Mystery
The Elderberry Bush
My caracal and I were out walking together. He was a leader on a leash. Big guy. Friendly as all hell, and your raging piece of shit of a canine was so curious, he’d actually shut up. Made a german shepherd’s eyes BIG. He started chattering at whatever was behind this old gate between two century-old homes. I couldn't give a damn about very much at this point in my life clearly, so I let us in behind the two old houses near 23rd Ave in downtown Portland. We turned around the corner while I watched him. He stopped and sat, just like he was trained. I looked where he was staring and was given the first vision of my life. There was a medium size shrub a little taller than I am. I saw through the eyes of a honeybee:
Ethereal, violet, lavender,
purple, green. . . white.
I wept
and picked a sprig
and walked to the
art store
nearby
to pick out
$600 worth of oils,
pigments, supplies,
brushes,
and a canvas
I couldn’t afford it
so I made some tea.
Stop Watch
I don't know what to qualify as GOD, and I don't know what qualified me to use the word in the first place to describe my illegitimate faith in this thing that is known by the Bible alone. How many $12,000 watches freeze up after a year or two? Mine. My last credit card declined on a $110 steak, and I looked at my watch again on the way out the door. It had stopped. This is why anything but poetry is frustrating. Can you believe this? I have no idea.
Can you believe that you, GOD,
would give me a broken watch—
that a piece of sand in the movement
was on TIME?
A couple hundred thousand dollars of credit,
and my last card
declined
at Ruth's Chris
and I checked my prized possession
IWC, Le Petite Prince
like I did every five
minutes
and it had stopped.
I twisted the winder,
pulled it out,
messed with it, screamed
"GOD."
and destroyed it on
bullet proof glass,
and again
on the sidewalk.
Wagyu—5 of a Kind, $1010 (picture after tip)
Best keep track
of the hand
that feeds.
I won three
tournaments
in a row.
I was Hellmuth
himself.
I won the
third tournament
with four-of-a-kind
of my favorite number.
1/75*1/4164*1/13*1/200*?
then I lost so much money
that I won that I could throw up
two times at any moment. .
Platinum
They took my caracal. Freyr was the last thing I cared about. When I arrived at the airport in Ukraine, the customs officers brought me into a room without my carry-on. On the way out of the airport, I realized that they stole my watches. I walked back up to arrivals and knocked on the employees only sign. I waited an hour. I knocked again, and waited. I knocked one more time and waited for a minute or two before marching back to the door and praying to it. They opened it and let me inside. We three airport employees talked to me for a while. In the end they blamed Turkey. When I left, I was followed back to my hotel. Five men beat me, bound me and broke me of something.
I went for gold
in the
Odessa airport.
they stole my watches
out of my bag and when I
went back to talk to them,
they would not see me for an hour.
so I wore my rings.
I stood up out of the
seat, clasped my hands,
and prayed to their door. hard
enough to bind thick platinum
to my left little finger
and mason's gold to my right, chesed.
the tungsten ring from my brother
shattered.
I pained myself
on their fists,
and my ribs
on their boots. they threw me out onto the
road and I walked back to the airport.
I pissed bourbon with a soldier's eyes.
I'm still proud.
when they bound my hands,
I chose the family jewels.
Pay
To meet
a
basilisk,
you need not
speak its language:
berate five men
with pistols.
to
pay the
piper:
before they
came,
a part
of
me
knew,
that part of
me danced.
I met them
in a towel.
they would kill me,
and I wagged
my finger
at them.
I might
be
Jesus
I felt a crown
inches above
my head.
I might be
cane,
I am not
able.
I am bound—
I chose
my
balls.
I am
dragged
through
the
hallway.
I might be
adam,
my rib removed
the fruit
eaten,
pay the mouth.
you will get up
when they throw
you out of the van.
you will see planes
in the distance.
they have taken
something from
you that cannot
be given back.
it won't take
long in a
daze,
go get it
when
I arrived
back at
the airport on foot,
I pissed bourbon
with a soldier's eyes.
