1. Overheard
You did not provide Me a holy sanctuary.
You've used my Island to entrap Me
and make me a puppet for the cult.
I’m either taken advantage of or completely dismissed.
When I’m on My Island, that is how I am pushed away, repressed.
Nothing at all is happening out there,
and on My Island, I’m under house arrest.
You’ve turned My Own Island into a home for the cult.
You’ve turned My Own Island into the State Mental Facility
for
Saint
&
Ear.
— Overheard Speech before Raymond Darling’s Departure from the Asylum
2. Epitaph
The air may circulate Him.
The earth may stand up for Him.
The water may bear Him.
The fire may gladden Him.
Elements known to refuse corruption
forever gain the favor of epochal magicians.
If we stand on this far equatorial rock
He may be more closely felt.
Although in earliest days He wondered —
Will a hum beneath the earth
be my only witness?
Fire ants do crowd the beaches here,
excavating their tunnels on top soil,
tapping feelers to avouch one another.
Suspension bridges hang lightly
from one round beach to the next,
erecting prisons with walls of leaves.
If we start with a religious summer camp,
we may end in a wintered papacy.
So perhaps it’s wisdom to moderate our hopes
for our holy life to imitate a perfect art.
Here where the canvas towers above all.
So monumentally alive.
Of course, once Raymond was “safely” confined, Saint-and-Ear quickly recovered from the “Incident”. And all its “religious” doings continued, thereafter. Just as they had before Raymond’s unexpected — and deeply unwanted — arrival, among the “faithful”. And the “Incident” was never much mentioned, again — except to dismiss it, by a brief and caustic mention of that one word. “Oh, yes—the ‘Incident’. That was so long — ago.” And, always, the “Incident” was casually dismissed and discounted — as if it were a foreign substance. Or, at most, a freakish occurrence, due to fakery. Or, some kind of aberration, caused by an insane person — inadvertently allowed in, from the “outside”!
After Raymond was “safely confined” — and, altogether, discredited and defamed — Evelyn Disk continued, as ever before, to Pretend the Raymond-role, in all the Raymond-rites of the Raymondite “religion”. The “real” Raymond was — with certainty, as an article and act of “religious” faith — presumed dead, and “safely” absent. And everything was accounted for — by means of Evelyn’s famous Story of the “Ape-in-the-lake”.
Evelyn, himself, continued to provide all the explanations sought — and all the myths “required” — by everyone at Saint-and-Ear. And, quite simply — and easily, too, it seems — everyone forgot about Raymond. Himself! And As he Is! And where he had been sent to never Be, at all!
— The Mummery Book, Adi Da Samraj
4. Lyric
spirit me off to my island home
where elders fill my ears with lore
they say they’ve heard a lion’s roar
they say it’s mane cannot be combed
as we sweep an eggshell from an open door