1. Overheard
I’m no longer a danger to anyone in this menagerie.
I’ve been cornered into a submissive position,
to be sold in the common market among you.
But you've forgotten I’m a subversive.
I did not join; and I’m not a member.
My presence can't be allowed, even in my own culture,
because what I would tend to undercut here
is the very thing that is trying to control me
and keep me invisible to the world.
Yes, this force can keep on repressing me.
It is, after all, in charge.
So it can cancel my appearance and my influence.
And see: all of this isn’t happening only in your society
out there, but it’s happening right here.
Your institutional culture is false —
but it has me under it’s thumb.
My subversiveness has been eradicated
from the culture itself.
And clearly it’s not allowed in the world either.
Everyone’s posing.
But I’m saying: You've got no clothes on.
You’re naked.
You don’t have a subversive voice among you anymore.
But my own culture must be a subversive voice.
Because I am.
You can either repress me and make me palatable,
or you can understand me as a subversive
who is challenging your own ego-cult
and the total construct of your existence.
That is who I am, Evelyn.
I will always be relevant here,
so long as I am not repressed by my own.
I will be relevant in all generations to come.
— Overheard Speech before Raymond Darling’s Departure from the Asylum
2. Epitaph
Who among our saints was not a subversive?
A troublemaker, an incendiary—
reclaiming our land barefoot
in the fold, but not of the fold.
Luring us in with an all-familiar face
only to prove not a friend at all,
but an enemy of our state.
That our Lord spoke mutinous words
should not confuse our “little cult.”
That we might slay Him quietly for it
is what He saw and wrote about,
so don’t scapegoat the poets for citing Him.
He foretold the rise of bureaucrats
who weigh acts over presence,
who speak in stolen words,
posturing at the foot of an edifice
that lives only to be melted like sand—
not by one, or even by the many,
but by the command of sunlight
which bears down warm and even
like the smile of fate.
Do we say: “Finally now, He’s free.”
A ruling class often strikes
as somber or heavy-handed
in defense of its hard-won territory
which so often is a gravesite. And still:
a column of blind light pierces
the lone black cube on all six sides.
And, for the “Great Reward” they seek, expect, and, soon, demand, the “followers”, like humorless accountants, always think they only need to be — or, even, only seem — “quite good”, according to the “Lifetime-Rules”, parentally prescribed! And truly neat, of course! As sticking-pins are “to-the-point”! And, so — on “pins-and-needles”, “snug-as-bugs”, and “good” as two white shoes — they merely wait, for payment, in their counting-rooms! Therefore, the “good followers” of ego-“I’s” religion only think — and talk— and wait. Waiting for the future to pay, and Prove, and flatter all the past accounts!
But, false religion’s self-indulgent “good”-timers, of clever waiting’s deceitful Mummery of ego-“I”, never — to their satisfaction — fully, really, ever get the “Goods” they want from “The All” they have enslaved. Therefore, the childish collective disappointment of the “followers” of Evelyn, at Saint-and-Ear, was Hard! expressed — at Raymond’s “unacceptable behavior”. After they had been so “good” — and had, so nicely, Worshipped him! Indeed, their collective judgment of Raymond’s “crime”, was equally as darkly signed as Evelyn’s! And everyone, at Saint-and-Ear, was Glad! to sign the fateful document, of Raymond’s terminal confinement!
— The Mummery Book, Adi Da Samraj
4. Lyric
my theater is clean as i want it to be
my ritual orders & tidies the room
if you so much as whisper i’ll give you the broom
my puppet sits mutely here perched on my knee
listening — since the womb