Divine Madness

I had my madness, and it was divine. 

I was like Abraham leading his lamb; 

and I was also the sacrificial ram. 

I was Dionysos, the sacrificed child;

pure wine of a God that is neither

child nor man but all too much of 

both. It was my twenty-fourth year, 

and however ineffable, there were 

plenty points of raison d’etat but this

is neither the time nor place for their 

explications; suffice to say that my 

time had come to throw off the mad

caper, and cape as one profoundly mad; 

to throw away the zeal of innocence, 

and try, but fail, to hold onto something 

stronger, more massive than mass or 

anything the hands alone can grasp; 

but it all spun from out my buttery, 

canola oiled, palmed hands of youth

where tobacco stains built up with

the dirt and street cement I slept on 

in my flight to discover another glen of stars

just over the hill—just over that one, 

and that one, and so on; until I was 

here, stuck in my madness, stuck 

forever after grappling with what 

I could not grasp in my hour of divinity; 

in my hour of shining just beyond the 

hill of men. And because the bridge

I relied on did not take me vertically 

to its zenith but horizontally where I 

already stood; as if I were fated to be 

moved by certain rhythms within the 

grid (however much I try to escape 

its clutches) and that I were set by design 

to feed the flux of despair, of prison; 

of death as it comes to the mortal 

and immortal all alike—as it nails 

both God and man, natural and mystic—

the virtuous and the indifferent.

And though I knew that only the tree, 

the sacrifice; an Odin-like solemnity 

of self-effacement for self-upliftment  

(a self-fulfilling sacrifice to the self)

was what could save me from myself,

I still, in my stubborn youth in chains

of madness—unable to see the warning 

signs, always mistaking the glimmer 

of any jewel as destiny’s wink, 

never realizing the Luciferian deceit

behind it all—: in my flat-out stupidity

and arrogance, believed my spirit and 

its divinity would last through eternity

as it spiraled in and out of my frame;

that all my soul, all my loved one’s, 

would be saved from the rapture; 

from the burning of the heavy earth;

from the flooding of the plains as I took 

them atop my body, through my heart;

as a consciousness where madness, 

divinity, and reality come together and apart;

where they puddle, then porously regather 

into clouds that rain down into dreams 

whose fulcrum is my joy and torture; 

whose torrent I know as the thoughts,

the feelings, the inebriation that I hailed, 

thundered, down the hills, through pouring

streets, up the empty canyon with my feet—

and through the wings of my imagination;

my torn, fettered, musically mad singing 

fantasy of mind—and down into the ruts, 

the grazing places of the masses, the herds;

in the valley of not lilies or roses 

but pure thorns that are bred by people

and their thorny children; yes, I grew mad 

at their stare, as they grew mad at mine; 

and I sighed and bawled like a child delivered 

of its throne; renewed, exonerated by

the sunset fading like the reverse shadow

of a rose returning to the summer where 

I lost it all with a ball of frayed thread. 

And because I did not, could not, love

the princess, I was doomed to madness; 

and the kingdom I came close to winning

fell into the hands of demolition; and decay,

once wiped out with every handicap—

every inebriation our Gods suffer us

to be drunk by—threw me into shackles 

I knew to be the only reasonable conclusion.

But the minotaur, worst of all, died from

stomach cancer; not from my hands.

For I am a former ghost of myself and not

yet the ghost I will be. My madness made

and crushed me; my spirit, my imagination,

continue their craving of stars just over 

the hill; of falling, striking through their 

own meteoric heart. My maelstrom, in

truth, is without end; is without firm 

beginning: is like Jesus’s weaving through 

Jews, then Gentiles; searching for solid 

soil; or like Abraham, whose faith is 

wild like the land—unbelievable,

primordial, mammoth, and oh so

real to him—too real as to be of any

security to anyone else; too archaic 

to be of benefit these days; and yet,

unceasing, unwavering it goes

from golden Egypt to arid desserts;

in epic richness and fluent despair,

or like a giant centipede that erupts 

from behind the head of the sphinx; 

like a monster drinking too long from 

its own scorpion tail, but somehow 

gaining nourishment thereby; 

like a vicious snake eating wormholes

through patient space-time, a Magellan 

of cosmic idleness; such madness  

as even the Gods, however ambivalently

they express it, are inspired by.