Invictus

 

I am that I am

Words uttered
By an imperious
Grey-bearded Hope
 
Worshiped by deserted nomads
Roaming their wilderness
Of shepherded wonder

His face
Stoic
A Mount Of Sinai
Smoking
Amidst the burning leaves
Of sage white offerings

I yam what I yam
Singsung by
A spinach-propeled superhero
 
Popeye
The sinewy sailor man
Who crushed steel cans 
with his bare hands
 
His arm popping reserve
A vacuum-packed punch
Bold & sold
To conquer the Bluto-cratic

Those bullies that seek
To demean
The meek and the weak
"Denigrate to elevate"
Their rallying cry
A war waged to deny
Their own miserable lives

I am

They are the flesh words
Spoken
Sputtering thickly
With undeniable essence
They are the meaning
In the being

I am

That eternal I
Embraced by the penumbra
Of Gods created
in the sky of why

Borne from and by
A needy greedy
Mankind
Insistent
On the more than the this
Short kiss of
Mere mortal subsistence

Mankind in his infinite infancy
Wishing to stowaway
On the Goodship Lollipop
Curled safely in the golden locks of
A Shirley Templed splendor

So willing to eat the crumbs
Scattered in the dark forest
of a Hansel & Greteled path
By their heavenly creations

In lieu of the promise
For an eternity
Of long lickings
On Serendipity's rock-candied tides

Chanting "The wind, the wind,
The heaven-born wind,"
While devouring
The Gingerbread trap...

The muffled tap dance
Embedding them
In a never receding thorny ceding

The seedless fruit budding
Within the hollow covenant
In an infinitesimal universe
Of impossibility

The oven door shuts man in.

But this Giving Tree
Mankind planted
Hoping for shelter from Death's storm
Is jealous of its own roots
And seeks to rip them
From their earthen bed
In rude redress - Yes!

The created are jealous of their creators
The gods envy man...

So the priests of the gods' dawning
In mock mourning
Try to convince man to destroy his ego
So that we might not compete
With the masters of our own delusion

And in the existential confusion
The priested powers
Preach of the horrors
Warning the wicked and the damned
Who seek the lofty I
In the Am

Lucifer
Heralder of Light
Son of Dawn
Was blinded by the sight
Of an infernal ambition


He lit Paradise
With a roman candle of want
Burning like the Day at both ends
Exploding in spidery constellations

Daring to wish for his own Am
In the blue lapis throne of Zaphron
Til he was cast out
In silvery shrieks of agony

His lightning
Thundering
Into the shadows of self
Bolting the skies
between Heaven and Earth

His insurrection
An eternal lesson
Of the Hell
In the fall after the pride

But why

Why would a perfect omnipotent Deity
Require worship as a sign of fealty?

Why?

Should we be the leave
And trust that the exalted thing is
To strip ourselves
Of our suits of skin
And shimmer in
The naked evanescence into the vaporless vapor
For that consummation in the marriage
Of the Cosmic constancy?

That our happiness
Lies in the path of forgetting
In the forfeiture of our bodies
In the seine of souls journey to an otherworld?

Where is the wrong in reveling this body?
This planet?
This realm?
This plane of immanence?
This agent of life?
Every religion
Every philosophy seems to say
Die now
Live later

I don't buy it
Not from
Jehovah, Mohammed, Buddha, Vishnu, nor
Any of their silky ilk within their wily web

Our humanity runs rife, but free
We are beautiful as we are
Because of our flaws
We create stars from this dust of carnal angst
We lavish the lick of the yes on the lips of every must
All the elements in the universe teem within us



I am
Why should we deny
The spring in the tension of our coiled mortality
Why should we bow to the will of a so-called infinity
It is a yoke
A collar of collusion
I won't wear it.

I'd rather
tear down the heavens
And bitchslap the sky


My evolution is sans
Disintegration
I riot in the revolution of reintegration
A synthesis of the self
A Celebration
In the celestial potency
of our own free wills

We are not cool pockets of air
Woven into
The blanket cover of some syncretic galaxy
Nor particles of light
That dance on the edge of eternity

I sing the body electric
I cartwheel in the chaos
I rattle my bones
I surf my skin
I boil my blood
And rejoice in the me
That I am

I sink in every valley
I rise in every peak
I ride the surge of my every curve

I burn hot as fire!
Combusting with desire
Why deny my nature
For the promise
In the hollow seed
Of so-called Serenity's
Apocryphal creed?

I am
I will not deny my I
I will rub myself like sticks
And flame my wick

Creation comes from friction,
Friction produces
HEAT
I want the meat on my bones to sizzle
I want my teeth to taste the gristle

Because I am that I am
Ambrosia be damned!

I will drink deep of the Pierian Spring
And then gladly drown in the wake of everything!