Thursday, July 29, 2010

powerless at some crossroad of infinity

though it only looks to the world
like an intersection
on a busy Saturday night street

any move will send out ripples
of signal and consequence--
I sat too long at the bar and thought--

bad combination--too many shots
and too much thinking--and poleaxed
at the similarity of hangover and Buddhist

'blank mind'--next I'll have the grotesques
come up and ask me for directions--I should
light flares and surround myself--broken down but

empowered on the shoulder of a speeding highway



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
lost my cool many times

in these trying times--

Life on the rampage

most severely in centuries

to scour the ruins of our last age's

excess to make space for

the new dispensation--

if stroke don't kill me

something else will

but it's o.k. this is not

my world anyway

and I'm pleased to go--

let this current crew do its worst--

redemption a whisper in a future

of our pitiful imagining


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
it is such a relief

to offload the halo

even Baudelaire's

friend rejoiced at

losing his in the muck

of raging horsedrawn

traffic

it is such a relief

to be able to go

where you want and not be recognized

and thus pinned to

the board of gossip like a specimen

no the halo was vain

but true radiance is not

yes such is the relief when one

no longer has to be wants others
want one to be...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
exhausted under the T-square
that ends the previous game
and commences the new one

the planets squeeze us
we only think we're out of sorts

it's one and the same
we and the world must flow
in a different direction

if we are to survive

I mean really what do you
not get? you must've seen too many
movies

you've trained yourself to think in terms of
pleasant outcome
sweeping dust out into the dooryard

like a fastidious maid

what will your reckoning be
when you reach your outcome?

...er, thanks Rev.--now please don't get overheated--
siddown and have a glass of wine--(it's food)--

come down and join us in the judgment

and the verdict...




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.




so you fool

do you believe

in your fairy-tale

creation god now?

what broke you--

a last reliance

on miraculous intervention?

the comedown of cursing

the empty sky for your delusion?

then join the pool

of fools dog-paddling for

their imaginary lives




Content (c) Philip Milito.
eye see

see

so says

ewe

that saw

what it

seen




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
the sharp metal

the reigning steel

over the heart

on the altar of commerce

I'll die in the street

before I'll let those

these bloody-thirsty vampires

drain me in hospital



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

enough talk of "god"--

I have a mouthful
just trying to say what I really mean
and know that I'm saying it
and knowing I'm meaning it

enough talk of "god"--

I have to do the heavy lifting
when it comes to honoring
what good in me I haven't ruined
by being mushmouthed about it

enough talk of "god"

it's not the Divine's fault
that I'm at fault--the correction's on me
and after all these stumbling years
I'm glad to have had

enough talk of "god"

so shut up already, Phil

enough talk of "you"


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Habit is ritual that has lost its meaning.






Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

the wicked will perish of their own accord

and even here God is merciful (somewhat)--

since the wicked do not believe in God

at the end of time they will be blotted out

as if they never existed

and since they expect that to happen at death anyway

they will not be disappointed--

they will not be anything--

detached sadness of the saved observing

in the hardness of truth

matter-of-fact even in God's empyrean--




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.



I'm settling in for the night

the long day draws down

joys and sorrows are one blur

in the soft sigh of twilight




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
what you want

you already have

what you need

you already have

what you desire

you already have

what you attain

you already have

bless all you maintain

it's already yours


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.




all power of grief

the force with which my blood flows

what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, eh, Fred?

what doesn't make me stronger makes me keener

there is no time

to sit and tremble with regret

like a lava-flow I use my power to burn my way forward

my history hardening into the foundation

future incarnations will walk upon...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
my sense purged in the fire of ordeal
common to us all
fire consuming the past
into new manifestations

dull in the afternoon heat
contours of skin
borders of flesh
dissolve into the hazy lengthening sunlight


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
heat of burn-out

burnish the self-reflection



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I'm eager to go on--

I'm tired of this context--

now that done is done

I crave what is next




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.


I
I do
I do not
I do not wish
I do not wish to
I do not wish to elaborate
I only wish to eliminate
I only wish to
I only wish
I only
I

do and do not



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Monday, July 19, 2010

I do what I must--

whatever God allows

I do what I must

because I must--

and whatever God allows

is God's business--

whatever my karma

I'l make good--

I won't let His vicious

spiteful vengeance

deter me from what

I KNOW is right--gotten

not from this cartoon tyrant god

but from the One--the One--the Ineffable One



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.


Long I hoped for purity in pleasing the One

But what did I know of the One's reality?

