Diotima, the Guru and the Ivy Crown

“I'd love to hear your views about how we should understand the admonition to "be a child of illusion".” – Bill

Bill, Bill, Bill. You are no newbie here and must surely know it’s best not to go encouraging John. You have gone and done it now! If Ning starts charging for server space, I am sorry everyone, but Bill asked and must share some responsibility here.

One very important proviso, also, Bill. When someone lobs a softball over home plate like that, John has been known to throw down the old bat and just break into song. If that were to happen, be sure to remember that words like “YOU” are no longer addressing Bill, but more likely someone trying to get someone else’s attention.

Next, I want to acknowledge that I too am only a wannabe philosopher, but I have been one long enough to have gleaned that much greater ones than I have acknowledged themselves as wannabes. At least in the sense that none whose works are worth taking to a desert island ever claimed to have captured the mysteries of existence in their words. Their methods were ramps and their conclusions jumping off points. One, Great Diotima’s great pupil, punned, “I know that/what I do not know.” Some doubted themselves off the edge; some constructed elaborate scaffolds of conviction and leaped, some, like Nietzsche, danced into the Dionysian oblivion of Diotima’s party--endlessly repeating patterns--with joy, though it may have been feigned. Anyway, she made him pay. Nobody really ever got out alive. (Fabulous party. Do spare your servant yet a little while, Gracious Mistress.)

Still, this question of whether I am a real or wannabe philosopher does raise the question of my own credentials and I must be honest with myself. From your point of view, I arrive in your world in approximately the same way as the guy who sits down at your table at 3am in the donut shop to show you his very important notes on The Urantia Book. Unfortunately my credentials are not going to help me. Though I eventually managed to scam some kind of degree, deep inside where it counts, I will always be a college dropout. All I have is what is on this napkin, but first I would like to ask, what are YOU doing in this donut shop, Bill?

That is to say, what are WE doing here trying to make statements about reality and our place in it?

You will be relieved to find that what is on my napkin is simply a method by which we can investigate this question for ourselves, so you needn’t accept anything in my manifesto on authority. As usual the real question is whether this napkin and its bearer are worth your time while you eat donuts.

Even greater relief: What is on this napkin is not John’s grand but dubious manifesto alone, but basic shamata instruction, together with one hypothesis I suggest you explore: I submit that a person who has developed a rudimentary capacity to attend to the flow of thoughts in the mind is now credentialed to speak on this question in at least one important way that Mr. Chalmers seems not quite to be. (Though I get the definite impression that Mr. C himself might have some credentials he is not willing to divulge to the faculty committee.) Whether we are Buddhists or not, by this simple meditation we can develop the capacity to experience the relationship between thought and the substrate within which it occurs.

So, I am sitting and the thought, “pastries,” occurs, followed by, “I am hungry,” or “I want to talk to Diotima.” Whatever our thoughts, as we slow our minds down and attend to them, we notice that there are tiny gaps there in the stream of thought and as we pay attention to the gaps and the thoughts as conjoined phenomena rather than as dead silence vs. signal for action (not yet, My Love!) we come to a very important conclusion which I challenge you to test for yourself: All thoughts arise and subside in that same stream of gap and thought.

“True” thoughts are there. Factually true thoughts like, “the Empire State Building is in NY,” and emotionally true like, “Diotima is beautiful.” (In the eyes of the beholder, but blessed are those eyes, Radiant Consort of the Wise!) And also false thoughts are there. Factually false, like, “Sunlight is reflected Moonlight,” or emotionally unreliable, like, “Diotima loves only me.” (It hurts, but I still love YOU, O Unattainable Queen!) We could get into the feeling tones behind thoughts, but I want to keep it simple and we are going to use “thoughts” here for a whole variety of reactive experiences below the level of overt bodily response. Investigating these is a great deal of what we call “meditation.”

Some of these thoughts are declaratives that can be tested in the stream of gap/thought by seeing whether we can use them to make relatively accurate predictions about future experiences and thoughts. These types of thoughts range from the prediction that if I put sugar in my coffee today, it will be sweet just like it was when I put sugar in it yesterday, to the prediction that 50+ kilos of Enriched Uranium will take out a city.

