Another Bad Ruler Found Dead In A Ditch

It begins and ends on TV screens

and in jets the cross-hairs

quarter the earth beneath the sky --

the skull is fragile soon the projectile

pierces, explodes, and teardrops

of metal and momentum tear

through your self and memory. 

                               I saw

pictures of you scattered in mud

in some farmyard, hoof-marks by your head,

and rain pissing contempt down

into mire-pooled water, blood

on clay; your hands empty

and the others' open-handed also,

and the troops now exited. It is long

since past your time -- 

                                I am told this

by the way the rain water trickles

and leaves traces on the backs

of your eyes, by the sense that somewhere

below the puddles and waterlogged clay,

on the submerged side of your face,

there is an unraveling of knotted pink

and you are naked there, the only

naked that is ever obscene. For you,

the end was in incongruous dark; oh

it was simple, blunt. 

                                  And watch

at a distance something

which might look like you

soaking in war-wet soil and wonder

if you might also treat your enemies

thus given half a chance

and a grenade. 

                I forget myself:

Such things weave spiderwebs:

change the channel! 

                 I reach

for the remote.

Left at Saturn

The paths of no direction

The goat.  I remember the goat.  That look at the moment it fell for another year which is also an eternity. It is not a shriving to delegate one's sins to another, however unfortunate, however inhuman.

It showed me back to my skin and helped hang it over the bones before it had to depart.  

(desert of the unending, following Azazel)

Following Azazel, one strays into the desiccated regions, where even the sand sounds out its mourning.  The goat's feet leave no imprint, which is odd when one considers the burden that has been heaped upon its back, and its escape into the permanent evanescence of the landscape would be unnoticed were one to avert the eyes for even a moment.

One feels both accustomed and uncomfortable in deserts; the similarities between the sand-waves and the sea-swell are as great as the differences, and the weight of sin is probably safer here than it would be if it were ship-bound.  It is one of the shared properties of desert and deep that therein one can lose the self, though it helps if markers are left to facilitate finding it again, as disorientation is almost guaranteed.  One cannot apprehend the extent of one's error, though, if one permits the self to obscure it.  One cannot expunge the grime of the soul without first being rid of the shell that encloses the sacerdotal: sin is not something which can be wished or washed away at all easily -- pumice or brine is required, as the process of shriving must be a painful one.

In the old times, one could not enter the space immediately without the temple yet within the boundary walls without first being purified.  Purification is not pleasant, and never has been.

Azazel is so old now, by our standards.  Its rough hair is all gone grey and ragged, and rheum clouds its eyes, as it shall cloud all eyes as the water grows ever scarcer: weeping is wasteful in this environment.  It has been spared my errors, for fear for its backbone, and I carry my many misdeeds in its wake as this burden is not one that can be shucked off but is one that must be endured until one feels one is on the threshold of utter un-being, at the edge of the darkness which is death, which is silence.

* * *

(Many moons ago, it was observed by one who had witnessed me that October is my own personal period of self-castigation, as it still is.  It is in this month and this month only when the hermetic seals which hold emotion during most of the year are opened and the inner gaze attempts to resolve the inner self in all its ghastly detail, and the search and rescue operation is shifted into the domain of the ruthless.  One cannot save the self during this time, so one keeps it apart from other things, one treats the self with such overwhelming contempt that even hope is hard to harbor, and one tries to avoid exposing others to the contamination which pervades me and surrounds me.)

* * *

So.

Admissions.

In admission, I admit to toxicity.  I admit to arrogance, and to failing to keep myself from coming across as patronizing.  I admit to having not cared when caring would have been preferable, and to caring when forgetfulness would have been safer.   I admit to not having done enough to help others, and to  being obscure when clarity would have been better.  I admit to many betrayals, including the betrayal of myself, and to letting too many hear the garbled rubbish to which I am predisposed.  This admission is compounded by the double betrayals of all those whom I have betrayed yet whose names I have not recalled.  I admit to possessing human attributes, and to having too little courage and an excess of empty bravado.  I admit to covetousness and greed, and to hypocrisy in suggesting that others be less covetous, less greedy.

Over and over, and above everything else, I admit to treating any who treats me kindly with cruelty.  I admit to cruelty to those who do not treat me at all, to those I do not know, have not met.   I have cast off links with friends for no good reason, and have pushed away those who would be closer to me.  I admit to opening thousands of academics to self-defensive derision, simply because I happen to have disagreed with their interpretations or their original work.  I admit to hoping that all is not hopeless.  I admit to hopelessness.  I admit to inequity in my treatment of others.  I admit to having applied the concept of 'failure' to human beings and other living things.  I admit to having elevated my own position by walking upon the backs of those less fortunate even to the point of those backs breaking.

I am guilty of presuming forgiveness on the part of others' pasts.  I do not personally believe that anyone can really forgive anyone if they have not forgiven themselves first, and I am not yet able to do this.  I admit to not admitting those things I have forgotten or that I have chosen to prevent myself from remembering.  I admit to inadmissibility to the company of those who need admit nothing.  I admit to no right of admission to any place which requires goodness or purity.

I admit to scared contempt for any greater than myself, which is for all humanity.  I admit to judgment.

The goat grows tired.  It should sleep.  So too oneself though one holds it off.

(the start of seepage)

This a start.  So they tell.

As with most of what they tell, it must be questioned.