I simply give in to weakness and folly

And said, "Fuck THIS!" after more times

Playing the fool than I wanted or needed to--

To hell with pleasing everyone else--up to and including God--

I was trained for mercy and forgiveness but found

Only cruelty and spite and ruthlessness--

God--who has no love--but plenty of vengeance--

You all deserve each other--

To hell all of you can go--I've gotten over my own stinking

Fake holiness--I wallow in my pitiful and fleeting

Earthly happiness--and I don't care--I've stepped free--

No matter what comes after--for now I've gotten away clean



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
The will has been defeated

The All gathers in






Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

God saw me hanging off the edge of a cliff

and was so moved with love by pleas for mercy

that He came over to the edge

and brought a sandaled foot down on my fingers




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I'm almost sure I'll live to see
my imagination satisfied

so long it has glanced up
at the silver cord

felt its tug
strained on its leash

knowing flesh could not
satisfy the imagination

that holds it bound
in exhausting hungers

dry regret masking
moist memory

ignorantly wishing
it were what it in reality is

but sightless of that fact
yearning instead

for what it wants the facts
to be

and no matter here but
for nonplussed onlookers

who'll live to see me
living to see them

seeing me...


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

how many moments
lost to our experience

are recorded and remembered
on Infinity's

silent blog...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

no structure
no limit
no reference point
no yearning for a release

it's all in play
there are no boundaries
there are no boundaries
but God




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

THE MOON HIDDEN BY CLOUDS



[A small old-fashioned modernist sequence written during May to September 1976.]


He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.--Luke 1:51


The moments blend together
Surely we were children together
The essence of all my scenes
Sleeps in another skin



I am delighted to think
To think of what I want to know
To know of what I want to think
To think I am delighted



I talk to my friend
The audience
Ah witness my creation



We'll smash the marble of the night sky
We'll stipple more stars and sculpt
A dawn of grottos and still roses
We'll absorb the color from the faces of virgins
Yes boys...yes...with our horns in the wind



The phases of night and day join arms
Over the buildings
The heat of their embraces is the color of this twilight
We notice the similarity to the neon
We won't even be friends 'til the drinks are paid for



The violet sky tingles in the web of the window
It pulses with every breath
The dark moves around your transfixed face
Mad eyes in the candlelight



A pipe smokes beneath a trellis if stars
The ashes huddle in the bowl
Prepare the scene before the hour strikes



Every crime is the perversion of a need
Every ape stalks his family tree
But will history show Freud brought
More of them back alive than Jesus?
Both of them attended by vice
Hanging like fruit
Outside a cage



I'm giving you plenty of chances
I know I'm generous
I know I'm a fool



We are the deaths of each other
What an egotist you'd have to be
TYo be poet or powermonger
And not realize you are led to your maker
By the opinions you despise



You darling live in this world totally
It is here nothing opens by itself
Thus I didn't know your love
This heartbreak was mine
I'm neither vain nor psychic



I remember the mushroom warnings
Too much was there
I saw a tool lying in the grass
It was almost Mexican in concept
Its form fit a groove in the scene
I turned it to an ocean into which stars were falling



Why are you such a bitch?
I stood outside your window all night
If you saw you widened the curtains for nothing
You're never more naked than when you're trying to be friendly



Love passed right through without touching me
It's senseless to pine away for an intensity unreceived
I was too busy destroying myself
I wanted us to be so tight people would
Feel good just seeing us together



I waited for your denial
Fast hands traded up the rope of nerves
You say you're looking for work in New York
You say you know what you're doing
Don't go there if you don't



I would be there if not for you
Don't think you did me any favors
I do not like it here



You were my last hope
I knew for a fact you resented it
You took me to task
Long past my due
You brought me to tears
In an echoed room
And left
Leaving the door open



My love for you is dying
I'm realizing my greatest ambition
To be a cripple
Who neither sees nor hears nor feels
Still as stone
With rage becoming
A life in the mind




Learn to play an instrument
It's the only way you'll get laid
After all people put out cigarettes in sculptures



The steeple chimes a sentimental Irish drinking song
The night glows with mist warm as blood
Drunk in the window I stare down at the congregation
I don't remember how we connect



The world lies under an assault of sun
Flowers are torn out of their seeds
Leopards feed on chicks in the nest
Dreamers get screwed and how



The solution was hard come by
The criticism pointed and stuck
But he felt ready for the honors
His mind drops like an egg



It was an open window to the courtyard
One could almost tighten in the day-long shadow
Children's playful screams echo
Like the head being stuck



I don't think I'll ever be through with my misery
Too many know me by its name
Too many don't like to be wrong



I'm afraid I've been dreaming again
You said you loved me after all
Your tongue penetrated and I went off in a daze
Out of my mind and finally into my arms



Weaned on a paradise of guilt
We developed
We grew nails and sharpened them to improve draw
Perhaps one day we will change the rituals
In the name of love we've already destroyed the world



One night I spilled my guts for mercy
The excuses were in vain
As were the dissimilar bitternesses
Never tell love of love's secrets
The next morning the moon set
With nothing between us



