Songs of the Third Culture

         Noel K. Anderson 

The Bauble Spear

Beneath the contempt of the incumbent king

the joker/philosopher revels in blasphemy,

shakes his fist at the gods and their faithful followers,

wiggles his staff in crazed, maniacal provocation—

a convulsive, gut-busting paroxysm of ire—

as if to exchange the meet hunger of many souls

for a plather of palaver, colorful derisions,

and vacuous, flatulent laughter—

skimmed like scum off the frothing, septic souls 

of his odious audience.

His rod, the bauble spear, is his rule,

befitting the soul of a profligate fool.

Alit in his glory, he eats (as he gloats)

the laughs he sucked from the guts of these goats.

A comedy of noisome, empty despair

played out in anger—in perverse non-repair—

a negation narration minus substance or joy

delivered tout sous le mépris du roi.

Disenchanted

How long must a people walk deluded?

We invested too heavily in a promising scheme

which has returned nothing, yet we believe. 

We believed because we believed in belief.

We believed because we were a believing people.

Yet we believe beyond the beliefs.

How long until our disillusionment?

Sold a bad product, a false system—

told it was wisdom and truth—

we paid with our birthrights,

our livelihoods, our fortunes; 

we jumped in with all we had.

Something so costly had to be true;

it was far too expensive to deny.

Yet this light—this false dawn—fails to see day.

Shame dawns: we were deceived.

All that money, all that heart,

all our children and schooling squandered

on a hollow idol, a sweet-surfaced, packaged lie

as old as Eden:

“Surely, you will not die.” 

Athens

What powers above seal our fate?

Mind of minds over us,

made in our image

and the images we choose.

We imagine, reimagine,

give voice and expression 

to the pulse and pulsion, 

the magicks of fertility,

the power and pump of drive

to pull, compel, or cajole 

Fate’s force this way, that—ours.

In sacred desperation 

we worship our ends

which are one.

In sacred desperation

we proclaim with our lives:

all is death and vanity.

We wait and await a word from the Logos,

we wait and await a word from above, 

we wait and await some release from our fictions

grounded in beauty, in truth, and in love.

The truth is beyond us, betrayed in each breath:

all fate is in emptiness,

all fate is in death.

Deconstructing the Word

We read in blindness (the distortion resembles a murder).

To believe in the Word,

the word behind the word

that dare not speak a word,

is to believe in true reading—

reading beyond filters and flavors—

a true that is truly heard

like music long-remembered.

The Word commands.

The Word is law like gravity,

like the singularity

with an event horizon rotting at the edges.

The final figure of Man (not woman)

bound to the cross of cruelfiction or cruelfaction,

emasculine and addlepated,

vilified and calumniated,

proves a depravity completely consummated.

Killing the Christ, crucifying the text,

piercing the Word, word, and words,

the readers lead the readers,

pulling together to mount a last chance resistance;

selling sex fictions, race fictions—raised up in the monstrance

and worshipped as the golden yoni of the mother/son. 

Fools empower the panzers,

a map of Africa their Shroud of Turin

(We will not read that way).

The Suicidal West

Worship of self is death.

Whitman’s song:  a degenerate, desperate whine

sinking slowly into a wormy grave. 

“The Wasteland” is eclipsed by “Highway to Hell,”

a pithy, pulsion-powered matter-of-fact—

the sad truth simply stated from a power-grinder of urge.

Goodbye to print, so long to civil discourse,

enter ubiquitous critiques—all sexy sophistry—

seeding a cloudy cosmos for a much-merited storm.

The blind lead the blind, claiming no more than blindness.

The best of the best decry the violation,

but outrage erodes to whimpers and sighs. 

There is no authority left in their authority

and no authority left in the West—

all are despised, rejected, or repressed 

by the omnipotent cult of self, of Death.

“The Snuffing of Europa” plays every stage on the globe.

John Wayne, elbow on the bar, boot on the footrail,

quaffs his hemlock. 

The ambitious quest of the now-ubiquitous West—

a slow sociocide—death by our own hand;

the spirit of Elijah is lost from the land.

Transgressions in the Emptiness

Fallen to the floor, bed-fumbled,

I awake, suddenly quick-witted—

sparked to urgency by a reveille of remembrance and review

of the night’s epiphanic dreams.

In an excessively spacious hotel,

a palatial lobby filled with finery—

furniture nurtured—

a sparsity of gathered, ghostly elites

float at a distance.

A pop goddess, above a golden table

presents hermaphroditic genitalia

to a bored college of voyeurs.