If you're a deadman
If you're
already
dead,
and five priceless
($100,000)
objects
are stolen
from you,
wear your rings.
walk back to the airport.
pray to their door.
mason's gold, irreparable, chesed
thick, ornate platinum, chesed
black tungsten, shattered
custom platinum, bent
tri-color gold, unbent
Alexander the Great, lost
alexandrite, tanzanite, lost
garnet, emerald, lost
* mirrored—
Little Boy
If water were napalm,
feebler me
would like to tell you this
and it's a secret.
I destroyed the United States embassy
in Kyiv
before the Russians did, if they did, I can't find anything
on google.
I am also led to believe that
a house I would like to own someday
in NW Portland up on the hill (very, very greek)
will be destroyed by a foreign military at some point in the not-so-distant future.
doesn't much matter if you quote me,
this is very unintelligent but I just need to get it out.
really the only two structures I've thrown large containers of water at. . . while thinking "bomb".
Gloria, Mother, Medium
I met a woman with her daughter when they arrived together at a house in Nashville that I was staying in. The mother was a Christian woman who underwent a difficult and powerful spiritual awakening late in her life. We spoke a little about spirituality and she briefly shared the nature of the experiences that brought her into awareness as a medium. Her church excommunicated her when she began telling people about what she was going through before she grew to understand it. We didn't talk at length, and I didn't even share my full name. I went to bed late that night and fell asleep quickly.
A couple of hours past midnight I became aware as if I just awoke, and I felt a hand grasp my forearm. I opened my eyes to complete darkness except for the hand on my arm that I felt was my brother's. Coming fully awake, I realized that it was a dream, and I laid awake and grieved my brother Ryan for the first time. A few minutes later there was a light knock on my door. I asked who it was. Gloria answered and said that she was told in a dream to come see me. She asked if I would listen to her daughter sing. Her daughter sang a beautiful original song while I sat up in my bed, teary eyed. Then her mother, Gloria, told me that she spoke with a man named Heath in her dream. She told me that this man was looking after my brother and tending to the wounds he carried with him into death. Heath told Gloria that my brother wanted to be a guardian angel to watch over me, but that he needed to heal.
I didn't want to ruin the gorgeous gesture from Gloria and her daughter by prying about "Heath". My grandfather's name was Keith, and I thought that somehow Gloria knew my last name and found my grandfather's name. I mentioned this lightly, but she told me that it wasn't "Keith", it was "Heath". My mother rented a room from an elderly woman, a widow, just weeks before I came to Nashville. I didn't know anything else at all, and when I called and told my mother about the message that a medium gave me in the middle of the night, she burst into tears and explained that my brother Ryan's ashes were beside the ashes of her housemate's late husband's in a grandfather clock. My mother’s new address could not be found online. My mother's housemate's late husband's name was Heath.
At a Carnival
I lost my friends
and rode the
ring of fire alone.
jumped into a seat,
an empty one next to it,
and two brothers across from me, ages 8 and 6.
when the steel harnesses
mechanically lowered,
mine did not latch. I lifted it myself as the ride began oscillating.
I asked the two boys
calmly, "Do you see this?"
one confirmed, "Yes." the other nodded fearfully.
I walked
off the
ride
more
hateful than amazed.
I spoke lightly, "No, GOD, do not be maimed, die."
I walked
onto a
ride that
certainly
would kill me.
when the five of us
arrived back at our apartment,
my roommate asked
me what was wrong. I told him and began crying.
Another man present was a Jehovah's
Witness church leader.
He took me downstairs. I cried harder, and harder, and harder
until the skin on his body became yellow.
Consciousness and an Older Savantism
There is argument that during certain momentary decision making processes, the human consciousness perceives that it is commanding thought and action in time even while the immediate decision can be traced back through a definitive process to an impetus in the unconscious. Older concepts are of the djinn and genie. To note my own conceptualizations of direct experiences, I have assumed both of these esoteric terms. I do not have enough historical knowledge of either term to draw any concrete parallels to any formalized definitions. The choices are based on my own associations.