I don't know where you are
I sometimes wonder if fate is ever more precise
Than when it joins us in our different identities
The next time we meet it won't matter
We will have forgotten enough
Of our sense of place
To be more alone than strangers



And so it came to be void
We sat in bars 300 miles apart
It's no wonder we noticed what others were wearing
It's no wonder we listened to the music



Bitterness comes to flower
While we tool with the spade
We are defined by pain
And remember every detail
As with the memory surging up full
Children send up a cry
The wind takes it in exchange
As the tree claims another kite



I grew away from our time with anxiety
Fear and mistrust were the clock's hands and numbers
Finally I counted the crosses
Tearing a leaf off the calendar
Dull and warm in comfortless Autumn
Was a man distracted by remembrance
Was the moon hidden by clouds



I believe I've lost this thread


* * *
Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.








WAILS OF THE WRAECCA


PART X: LET US KILL THE GOD OF OUR IMAGINATIONS


I continue--

Having nowhere to stay

One foot in this world
One foot in the next
And belonging in either

Oh One who is All--

Show unblocked way--
That I may faint and dream

Unimaginable aid


*


Wretched turns
Course the way
No accounting
The conditions
Why good goes bad
And bad goes worse
Wretched turns
Plot the course


*


You tell me why we fell--

You tell me why we were cast out--
Why our genuine effort's never
Penance or grace enough enough to heal and repair--

You tell me why God loves our pain
Why forgiveness is demanded that is
Not shown to us--for all the faith
In prayer--and why all amends are blocked
By divine imperatives for amends

You tell me all I cannot imagine

If I could imagine it
Or if you tell me about it
Then that isn't it at all--

Daily my soul is inspired to its trembling--
This supposed co-creator stumbling
In merest guess of his sorrow


*


You will be done down over and over
You will get the pegs knocked out from under you
Every foundation you lay will crumble
And nothing you build will stand

All you touch will slip through your fingers
No connections will lead anywhere anytime
You will have no choice but to move and every
Move will be the wrong one

Your arms loaded? Then know
Your burden will be increased
And--like a cartoon--the last floating
Feather landing on top of the pile
Will send you plummeting through the floor

Your heart is sorrowing? Then be assured
No amount of time will heal it
You are sorry? then don't expect prayer to chnage anything
Or Grace make a difference to your misery

You will have dreams you will never figure out
You will have their issue seeping out of your wounds

Who help us then? If this is God's Love
What must His Wrath be about?


*


My mind in sotto voce advices me--

Get wise sonny--
Your pretense of deep contrition
Is another evil the Lord
Can do without--

I'm no better in my alleged suffering holiness
Than others whose delusions of grandeur
Are their only visions of heaven--for what
But opportunity for error in prayer--
The emphasis inescapably on self?

My mind may advise as it will--
But will it eventually divest itself
Of its own cripplings of faith?

Will my mind learn acquiescence
To God who does everything
By doing nothing?


*


Let us kill the god of our imaginations!--
That petulant projection of our selfishness--
That thug we've created in our own filthy image--
That miscreant majesty we've invented to excuse ourselves
And to interfere with the lives of others--
Our invective righteous as advantageous safety

Let us kill this devious deity--
It is he at whom we aim self-hatred as blasphemy--
It is he we curse for our stubborn failings--
It is he we blame for our ills and whom we would
Manipulate to harm and to ruin our enemies

Who invoke like their image of God for protection and victory--

Let us destroy this notion of god destroying us--

Let us do away once and for all with this evil
Keeping our minds fogged by the narcotic of stupidity
Keeping our hearts enchained to craven habits
Keeping our souls enmeshed in our puerile creations
And separated from the True One whose works
Are wrought and ruined through us and whose sufferings
Consequently are ours--

Let us peer into the Void at last and see what
We are wrought-

Let us finish with this way that only blocks the Way--

Let us kill the god of our imaginations
That we may find
God--


*


My fatal lack of of perspective
Leads me astray--
Cold reasoning deciding
A bird's a god or the stone's manna--
An earthquake's an omen or
Health a carrier of delayed woes--
Bitterness unbounded by
The weakness of the will

And so confessed on an empty morning
Focused in some overriding view
Things become themselves again
And I gather myself up--
The chair the window the trees the sun
All lit with the blaze of matter
While I twist in a daze with nerves
Crackling like a sparking wire


*


God was watching the misery on earth
Weeping with His hands behind His back
Making not a move toward those in pain
Who were beseeching Him for His help and mercy

Because they were only receiving back
The harm they'd done to others--
"Trouble comes to all--but woe to the one who brings it"

And all this by God's own law--
It is said God does not contradict Himself (His wonderous
Paradoxes evidently a different matter)
And so He will do nothing but let them
Wallow--letting this way of self-atonement
Be His justice--