Others thoughts are delightful jabberwocky or self-evident axioms and deductive proofs or angry swear words or internal “mental” movements just before they become overt “physical” ones. (Maybe that describes all of them in some subtle way? Check it out.) But all thoughts are there in that stream. Thoughts about science, probability and experimental predictions. Thoughts about where did you leave your cell phone. Thoughts so weak they hardly register. Thoughts so powerful they make you want to fight or throw up. And then there is the class of thoughts about the whole EXPERIENCE of the stream of gaps and thoughts and all the other experiences we have. Thoughts like the word “experience” itself.

Mr. Chalmers’ thoughts are in that latter class mostly, with the possible exception of his attempt at a “thought experiment,” which could be in the class of predictive thoughts mentioned above, though I am skeptical. Now, this response would have been much easier had you chosen a worse paper, Bill. I want to thank you for that. I happen to know this paper pretty well (in a wannabe kind of way) and it has some marvelous things in it. In fact, I will suggest before we are through that Mr. Chalmers has given us something we can investigate to great advantage in our practice and our life. Chalmers work is rightly highly regarded, but, of course, my job being a philosopher, even a wannabe, is to eviscerate it as neatly as possible.

Let’s get back to that EXPERIENCE thing and remember how we got to this particular table at the donut shop. It all happened in our experience. Your blog post, my response, our experience of reading Chalmers’ paper, mine of remembering the last time I read it, it all happened “intertwined” with that same “stream” of experience which “contains” (metaphors, metaphors, but try talking about this stuff without them) that “stream” of gap and thought. Let’s let some of Chalmers thoughts waft through our minds, and as good meditators should, lets give ourselves some space in which to react to them (or not) more slowly and deliberately.

Here’s one: “The problem of consciousness…”

That’s interesting. I don’t know about you, but I am sitting minding my breath and there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem about consciousness or experience. If Diotima lands another blow to my ego, that might be a problem. A bill I can’t pay is a problem. Things INSIDE experience are problems. But experience? Why is it a problem for Chalmers? The rest of the paper makes clear that the reason it is a problem is that Chalmers (though to his credit he gives up) wants to explain/reduce experience by/to some material cause.

If Chalmers did not think this was a problem, would he have a job? If Chalmers announced, “Experience is what it is, let’s just hang with that…” Would he get a promotion? That’s one avenue of exploration here. But let’s call that trivial and let our mind riff on this whole matter/mind problem for just a second before we move on.

As meditators the word “experience” is a pointing out instruction. The most basic one. It points us back to that mysterious act of being alive and aware, what we explore in meditation. It is not an “object” in a class of objects, but the very capacity to apprehend any objects at all. Chalmers seems to want it to be an object among objects. Even when he finally admits it as “fundamental,” that is, not an object to be explained, he still thinks of it as an object. But can experience contain experience as an object? Have you ever seen experience itself? You can say, “let’s stop drinking and go experience dinner” but you can never say, “let’s quit experiencing and go get a drink.” Experience is not a problem or an object. That is why in mediation we do not define it or theorize about its cause. We open it and rest in it. We can only find its “explanation” in contemplation, not analysis.

But here is another direction we could take before we rest. We could psychologically investigate whether we, like Chalmers, may feel some need to “explain” experience. (I myself don’t know what the word “explain” means in this context. I used to think I did, and apparently Chalmers still does, so I’ll use it. I am going to cheat here and condense many years of working with this issue.)

I was for many years one of those people who did “worry” about the mind/matter relationship. I would not advise holing up in a tenement somewhere with espresso and a bunch of books to come up with the “right” answer to these questions. I tried that, and ended up in this donut shop. But I did, in meditation over the years, notice that the primary feeling that accompanied this fixation was a low grade, but deep anxiety that made me excited when I thought that I might be close to “explaining” experience in terms of matter, or vice versa. (An anxiety that I recognize when Diotima snubs me.)

I noticed that the word “matter” tends all over the world to be related to “mother,” the first material sensation we encounter as we differentiate from her, and a great source of anxiety when she first leaves us. I noticed how when I thought I had an “explanation” my anxiety decreased. I began to work with the different “explanations” and work with the type of answer I was being given. Here are some of my results:

Materialism = I never left Mom. I never will. I’m just a weird bubble in her and I pop. Nothing is my fault. Everything is cool.

Idealism = Mom is an illusion. No more birth-death trauma! I’m free! Why can’t I control everything and stop all this suffering?

Matriarchal Theism = see materialism.

Patriarchal Theism = Dad is really in charge. Mom can’t kill me now, but He is a scary dude in his own right.

