Rainforest

Ghosts see the world as if through a shutter.
Moss hangs over their eyes in a drone of falling water.

Forks

clam chowder in a bread bowl,
scraping the sides with a fork,
thickening the soup into a paste
before devouring it all.

I’m sitting at my desk.
I’ve had a yellow pill to rile me up.
I’m guzzling wine to rile me down.
I can't get at what I want to say.

I choke when I speak.

Forms of Meditation

Meditation today produced observance of stars, moon, and life's subtle workings: the green flesh of strange bushes, the rough surface of bricks, the chill of midnight breeze; all things I thought I'd lost.

Non Serviam

Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; and yet he fell: he fell and there fell with him a third part of the host of heaven: he fell and was hurled with his rebellious angels into hell. What his sin was we cannot say. Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: Non serviam, I will not serve. [JJ]

No superficial affirmation can compete with the dark thought below: “If this is life, I want no part of it.”

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning. [JJ]

“If I have been rebellious, it has been only with a deep commitment to that which is true. I am stubborn, absolutely, but not blinded by pride.”