Until they become wise and strong enough
To break the effects of the laws of God
By obeying them so completely they themselves
Will Become The Law--and rejoin

God watching the misery on earth


*


Of course I wish it could all be
Honey and roses
The golden light
Saturating the multi-hued hills
And leaving shimmering stems
On the peaked waters
Even if my words--or any words--
Stunted truths in themselves--
Could never render the fullness
Of this reality--
But my fate is not such--
No amends are enough--
No punishments too severe
Or sustained to be
Mitigated or cancelled--
Forgiveness emphatically not the balm
We were taught it is--or if so--
Then on a scale beyond what we
Can measure or appreciate

This then is the Way--
His doing our price--
The reason honey leaves sticky residue
And red or pink or white roses
Wilt to universal brown--
The reason the leaden light
Drains and bares the blank hills
And levels the peaked waters--
Where my words--and no words--
Could ever render the reality
Of this emptiness


*


Left alone in the world--

Peace thickens like a fog--

A distant clamor
Underscores the dense silence--
Nothing under the ceiling of heaven
Moves but for my inner stirrings--

Cacophony mutely tumbling in the hush--
I am unable to transcend--
The Void fills with images
Squeezing free of the process of experience--
Memory recording the subjective brunt--
And flashing on the screen of nothingness
The sad parade of shame and waste and loss
That brought me to this terminus--

A jitter in the calm night air

[End of PART X.]

End of WAILS OF THE WRAECCA


(Note:'wraecca' is an Anglo-Saxon word for an outcast, an exile--a wanderer)

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
WAILS OF THE WRAECCA



PART IX: I'M WAITING


I hold in my hands

Air and hope


*


My faithless heart cries for deliverance--
Its prayer for strength
Unworthy and unclean--
Yet supplicating
In resistance to despair
Even at the risk
Of being called
Hypocrite
By the fear of others--


*


Revealed in the
Sacred quarters
Of our holiest privacy--

The Creator
Outcast by
God's creatures themselves


*


Hung time and again
On my own cross
This time it took--

Writhing in dark rooms
Like a monk
In his cell

Praying to the blackness
In melodramatic
Postures of self-regard--

This time I broke
In the torment
Of struggle--

This time
Contrition and
Penance were one--

It was finally no wonder
The slow dawn found
A prostrate form

Perforated as with
Stigmata and invisible eyes
Regarding it with relief--

The soul unhung
From its cross and leaving
Its stations of enlightenment--

This time it took--


*


As long as
You are
Involved
In the ills
Of creation
You'll be
At the mercy
Of karma

As long as
You are
At the mercy
Of karma
Then evil
Will always
Seem to be an
Instrument
Of God's
Vengeance


*


My ordeal's reached
The flashpoint

I will break
Either down or through--
"He who hesitates is lost"
I hesitate
"He who would save his life
Must lose it"
I cling and lose--

Cannot go begging Christ--
My miseries are nothing compared
To the load he endured--

No help coming
Or deserved if this desolation
Is in the service of justice--

Opportunities for
Amendment are passing
And I know only
One lament
One prayer
One action
Torn from my heart
Every other minute
Of every single day--

Mea culpa


*


One slow destructive
Step at a time
Led me into
This swamp of passionate wrong

One slow constructive
Step at a time
Will lead me out--
Even if the trudge takes

The rest of this bug-bitten life


*


Our ordeals shatter us
To make us whole--
We must trust then
In the Master Craftsman

There are so many missing pieces
We could never find and repair--


*


The sky is slowly clearing
The drenching damage beneath
Sloshing quietly in the ripples
Of survivors wading
Numbed by the harsh cleansing

As the soft sun casts pale gold
Spangles on these waters
And the ruins of our false hopes
Misdirected desires and mistaken
Understanding--

Hubris
Floating face down after the tempest


*


Service in the endless air of creation
The aether crowded with souls
Prayers for all of us
Against our own evil
God's Grace pours out increasingly
With each faithful syllable

On this side of the veil we look
At the empty blue sky
In silent awe
And imagine it--


*


A new world has been born

No miracles attended this birth--
Conduct did not alter greatly--
Many were disappointed
Expecting the Will of God made
Openly manifest like a light show

Whatever the calamities yet to come
To whatever crushing lives yet to make amends
The material world remains the snare
It has always been--

Cosmically the vibrations may be higher
Sharper from the shifting of the age
The understanding a little deeper and thus
The responsibility a little greater--

But the earthly imperatives remain ever despite
A new world born--

Far far yet is the Great Unification--

Girt yourself--
More profound than joy
Is the weary blessing
To a new age begun--


*


Spirit feet
Walk that
Perpetual road

Look at what
Lies ahead--
Self-review

Learning again
To learn again
What was learned--

Movements of
Spirit in the
Awareness of

The soul--
Turning it
In renewed hope

Away from
Its prodigal
Sum of error

And onward
Still to the
Truth of its

Love in the
Authenticity of
Its amendment

With no rest
In all creation
Until all is

Set right


*


I'm waiting to be
Consumed in fire like Elijah
I'm waiting to be
Lifted in a wheeling smoke to heaven
I'm waiting to be
Raised up beyond the seven stars

I'm waiting to be


*

Setting sun

Round accomplished
Night sparkling
In the breath of Thought--

Sigh wearily
Welcome the wierd--

The stumbling
Of a wraecca

Outside the gates



[End of PART IX.]