Atheistic Existentialism = Dad’s dead. Mom’s a bitch. I’m me. Deal with it, cuz I can’t.

Well, John gets carried away, perhaps, but over time I saw that the “problem” is constructed out of anxieties along those lines combined with the mistaken inclusion of “experience” in the contents of experience (see above) as an object (a confusion of language). The “solution” is one that began to sink in to my head from many sources, but the best one I remember is Herbert Guenther’s: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” That to my mind is the Buddhist “solution.” Check it out:

Buddhism = Mom and Dad and I are all just aspects of experience itself. I will just accept that as what is, worry as little as possible, keep experiencing till I don’t, and see if it ever happens that I stop experiencing, since I don’t even know what that would mean. (Try imagining not having an experience sometime in meditation.)

Now, I have overstayed my welcome, Bill, but may yet bleed keystrokes all over your blog comments, as this will be one of my last posts for a long time, and I feel a song coming over me. I do want to comment on the best part of Chalmers’ paper, though. It is when he gives up on trying to explain mind in terms of matter and just starts to relate and coordinate the intricacies of physicality with experience. He manages thereby to sneak the possibility of an old attitude behind the unfriendly halls of Academe:

The World is Alive!

Now Chalmers seems to see “metaphysical speculation” and no doubt more papers, as the next step in this investigation. I am going to suggest that as meditators and practitioners, we have a better way to investigate. Since we are not concerned with convincing others or ourselves of “the truth,” but with exploring how it is to live different ways, instead of theorizing we can just start to live as if the World around us is alive. (What the experiences are surrounding us may be unimaginable to us, but what you or a flea experience may be unimaginable to me.) We just talk to our gardens and the birds and the ocean and the sky and the freeway and the buildings and the crowds from the heart and see what happens in our lives. Try it, with good intentions from the heart, for a good long while (you may feel ridiculous at first) and just see. That’s all I’ll say. No theories, just try it, and rest in the experience.

Not that I don’t still have separation anxieties sometimes, Bill. Speaking of which, where’s Wisdom Herself in all this? Where’s Diotima?

I turn to see the Perfect Woman’s Face
and there instead is Lord Kalu, King of Dharma
He holds a Jewel and smiles at me at last:

“Philosophers and Scientists may seek
but ever seeking Mind is only Mind—
Let Mind rest in Mind—This Stone cannot be cut
Stale Bread and Fine Pastry are one to the Yogi’s Tongue
Pray to the Mother of the Perfect Lineage”

I cry, “Kind Master, touch me a second time!”
But He is gone—No Vision lasts forever
No Pure Thing holds in an Impure Mind
But She in Whom it’s visioned? My Pure Love?
How can She leave, Who’s never come to be?

Unseen Her Gaze. Unending Her Vast Gesture
I am led into an Evening Room

What’s this? I see My Friends of Old
My Rug, the Sun and Moon, a Book
Behold! The Signs and Symbols of the Ages
The Rage of a Prisoner in a Cell
Two Lovers in a Twilit Chamber
The Play of Mind in the Yogi’s Cave

You who gaze into the Wine Glass at the Party, all alone
You Fervid Caffeine Seeker, Bong Hit Blower, Carrier of Tobacco’s Secret Case
You in the Elevator Incubation, You in the Cyber Drone
You Criminal, You Liar, You Lover in Your Own Embrace
You with the Acid and the Thizz
And You with the Lonely TV on
You who know where the Party is
And You in the Pornographic Dawn
You Digger in the Pit of Greediness
You Sucker at the Tit of Neediness
You Killer with the Blade of Hate
You Fucker of Your Weaker Mate
You Weak Seducer of the Strong
You Quick Excuser of Your Wrong
You Harsh Definer of the Real
You Cutter of the Wicked Deal
You Gambler with Reality
You Loser of Carnality
You Bower to the Idol “Brain”
You Liver in the Body’s Pain
You Stirrer of the Pot of Shit
You Lover of the Smell of It
You Warrior in the Secret Wars
You Whore and Monger of the Whores
You Shunner of the Little Child
And You, Shunned Baby, Running Wild:

Come to Insight’s Crazy Carnival!
Kill Your Parents! (Knife both Induction and Deduction)
Mind wakes to Mind at Indecent Intervals
Seek a Wise Teacher—Ask for Instruction

Walk the Whole Path for Others’ Sake
Send Joy and gather Sorrow with each Breath
Call on your Teacher’s Heart. Let your Heart break
Meditate past the Point of Death.

