The Unsayable

And Jesus said unto them, “See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.”—Matthew 24:2

The sordid trappings of modernity

We may now take as bloody read,

And what’s always been unsayable

Must, it seems, at last be said.

But why, O Lord, should it fall to me

To reveal this final secret

To the ungrateful living dead?

The reason, the Abyss replied,

Is this: You’ve got no fucking cred!

They’ll never get the Word you spread.

That way we keep them in the dark

So they can shuffle off their fears,

Though for form's sake allowed some spark.

Revelation’s never meant to last.

Thus it’s long been in aeons past.

God wants to keep them dim, the dears!

December 21, 2024

Under the Bodhi Tree

Piet Mondrian, Tree (1912). Credit: Mondrian/Holtzman Trust/ bpk/Staatsgalerie

From the world of representation

I to Costco's bourne retreat,

temple of the shopping nation

where the serfs of commerce meet

—Mammon’s children have to eat.

I'm impressed despite myself

to see such piles of potent pelf,

while outside on 250 East

countless cars with flaming eyes

pay their homage to the Beast,

heading maybe now to Hell

to buy such things as it may sell.

On the shores of this Red Sea

I search undone for sight of me.

Did I make the world, and Why?

Better then curl up and die!

Turning from the scary sight,

we head for home, I say goodnight.

Underneath the Bodhi tree

leave for now God's baby be.

Later on—well, then we'll see.

December 19, 2024

Reveille

Where there are many chickens, the night’s over.—proverbial saying*

They claim now that the converted Khazar khanate† never was.

I think it must have done—because

coming home to roost, its chickens

have built their nests and laid their eggs so well

in the daunting dauntless state of Israel.

Indisputably, then, the plot thickens!

Khmelnytsky may have been a nasty bit of work,

but his Zaporozhians fought Pole, Swede, and Turk;

Khazars, Cossacks, and Kazakhs,

for the new Völkerwanderung are much the same:

Fodder for the patriotic game.

History, I think it was Voltaire that said,

is the BS currently ahead.

And clearly when the chicks proliferate,

of course, we cocks should celebrate.

Here, then, is your Rhodes, here dance!**

If in doubt, attend—I fear we all must—the school

of our mighty magpie Khan of Khans

. . . la bouche en cul-de-poule.

*Wo viele Hähne sind, da ist die Nacht hin. / Là où il y a beaucoup de poules, la nuit est finie.

†See Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage (1976),

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tribe.

‡Völkerwanderung = the great migration era in which Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Ugrian, and other tribes distributed themselves around Europe, ca. 300 to 900 CE.

**"Hic Rhodus, hic salta," https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hic_Rhodus,_hic_salta:

December 18, 2024