moments unwanted.”

“I am now,
whole.
an enormous longing for being someone else.”


“Today I’m the cessation of volition,
the end of habit
and the answer to the algorithm of my own demise.”

“And,
knowing this,
knowing only this.”

“I wait that the Great Tyrant Time pushes all my doubts backwards into the past.
So I can be whole,
alone,
With what I am…
now.”

Sorrow and forgetfulness

Sorrow and forgetfulness,
make the history of memory.

A continuum of random loose events,
glued by a feeling of unbecoming
and history made whole by regret.

The unexamined life is not worth living…
They say…
That might be true,

But I live a life put to such scrutiny that no man could survive this.


All,
All day,
All the things,
All the things that I think and that I am,
wait bovinely to be perused by the panopticon of conscience.

Self and reason as the plot where it’s weaved this web of failure.
Nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
hostage of myself.

Alone in this prison,
sacrificed at the altar of me.

Love Shall Rule the World

I

Love rules the world.
Listen to my words,
because it does.

Love, the unbreakable law of the universe,
the last word of God
and His final seal on creation.

Love is the gravity of the soul.
The force that gives Spirit direction,
purpose
An up and a down.
Movement and a direction to move.

Love the cause
and the reason for causation,
a force beneath and above all forces,
beginning and ending all things,
so powerful and so present that is,
as if it wasn’t.



II


Many names are given to Love,

Compassion,
Caring,
Wanting,
Protecting,
Solidarity,
Charity,
Piety,
Sympathy,
Empathy,
Affection,
Tenderness,
Enthusiasm,
Devotion,
Attachment,

all different,
all wrong.

All the names that Love was given,
all of them,
are veils to protect the eyes of Man from its true nature.


Because the true name of Love is Obedience.



As matter finds matter,
as time bends space,
as time twists place
as place becomes gravity,
as continents drift above the mantle,
as trees look for the sun,
as animals hunt for prey,
as rivers run to the seas,
as fruit falls from a tree,
as man searches woman,
and
as all men die…

So do we,
all,
obey the unwritten law of Love.

Unwritten and unexplained,
for it was never meant to be understood,
only put in motion through Creation and in each and every one of us.

Love is God’s intent in time and space.
And, being of God, his intent his alive and sentient.

He unfolds trough time this long mysterious narration of Love,
of which we are an infinitesimal part.

We move in His direction, oblivious to the whys and the hows.
Not because we don’t know them,
but because they don’t exist.


Love as a clear stream of Logos pervading the universe.

Reason without logic,
Knowledge without understanding,
Love forever free from the yoke of causality,
shining on us its cold white light,
freezing us to immobility,
making us stop,
and listen,
and learn.

Obey.

III


Love as a thud in the mouth of the stomach.
A pang in your chest,
a tremor in your hands,
a quickening of the heart,
and a widening of the eyes.


The mother who kills her own so as not hear their cries of hunger,
the instinctive scream as another man falls,
a sickening feeling when other animals are hurt,
a strange revulsion against death and pain in others,

foreigners,
strangers,
beings to whom we owe nothing,

unknown,
uncaring,
but,
still…
All of us,
united by the outrageous scandal of entropy.

This is the new Revolution.
The True Revolution.
The Only Revolution.

God’s path to Himself,
and Man’s only unquestioning allegiance.

The Words of Others

Long gone are the halcyon days,
too bad they were so short-lived.
Sideswiped the cake, and stolen the champagne.
we drink the dregs and wait for the bell of last call.

A green yellow morning trundles violently towards the bed,
and we see our faith as mobile, relevant, and bold!
The reason is simple:

We are dead in our beds and hearts,
sickened to the stomach by the lingering want of living,
and the secret shame of not dying.
And the churches are rarely full and our many countries are being sold off, to the Mammon devils we fear no more.
Bowing mechanically into silence and turning our back into public discourse.

