BORN AMONG BRIARS

JOHN BROWN'S BODY

© 2011 Matt Cygny

All Rights Reserved

Dreamfields Press
8235 So. Park #414
Tacoma WA 98408

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* * *
Canticle I
BORN AMONG BRIARS
An Emblem Book by

MATT CYGNY
Contents
1. The Threshold of Siege Perilous 1
Lurker at the Threshold; The Myth of the Star-Spangled Banner; A Needle too
big for a Horse; My Cruel Soulmate; Maxwell's Demon & the Quartermasters
of Reduction; Love Should Make us Happy?

2. The Budding of the Rose 16

Old Soldiers Who Chew on Each Other; As Soon as the Play Has Two Actors;
When Wounds We Have Been Sharing Begin to Cry Out; Conscripted by
Heaven; Geometric Colors of Designer Sheets; What is the Spirit & What is
Fermentation? Dodging Used Condoms

3. Holding the Corners of the Sky 28.

In Retrospect, It's Obvious to Me; Bursting With Angry Energy; The Cosmic
Irritation; Felon Apollyon, and The Great Desolation; Back When Those
Vultures Were Angels; The Lions Have Gotten Loose

4. She Contemplates a Very Un-Kosher Offering 47

The Cinderella Regime; The Family Values of Bingbum de Singsum; When Old
Scratch is being Nice; Does It Make Your Soul Burn? She’s Making Me Bray
Like a Donkey; The Shadowgraph Speaks Back; It Burns With Cold Blue Fire;
When the Fishes Became People, & I Became a Rattlesnake; She Who Hanged
Herself, Back When the World Was Young

8. The Anti-Swastika 67
A Taxing Argument; The Revolution of the Goddess; The Reason Why the
Peasants Must Be Honored; The Wheel of Karma Keeps on Turning; Ashes of
Burned-Out Obsession

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Notes on the Illustrations

(original addresses of CC material modified & incorporated )
(p. 1) Picture of John Brown derived from the mural by John Steuart
Curry, Kansas State Capitol. The two fish are derived from "Coral
Garden,"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usoceangov/3750089892/in/photostream/
CC attribution 2.0, NOAA's National Ocean Service

(p. 28) Waves beneath the sky: Openphotonet::

http://openphoto.net/gallery/image.html?image_id=19943
© Adrian van Leen (MasterContributor)
'approaching rain and storm clouds at sea'
registered in PublicDomain by © holder
3 towers: above hills:
The tower is an reproduction of the Azadi Monument, which has become
an iconic symbol of the Green Movement in Iran

(p. 47) Statue is a detail from Pygmalion & Galatea, cited in #5

(P. 67) Starue of Pygmalion & Galatea by Étienne Maurice Falconet, from
Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Falconet_-
_Pygmalion_%26_Galatee_%281763%29.jpg#file

Shadow of swastika being hammered – derived from the cover of Bash

The Fash: Anti-fascist recollections 1984-93 By K. Bullstreet.
First published by the Kate Sharpley Library, 2001.
Hard copy ISBN 1-873605-87-0 & ISBN-13 9781873605875

Kate Sharpley Library, BM Hurricane, London, WC1N 3XX

KSL, PMB 820, 2425 Channing Way, Berkeley CA 94704, USA
www.katesharpleylibrary.net

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E
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THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD

Born as we are among briars,
We know not yet the budding of the Rose.
In pride, we dare declare ourselves
The Green Knight’s warriors —
But he who resides in the Holy Tent
Asks why we have been using Truth
As though it were no more
Than just an obsidian club.

W hen we arrive at the Chapel in the Wilderness,

we discover that an ominous creature is
lurking at the threshold of the cave where Tristran
and Iseult took refuge.
So long as this Great Red Dragon is watching at
the threshold of the cave, the majority of women shall
languish as the puppets of the master-pimps, and the
earth shall be ruled by oppression. So long as the
military Pimp School remains the instrument through
which men are initiated into society, the world is
reduced to the mechanical substrate which has
precipitated in the bottom of an erlemeyer flask. So

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long as Babylon’s sorceries confine us to the bottom of
this flask, our view of the world beyond the flask shall
be distorted by the delusion which imagines that
conquest is love.
If we would vanquish the Dragon, we must equip
ourselves with a science which appreciates the
ontological significance of Love. Within the human
world, Love is the Prime Mover. Exorbitant passions
arise as reactive rebellions against Love. Eventually,
Exorbitant Jealousy merely creates martyrs who
confirm the Dominion of Love – but in the short run,
we shall be in need of heroes and houris who
understand just how a dragon may be slain.
Of course, as ancient tales shall tell us, the
Dragon’s lair is littered with the bones of heroes who
forgot to take care of the Bag of Tricks that
Grandmother gave them. It’s also known these tricks
shall only work for heroes who are gentle with the
girls.
There’s some who say, that we should just forget
Love, to set our hearts on higher treasures like
Knowledge and Contentment. I know the Dragon has
some way to get to these states without walking
through the Land of Love. But I, alas, am only a poor
mortal, who’s only moved to long for higher things
when prodded by Love’s pang.

