Substance Without Form

My God I've found the Alchemist's Stone,
Sunlight on my windowsill turns marble into gold,
And yes, I know a trick of the eye,
It was always in that trick of the eye.

All tangled limbs and panicked thrashing in the sticky film of sticky time,
With swollen clumps of language gumming up gasping passages,
Some kind of disease and breeding festers in the murky waters of the eye,
It binds. It blinds. It multiplies. Cell windows crack and crystallize.

Secret knowledge, secret light, secret handshakes in hidden doorways.
Secret whisperings out of secret lips that ask secret questions like "Do you want gold?"
Yes there are secret codes and secret controls,
And they've always had secret operations manuals in vaults under Rome.
But what could these do for their fear of the unknown,
"We need more soldiers, more land, more control,"
A new kind of drug, an addiction was born.

Aged white knuckles grip the stone,
The structure cannot hold.


Piscean talismans adorn the Millennial Priesthood in their hallowed halls,
While outside, their sparkling jewels splash bluish light off their raised scepters,
Measured and calculating, declared by turning compasses within the precision of lines,
It's a beautiful day for a blood sacrifice.

Opposite reaction.

What slouches now toward Bethlehem,
The spiraled clock hands turning back,
Lost gospels rise up from the sands,
Released by Time as if by plan.
Hey Judas, Thomas, Magdalene!
Come out, don't hide your faces another day,
You're just in time for the Information Age.
Return, rejoin, with voice and visions.
Rejoice! Rejoice in new perspectives.
Did Jesus tell you something else?
The shattering of ice and bells,
Angelic songs and trumpets sound
Nerves numbed stiff twitch to awaken,
The rooster stabs through your dreams.

See the starry eyed man on the road with his clothes?
Pray that you might become like him.
You don't know the wealth that he carries and owns
Let him stop you a second, let him tell you some jokes.

Pray that you might be like the traveling man,
Electrocuted, shocked and senseless.
Forgetting always what you were doing,
With eyes like the moon in the afternoon.
Let your temples center star processions
Mother and Father's orbiting arms.
The center is where the center is,
Where is it that gravity's tugging you now?
That round shape in your mouth is pulling everything down,
Give birth with it, say "now", "now", "now".


But no? Such terror of the void and formless,
Do we always need someone to speak and fill the emptiness,
Our chosen: our Priests, Kings, Philosophies.
Speak, please speak, we beg of you, please.

On second thought, be silent.
You've been talking too long and you've said enough in your time,
There is a sound that was before you and a sound that will be after,
A sound we were always hearing behind you.

Young woman, young man,
The heavy heap of culture you carry keeps pulling you forward and backward,
It's so rare that you just let yourself be where you are,
You know it and and you drug it and sometimes you try to find a way to escape,
And so you run to the library to try and read your way out.

Look up at the sun and stop!
That blinding light is you.

Finger the scales that bind your perception,
There's no knowledge of trees if there's no one to listen
There is no up or down in outer space.
And the planets do not know their names.
The seasons and stars do not know the shapes that we have given them
Why are the animals pulling away?

Make love and remember, sing songs and recall
The rhythm in your dancing has been telling you all along.