The once-eager peepers, now eclipsed by over-barrage,

carouse unaroused.

“They’ll be cutting priests in the quad today,”

says the she-man shaman, brandishing a plastic Priapus 

as zhe sashays past the concierge.

“Who is in charge?” I ask the air.

“There ain’t no authority higher than desire,” 

cheeps a pink-eyed monkey bird. 

“Tohu Va Bohu,” answers the air as the chanting begins: 

Revulsion is repression!

Repression is oppression!

Revulsion is oppression!

Progress:  a doxa of rights

I am emptiness.

I am as I am—

I am who I am by my say so.

I have rights—

I am right to have rights.

You must tell me so—you must make it so—

but you do not make it so well enough.

You insult me, you oppress me.

I am who I am, I am who I say.

I grant me the rights inherent in me.

I grant you the obligation to share in my rights

and my self-sacred identity.

Freedom for me is freedom for you,

I proclaim.

I am emptiness

and my right is right.

Art After Chaos

Art as defiance of norm,

defiance as liberation from repression; 

Art defies humanism as the loathsome warmth of the herd.

Art: ever proffering false promises of apotheosis

beyond the stale plane of conformity.

Art as the thunderous No! to every divine interdict,

Art as atheism and anti-theism,

Art as new, better gods,

Art as defiance of family and tradition,

Art as newly-constructed truth above all false forms of truth

(and all are false enough),

Art as dispenser and disposer of the worthless and pointless,

Art as death to the stale and boring,

Art constructs truth at will,

Art as no boundaries, contracts, or confining promises,

Art taps the primal energies of personal and animal nature

for their unfettered expression,

Art as drive, want, desire, hunger, and passion,

Art as pulse and pulsion, 

Art eats reality,

Art takes all things into itself for its own enrichment

and defies or denies all readings,

Art as life and art as the end of life,

Art as afterlife,

Art ends life—even its own—at will,

Art as fulfilled in the glorious beauty of non-being,

that voice from the deepest, darkest depths

commanding us to end it all.

Nebuchadnezzar’s Statue

They set up a great, golden statue

to honor our glorious humanity

and created a ritual for all the people. 

The worth of the statue (beyond all dispute)

merits the worship of every tribe and nation. 

The band’s overture signals the call: 

      All shall bow down low (and the people love it so).

Finally, our virtue—this movement toward alignment,

harmony, unity, justice, and enlightenment—

      All must belong, all must agree,

      All must submit and bow down to be free.

The expansive, boundless fulmination

of expression—the harp dance, paint and clay—

ecstatic submersion and sexual destruction, 

the growing pageant, a tidal wave,

a holy juggernaut emerges from the sea,

rising in great steps onto the land.

A great Apollo, a greater Gaia—

a glowing, compendius god and messiah--

      How happy our people

      How pure now, our land

      Let’s minimize those who won’t dance to the band.

      To the den with the lions

      To the kiln and the fire:

      A fit sacrifice to instruct and inspire.

The good gods they think they know themselves to be:

good in their minds, good in their own eyes, good for themselves, 

but bad for all who disagree.

Mendacious Muse

The Church du jour, replete in self-assertive, 

tradition-trashing, present-proud entitlementality,

presenting forth the primacy of the pray-er, the prais-er,

the pietist as prayer artiste

in place of the object of piety.

Artisinal spirituality:

the muse adored,

the creaturely crutch lauded:

both source and object obfuscated.

Salomé drips in the spotlights:

glowing, rapturous attendants

gather her skirts in exhibition.

The emasculate king of pretense,

donning robes of the old order,

kneels at the edifice lingham. 

The center has not held.

the gyre, widened to exhaustion

awaits the Second Coming.

Turn, return, Oh Israel.

Newspeak

Resistance is unkindness,

dissent is immoral,

the refusal to celebrate the victor’s domination

is a hatred to be expelled.

All who defy obedience are evil:

the refusal to align amounts to degeneracy

The freedom of conscience has limits—our limits—the limits we say.

Disagreement is oppression,

and refusal to advocate for our dominance

is fear, hatred, and immoral recalcitrance.

Our holiness is godless

but the god is on our side—

our progress made perfect

via holy theocide.

Goat Song

Heed now the new song from an old tune emerging:

we eschew the shame-based stage masks of old

to brandish the source of our urging.

Flesh unfettered, unhindered, unhung—

all urge and pulse revealed and sprung.

Full like the satyr, wan as the faun,

boundless and borderless—all manacles gone.

I am : vital essence, 

antithesis of death and soul senescence. 

To Hell with the cloister; the world is my oyster!

