#arsj

I love my life

And I live it well

It’s the furthest place

From that thing called hell

A paradise full of grace

A hermit in his shell

Here there is no strife

It’s a rather painless case

This life: my own, the world

Wherein I dwell, in a whorl

My wings are given flight by the wind:

I am the Winged Victory of Samothrace

And in the potent light of day, I steep

In the drink of the night: I’ve won, the end

To this raucous fight (with the deep, I contend)

And taken by the fleet feet of a dancer, I twirl

In ecstasy, like a ray of light made radiant

By bar tracery refracted in, as it creeps

Through, a cathedral’s oculus, defiant

Of every will to pretend, I unfurl

My masts, a ship intent on meeting the Grandest —

Its sacerdotal — end and cheating its wanting

To bend back away from banks of life

To retreat from the grace-soaked sands,

Reviled by the fact that no one except

Myself holds the responsibility to accept

His own defeat: my death draws nearer

To me in worrying that deeper water lies ahead of the shore

But when I close my eyes, the beacon of joy,

A jewel in the shrubbery (the light in the trees),

Is beckoning me, “move forward, come closer: explore

My depths and find beauty everpresent therein;

Clearer water lies within,” so in faithful duty I deploy

Myself into the sea, passing beyond the boundary

Of this liminal space called my vessel wherein

My body’s calls to action radiate, long gone, into the void

Silently resonant, vibrations of wind in a bottle, devoid

Of meaning to the mind, and finally I reach the end

Of my swim to the shore, unscathed by the bygone perils

Of doing my duty to this world which I love

So dearly; and love endures on the Isle

Of Samothrace; this, its crowning laurels:

A somatic being emerges (extracted of infinite marbles

By Daedalus) in victory, a white-winged dove

Whose function and form are one in the same while

The beauty of its being, in sync with all,

Can never know the fall: the light of being

Alive is to be the light itself, never once alighting to the call

Of strife; instead, take flight and ascend beyond the clouds

And find yourself diffuse (heavenly body rarified, a being

Whose particles could not ever comprehend the shrouds

We use to protect ourselves, in fear of impending doom);

However, always make room for others to settle themselves

Amidst the glory of your space, and be like the jewel of that beacon

Which beckoned you here to Samothrace, celebratory in joy.

As an angel — a dove — once told me

When she found myself steeped in peril

At the park, “Enjoy yourself always,

You must trust me on this, really, and

All your days will with heaven meet;

If you do this fast, without any thinking,

You are set to gain the fleet feet of

A dancer lost in ecstatic praise

Of her benevolent creator whom (in love)

Gave her the grips to raise herself up

And take a sip from the Lord’s cup,”

And from this moment on life

Was different: devoid of strife; so

I loved it, and I lived it well,

And there wasn’t a soul — no,

Not a one, and still not even

To this day — who could or can

Convince me otherwise: that heaven

Is here and now in the present

And for this I could never resent

My creator: this life is the furthest place from hell;

Rather it is paradise, full of grace,

A veritably painless case: a stately

Pleasure-dome with caves of ice

In which I dwell, my home: this life.

If all we have is love to give then who knows [from] what I am missing (what?)

I take and taking is all I [can] do (I’ll be taking!)

And once we met all I wanted was you;

I knew then you had what I was wanting (right then!)

My immediate possession, I saw it in your eyes (yea, I saw!)

It was clear: right then you wanted me too (you wanted!).

To be real, when you committed yourself to me forever

I knew it was the greatest prize I could ever receive

To know you wanted to build this world of two together (in love)

But forreal a greater challenge could not exist, and I realize (in self-hatred)

That you could not ever have been aware that to relieve

Me of this dark matter, undetectible and all the while clustered in

My core, the loving-object must be dead:

Letting myself love you, in spite of my spiteful ways, taken

Like a green fruit from the tree, you bereave

Me in your silent death having given

Me all of your love, and you, this unwise

Martyr, are at long last saved:

From the start til death you repented my sins

Until He sat you free in time; you gave everything you had to me

And I accepted it so gladly, but in this my demise

Wrote itself: to have none and

To go on living alone, enlivened by love

And living in hate

Forever I am taken

Away from our world of two

For all your giving

My taking finally

Took me away from you

I thought I knew it all with you

But now I’ve hit a wall

You’ve gone, and all past traces left

Have too

The last leaves of January left to fall

Are falling, fallen

The sound of your voice, my wind,

Blown away

My inspiration, your heart, a rhythm,

Playing on

Indelible, in the absence of my ears.

If I could recall you

Easily, as under the sun I toil about

In my work

But you are forgotten, blame the iniquity

Of living life

Amid a sea of works of yet to complete

And I am tired

Of swimming and drowning in circles

Just to stoke

The flames of memory, sacrificing myself

To keep you alive.

Instead I’ll choke the embers. You’re dead

But at last I see

What truly was in the rain that night

Behind the light

That both you and I saw, englobed by

The branches

Of that fateful tree, immediately after

I declared

To you that « I could, in this moment,

Die the happiest man »

And what we saw was the circle in full

In search of the sun every branch is set

To cross

Until one day, in chaos, a light illuminates

It’s form in truth:

Accomplished, terminé, you’ve at last

Been finished

And the ecstasy I once saw in your face

Hisses

Inundated by a flood of regret, a formerly

Rabid flame

Brought at once to cinders; I wash them away

With the water

Of a cloud’s glacial lake, the sacred rain

Of a teardrop in the sky.

They aspirate the liquid, their struggle

Is a score

Composed of the faintest flicker, a cough,

So weak

And yet within such a death is strength

This: the beauty

Of letting go of all things which can

No longer endure... .

Put faith in yourself in the future by putting faith in yourself in the present

And always honor yourself, the king, by always honoring me, the peasant

Cast your gazes forward and never look at nothing

Take flight, ascend, then fall with grace

Crashing into the earth, it’s gone

You’ve fallen, you are there, you’ve lost your face

But free at last by faith, the future’s come

While you’ve so suddenly gone away without a trace

Now that you’ve made it to your place, you, the king, yawn

Your masterpiece is finished, the last line drawn

Your ego killed, the heart beats on, a drum

A clock unknown to time, sans face — mere seconds left to chase

And the prophet struck dumb

His visions must tick in accordance with nature’s prescribed pace

Seconds going on, bye, an anthem created

To this destiny, every man is fated:

Putting faith in yourself in the future by putting faith in yourself in the present,

And always honoring yourself, the king, by always honoring me, the peasant

Never looking in the mirror, an automatic blindness instated

Automated Oracle: your time is contabescent

Your place is gone, your lips drawn shut

Your words a breach of trust with fraudulent intent

Forever the future goes on undated

Til finally all the morae’s strings have been cut

And tied — voilà, the future known to its greatest extent

In silence we stand; we know not what

Holds for us the future except by faith

So we go on working, backs bent

Our memories, be them a wraith

For each and every day we’ve spent

In toil beneath the sun

There was never any fun for me, the peasant

I run, I stop; I fly, I fall; voici the king’s lament:

We know not our fates until our time is done;

May our eternal prayer be that our best work be of yet unbegun

But in our blindness, be there hope; you are your father’s son:

With God all men are kin

All women, and trans people too

In fealty the king’s, the queen’s fate belongs forevermore to you

Time’s conceit is within

Listen to this specter: we are all one

There can never two —

Thus saith Pythia along with her adieu

— amen.