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Friday, July 2, 2010

WAILS OF THE WRAECCA



PART VIII: LAST IN LINE WITH A BROKEN CUP


I visit
Headstone after
Headstone
In my memory--

Leave lillies
Of regret--

Cross myself from habit

And hope they are doing
Better than I am


*

Tense beneath my brave face
Hard done by and sore from it
I struggle
With belittled hubris

Prodded by fear
As the only guidance available
Persistent as consequence and
Hard as forgiving one's self


*


Oh poor victimized
Clans of crap
Rise up and kill
Your true oppressors--

Commit suicide


*


To question at all God's Will
Means an instant fall from Grace--
Who knows their own hope purely--
Undeluded?


*


Is this the glory in suffering?

To be first up in heaven
For a swig of Living Water
Who on earth was
Last in line with a broken cup?


*


Done down again
And yet again and
God Goddess Whoever Almighty--
You never tire--
Grace getting far less of a workout--
How about surprising the hell out of us
And letting goodness manifest as something more
Than a broken ideal?

Would creation truly collapse
From a brief flash of mercy?

Grant surcease please!

I weary of the mournful cuckoo
Building a nest from remorse--
Am I too unworthy to ask for the dove--
With head aflame atop blinding wings?

Would goodness build it a nest
I for one'd Promise not to try to kill it--


*


With only regret
To guide me
I move ahead
Fearful of
The sweetness of
Divine promise--
Fearful the promises
Will be fulfilled--

What would I do then--
Ready for anything but
The Grace
I despaired
Of receiving?


*


Grace may abound
When most we've fallen--
--But our fall is so swift
And Grace so slow


*


Amends?
One tries-
Enduring love
That often
Feels as if
One were being
Tortured by
An enemy


*


The pride of the meek
Will undo each promise--

The hubris of suffering
Squandering our inheritance


*


God will stem evil
In God's good time
--Sadly we suffer
Under a different clock


*


I must forget Time
--whatever aspects signal Change is slow
As the ignorant that misses it
And passes off The loss of this chance
As a test of patience


*


Useless to denounce the world--

Horror from good intentions at cross-purposes
As hard as evil seeking
Its disruptive advantage--

Unless you're into confession--don't bother--

Any who hear will be offended--
Will say--"Who are you to say?"
When God has the last word anyway--


*


May I find
My strength of patience
Against hatred of world
That binds me to world--

Trying to find the Way
Where signs are scarce




[End of PART VIII.]

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
WAILS OF THE WRAECCA.


PART VII: SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT IF SOMETHING'S NOT WRONG




You can't withdraw and pine--

You're no longer a child
And haven't been for longer than
You've known you haven't been...


*

It's cold beyond the pale--

My breath froze
Into demon shapes

Flipping birds at me--


*


What prompts
What calamitous leveling
That's punishment or penance
according to your lights?

I cannot recall

Though some moments
Whisper alternatives
As I search through
Wreckage for clues


*


And here is another
Invitation to pull pins
Out of your voodoo doll
And stick them into the carcass
On the crucifix

God forgives--
But only if you do
And with your
Misconceived notions
How can you?


*


Lord! Help me remove the bitterness
From my heart!

"I will not!
You have bitterness in your heart!"


*


Why shouldn't gratitude be bitter?

Isn't righteousness too often the helping hand
that adds to the burden?


*


God's Will be done--
What "free" choice have we really?


*


I was finally broken--

I'd prayed like never before in my life
And still did evil triumph and horror crumble
All delusion--

As if God put my smashed pieces under heel
And ground them further--
The aftermath chafes in the blistering heat

Of afternoon--with mouth closed--
And a fading of pain as relief--the cure
As bad as the complaint--

For Life's sake I'll have to lose god
To find God


*


Have patience with the afflicted--
You are among them


*


Pity us purists--

At best we're laughingstocks
At worst fall guys


*


Dry heart--

Definitive as a fossil
It gives the exact condition
When doom overtook
The fresh fragile beating
And rendered its being

Complete


[End of PART VII.]