Going,
and growing,
evermore into stunned and unutterable disbelief.

Increasingly dependent on the words of others to
wear the many identity masks we wear concurrently – race, ethnicity, gender, class, language, region, tribe, and faith
all exist simultaneously.
While identity is not essential,
it is profoundly democratic to choose which aspects of one's identity to represent in the public.

But,
again,
maybe the presence of so many players is not the necessarily the issue.
The more voices the merrier...
maybe.
life is an effort to live a life of divine awareness and acting in accordance with high moral values and ethical standards...
and ,
even if this sounds terribly idiotic,
we need not be ashamed of that.

I'm Becoming the Pillar of Salt

(Detail, Mosaic of Ravenna, "Lot's Wife")

I’m becoming the pillar of salt.
The last glance to Gomorrah.

Orpheus guilty glimpse over the shoulder,
the last long look to things not done,
to the Styx and
forward.
Forward…
to the sadness of wrong turns taken at the wrong times.

Opportunities lost as soon as they are found,
time passing by like a thief in the night…

watching the spectacle of being and
living as the silent detached witness of myself.

Cold
distant
and aloof.


I haven’t slept for five years.

All,

All days
mornings afternoons and nights,

all,
together,
one after the other.
All days and all nights,
are the same, under the harsh insomniac light.

The hours pass
(dirge-like as in a prison)
as I walk down the garden locked inside the walls of my house.

The light darts yellow trough the window and onto the trees,
as if shielding them from reality…

Yellow restless light that counts time passed between vigil and feverish dreams.
A light of ruse and mischief,
artistry and puppetry,
light made by a slight of hands, smoke and mirrors.
reminding me that,
from now on,
there is nothing here but the ghosts of reason.

In the phantasmal light that scars the trees,
I sit grass like and canopy looking…
tall and distant….
Taut and alert.

trees.

I watch them green and stupid,
tended and erect,
darting upwards towards the sky…

silently intent on photosynthesis.

Inside them a myriad of organisms, moved by the simplest tropisms.
grow and move,
restlessly and mercilessly,
unmoving and uncaring.
oblivious to everything but their growth.



All.
All this,
All so foreign.
All cold and unaware.

A universe of vast silences and expanding indifference.

Cold,
Cool,
Beautiful.

Would if I Could

I

Would if I could,
refuse me from life and its appointments.

If I could,
I would,
sever all ties with polite society,
set sail from humanity,

Shun all morality,
all knowledge,
all Love.

Not out of rebelliousness,
and least of all to be free,

but out of sloth.


The apathy that impedes me from acting has led to this philosophical detachment.
That’s not philosophical at all.

It is,
whole,
inertia.


Would if I could,
surrender unashamed to the weariness brought by the passing of time.
Quietly address the silence that’s inside,

wrap me up in indifference and leave the world to its own devices.

So I could watch TV…
for eons and eons.

My indolence is irreducible to logic and cognition.


There’s no causation for this sadness,
There’s no sickness or sorrow that could explain it.
It’s just there,
like gravity…
one and the other bringing everything we know crashing into the ground …

My mind is one with the forces of the universe,
fighting nothing and wanting for less,

I wait that the last guests leave so I can be alone.

But I know,
acutely,
that talking of being one with the universe is nothing but words in love with words
taking them to the end of themselves,
finding release on the cusp of nothing .

Laziness,
pure
and
simple.


And as I sit here writing these words, I’m reminded of younger days…

Of watching adults go through theirs lives half awake,
responsive to a just a small set of stimuli,
Living a life that the dead would be ashamed of living.

well…
I believe I achieved maturity.
I am an adult…
And not even the horrified gaze of a younger me will wake me from this stupor.

I also remember reading that when a man has children looses half his soul.

Forever incapable of redemption,
an empty shell,
living a life that the dead would be ashamed of living.
well…
I’m a father now.
She’s three and she’s adorable.
Do you want to see pictures?



