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michaelanthonymcnamara · 8 years ago

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AMERICAN MESSIAH

‘I heaved upon that cross, my gut burnt with vinegar wine;

Cursing, I vomited upon the women who, weeping, knelt below.’

Men are but men and those who judge but men,

they harbour video film fantasies

and crave eccentric haired prestige.

They have blended expert opinions, inherited learning,

with their flaws and neuroses

casting shadows along the pathways of justice.

And see, just when I toiled within the field

like the lily, unnoticed, behind chained doors

and mute windows I was borne unwillingly

into the changing winds that breathed

new life into a dust laden culture.

Every outlet cried of the West’s probation,

cracks in walls bled a new Renaissance,

TVs blinked black and white ideals,

a grand beginning of grown awareness,

youth’s involvement in the ways of man,

while I learned from yellowed news sheets

of dreams that were woven in the outside world.

The four white angels, insect-like possessed me as

from flattened minor chords sprang up a concept

that rang across the universe.

Autonomous images were branded on my brain,

tap water wrung visions of England,

bright city lights, rain-shrouded and pale

merged with apparitions of suburban lawns.

Tobacco smoke invoked unbidden glimpses of stately homes,

girls in short dresses, sensuous and carefree

appeared in swift response to some light, unguarded phrase.

In red brick walls were hewn the faces of the day

and a view of the same sky that covered London’s streets

promised to drown me too in wild surrender.

I watched my finest hours decline,

monitored voices of The Dream through biased headphones.

Thus would I be lionized and adored, for I came

bound in chains of mystery and pain

suffering with a joy no-one dared share,

a plumed hunger perched crownlike on my skull,

this halo of bloodied thorns.

And who shall cast the first stone? See,

the ascetic exists beyond the yearning of the flesh.

All relationships lose meaning, all human folly

regarded with the eye of knowing, so too

does the schizoid man dwell beyond (though below)

all intercourse with life.

Then what remains?

Stripped of the coarse haired saintly robes,

choked by desire, he, gasping reaches out

to break the humid sky. He grasps at all,

drowning in a mire of alternate swamps

that sink the soul in false-self involvement.

Thus youth pronounced me great,

for in a world of hypocrisy and hype

I mastered means to survive.

Searching, as all fools do,

I stole from Everyman.

The media created flames that burned me and

the media would in turn

ignite my beacon to the young.

Like a cape of darkness then I gathered around me

children of rejection

for I had had much time to learn.

I had dreamed their dreams, known their fears.

Yet how hollow was this adoration from those who gaped

in adulation at my ageing, whiskered face.

Thus it all began.

The Lord of the Eternal Erection was born.

In my babbling tower I grew strong

while they, in turn diminished.

I raped psychology, returned answers that

were no more than a glib façade.

Haphazard games I played,

a faked knowing, while beneath me lay

a black abyss.

In the streets of the grateful dead I ruled

but the opposition of older men constrained me

and the lure of the Valley of Death was great.

Yet there were hours remembered,

like a cigarette shared

with a friend or lover

on a sunny day;

a clear patch on a frosted window,

a glimpse of reality that took form for a second

rising above the smothering mists of fantasy

and apathy. A fleeting glimpse of what might have been.

In the guise of the lutanist minstrel

I strummed my tunes along those fragrant streets,

I shook the dust from the tenement tower blocks

with a freshness born of eyes

that are free from the cataracts of everyday…

for all came new to me.

Like Lazarus raised again into the world to see

I saw a house alight with fire,

a golden blaze that does not burn, a tree

bristling with shimmering fervour,

a moment hazily aglow with burnished memories.

For these seconds alone I survived,

for these revelations I endured the wasted years

suffocating deep within myself.

Oh, how I was filled with the mystery of Being,

the voiceless call to nature’s son as I stood

aglow in the light of the cradling moon.

The seasons raised me to commune with life

as I licked the dew from doorsteps and

cracked a smile at the clambering sun.

This inferno of feeling, soul scorching, intense,

was bounded only by the dark waters of otherness;

Oneness ruled the universal ego and I,

I was the universe.

And yet…

the awful vision of those who watched,

those unseen seers, knowing but unknown,

lodged within my spleen.

Thus sanctuary, a place of peace, was seldom found

as I feverishly jumped appeasement’s puddles.

Outside of fulfilment of the flesh

there is no joy

and life is void.

I could dip my untaught intellect

into the fathomless cauldron of the East,

emerging with a raw religious stew

but my heart could not be sprinkled

with the spice of love.

All negations I possessed, fear and anger

and each day I awoke with desire,

a socket through which to connect

with the pulsating undercurrent of life.

And though I had seen men

grown ugly with lust, still I yearned

for the hour when I’d destroy

the sons of the first black man who’d fathered all

and craved too, to debase

the sisters of my motherless past.

I am but a small man, thirty years old

but my head will hang with your heroes.

In time you will look back and acknowledge

your debt for the weight I dragged

along the new Golgotha.

I, who can control your children,

erasing the false ideals you have thrust upon them,

those double edged, two faced Janus idols

of prestige and possession,

I, who you alienated and rejected

will set myself upon the throne of infamy

and grasp the sceptre of glory.

You who have fed me snakes and stones; beware!

I shall quench your thirst with fiery brands

and warm your hearts

with the frozen wilderness of my soul.

#charles manson

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