I’d join the throng upon the thoroughfare,

All looking for the love that is perfect
Then fighting for possession of that love —
But I, who’ve wandered through the fields
Find that I have been wounded
By the thorn of the Rose.

I know too well, that in this world,

Love comes as a letter of induction

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To join some cruel struggle.

The Lovers who are True must be the ones
Who cling to the Firm Handle,
Despising the extravagant titles
Manufactured in the House of Power & Control
By Jealous Apollyon.

The Myth of the Star-Spangled

Banner
“But we aren’t corsairs,” I confided to Ms. Kierkegaard.
“We are actually root-rock social scientists
Measuring the vectors of those glamours
Which turn us into slaves and enslavers.
April 15, 1994
There are so many legends that rise from the hot air,
on the western edge of the Great American desert. For
example, the Myth of Billy the Kid informs us that the
freshly widowed Mrs. Alexander McSween remained in a
her burning Lincoln County house long enough to play The
Star Spangled Banner on her imported piano.
Yet there may be subtle truths embroidered on the
rudely hooped canvasses of these cloud-schooners which
drift up from the smoke of the Western campfire. It would
not have been much of an exaggeration to have
represented all of the New Mexico of 1877 as one big
burning house. The delicate fabric of compromises,
alliances, and co-existences which balanced the Hispanic,
Native, and Anglo elements of this complexly interwoven
culture were being menaced by an insurgency of Anglo-
Norman conquistadors in the Jesse James mold.
Susan McSween’s protests over the indifference of
paid-off civilian and military officials towards the murder
of her husband played the national anthem loudly enough
that way back in Washington D.C., President Hayes was
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prodded to appoint the veteran Abolitionist Lew
Wallace as the territorial governor, with instructions
to put out the still-smouldering fire. This is why the
legend persists, in spite of Susan McSween’s
documented insistence, that she would never have
been that foolhardy1.

W hen we drum and tune our guitars to

accompany the coyotes under the stars, some
people will call us corsairs. Even the Lady from
Denmark, who should have known better, doesn’t yet
understand the difference between a bandit like
Jesse James, and a battina like Alexander Mc Sween.
“I want to join your banditoes,” she confided to
me, back when Paranoid Alien Radio was just
beginning to broadcast.
Of course, I found myself confronting what
seemed to me a rather unreasonable prejudice.
Because we are a community of dark-skinned people

1. Update on the Myth of the Star-Spangled Banner. The custom of standing

up for the Star-Spangled Banner is credited to Rossell G. O’Brien, who was
regarded as the founding father of the Washington State Territorial Militia.
O’Brien was also close to the Bar Association, and served as court clerk for the
territorial court. His Civil War service brought him into hostile contact with the
guerilla forces in Missouri, so we can be assured that he was aware of the
continuing neo-Confederate threat.
This may provide the clue to the riddle of why Susan McSween was credited
with playing the Star-Spangled Banner in a burning house. Alexander McSween
was a lawyer who gave his life for the vision of an American West which would be
ruled by reason and due process rather than through mobs driven by racial
prejudice. Walter Noble Burns wanted to plant a flag on the trail, because he
wanted us to remember that when Rossell G. O’Brien stood up for the Star-
Spangled Banner in 1893, he was saluting Alexander McSween, as well as all of
the others who had suffered and even died for the same vision.
The Star Spangled Banner did not actually become the National Anthem until
1931, although a 1916 presidential order by Woodrow Wilson paved the way.