But all this remembering feels like reenacting finished conversations.
Lines of enquiry who were closed because conclusions were found already.
All this knowledge is useless and cold.

Even if it is the only source of explanation for me…


but…
honestly,
I can’t be bothered with myself.


II


Would if I could…
but I cant.

And perhaps its better this way,
leaving even the wish of ataraxia unfulfilled…

what better monument to anomie but the failure to stop.
There’s a deep logic in a laziness so profound that stills acts.

But,
still,
who cares?
who could possibly care?
why?


God knows I don’t.

Ice Storm

As everything expands to the end of its possibilities,

and the cold brings homeostasis and simplicity to the universe,

We bow,

gently,

at the unstopable violence of cause and effect.

Black Girls Over the Steeple

Black girls peering over the steeple...

Silent disbelief as the monks looked at dune where the women stood.

The slow, red, caressing wind, touched their faces, hair, and feet,
spreading incredulity all trough the desert.

The day was getting late.
The hill was ahead...
high and long...
Northern breeze blowing the sand out of the buried church.

The women looked at the monks;
looked at the sky and;
went away...
over the hill
and nowhere to be seen.

The night drawed near and colder.
Paulus, Josephus, Silva, stood tired and silent before the hill of sand that surrounded the church.
The Old church.
The church they longed to find.



It grew darker and darker,
colder and colder...
Night oozed blackness through the golden stony desert...
Everywhere sand, stones and nothing.

They walked for 40 days to get here...


And now;
for the first time in 3 days.

They stopped.
Tired and unable to move.
Parched and gasping for breath.
Weary and kneeling in front of the dune.



Before it they stood;
breathless,
Their legs broke, their eyes widened, their hearts bleeding.

There were no more places to go and no more prayers to pray.
Prostrated,
broken,
waiting.

The sunset came over the desert like a sunset who comes over the desert,
as men waited,
like men wait in the desert that will kill them.


Looking at the dune that's not a dune but a hill,
and hill that's not a hill but a church.
The Old church.

Clearer and clearer through the night wind...
it's stony walls cleansed by the dust of passing time.
Long,
Long,
Time ago.


Far,
Far,
away,



in the desert.
There were three names who were men, and men who were monks, and the monks who remembered their master...
He spoke of the new God.
The Man-God of Galilee.
Chocked like a beggar, died like a king.
He brought them news of the end of the old gods and the promise of a new beginning.

Servants of Jesus, the Christ.
Fishers of men;
Fishing for spirit beneath the remains of the flesh.

Their zeal and piety was not enough.
The light of God trembled dimly through the haze of doubt and reason...

And the longing for the Nazarene became a wanting, and the wanting became a journey; and the journey became a story;
and the story was this:

"When the Verb Incarnate walked the earth,
he searched the desert, listening for the fading sounds of God.
Deeper and deeper into the vast white silence,
into the barren loquatorium of the Godhead.

And,
He found himself very, very
far,
far,
away from everything else.



He saw for the first time his own Divinity;
Naked and triumphant;
the presence of Being as a wave of destruction engulfing this unwelcoming altar.
His life and body a fitting sacrifice for the reward of the final truth...
In this place,
In the center,
the middle.
Inside,
him.

This was the first church.
This was the place of the prime sacrifice.
Where Jesus died for Christ,
and the destiny of the world was sealed by the Son of Man.



It's this empty place of giving the monks searched for...
walking,
not standing...
looking,
not finding...
living,
not being,
in the centre of God's first sacrifice to himself.

And,
Lo,
They found it in the desert.

Under the hill,
the dune,
the sand,
time,

darkness made flesh.


On their knees,
before the night wind,
blowing the sand from the church that awaited them.

And,
as they waited,
horrified,
terrified...
as God slowly striped before their unwanting eyes,
they watched,
(after the point of no return)
the grim spectacle of men made spirit,
and spirit made sacrifice.



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