Radiant, my True Love’s face. How sad, I will never see Her.
My Heart breaks and I call to the Daughters of the Sky,
“How Kind you are to let me sing in the Evening!
May you be a Refuge in every Lifetime!”

“Demons and Ghosts! Look here! I’m Crowned with Ivy!
And Your Meal is Rapt in Finest Linen White
Come to the Great Feast of the Witches for the Son of the King!”

Confused and Tortured those who grasp at Phantoms
Happy the Yogi touched even once by the Master
Use this Gem for Selfish Ends
Build a Fire to fry in your own Fat
Not even the Lord of Love can help you then

[A poem inspired by KM and Diotima before I knew who she was. It was published on the old Unfettered Mind Ning site, but can no longer be found there.]

Love to All,

John O.

I Summon the Protectors (Sunday cont.)

My Prostration retreat started all bright eyed and bushy tailed on Friday the 7^th, but ended last night around midnight with a round of somewhat seedy, distracted and flaccid prostrations in Chinatown and then at UN Plaza on the grass. My bones ache.

As my retreat ended I ate the last of the schizophrenic's candy and offered its sweetness and anything good from my practice to Diotima and her fellow practitioners in Montreal sitting Zen Sesshin (a real retreat and not some trumped up John O. fiasco) and to all real practitioners, and to the many who have supported me, including you, Dear Reader, and to my Saint Anthony's Dining Room sponsors, and to the people of the Tenderloin and all of San Francisco and everywhere, and to my friends, my enemies and those unknown to me, all beings without exception.

I hope you all get something out of this because I feel like a failure. I am still John and nothing has changed.

Just because I am a failure, doesn't mean you are, though. Meditation is about living life as it is, and whatever your life is, it isn't John's life.

The whole point of these writings is to encourage friends to explore different types of prayer (I like the word “aspiration” but in everyday talk “prayer” will do) and different ways of approaching and practicing meditation and dharma in its most universal sense. All this stuff about John's adventures is just so many blurbs on the cereal box. I'm going to forget that from time to time, so it's best if you don't.

I will talk about doing the prostrations and how they relate to prayer and meditation at some point but it's a lot better story if I get there by way of Summoning the Protectors. One problem is that when it comes to prostrations there is not much to talk about, as my co-bower and friend Muddy Bill points out wittily in his report about his own prostrations. You just keep doing them over and over and sometimes when you start you're stiff and can hardly do them at all, and sometimes you are distracted or weak and end up pausing too long facedown in a day dream on your cardboard, and sometimes you get in a flow in the present moment and it's all downhill on spiritual easy street and the heart opens and the connection between your heart and your throat and your eyes opens and you are able to take in everything inside of you and outside of you without judgment. As I said, there's really not much to talk about. So it's easy to just start talking about something about which there is so much to talk about, and if you're John, John comes easily to mind.

Anyway, bowing, mantra and prayer are good ways to summon the Protectors. The only ways I know, personally. (If you add a little discrete fasting sometimes, that can help too.) So let me tell you about them, since that is closer to being about me.

Obviously the first Protector to show up on this retreat was the schizophrenic with his “this will help” candy. That's why on Sunday (we're still on Sunday) I brought the donations box, the one with the sign that spymistress Emma Peel said was too small. Even though I was not getting donations, it had the candy and the dollar from my first donor and a few other coins in it and I wasn't ready to leave home without them.

(The mysterious Emma Peel, by the way, was the second Protector to show up on this retreat, but she left Friday so I wouldn't be over-protected. She was not wearing stiletto heels when I saw her, looking for all the world like another Starbucks clone so none would suspect, but it was clear she would wear and do anything necessary on assignment.)

When I bow I usually recite my version of a refuge prayer, but because I had been inspired by thinking of Lama Lodro on the crack dealer's corner I had decided that all day Sunday I would sing the Mani while I bowed.