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salted with the occasional pale cosmopolitan, we are
more than likely to be typecast in the role of Dick
Turpin. This is unhistorical. To quote Walter Noble
Burns, who was a fairly observant historian, “[The gun-
slinging killers of the Wild West] were all blond. There
was not a pair of brown eyes among them.”2
But even now, after various Marxist parties control
about 1/3 of the seats in your Northern European
parliaments, you Europeans still persist in clinging to
the myth, that it was the Real People who were the
aggressors, and that armored 2 Like all the

European prospectors who weren’t noted killers of the

afraid to torture the Leprechaun to West, Billy the Kid
find the pot of gold, were simply our was of the blond
type. Wild Bill
passive victims. We know that you Hickok, Ben
have degrees, and that you have Thompson, King
studied the Marxist theory of Fisher, Henry
Plummer, Clay
colonialism. But do you remember us?
Allison, Wyatt
Do you remember who it was Earp, Doc
that taught the earliest cowboys and Holliday, Frank
loggers how to live on the open plains and Jesse James,
and camp out in the woods? Do you the Youngers, the
Daltons – the list
remember the people whose identity of others is long –
has been confused, because they were were all blond.
betrayed in their own homeland? There was not a
“So tell me a little of the data pair of brown eyes
among them. – p.
which you intend to publish in the 60, The Saga of
journal of your Socialist Monarchy,” I Billy The Kid.
challenge. “You found the noble 1925, University of
savages, recorded their music – and in New Mexico Press
Edition, 1999.
a few years your published reports Albuquerque.
shall have inspired a new form of rock
and roll.”
“Are you not the cynical one!” she declares.
“Since I came out West I have learned a lot about
the Marginalized Peoples.” I answer her. “If the thought
of Marginalized Peoples is discussed in your academies,

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it is usually presented, as interpreted by
anthropologists. So since you have come out here to
interpret, will you allow me to interpret you?”
“You’re not a Noble Savage!” she exclaims. “What
I can see, is that you are simply a goat, who has found a
way to get through my defenses.”

A Needle Too Big for a Horse

Meanwhile back in the hospital, Dr. Tres Cruces
slaps the butt of an old cowpoke who has taken the
removal of his pants as a pretext for harassing her for
sex.
She maneuvers his butt into position under the
fluoroscope eye, then slaps his butt again with the
harsh statement:
“That’s all the anesthetic you are going to get
before I stick the serious needle all the way up through
the notch in your pelvis into your backbone. The
Jesuits who taught me in college gave me to
understand why veteran bull-fighters should not be
anesthetized too much before an epidural injection.
Hold still – the way that you have harassed me, shows
me that you need to pray for God to help you learn how
to atone. Hold still so I don’t break the needle, and need
to make an incision to fish it out. I know you are man
enough to be glad you finally can atone for all the
women’s hearts that you have broken. Aren’t you kind
of glad, that I’m mean enough to treat you, the way you
have treated your women?
“O.K., the needle is in now. First I am going to
reward you with something that is going to make you
feel like your legs have turned to candy. But now you
have got to hold still and enjoy the time it takes for me
to change the needles – just a minute, this one is dye,

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that one’s not going to hurt too much – but the next one is
a sort of shock therapy for your spine, to trick the affected
nerves to start producing the humors they need to, to
keep pain in its place so that it disciplines your excess but
does not dominate.
“Oh, yes, I know, buckaroo – where women are
concerned, excess has always been your middle name.
Start saying your prayers to God, to help you take your
atonement for your sins gracefully, because I have gotten
the serious syringe in place now, and I’ve seen a lot of
men just as big as you scream and cry when this injection
went in. I know you aren’t feeling OK, but you have been
brave. You’ve only got to hold still for about another
minute, while I pull the big needle out – I’ve seen a lot of
big men cry when I did this to them, so if you need to
moan don’t be afraid to let it out. There – let me put a
band aid on it. If you need to quiver and shake you can do
so now. Call the clinic if it gets to be this time tomorrow
and the pain has not diminished sufficiently that your
masochistic butt can enjoy it.”

My Cruel Soulmate
I’m Asking the Father in Heaven:
Why has Love been tortured so often?
I’m brandishing my fist against the Archetypal Father:
So long as He must always be in control,
There can be no redemption for the world.

