...When Suddenly / Closing the Creed

"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

 

…when suddenly,

I am in Libya, raining down

Russian on a hospital and a killer,

Dropped

By that universal psychedelic Journalism,

mediating Consciousness and generating

Worlds within,

An artifice of meaning

stretched thin across the shrinking globe….

 

…when suddenly,

I am in Joe Biden’s heart, contemplating

The grim presidential void,

Propped

Up in power by that new God

Media, ruling

Worlds without,

Babylon newsstands selling the World

 

…When suddenly,

I am over the globe again,

Biden no longer, Libya no longer,

in Canada with elections, In Iowa with elections,

in West with the money and the South with the poverty,

in the inner city, in the great wide country

All about the world I trod the footsteps of Art,

Worlds built ex nihilo from

observations of others and Transmitted on

pictures and pages,

sounds and symbols,

meanings and motions,

A world built on art – truth built on beauty

 

"From untruth lead us to Truth. From darkness lead us to Light. From death lead us to Immortality."

 

All of them lie.

 

The sages do not travel, nor do they wander,

Nor do they read the news. They have no need of

Experiences unexperienced and meanings found meaningless.

 

Truth was crucified, you know,

Resurrected only in ghostly intangibles,

And impressed on matter iconic,

Ground with water and pricked with pen,

Scratched thin onto crude parchment and

Worshipped by pale, silent orders through

Persecutions and translations immemorial –

 

And here it is, truth once handed down:

The incorruptible relic, laid reverently

In the chapel drawer of a cheap motel.

 

"Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti."

 

Truth died that day, many years ago,

Entombed on a cold dead page.

 

But we await the resurrection:

Truth once dead can live again.

He who walked among us lives, and

Rules within the human heart.

 

Away with the old dead art, and

The false world of truth it built for us!

Away with those who peddle truth and

Manufacture meaning!

 

A new world will require a new art:

Are we so bold? Can we move past this

Painful separation of spirit and matter?

Can we write of the resurrection? Can

I find the Coming King within the lines

Of a poem self-written and unpublished?

 

I look for the resurrection, and the life of the World-to-Come. Amen.

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