The air itself was alive

and I looked with excited foreboding
as the trees bowed in unexpected homage
to the ancient master that was now
aloft above them.
The Presence glowed without light,
was felt without sensation, and
shouted without sound.
It hovered in front of me,
daring me to live,
and insisting that I speak,
with a command that was only mine
to know.
I stayed silent for seconds, minutes, years,
centuries, eons,
as all about me remained frozen
in deathly joy.
Then I broke the air itself, and said simply,
"Show me."
And I knew the unknowable.
And I became numbers
and dimension.
And I saw non-being
become being.
And I lived in the maelstrom of
stellar hellstorms,
and stood exultant in the middle of
the Sun,
and swirled walls of
galaxies with a casual gesture.
And all that was,
or had been,
or would be
thunder stormed by my transfixed sight
faster than light speed
and I lived all that had been lived
in any world.
And in that moment, and only
for that moment,
I was All.
Trembling, shivering in the
Antarctic  Present,
I then asked,
"Why?"
And every
shrieking horror
raped me, sneering as it did,
and all the idiot suffering
tore my face with
razors,
and every depth of pain
became mine
even as it was not mine.
And in unhinged, lunatic rage, I roared
at That Which Is
Fucking bastard!
Inaudible weeping filled my ears,
and unspoken words said,
There was no other way.
And I felt it take my hand
as if it had fallen to its knees
to ask of me that which it had
no right to ask.
I said finally,
"Will I remember?"
The night sky said,
No.
But I was at peace,
because I knew,
somehow,
as I was about to lose
all that I had experienced,
that such places as I had seen,
are,
and such times as I had witnessed,
were,
and
that He and I
were of the same body
after all.

The young one meanders on a journey

he can see only in part,
rising and falling in crazy-quilt fashion,
restless to be more,
if only he could know what more really was.
He is a strong, thin reed of sinew,
heart-breaking in his hopeless, aching desire
to heal the ancient scars of an indifferent world.
He burns with diamond-flash intensity,
fierce young man's desire
saturating his being.
He bursts with fiery rhythms
and raises his voice in songs
that lift up his intense, wounded soul
and wring it out like a dish rag.
A gentle, naive love
exultantly calls out
from the core of his being,
one that just wants to see
simple kindness replace the
blood-smeared brutality that leers at him, and one
that will keep the creeping bitterness that is coiling
around him at bay.
He wants to be a hero,
if only to reassure himself
that he is at least as good as the others.
The Old One looks from a safe distance as the young heart-man
teeters on the cliff's edge, so strong, so unsure, so brave, and so mad,
all at once.
The tired, cynical old one has seen the last
of his own boyish dreams
boiled away by the heat of blind reality,
and has begun to see

death's patiently waiting face taking shape. 

In the young hero-in-aspiration he sees

all that was best in himself, long ago,

before he opened his fingers and let it

trickle away.
He delights in the young one's
still-green, smiling exuberance,
even though the smile masks
darkened pathways of despair.

The Old One sees strength growing in counter-point

to his own body melting away, and a belief

in the possibility of change

where his has vanished.

The Old One throws ropes to the fledgling knight, 

because it makes the Old One feel

that he still counts, and because he knows

that when the uncertain, beautiful young one

finally rises to be the equal of the vision he has
for himself,

the sight of it will remind him

that joy is not just for

children, and that life still has its
occasional, battered triumphs.

If I had prayed with her

in the garden while the others slept,
or joined her on that storm-clouded hill
as the one from Aramathea,
immersed in the ocean trench of his grief,
gently lowered the torn and bloodied corpse,
or if I had risen up in the middle
of the air as the joyous
SHOUT
echoed through skies witnessing
the coming of the Kingdom,
would she have
seen past my formless heart,
and kept me alive
longer?

The grief must come in silence,

so as not to arouse suspicion
or call attention to
your tiresome pathos
and
your faded drama queen sorrow.
Bypassers must be kept in the dark,
so there can be no audible sobs;
that's for children
and other people who are still
unconcerned
about
their image.

I imagine a day

when all of them are gathered

in some place fragrant with

sweet flowers,

and everything is finally revealed,

as we might show a child 

the person holding the strings

on the marionette.

And many of them will nod knowingly,

perhaps saying, "So THAT'S what that was",

and others will bend their heads down and weep

softly, the grayish terrors finally falling from

their shoulders with a clattering racket.

And some will stare in shocked disbelief,

as the world they drove themselves into

like a tent stake

crumbles beneath their feet. 
And others

will laugh gleefully as they watch the

pained expressions of those

who were so sure that the marionette

was a real boy.

Even before it was visible

its brutal eagerness

made the unsuspecting earth shiver as

it cut through the ground's layers

like a thug carving open a mark.

It burst through the surface throwing

dense, thick wads of glutinous muck in all directions,

its metallic body spinning as it extended twenty

huge unfolding mechanical arms from its central drill.

A death camp sized searchlight emerged

from its top, rotating as if scanning

for escapees slated to be shoveled

directly into the oven.

A deep, iron-voiced roar emerged from its unseen throat,

and as it rotated its arms flung bricks of sharpened steel

with decapitating velocity.

Everyone else trembled in uncomprehending

terror,

clinging to the wounded ground in panting desperation,

but he stood upright and walked in wonderment

right toward it, the projectiles cracking

by his ears delightfully, the light sweeping over him

in movie-premiere glory,

the deafening roar his sit-com theme music.

He smiled as he wondered whether it would

first caress his head or snuggle in his midsection,

laughing at the delicious moment that was carried

on the freezing night air.

They sit on their respective ice floes,

tethered to each other
by a rope bridge grown tattered
and strained,
but still hoping to remain in
hearing
seeing
and
touching distance,
never wanting to drift apart,
and face
the unseeable currents
on their own.
They know that they will never live
on each other's tiny islands,
but they will keep the rope bridge mended,

even if the reason they do so

will forever remain hidden from their view.