Sat., Apr 16, 1994

“I have a cruel soulmate,” I found myself confessing,
as I let Regina drive me out into the hills in her open
ragtop.
The stars were bright within the sky; the moon was
like a quarter of a cantaloupe.
“She’s just like one of those stars, isn’t she?” I hear
Regina smirk. “She’s just as constant and just as distant.
If you don’t watch out, she shall become the Valkyrie who
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leads you into war. I like to flaunt my Resistance
heritage by seducing men like you. I know, after we
have played our butt-games and our horn games, that
she shall become the one that you always return to.
Perhaps your time with me shall make your relationship
better – because you shall be less self-righteous when
you finally do go back to your constant Evening Star.”
What happens to Love when She has been
tortured too often? What happens to the bright stars in
the sky, when men and women decide they will never
forgive the sins we commit against one another when we
lust? What happens to love, when there is always a
lawyer between you in bed? What happens to the Social
Contract when even Athena believes the Man is always
right?
“If she really is your soulmate, she will be back,”
Regina hastens to assure me, as we drive up into the
hills, toward what she assures me is an el-primo
camping spot.
Perhaps our willingness to sate our rage against
these distant soulmates through indulgence in
unlicensed carnal pleasure, is a means of brandishing
our fists against a Patriarchal God who has been
dethroned from Heaven, but still retains the power to
call most of the shots here on earth.
The moonlight reflected from clouds, and perhaps
amplified by the aurora-like glow that is cast upon the
clouds by the lights of the cities below, enables us to
make out the forms of vultures on the cliff.
“Just for your anthropological notebook,” I
intimate to her, “those vultures used to be angels – at
least, that’s what the Cherokees say. The Vulture was
more or less, the King of the Djinn, who made all the
hills and the valleys. The Shennadoah River was named
for him – but then a bad thing happened.
“The Vulture used to be the most handsome of
birds, but then he grew so proud that none of the other

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animals could stand to be around him. Some bad things
happened to Vulture that spoiled his fine hairdo, and left
him stinking like a piece of rotten meat. While Vulture
was being dragged around by the bison he’d thought he
could love and abuse, the animals began to broadcast his
shame to all of the medicine people. Because all of the
animal people looked upon Vulture as their priest, this
precipitated a revolution.
“The Aztecs became the counter-revolutionaries who
sacrificed the dissidents, and everyone else that they felt
like, so they would be able to continue in worshipping
their Vulture-Priests. But after the Revolution, most of the
Native tribes north of the reach of Aztec diplomacy
became strictly Republican. After that revolution no chief
or sachem was permitted to have more than constitutional
authority. After the day when God had to break the nose
of his little brother, even the greatest leaders had to defer
to the dictates of tribal authority.
“I thought the Southern Death Cult persisted until
the Frenchmen settled New Orleans,” Regina reflects back
to me.
“You Anthros want to think that no one knew a thing
about progressive culture, until you came over to
enlighten us,” I find myself reacting. “You’re so entrenched
in the prejudices left over from Christianity and Islam,
that you can’t imagine that there might have been healers
among people you call savages, who carried on a very
lively dialogue with their Creator.”

That’s why the flag of our revolution

Must be the Flag of the Sphinx::
We’re weary of these pious cruelties
Of racial theories which reduce the land
To horrid desolation.
Voice of John Brown
Now that we see Christianity and Islam lining up
to make war on each other, isn't it about time we
start to admit, that the shamans of the little woodland

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tribes that you still refer to as savages, might have
had a relation to the Spirit of Prophesy which was
just as valid for them as any of the revelations of
your saints? Don’t you see why we are concerned?
It’s one thing to accept Death as a sort of initiation
into a Higher Realm. It’s quite another to impose
this sort of initiation on everyone who will not
accept your version of the dogma. You want to
condemn the Natives because their urban cultures
persisted in sacrificing people who wanted to be
Gods – but don’t both your Christian Inquisition and
its present-day Islamic equivalent, show every
surviving aborigine all over the world, just which
cultures really are entrenched in red-handed
savagery?

“I’m trying to understand what my people saw in

1944,” Regina shudders. “I think we saw most of the
kingdoms of Europe get taken over by the bloodiest of
the Old Aztec Gods. We are still trying to develop
conceptions which will help us understand why we had
to learn that our piety was not leading us to salvation,
but rather burdening us with the guilt of six million
Jews.”
“When we had only virtue,” the vultures are
hoarsely croaking, “our addiction to our own hunger
became pride. We thought that we were saved by faith,
but our pride had distorted our faith. Like Dr. Faust, we
finally had to look on our good works – and found that
our great labors had constructed internment camps.”
That’s why Regina and I are holding each other so
closely, even though both of our hearts have already
been pledged to somebody else. That’s why we kiss, as
we sit together on a blanket and look out from this hill,
at the Scorpion who glowers on the horizon. We kiss in
the sweet grass, because we are seeking healing, not

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only for ourselves, but for our distant soulmates, and
even for those far-away stars which constellate in shapes
that remind us of the grossest outlines of our human
destinies.
We want to believe that when soul-mates begin to
forgive each other for the crimes that they have seen in
the pit that lies between them, the world can begin to
move toward some sort of redemption.