Of the djinn, the mind may create plans and carry out decision making processes without any intention or corroboration of consciousness using knowledge that is not retrievable in memory or that may be gathered through systems perceptually outside of a person and interpreted in cognizance beyond normal sensory attention, e.g. interpretation of projected or externally based systems of omens known today to be integral to traditions of shamanism and animalism. To note a definitively other experience that seems to have common roots of the psyche, I’ve come to think of the genie as a more direct form of possession that at certain degrees that I have experienced is not noticeable to an observer. We have modern concepts such flow-state and dissociation that lay at angles on what I now see as a spectrum of self-control encompassing, three dimensionally, the subjective experience of the actor, objective behavior that can be recorded, and the subjective experience and interpretation (be that immediate and unconscious, thoughtful and analytical, and public or private) of any observers. The genie may not give any indication in objective experience, but ranges into the states of mind that are associated with unmanageable behaviors and direct compulsions such that can be seen in medically diagnosable individuals who are given to lack immediate agency in present day interpretations of what were formerly known to be curses and possessions such as OCD and Tourette’s syndrome.
I have direct experience within longer periods on the extremes of this spectrum during which time I acted in apparent lucidity but in a state of near-zero agency. This is characteristic of dissociation, except that I did not outwardly seem to be at any lack of self-control during a series of symbolic actions and as one might believe they were scripted, unbelievable conversations with strangers. This culminated in a bloody, and to my understanding, ritually enacted scene of possession of multiple people, including myself, during which I was assaulted by two men in a doorway, one of them standing directly in front of the other. The front-most man took both of my wrists in his hands (my arms relaxed at my sides, making no attempt to free myself) while the man behind him reached over the front-most man’s shoulders to strangle me. He did this in such a slow and deliberate manner that I was able to take one of his thumbs into my mouth all the way to his palm and bite down so slowly that it may have been a second-and-a-half before my teeth broke his skin (while he made no sound or attempt to remove his thumb from my mouth). His blood flowed into my mouth for a time until the front-most man released my wrists. The front-most man began threatening me in a New York City Brooklyn street-talk dialect. The rear-most man retreated from the doorway and I pushed past the front-most man to inform the office of what occurred. I believe word of mouth of my strangulation and harassment charges which were pursued by my ex-wife was the basis of this real spiritual manifestation. There was blood on the banisters and the floor. When I made it to the door of the office, the man attacked me and I was forced to restrain him. My shirt and hands were bloodied. He left a very large, horizontal red stain of blood across the inside of the door which separated the shelter from the office and then the outside. He retreated when I released him, and I went inside the boundary door and held it shut while I asked the attendants to call the police. My heartrate was 52 (normal resting 65-70), BP 110/65 (normal 125/85).
Making note of something that I wrote about intuitively as it relates to reflected colors in the eyes a pet lynx that I kept—for several days after this experience, my eyes were periodically spinning on their axis in the same manner that is normally experienced when a person's head tilts while focusing on an object, but my head was not tilting, and this only happened in direct view of other people. I am sure that this is an aspect of possession—possibly the djinn as conceptualized here. I managed to capture it in myself. The motion is clear at the automatic shutter speed of an iPhone. I believe that this is related to angles or vertices of stars as found in witchcraft and occult practices. There is no evidence in personal experience for this conjecture, but I noted hypothetically that our subconscious perceives a six degree angle of rotation of the eye about its optical axis, with a thirty-six degree upper limit.
- cerebellum response to musical rhythm 1/32, Eye of Horus.
Prime + Wagyu
Sophia, how many people have your name tattooed somewhere visible while clothed within Portland? Same ballpark as the number of times I've yelled, "GOD", at the top of my voice. I noticed your name seconds before the doors opened at the stop nearest to you, and I put my glasses on to make sure. I have some sense of statistics but this blows everything out of proportion and straight to GOD herself. Let's say there are between 1 and 25 people out of 2.5 million in the metro area that have your name tattooed somewhere visible. In red ink? I may be able to see a tattoo like this on 2-8 people sitting next to me, maybe 1/8 of the bus riders. I ride the bus every 3-4 weeks. I rode for 15 minutes. I planned on staying on the bus through most of town and I saw your name at your stop. A calculator gave me quintillions to one. I am not a fool, it is the infinite.
I was immediately possessed to bring you flowers. I walked to pick out a bouquet of tulips, the ones that I promised, but I couldn't see clearly through my tears. I was led to a vase of white roses with wildflowers and ferns, and a pink bow. I hope I didn't upset your boyfriend. I wasn't thinking when I left them from a secret admirer.
