I sing of the cult of Ecstasy,
the abandoned, and forbidden,
the subverted and inverted,
the heresy of pleasure,
the long-hidden doctrines of Joy.
I make no claim of personal godhood,
of special vision,
of being a needed intercessor
between the pain of the grey, bloody World
and the healing coolth of Bliss.
But I will say that,
like the Sufi sage,
I would hurt water into Hell to make ash of its flames,
hurl flame into Heaven to make ash of its palaces,
so that we act, not out of love of Heaven or fear of Hell,
but out of desire to make this life better,
regardless of whatever else is on the Wheel.
As for me,
I will not get lost in the ecstatic rites and become a beast and not
a thing of man;
tempting,
tempting,
tempting is that not-undiscovered country
of unthinking action, where consequences
are unimportant until
the moment when they
slam shut behind you.
Tempting,
tempting,
to leave this world of thought
and planning
and rehearsal
and practice
and rewriting
and editing
and moving
and being,
but I have spells yet to script,
potentialities to inscribe,
even a world I might help make
a little less wrong
for a little while.
Perhaps.
In wine is truth; in too much wine is too much truth, at least if the wine’s in me;
it turns roundabout, takes peculiar pathways, seeps out through words whose
perambulations ’round my pineal gland
always go unnoticed
until they’re thoroughly dipped
in strange waters.
I won’t worry; let it go, and let it come, and
let neither the heights nor the troughs
stay me from my appointed mission:
joy for all,
enslavement to nothing,
not even joy.