Leave the old and cold dispute

of what is fit or right;

take audit of every double-pleasure

and seize them with all might.

Trade the old, sad violins

for pipes and a golden horn,

blow them with elan vital,

awake as one reborn.

We play ever-uninhibited

un-naked even when nude

our horns are here exhibited,

our Panic pipes renewed.

We celebrate our sin and worse,

we blaspheme for real as we rehearse.

Come join us in our penché perverse:

We desecrate Olympus; We Jerusalem curse.

Sand for Stone

Stone is no good:

it functioned well enough in the past,

in a simpler era with simpler thoughts,

but today it just won’t do.

It is too hard—too rigid and inflexible—

unyielding to present needs and the rising consensus

of hope in all new possibilities.

Stone is impossible, impassable, and practically unimpressible.

Consider sand:

it pours like water,

molds itself around every obstacle,

fills errant spaces,

and levels itself by itself.

The smallest child can lift it in her hand

or shape it into a castle of her imagining.

We can melt it into glass with perfect transparency—

while stone sits thick and dumb,

perfect only in its opacity.

Sand is superior; sand is the future.

Now wisdom demands supreme plasticity—

endless possibilities without boundaries—

Sand is our sure foundation 

for building the enlightened future.

Decalogue  (E Vietato Vietare)

1. Why not despise God and become God yourself?

2. Why not design a better version of God?

3. Why not use God to change the world?

4. Why not defy every so-called sacred ritual?

5. Why not rise above our mere biologies?

6. Why not end pointless lives to promote the general

     flourishing of greater humanity?

7. Why not gratify the flesh without boundaries?

8. Why not redistribute wealth for the greater good?

9. Why not support whatever narrative that advances

     human flourishing?

10. Why not follow your bliss, your dreams, and the

       desires of your heart?

Pop Religion

All praises be to the nothing;

May nothing be glorified. 

(except for the glorifiers)

To nothing let us live,

serve, and sacrifice flesh.

Nothing is the center, the source, and soul 

of all that is or is not. 

Nothing is our birth mother goddess,

Nothing our murderous fathers,

Nothing is worthy of our all in all.

There is no nothing other than the nothing,

and any other nothing is a counterfeit, a lie. 

There is only one nothing; there can be no other.

Come, let us give ourselves in truth,

let us pour all we have, all we are, 

and all we hope to become into it.

Let us lead all peoples into its truth.

As we give ourselves, we give them—all others—

over to Nothing.

Peoples of the world,

give your all to Nothing

for we all come from Nothing

and to Nothing we all return. 

The knife that cuts you is the knife that cuts me.

Nothing is real, and Nothing is free.

All glory, laud, and honor to nothing

for Nothing saves us. Nothing is real.

A Liturgy to Death

Oh, Holy Death!

Death the storm, Death the drug,

Death, the holy center we serve and love

through fear and avoidance— 

the Almighty, All-powerful, Eternal One,

perfect in reason and all-comprising aseity—

to the be-all end-all of all:

we see you, we ignore you;

we serve you by ignoring you.

We honor you by fighting you.

We worship you by cursing you and doing all we can

to thwart you and your influence.

Our fight against you proves your perfection.

You alone are truly real, and so we confess,

unmindful of your ubiquity,

that we only exist in you and toward you. 

In hating you we love you,

in defying you we lift up your name.

We exalt you in proclaiming no other gods,

for you—you alone—are eternal and perfect,

Your plan is visible and revealed in the heavens.

You are all.

All is in you and taken into you.

None can escape—all is mortality—

absolutely, absolutely all. 

A trillion years is nothing in your sight, 

for you will judge the cosmos.

When all is still and cold, your reign is just begun.

In truth, you will be all in all. 

All things unitied-in-you shall be forever--

forever cold, still, and perfectly dark. 

Your reign will last forever.

Your judgment is perfect 

and all that exists will soon not exist in you.

Your power is insuperable,

its extent ineffable,

and all shall become you. 

You are the unifying center of all that is

and all unification that is to be 

is found in you and you alone. 

Here we  praise temporality: for Death comes!

Oh, Death, Death, Death!

We wake only for today and live these few moments,

but you, Death,  are sure and certain—

our hopeless hope—

Death, you are Lord!

The Dreams of Peter Abelard

Dreamed cities are imagined cities,

built, altered, destroyed at will.

Buildings stand along impossible streets

crossed by impassable rivers—

all morphing to non-existence

the Augustinian pair.

Here, a familiar corner,

a spot known from childhood,

changes out of its familiarity

into distorted caricature

and we feel ourselves lost.

