Hell is in your own head–demonic hell.
Heaven is in there, too–angelic heaven.
And now to update undead Mr. Kurtz.
A certain young man went out into the wilderness,
Shunned all society.
Managed on muscadine,
A certain young man went past where the willow weaves
Long green fingers of leaves.
So this is paradise–
Meditation on the moss,
Free blackberries and walnuts.
The soothing silence of natural sound
From creeks without argument,
From crickets who live their notes,
From wind in a wild key–
You alone.
There is no getting out of the body
Without first going into the mind.
This is the first law of enlightenment.
And what other minds did you leave behind?
Those who have botched things badly.
Are you running fro them or you or both?
All of us botched things badly.
Did you run to learn from what all of us did?
Only tolearn why I helped.
There is a hermit in the wood,
A wise pariah, raised on good.
Hear him out; I think you should.
He walks across a fresh trod path.
In that steam he takes his bath.
While singing loud of woe and wrath,
He cleans his leathery hide.
The whippoorwill must think it weird
To find a human throat is cleared
By crooning curses through a beard.
So come and hear the hermit cry
With floating word and burning eye.
Hear one who cannot live or die.
Hear one who went inside.
"Do not seek paradise.
Look for anthing but paradise.
Look for anything.
Look.
Nobody cries in Eden.
"I shall not want;
I shall not care,
I’ll walk past pinheads on the stair,
Nor wince at broken blooms.
Here is a garden, grown from a pill,
An anodyne for any ill.
Happiness is a warm womb.
“O let us dance among our dreams.
Be everwhere and nowhere now.
Have done with grief. O let us dance.
I shall not want;
I shall noy care.”
How the songs of the sirens sting–
Myself to love, no other love,
Escape to stay, no longer think.
O lotusate! Euphoria!
O lovely death
Pass up that heaven and count your demons.
Name them, one by one.
This is the second law
Of Enlightenment.
The crags above the soul are steep,
Below them, hidden in the deep
Runs the river of flame.
Look down into that dismal ditch
At crawling forms within the pitch
And know your shame.
No one who sees
Will ever be the same.
Leave those woods, young wanderer.
The hermit saw his devils one
And fed them from the paradise they made.
Choice–that is the third law
Of Enlightenment.
