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"for the vanity of man is as porous as dust...and, in their supreme wisdom, because of this failing, the Gods have decreed, that mankind deserveth no more, no less than his designated allotment of being.
And such it shall be."
writ by
The Marshal Gebbie
June 2023
<>
rise up, rise up,
son up, sun up!
see for yourself a newly birthing day,
the early rays licking the unlocking of a grinning earth's face,
humbling humans and their perpetuity e~mo/notions of eternity.
how are the daily~we, to measure ourselves, versus our ancestry,
by whom shall we~be set forth as examples to our posterity
what tools we fools think, we possess, an etch~a~sketch,
to imprint of who we are,
what we were, and
who we might become, and
be  beauty becoming,
marking our time with ensigns of
words of integers in some giant network
authored, offered, up unashamedly

and even though the sun
does not always greet & meet
the discombobulated human riffraff
every diurnal,
daily identical,
when it shines,
it shines for us all
in an equality of glorious,
it shines upon us all in equality,
it, great equalizer, who restores and
replenishes our colored planets blue green,
a methodology of air, soil and water interactively,
for we are all chemicals, forever effervescent rebirthing

and so it goes.
our cells, are a
rare earth depository,
we plant ourselves
eternally, fed by
foodstuffs of
our ancestors cells,
their brewed ***** dust,
and thus each of us singly
is thus remembered, reconstructed
as are we, both, individually and collectively,
from dust we are, to dust we return, this matériel future prepped


postscript

We Hebrews have a knowingly foolish,
a most beauteous custom, gifted to us by
our forefather Jacob, who when espying a
solitary grave by the road, a nameless marker of
piled-on stones, marking an unknown person last remains,
added one more, add-on to ensure this nameless one yet remembered,
so we too do not pass by without adding a stone, a tiny pebble,
we encumbered, to solidify, perpetuate, renew, ever sustaining,
cannot pass by without adding another rock,
another pebble, that time will surely shift,
but as long we follow this custom,
spiting time's erosive nature and until today,
yet the same, for at a cemetery, every grave,
all marker, ego big, humbled small, topped,
festooned, with small stones, we top them
signaling that this, very spot here, here!
for now, until for ever
shall never
be forgot

<.
and so this peculiar, deteriorating canister places
one more smoothed handy beach pebble, upon
this, his unmarked resting spot
nml
<>
Monday morning
7:10am
an august, August dream day
specified as the 11th day of this
eighth month in one particular
calendric methodology
and as the
17th of Av 5785
in his ancestral calendar

As I sift through my bathroom shelves,
I ponder over items I made space for, but never used,
Why did I accept what didn't work for me in the first place?
As if with passing time, our chemistry will change.
As if I will come to appreciate that strawberry lotion,
Or the beige foundation sample will grow to blend with my darker skin tone.
Three bags of discarded items later, I gain clarity.
I will be discerning about what I welcome into my space
To only hold space for - what brings me joy.
To only entertain what truly resonates with my spirit.

How do you come to hate,
The ones you loved?
You don't.
They tend to turn on you,
Either that,
Or they weren't real at all.
I forsake any shard of regret I had,
From leaving you,
I regret any feeling I had,
From loving you.
If anyone lost here,
It was you.
Because you'll fall back into emptiness,
Trying to replace it with people,
But I, I will not.
I'll continue to cradle my own light,
Which you came so close to taking.
I'm done sacrificing pieces of me,
In order to receive nothing.

That night,
weary of the crowd,
weary of the human machines that clatter,
I tore myself away from the noise as one sheds a diseased skin.
I left the city,
and found myself alone beneath the warm breath of the summer sky.

I lifted my eyes,
and in that upward gaze,
something from childhood returned —
a sacred astonishment, a soft humility before the infinite.

It felt like falling up.

The sky was wearing a cloak of bronze.

The stars were twirling like tigers of light
that tore through the tar of the night.
Their fangs of fire were gnawing at the dark,
and searing holes in the velvet expanse,
like nails hammered deep in the welkin's bark.

I breathed in the beauty of this funereal veil,
That takes its source from the void that won’t echo,
And that reminded me that I’m only a mote in the abyss.

I stood there—
alone.
Like a moon-fisher
Lost in a sea of wilted flowers,
casting lines into the void.

I baited my hook with pieces of my own heart,
Hoping that something would bite
and pull back from the ether.

And I waited.

I waited for the silence to shatter,
for the night to answer,
so that my dreams stopped bleeding
into my waking hours.

I waited.

But the stars just kept on burning out in silence,
while my dreams kept dripping like open wounds.

I was fishing for meaning
in this night,
I was waiting for its answer
but all I reeled in were fragments,
slivers of light
that faded before I even got to touch them.

The dark stared at me,
daring me to blink first.

And I wondered,
I wondered how many nights like this the stars had seen,
how many souls like mine they had watched with that pale, quiet gaze,
while we knelt beneath their cold indifference
and called it beauty.

And still, they kept twirling.
Still, they blazed,
while I waited,
while I bled,
while I held my breath and hoped
that maybe,
maybe—
the next flicker would light the way,
maybe it would spill some hint,
some clue that there was meaning hidden in their glow,
a reason buried in their fire.

I would beg the stars to break the silence,
to stop their silent spin
and to just say something,
anything.

But I know they wouldn’t,
and that I could only choke on the ash of their silent dirge
that smothers those who dared to look up
only to find out that there is no answer.

And then—
it hit me.

What if it was never about the stars?
What if they are silent because they’ve already said all they had to say
and this eternal silence of the infinite spaces
only existed so we might pour ourselves into it?

I understood why we built gods,
erected cathedrals,
raised cities of glass and steel,
split atoms,
and walked on the moon,
why we loved,
sang,
screamed,
wrote poetry.

And maybe that’s also why I drink so much.
So, so much
just so I could catch flames
like these stars,
to be like them,
to rend the void that doesn't echo back,
just so I could look at myself the way I look at them
and believe that I could make any sense of it.

Science is too short to measure the infinite.
Art is too vain.

But this flame—
my flame—
is all I have.

And I want to burn.

I want to cast off this skin that traps me,
I want to lighten my bones from the weight of the world
bare my teeth at the cosmos,
howl at the heavens,
tear through the ether like fangs of fire,
and scrape the cold black bark with my nails.

Maybe I was born to blaze,
or at least I just need to believe I could,
that I am the beacon,
the dawn that splits the abyss,
the answer made flesh.

That night,
I felt something kindle,
as if I, too, could be a tiger of light.

That I could dare look into the dark
and perhaps even make it blink first.

healing pathway open eyes now
ancient wisdom find a way
deepest waters flowing upward
folded hands again will pray  🙏
let us all now remember
breath of life be on this day.



D.T. © 2019

Can I stow away
in the depths of your heart?
Hidden in the shadows,
I'll stay out of sight;
then slip past the guards
in the dead of the night.
I'll be that stranger
stood at the bar—
pinstripe suit,
buttonhole, tie.

A knowing look,
our secret code.
The wink of an eye,
our signal to go.
Exit by a side door
into the night,
a shadowy figure
beneath a single street light.
A scribbled message,
in a telephone box—
L is for Love,
P is for Pay.
The babysitter, she's asking—
she’s done for the day.