(Guelfo and Dego are marionettes from medieval Italy. Guelfo’s eyes are black with hot embers, and Dego’s eyes are sky blue with pieces of glass. They are walking down a village road and alternately talk about what they are both looking at.)

(Seeing an apple tree)

 

Swallow the apple flesh

if you want to live

Give it meaning.

           

Distill and ferment

the outside of the visible.

 

 

 

 

(Seeing a beautiful woman)

 

Spin among the wildflowers

make the fairies release

wonder!  awe!

Your fate-to-be spreads above

Inhale it down.

 

Immaculate conception

behind the blueberry bush.

 

 

 

 

(Seeing a nun)

 

Aligned symmetrically in devotion

I clasp my fists in praise

they burst overhead  

flashing angles of cognizance

for all.

 

You mope down the rosary

of strung moons

an asteroid belt

ruminating on the sun

 for heaven on Earth.

 

 

 

 

(Seeing the nun’s image with their eyes closed)

 

A faded shroud

A polarized skull.

 

X-rays across the cosmos

The disappearance of flies.

 

 

 

 

(Seeing an old person)

 

Memory is fuel

for believing

yourself.

 

Burn mayhem

mute

Burn trees

ethereal senses

Burn abstinence

and eyes

 

 

 

 

(Seeing a hermit)

 

You wait to see

if I remember love

and if I would expand you

only to disappoint

Life is forgotten when falling into

ecstatic mystery.

 

Thought is the shadow of the Nothing

seeming to be something

All I give is the thought I put into you

with Nothing to hold back

withholding Nothing.

 

 

 

 

(Seeing someone on a stretcher)

 

The tipping point   

into the end times

is happening

tonight.

 

Bleak artificial light

plastic sheet

rapid shrivel

burnt acetylcholine.

  

 

 

 

(Seeing an exorcist)

 

I incorporate an overarching

macrosystem

to persuade what appears

into the microscopic black hole.

 

In prayer

 rocking   waiting

for what comes

from below

to slash me.

(Guelfo and Dego come to a stage, climb on it, stand in the center, and speak.)

 

Signore e signori

come gather.

(Passersby gather before the stage.)

For your entertainment

un spettacolo--a show.

 

(A troupe of mimes join them onstage. Either Guelfo and Dego recite poetry and the mimes interpret it, or, as the mimes perform, Guelfo and Dego interpret it through poetry.)

 

“Offerings”

 

Offer sentience to the life-forms of morning

Offer space to all planets

Offer your venue for the archangels’ powers

 

Hermits of the night

feed no fear to Satan

They offer form to the

Holy Spirit

 

*

 

“Wolfman”

 

The snow that makes night clean

Blood found in the flight

A silver bullet streaks the twilight

In the crux of hunger

do mind and body run insane

 

Thank you for this

this the power I crave

Of hunger and fang

do predators howl

 

*

 

“Holding a mirror”

 

You just make out the form

of that which waits inside

in the darkness

“Confess

and the coronation

and crown are yours

The kingdom

becomes you”

It is what you want

 

I wish you sat me down

to talk about my depression

and low self-esteem

but you couldn’t encourage me

the one who is different

because you didn’t get that yourself

You hoped I’d grow out of my issues

but I grew into them  and was debilitated

this my lifelong challenge

 

*

 

“Dropping the mirror”

 

I was still hovering in shyness

when my perspective revealed

I’ve grown old

 

You in therapy was never discussed

you wouldn’t confide in me

I still pray for your hurt

I’ll be your liaison to reversing

your endless escape

 

*

 

“Atheism”

 

You’ll believe when you see

the spirits of the cold

who receive you

when driven into the winds

 

Waiting in God

I Am  

Waiting in guilt

I am a consciousness

Waiting in chemicals

I am patterns of energy

all thoughts

lost in a cosmic wheel

 

*

 

“Temptation”

 

Here’s a lost pleasure I melt in

resuscitations

mouth-to-mouth

with liquefied black licorice dripping

and aperitifs

of an acquired taste

that this palette does currently crave

 

His eyes melt mine

melt sapphire into white blue suns

where there is and isn’t power

power is and isn’t there

when there is no end

there is all

 

*

(Guelfo and Dego leave the stage and start walking down the road. They come to a cave, step inside, and, as in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, see their shadows cast onto the wall in front of them. They do not realize that there is a whole world behind them, and therefore believe that the shadows are all there is to know. Their shadows begin moving on their own and speaking.)

 

 

I transcribe and catalogue starlight, speak in

tongues a distant alphabet I decode the

words of times ephemeral onto scrolls un-

rolling devotions

 

 

Split apart the pit of the fruit and watch

unfurl a leaf, a stalk, and a wisdom tree

unfurling wide a magical portal that the

world is not seeing

See the world transform in a glow above the

cosmic portal rotating sparkling seeds and

dew and stars in bubbles as heaven stirs

dimensions inside it

 

 

I’m a living shadow that feeds itself, that

feels alive on fire, on self-reliance

standing in the middle of something always

ending, myself, a

prayer feeding spirit and world their dream with

shadow hands that dissipate sentient pleasures

into tailwinds timelessly re-occurring,

tireless Gaia,

wild, wordless, uttering love in love with

giving all the love you desire back to

see the endless backs of your eyes reviving

God as diminished

 

 

Feel the Spirit channel you high, behold the

crossing into reincarnation, blinding,

dropping your identity into infant

clarity like a

ring of wind chimes’ negative space of sin and

doubt that linger quietly turning into

swirling joyous songs for the lord within the

nerves of a human

 

 

Rousing morning carousel up and running

Round the turn in rainbows and curves of Eros

swaying, loving, wishing it all would go

forever and ever

 

 

Fountain statue’s floating reflection falling

off the surface tension in backward motions

deeper seeing oracles masturbating

bottomless topless

(Guelfo and Dego leave the cave. Walking down the road, they suddenly freeze up. Holograms of themselves come out of their bodies and they begin speaking.)

 

Compress the trinity where you love to be held

in full exposure, asking your will to obliviate itself

with only one dream, this here-scape,

the home of your truth

 

 

Set fire in me your brain

and I give mine,

as when one ponders in darkness long enough

to know darkness needs light, to be

 

I’m shown a sphere of light

and I call to it in the séance of my heart

 

 

Be the self to which you forgot you agreed

Be the entity that shape-shifts into your future 

 

 

 

(The two holograms merge into one, and are seen as a bright glow.)

 

I am the force that pulls your strings

 

You are opposition to projection

lost in a hell of nonsensical numbers,

trying to refigure combinations with multiple aims

You hold two suggestions within,

each opposing each other’s funneling:

Follow pure, insatiable rapture, horns of

plenty, circles, ritual pyres, drink, or

follow paths of timelessness ‘round your head, but

seeing what is there disappear will shock,

transforming the faithful

 

I will go wherever you want

 

A sphynx awaits its lord

behind the dark veil,

prepared for unknown glory,

feeding on mystery

The voiceless voice burns the

sand and the throat

The sun is a shadow of its creator

 

 

(The hologram disappears. They continue walking.)

 

Raked-leaves, the breath of my final hour

The light of the equinox on the water-trickle

 

 

Why do I not

give up my body

to God?