I hope I haven't butchered the melody too much over the years, but I learned this way of singing the Mani by listening to Lama sing it on an Eight Nyung Nye retreat. He said he learned it from some wandering yogi whose whole practice seemed to be to wander and sing it. The old yogi sneaked across borders without papers all over Central Asia with a shrug saying, “I don't do anything wrong.” He probably got the practice from his Guru, but Lama wasn't sure. It is a rich deep melody that climbs from low registers in the belly to high registers through the forehead and then returns to the heart, seeming to touch and free all centers as it vibrates. OM MANI PADME HUNG

The point of meditation is not to seek altered states. Those aching distracted, despairing moments are just as important as when you're in synch and grooving with your mantra. But as long as you stay aware, you can be with both, so you don't have to NOT groove with your mantra when that happens either. The point then is to raise energy to power more awareness so you can surf the waves of pride and shame and not drown in them. Every mantra, along with its other meanings, is saying “wake up.”

Now on Sunday, I was grooving. I had stolen Fire. I knew how I would rend the Veil. The prostrations flowed. My soreness seemed to leave me. I was in the zone.

OM MANI PADME HUNG

When I stood up, my head lifted upright above my chest and shoulders and I could feel my heart open to the mystery of myself and all the other experiencing, sentient beings around me seen and unseen. I knew our miseries and joys and the emptiness thereof. Their miseries could come to me. The Lord of Love could handle them all. The benefits of my practice could go to them. Nothing to hang onto.

I went down and breathed out the whole John fixation onto the cardboard and just gave up on any attempt to contrive or manufacture or react to experience at all. I let go. My prostration retreat was working.

“Get the FUCK up!”

I turned my head to see a woman whom I have seen downtown over the years. She has a bull dykish buzzcut with a little mohawk look to it and rides her bike and spews streams of obscenities while grimacing wildly and chewing her own teeth. (I believe this is an extreme form of Tourette's syndrome. It used to be called possession by a demon.) She has never noticed me in particular before but has included me in her general disgust with everything around her from time to time.

Today, Sunday, the Lords Day, because I am doing prostrations and bowing while chanting the Mantra of the Lord of Love, she has noticed me in particular.

“You heard me. Get the FUCK up!”

She throws her bike down in disgust, making it clear that I will pay for making her treat her own prized possession so badly. She walks across the sidewalk swaying and dangling her arms in a universal primate move that translates as, “Your ass is grass.”

She squats next to my donations box. It would not be polite to repeat everything she called me. She reads the too small sign, and says, “You got no permit, I am clearing this shit out.” She reaches for my box.

Now even when we have opened our hearts, there are times when we have to take action. We might justify this by saying we are acting for a greater good. Or we might admit that we are still attached to some things (like cardboard and candy) and just let our actions arise with the play of phenomena.

I remained cool and saw the Lord of Love in the center of her Neanderthal stance, radiating her contorted grimaces.

“Please don't take my box,” I said.

She seemed ready to grab the box and I'm not sure what I would have done if she had, but two things happened. First she seemed to become aware of something behind me, so she was starting to rush things a bit. And then she became aware of the schizophrenic's candy.

Her eyes lit up and she grabbed a handful of the precious “this will help” sweetness, thrusting it at me and taunting me with it, as if to say, “I'm taking it, so try to stop me.”

I started to say, “Take the candy, it's yours,” but I realized she needed a victory so I said, “Oh please don't take my candy,” in a tone that was probably a little too flat. But she didn't notice. I had dared her.

She stole the schizophrenic candy brazenly and defiantly but she was retreating very quickly, and I saw why she was willing to compromise on the candy.

A tough looking black man came at her threateningly from behind me. He was not actually that tough, but all black men are tough by definition to many people, and he was trying to look tough, and he had big shoulders and a cane that was obviously not for walking because he was walking just fine and raising it like a weapon.

“Git the FUCK out of here and leave him alone.”

She had retreated, but he was going after her. I said, "Hey man, it's okay; don't hurt her. She just livin in her own world.”

“She a bitch. I don't care if she crazy, man. I know she crazy. But she oughtn't to treat you like that. I seen you man. You cool just doing your thang here mindin you own bizness. Don't be hurtin nobody.”

He is still acting like he might go after her, so I try a little redirection.

“I like your cane.” He suddenly seemed sheepish.

“Aww it's a cheap thing. Fact, I hit her, it probly break.” He laughed at that and so did I and I knew the incident was over. I asked his name. Ricky.

“Thanks for the protection, Ricky. You the man.” We bump fists.

He went off feeling like he had done a good deed, not knowing that he too was probably saved by the schizophrenic's candy.