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
WAILS OF THE WRAECCA


PART VI: HERE TREMBLES EX-LORDLY NERVES



Blackness

Nothing but blackness

As if the Outer Darkness
Were All

And the All

Nothing



*


Last life glow
Aslant a narrow stone corridor--
Amber sheen on black-gray rock
Stretching toward the dark
Out of which I see


*


Assured of little
I guess beyond my prayers
--Mind too noisy to hear
The still inner voice reply


*


Nerves fray
From the mind's imperatives
--The spirit leaking out
From screaming dendrites

Befuddled


*

Assured of nothing
We paint a grimace
On the public mask
To see whose pity
We may take advantage of--

Certain then only
Of our assumption
Mercy's a
Masquerade


*


The steady mind withstands the winds
That swirl within the heart--

I have no such thing
And bend with each blow--

Blood drawing nonplussed limbs
Into the clinch of capitulation



*


Here trembles ex-lordly nerves--
Small demotions culminating
In an enormous shattering drop
Teaching this subject purity of prayer
And genuineness of contrition--

Learning for real how the Great serve
All--for All--
Abandoning the grand notions
By tiny innumerable breaks--

This withering rest
In the jitter of awareness


*


Hard to forgive
With your enemy still
Holding the blade to your throat--

Hard to forgive
Where hope has the heft of a breeze
Passing through a graveyard--

Hard to forgive
Who cannot forgive--contesting a faith
Not apparent in this unforgiving world


*


No prayer helps--

A moment's begging for blessing
Is overturned in the next moment's curse


*


Allow me to bypass my nerves
Which explode to undo
Any extended peace and calm
I can manage--

The undercurrent constant
And grief the perpetual lesson
Grief itself makes me
Too stupid to learn


*


How fear clutches my throat
When I imagine Your Will--
How the bottom drops away under my feet
With hope dashed and faith groundless--

Pleading for mercy brings its opposite--
And what heinous sin gouges such hard recompense from
What remains of my soul--

Here where fear and faith blow full blast
In my ordeal's foundry and fright and fortitude
Struggle on the foundation of my will--
I tense in this night

Of hooks and fire and headaches
Called up for this purifying scorching of
What remains of my soul--

In this dark night of Reckoning
May Your iron hand turn gold to heal
What remains of my soul--


*


Forgive a penitent's self-deluded prayer--

When vanity breaks
Spirit will remain still--silent--

Then will a penitent
Give honest tongue

If his wreck itself be the Grace--


*


In these long
Thorough days
Of tribulation
Love--like Grace
Is all the more
Fragile
Sweeter and more precious--
Scarce almost to the degree that
Pain and hate are abundant
Hold to your soul
And your soul
To its Maker
During these long
Thorough days--

Let not consequence
Deter your purpose
And answer the Judgment
With forgiveness


[End of PART VI.]


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

WAILS OF THE WRAECCA

PART V: NOW IS FINALLY THE TIME



God is Love

But God knows
Love is not mild


*

Left with a heart that perpetually cries
Over all it will never realize
The more I yearn to be free
The more the screws tighten on me


*

Well may God despair of ever
Creating human souls--
Due to our Oneness
We reflect God "warts and all"

*

Let God have vengeance--

All we have is
The placebo of Grace
The fiction of Mercy

The lie of Love--


*

Where when and how
Atonement and forgiveness--
The reconciliation

And which One making
The first move--


*

We?--Co-creators?

To what vainglory do
You Lord invite us?

I don't want to create worlds--
I just to be at peace in Yours--


*


If things turn out well
It's often not to our satisfaction--

We only think we are making
God's desire our own


*

Who am I to breathe
Fire and brimstone?
Maybe I was Jeremiah
Once and still haven't learned--

Those who wish to control the world
Cannot and so--condemn it--


*

The world closes this term of sin--
Whole populations dazed with anger
With bitter axes to grind--
Bemoaning all we should have done but didn't
Or wanted to do but couldn't--

Now defeated on a crumbling edge
The world trembles in this apocalyptic clean sweep--
A New Age for sure--but first
God will clean house--and
Now is finally the time


*

There is peace
Between those
Who have no business
With each other


*


Bedraggled whore
Rouged and lit
Staggers by--
Do not mock

Or some day we'll wind up
In her briefest shorts
Wondering what we did
To deserve this


*


Let us hope God shows us mercy
Before we die of the lack of it


*



Nothing left to rage at--
No sense to anything--
Kaleidoscopes of matter
Tumble away
Revealing
No sense to anything--
Nothing...


[End of PART V.]