Fictive vistas,

artfully de-created, disassembled,

edited out of all recognition,

or invented only for recognitions 

to be forced upon them.

The city Episteme,

constructed in hypnogogic speed

to bolster selfhood or vaunt pride—

a Polis of Dali in a melting nation,

a functional folly

with no real foundations.

The puppets of intellection

formed from the clouds of unknowing

reveal a known course of direction

against the chaos of knowing.

Good Friday: Arbeit Macht Frei

Jesus weeps for Jerusalem, 

a city unmoored, a temple disconnected,

a tenable promise fumbled and eroded

through the predilection for inversion—

the love of, the drive toward death.

The great crowds, led astray

by shiny baubles and promises of quick release

pack the streets, line the narrow avenues, 

Ravenous for a self-spun justice

and the delusions of pleasure 

from poisoned desserts.

The Quest to Become a Sacred Self

I would write myself into the Bible

as Elijah’s successor

or Jesus’ best disciple.

or sip scotch with the New Atheists

winning their admiration

with salient skewerings

of the Church.

I would lay myself down

as a social justice martyr

giving all of my public self away

(in the media eye)

outpacing the pop ascetics

in emerging ideals.

Perhaps, as a tech tycoon

I could lead the lost

to new hopes of a faster,

more efficient, cleaner, cooler world.

Or, as an artiste, I could reveal

the cosmic, mystical splendor

of my special consciousness,

spinning in mastery the mysteries—

an indecipherable spray of me

for the plebes to ponder 

and by which they may sift their despair.

And all in all,

all is vanity, all is loss. 

I am emptiness in emptiness

building Babels—

a baubel stick, a bobble-head—

a miniscule nit sounding in the darkness—

a bad Bic lighter

grinding sparks without flame.

All is lost

All are lost

All is dark and helplessly separate

from the True

from the Whole

from the One

All this race

a swarm of selfish, swollen gnats

thinking themselves gods,

a noisy mosh pit of writhing cocks

grasping for blasphemy,

killing for vanity,

entirely missing the point.

Magdala Fringe

She skulks through crowds

blood-red with humiliation,

draining life, seeping soul

with no clean place to lay her head

in a world of hatred and superior sneers—

no chances, 

no knowledge or science, 

no hope

amid the loveless misery.

I am ugly beyond description.

Who would receive my love?

Not even the most lowly,

though I am willing to give to any,

and I will love, I will give,

I will do what I must to be able to give.

Somewhere are those who will receive.

I owe to them the best I can do for myself

for their good as for my own.

I will give my best.

I become in my giving

beginning in emptiness.

I will take what I can; I will get this for myself.

If I can but touch the fringe of his shawl,

Just the the tip of his wing,

I shall be made whole.

A Riddle of Blood

A riddle of blood and a problem of pain

delivered in blighted recurrence and shame:

It rained in Jerusalem the night of the flood

when the death of the innocents eclipsed us in blood.

A feverish derision, a blasphemous curse

for self-absorbed reprobates, wickeds, and worse.

The wine flowed incessant like blood in the streets

drunkening the arrogant among sad defeats.

Whose blood is this I think I know

which stains the wood and earth below;

it smells like wine and tastes like bread

and by its flood all souls are fed.

New Jerusalem

The grand yes from the skies that sounds like a no—

the start of knowing God.

Uninvented, unimagined, sovereign God self-revealing.

The noes shape love. 

The noes surround a greater space

where all is yes and peace. 

The Lord is God, not us. 

God saves, not us. 

In gratitude we love

and life is eternal.

A Poem for 2185   (for Howard Storm)

Finally, conversion.

We live to love God, one another, and ourselves.

Good riddance to vain technologies, personal possessions, 

and the smothering landslide of unnecessary stuff 

which obsessed us for so long.

We talk without speaking and listen as the deaf listen—

to the heart’s intentions behind the words. 

Yet poetry lives as prayer and praise.

It turns out we need so little to thrive.

Together, gathered, we sow and reap in abundance.

Together, gathered, we avert all the storms.

We live where we live, raise our children, 

and travel for wonder and insight.

We know souls who live so far away we could never bodily visit. 

They are like us—so very like us—growing toward God in every age. 

And here, just right here,

we grow into loving God more—

the fullness of our days crowned by beauties inexpressible

but experienceable.

We live an image of life we cannot make for ourselves.

It is as though we are being lived through

by life and a Spirit not our own. 

Not our own, yet our own,

ours to enjoy, to know and be known by,

to know the secret name of the Word behind the word

as Lord and God of all.