I went back to my prostrations and thought about all the Protectors. Of course the crazy mean woman was one of them. She told me to “Get the fuck up” when I was getting too comfortable in my practice. That's how you summon the Protectors, by the way. By seeing everything and everybody just that way. The Mani helps.

This made me think of the Guard and how I had slammed shut the Veil of the Temple by being so mean and laughing at him. It was time to go rend the Veil up on Nob Hill. Of course at that time, I thought would penetrate the Secret Female Place on the same journey, but I have a lot to learn about women, and “How I Rend the Veil” will be my last post about Sunday, The Lord's Day.

After that my retreat starts getting weird.

Love to All,

John O.

Flame of Love

Though he fall into the blossoming flame
and smell the burning flesh and feel desire,
in his howl of agony and shame
the wise will hear the voice of someone higher.
This world must burn, desire for beauty rage.
Love spares neither flawed nor perfect mind.
The fool, the rogue, the sot, the sage,
Love burns to leave one ash behind.
He will. He will breathe deeper than he can.
From far beneath him lift his eyes above.
Look: John is a fine wise man.
But burnt.
                 I AM alone the flame of love.

                              [adapted from the Mr Bones Doggone-Versations]

Love,

Burnt John

Love and Death Sonnet for Diotima

Some point out rightly all things joined are parted.

There’s no exception to this bitter rule.

So why pursue what leaves one broken hearted?

Why love, they ask, when Love's end is so cruel?

I’m tempted to reply, they've not loved You.

But I know well that answer won’t persuade.

Another fool, they’ll say, who fears what’s true,

Who lives oblivious to Death’s sure blade.

I am a fool. Let that be stipulated.

For only fools are granted to glimpse this:

In perfect Love, not even Death is hated.

His cruel cleaver also joins in bliss.

All things must pass. This truth brooks no exception.

But Life’s our wedding. Death is our reception.

Love and Death to All,

- John O.

Mystery (for D)

Such a Mystery to tell

from high above your Fontanelle

to deep beneath your Sacred Toes,

there's a Mystery I know

I don't know, and cette je ne sai quoi

hushes me and pleads “tais toi!”

But as poet I must sing

this Mystery and I must bring

a thousand times through Heaven's Hell

such a Mystery to tell.

Forgive me if I tell it now:

You have made me Love somehow.

Yours in Your Mystery,

- John O.

We Could Get Together

There's a preacher in the Bible
says that all is vanity.
There ain't much you'd call survival.
Get it straight for sanity.
To everything there are two seasons:
a Spring and a Fall.
Don't ask me the reason
but it's true.
Still as long as there is anything
anywhere at all,
we could get together
Me and You.

Darlin, you be a shore breeze
and I'll be some old trees
I could bend with You until I died.
You be the Vast Void,
I'll be an ast'roid
orbiting your starry insides.

You be a jazz band,
I'll be a tune.
Use me every song in every set.
I'll be a bridge span,
You be the Moon.
I think we'd make a lovely silhouette.

If You was a little vine
needin a place to climb,
I could always be your garden pole.
If I was a thirsty horse
lost on a desert course,
You could always be my water hole.

If You was a sunflower
bloomin just one hour,
for an hour I would be your stem.
If You was a deep bog
and I was a tree frog,
I would hop down all the time and swim!

Honey, You be a southern clime,

I'll be the sunshine.

That way I could always keep you warm.

If you led the bees' life,

I'd be a beehive.

That way you could come to me in swarms.

Babe, I'll be the summer air,
make like a mountain.
Between us we could melt a little snow.
You be a public square,
I'll be your fountain
somewhere in the south of Mexico.

Some say this universe
stinks like a cesspool.
Some say it is beautiful and pure.
I don't know good from worse,
I'm just a crass fool
but I will always love You. That's for sure.

[Adapted from The Mr Bones Doggone Versations]

A  Smashing Love to All,

- John O.

Kingdom of Ghosts

In the Kingdom of Ghosts the Queen is also dead.
Her silver shadow scepter threatens only the deluded.
If they knew that they were dead, it would have no point
but I, who thought I lived here, felt it sharp enough.

No one lives in this cold electric land.
I see the way the light shines through my body.
My sex is phantom and even if she beds me,
even if she calls me King, I’m dead.

She thrusts but I don’t parry. Now I know.
Ghosts can’t hurt ghosts, but I remember
sunshine and water and the breath of the living.
Smash this ghost with love. I will be born.


Love to All,

- John O.