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

WAILS OF THE WRAECCA

PART IV: WAITING IN DARKNESS


I won't believe a word
Anyone tells me anymore--
The road to any hell is paved
With crushed optimists

If I followed their advice
I'd be with them now
Stinging from a divine betrayal

Staring up out of the ground


*

Big luck's not mine--

The last things I need
Being the first things I get--

The only good being
You're ahead if you break even
And that as rare as Grace--
The biggest gamble

*

This is Life--
The World perishing in the busy talons
Of those imposing their reptilian wills
On the intractable facts and no visible doom
Strong enough to pierce the old training
Of moron delusions of transcendent comprehension--

Yet in perpetual heartache with no cavil
This is Life--To be spared knowledge of what knowledge crushing you--

*

Reduced to self-pity
Like those with the least to complain about--

Precisely the type of fool
I never thought I'd become--

*


Lord--we're all tired of the pain of life--
What ears have you for that? As the helpless manipulate
Conscience to entangle us
With a guilty sense of obligation
Their wounded cries have deafened
Our lower registers--

Are we to rightly
Assume Grace moves in decibels beyond
This stunted human range? And does Grace
The deafen You to our laments
As we try to manipulate You with angst
And prayers? Do You yet tire Lord
Of such shabbiness we make of Life?

*

Lord what light in Your creation
Illuminates the path
We tread with misapprobation
Mounting blind into wrath?
What sight unsealed at long last
Shall pierce the veil of vision
To see what matrix holding fast
Our actual condition?

*

What alone the body seeks
(But for it alone
Less lassitude in our focus)
Will be taken up with gravity--
Short weak spokes on a wheel
Treading floor that creaks With all we atone
The weighing down of miscreation--

As pledged spirit will strain
Itself in this push
Nonplussed at the loss of application
That drove the shades of appetite
From memory fit
Only for what earth betokens us--

*

Like a knife
Get it hard--
It's rust today
That sparkled once--
And taught you respect or else--
That could've broken off inside you
And spilled your blood
Like a drunkard--

That should've lost long before
It did and endures
Merely a relic of your regret--

*

I have my heart set on nothing


*

Waiting in darkness
For the Light
That seems to lose
Its way to us--

(Or which we are
Too blind to see--)

What comfort then
Our prayers?

*

I howl--

(Again?
When are you going to give it a rest?
It's not only that it's so much
But it's so much the same--
The unchanging note of despair
And of scorn for the
Spiritual aid that will not come
Because of the despair and the scorn--)

How does the amputee stand and hold?


*

wind passes
sound passes
desolation passes

always

always nothing left



[End of Part IV.]

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.



WAILS OF THE WRAECCA.

PART III: THE WORLD


Berserk from vertigo
My mind
Torn by images
Of years gone

As present and
Painful as ever


*

I'm mumbling again

I dare not speak out loud
While a shadow darkens
A bar of light
Shining under the door


*

The mendacious cultivate your misery
And benefit from it--

The councils of men--corrupt with complicity--
Feed off your grief
And their pious justifications
Barbeque the earth

This is the World--

All filthy ideals at peak action
Before what cataclysmic cleansing?

What purging in dumb "Finally It Is Truly Upon Us" awe
As eyes over chewing mouths lift--blank--gone slack--?


*

Fuck earthly authority
In every shape and form--
Fuck the insane imperatives
And don't you EVER conform

*

Advent season
Will pass like a wind
Over my ruins
Work of human hands

Ringing novena bells
Through this neighborhood


*

When night closed on me
Like a coffin lid
I was in bug-eyed panic
For you over a pay phone
As you hung up--

When I was defeated in my own mind
Suffering at the inanity of drones
And called for some rope of kindness
You turned your back--

When mad midnights struck
As I gazed out of my vibrating zombie
Contemplating my hells and needing a word of grace
You held your tongue--

When you yourself receive these ordeals
In some future state and I hear a whistling
In my ear and shrug it off
Then you will know--what--why--


*

What patience
When right goes wrong
What tolerance
When everything's wild

What forgiveness
When consequence crushes intent
What acceptance
When no grace stills this repetition

*

The oppressed do their worst
Blaming others than themselves
For their misery

The more cunning tyrannize the slow weaker ones
Who burst in rage past acceptance--
The steady need met in this mutual murdering--

In those swinging scales this dynamic
Manipulates this unity of being--as unrelenting as the god
Who upholds them all in their pains


*

For protecting whores
And giving them advantage
In every hand of a deck permanently stacked
Against the lonely and beaten
You--who love us
Soft feminine--pliant beneath the God's rampant maleness--
Indeed teach--
The wicked prosper
That they may be
Instruments of vengeance

*

To wait in patience
Before the throne
Without stalling out
When what you've long awaited
Past--is gone--

But then what fortunate turn empowering--
Balm for hurt useless for hurt--
Is disqualified from unmastered
Fuming griefs

Steady as the throne
Patience runs down before--

*

How do I get
The depth of a cry--
Sad harness
Harassing the feeble back
Drawing a rattle at drop down--

Is my life this? This depth of cry?

