Studio Bones 1998

Pilgrim

A PATMOS ISLE OF THE MIND (1999)

 
God has it in for me.
I believe.
No. I don’t believe that.
That would be stupid.
When I think about it, I know it’s stupid to believe that God has it in for me.
But when I don’t think about it, I believe it.
It’s one of those things I don’t think about but the thought is always there, unthought.
God has it in for me.
Because I don’t deserve to be happy.
I have displeased God.
And I continue to displease God.
And so He is going to show me His displeasure somehow.
He will get me, somehow.
 
How can I please God?
Can I buy Him off?
Sacrifice a lamb? A bull? A chicken? A goat? My first born? Will that satisfy Him?
Should I go to Church? Temple? Mosque?
Get baptized? Get re-circumcised? Go to confession? Speak in tongues? Handle snakes? Wash feet? Pray  the Rosary? Get slain in the Spirit? Flagellate myself? Flagellate someone else? Put rocks in my shoes? Wear a hair shirt? Fast? Abstain from sex, drugs, and television? Go to Mecca? Go to Jerusalem? Tibet? Branson, Missouri? Find the Holy Grail? Pass through the eye of a needle? Rationally prove God’s existence through logical deductions? Take a non-rational leap of faith? Have visions? Sit under a Bodhi tree? Smoke herb? Eat peyote? Go into the wilderness? Sit in a sweat lodge? Get into the lotus position? Be pure of heart? Wait for the Mother Ship?
Kill the perverts?
Kill the infidels?
Bomb a clinic? Drink cyanide Kool-Aid? Have a near-death experience? Go out of my body? Go out of my mind?
Die and be born again?
 
ON THE LAST DAY I was hanging out on the beach on the isle of Patmos and with my own eyes I saw the sky open and ETERNITY exposed Itself and I saw the WORD. Standing before me in the flesh in skin and hair and bones and teeth the WORD stood before me and I opened my mouth and said Are you going to kill us? Have you come to burn the unbelievers? Will you get even now?
 
Do you have it in for us?
 
And when I finally shut up, the WORD  spoke itself
 
In Absolute Silence
it spoke itself
 

SWAN LAWRENCE

New York City 1998

The seer leaves the mountain to bring his vision to the world. Throughout the infinite nothingness of Manhattan, the madman prophet wanders until he stumbles barefoot into the World Trade Center shouting “YOU ARE STANDING AT THE CENTER OF THE COSMOS AND YOU ARE LOST! This is the holy ground. This is Ground Zero. This is the sacred circle. Take off your shoes Take off your shoes Take off your shoes.
Startled at first, the passersby realize the seer is only a member of NY’s large population of street lunatics. “Too much or not enough drugs, I guess.” Soon the holy fool is escorted away by uniformed agents of the Thought Police. He is confined to protect himself from himself and gradually medicated back to approximate normalcy. He becomes a fairly productive member of the work force but the price of this behavior modification is the disintegration of his Vision of the Whole.

There’s no telling how many bad poets have likened the World Trade Center to twin towers of Babel. This morning the twin towers disappear in fog. Can’t imagine a tower to heaven when the sky is so low you can plainly see heaven isn’t there.

Pt. 2 Are You Running With Me, Ground of Being?

Ovum and Sperm. One of the Audio Artists' smash hits.

Part One in plain text

Are You Running With Me, Ground of Being?

Zero to Infinity,
and back.


What is the is of the is I is?
I is not yet
Then, here I is
Then, I is not, again

Now I is
Then I was

What is the I who is? I ask
Only the I who was answers
Is the is I is the same is I was?
Is the is I was the is I is?

Is my is a path from is not to is and back to is not?
Is the is I is part of the is that is and was and always shall is?
Is without Not, amen?


Universe is my universe
maybe
genesis is encrypted in my neural cocoon
REmember the BEginning
or even BEfore All That Is
was nad ever shall all compressed in infinitely dense microdot
WAKE UP!!
to clanging Alarm clock at BEginning of TIME
NEVER THOUGHT
I’d live to be a billion and I remember every minute
the UNIVERSE made me what IAM today
hell I AM the Universe looking at my Self
in the mirror. Is it me? I look exactly the same as
ALWAYS yet not familiar disfigured a mask with no face
behind it
Have you ever tried to jump outside the plastic bubble of your MIND
or looked upat the SKY and its not Heaven that you see though you THINK you see INFINITY its the inner wall of your REality
to be REborn you must be REconceived
and REmember youa re just ONE in the multitude
hominids crawling over ANTHILL EARTH
Yes there are over five billion stories in the Naked Global City
over five billion UNIVERSES exploding in restless brains

Part One