This laying down of the burden?




[End of PART III.]


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
WAILS OF THE WRAECCA Part II.

II. DON'T GIVE YOUR LOVE AWAY SO FREELY



You--who wish to know nothing about me
I love more than family friends or lovers

*

My eyes examine angles and
Corners where planes of
Walls and ceilings join

Imagining a shape to the universe

*

Well I've fallen
I've failed
Now you all can
Point your fingers and snicker
Now you can laugh
As all my plans
Turn into mere talk
And you cocksuckers
Hating me for the
Pettiest of reasons
Can gloat over
What you think is
My come-uppance
It would be nice
To say you bastards
Haven't gotten yours yet
You haven't
But I've been at
Your mercy for so long
I've lost my class
And now I'll show you
As much mercy as you've
Shown me
When you fall
I'll duff the high-toned nobility
And join the laughter
And the finger-pointing
It's so much more gratifying
Than mercilessly brooding
Over my reductions By you in this world
Damn you all

*

Everyone has had their day
Everyone has had their say
Nothing remains to be done
But sit back and criticize
The ones coming after us
The ones who'll make their play
And fuck up everything
Worse than we did--
Who did such a thorough job--

*

Angry that the wicked profit
I'm finding what
That anger makes of me

One day again scales will fall
And I'll have own up
To my contribution to their success

*

At the end of time and Your patience--
Is Your face a blur in the imagination
My pain pleads to unavailing?--
Forgiveness? Mercy?
I ponder Your precision of denial
As I straddle some abyss
Tongues of flames flicking up
And licking my balls--
One foot in this world
One foot in the next
And belonging in neither place--
Why do You prolong this agony-
You who murder us then bid us rise?

*

In the winter night
Ghosts stalk the whipping snowflakes
Giving definition to the air--

Their moods shaping chance--
Their vision a greed in the mind's eye
Blinking in the blinding wind--

It must be so or else
Why does no effort matter--
So crowded and hounded on the empty street?

*

I beseech in fear
Knowing false every image to which I pray
And Truth whole and complete
Beyond our scope--
What can be hoped for?

God? Satan?
Which mask exiled from their disciples
Showing no mercy or pity?

If this is our only choice
Then who help us?

*

What seethes in me
That finds no outlet?
What burns and drives me
To some black abyss of terror?
What so shakes me I cannot lie at peace
In my ordinary hovel
Wondering what I'll trip myself on next?

In a solid blaze of black fire
I shift in my white ashes
Bitter the prayer and bitter the silence
While I set myself to destroying
Every love that proves I've done wrong--

*

Don't give your love away so freely
Trust no word that can be spoken
Accept no excuse or explanation
Involve yourself with hunger
And that's the last you'll see of mercy

Don't give your love away so freely
Trust no unfulfilled and hurt memory
Accept no expedient yearning
We do not escape from our skins
And merge in some timeless place

Don't give your love away so freely
Trust no assurance born of desperation
Accept no gift you haven't earned
No two minds are in complete accord
One will feel hurt and one will feel cheated

Don't give your love away so freely
Trust no advice from the talkative
Accept no direction from the blind
It's a long way to get back
If you don't know where you've been

Don't give your love away so freely

Expose your heart to all
And shiver at the empty sheaths
Accept no praise or scorn
Trust no lovers or idols
Don't give your love away so freely

*



Knowing without wisdom or understanding
I carried each dissembling
Like a cross
Raging uselessly
Amid throngs of the hypnotized
Trying to waken them
To the sinless sunshine of blood and awe

But the world breaks against
The breaking flesh
Blinded by vanity but not yet hurt
Enough to renounce
I span spirit and flesh
Like a careless acrobat
Unable to tell
What any of us are dying to become--

*

What to make of it?

The child who expected
A salvation by miracle
Grew to be consumed in his madness

The child who expected
The Spirit to live his life for him
Grew to forget every learned lesson

The child who expected
To be reduced to ashes
Grew to be burned out in his pride

Oh One--forgive--
I've as much to remember
As I have to learn

In a world that was never
Attentive to Your Word
And now on some insane brink

What to make of it?

*

After the monsoon
Stars through tears in the clouds
Rushing over the mirrored streets
No one out this warm Spring morning
The last quarter moon horns like a fang
Through a break over the pre-dawn horizon

Fate in pursuit
Of the trophy of my skull
We lose what we most want
When we play it too close to the vest
Fate extracting its total price as I drain out
Like blood through a stent

*

Deterioration set in
I ate mushrooms and saw
What I saw as the face of God
Manifesting through the passage
Of time and the ebb of matter

So impossible since then

Tightly awake on some ledge
The air breaks in my hand
My eyes can't focus

I blur like a chameleon
Into the facts of the One's world



[End of Part II]

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.