Maxwell’s Demon, and the

Quartermasters of Reductionism
When we beheld the tents
Of the Quartermasters of Reduction
Lined up under fascist banners,
We saw how the people had been bound up in debt,
So that they would serve The Accuser
April 28, 1994
“What is statistically normative?” Renata
challenges me. “We’ve let ourselves be cursed by the fact
that the tortures which we grew up with have really
perverted our feelings. We have had to learn how to live
on stolen satisfactions in order to survive.”
She is walking very stiffly, with the help of a cane.
Even though her broken femur is clinically healed, the
muscles of her leg and hip sometimes get to hurting so
painfully that she has to sit down and cover her mouth
with her sweater, so I do not see she is crying.
Shall we weep in horror because we know, that once
the land has been possessed by spiritual lethargy, a fresh
harvest of atrocities shall sprout like the briar from the
soil? When shall we begin to learn the lesson we should
have been able to assimilate, when we studied the effects
of Adolf’s mismanagement of Europe?

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Maxwell Silverhammer
Is teaching a class in Statistics.
If you take a stand outside the Normal Curve
You shall be called Maxwell’s Demon

I am standing outside the Drugstore Café In Santa

Fé. The battle between the Viet Cong and the Hell’s
Angels has come and gone. Regina comes walking along,
and we promenade, until we find ourselves looking on an
Oriental garden, in the year One After Zero.
In the tents of that garden, the Quartermasters of
Reductionism are being judged. A correlation is being
made, between a very large pile of bleached bones, and
what are now established to be Fascist banners. How did
a whole nation come under the control of teenagers who
had been schooled only in the ethic that Sadism is Cool?
We walk across the street to see a ventilated world.
The statistical graph of the ‘80's is written in bullet-hole
code. The world which was so inflated is punctured in so
many places, it may not be repairable.
Behind the shrubbery in the Oriental Garden,
Renata and Thieu Erathna are sharing a foxhole as they
clean and oil their automatic weapons.
“Watch out for statistical profiling,” Renata warns
Thieu. “It’s getting much harder for them to get away
with sniping at you with a rifle. The problem these days
is, they will use our scientific achievements to map our
statistical profiles. Then they can fire projectiles that are
programmed to seek out those profiles, and claim that it
is an accident when they actually hit us.”
“Is it time for me to make my Tet Offensive?”
Maxwell’s Demon stops by to ask the two women.
“Not yet and get down,” they answer back.

Spiritual failure is the statistical norm.

This is what we learned from the years of the stuffed men,
The stick men, who take no thought of their Creator

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But are proud of the way in which economic compulsion
Irons out the lives of the people.

Love Should Make Us Happy?

We have sought for salvation through piety.
We have seen the angels laughing.
Psychological inflation creates economic inflation:
Arrogance continues to rule
Until the social facade is perforated by bullets.

“That’s why I keep whipping your arse,” Renata

informs me. “I suffer from a perverse compulsion to
make you an accomplice in a crime against nature. To
prove love really conquers all, you must learn to be able
to love the really nasty pain you feel when I flog your
hindquarters. As we learn to excite each other, statistics
fall on their asses, because we find, as we enable
ourselves in our sadomasochism, that we are able to
persevere even when the retribution of the Great Pimp
really hurts.
“This is our rebellion of love, because we have
grown so tired of being dominated by fear and pain, that
we are going to use the enchantment of love to bring our
nerves back under our control. In our rebellious love we
shall embrace the pain of death, so that we can call The
Grave our natural home. Our love has made us strong
enough to return into this world, after we had suffered
so much that, had we been only natural, our flesh would
have slithered right back into the cold ground.
“This is the right of our rebellion of love, because
our love has brought us back from a well-earned
Paradise, so we can consummate the courtship of the
Morning and the Evening Stars, here in this world that
so desperately needs a few adults out on the playground.”

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Love should make us happy?
Love exists to open a door, & make
us confront the abyss:
Can it give us strength, can we walk
without flinching,
Down the causeway
that leads to the pyre
where we shall be sacrificed?
The fairy-tales we have heard
Do not speak of this valley.

“Love should make you happy?” croak the ravens

who are guarding the Garden of Old Buddhist Bones.
“You underestimate Love’sk significance. Love was not
brought into the world merely to babysit narcissists, but
to challenge you to develop a higher vision, which shall
drive you because your awakened sympathy is attuned
to the pain and the yearnings of all sentient beings.”

First Vulture:
The fairy-tales you learned in the cradle do not
speak of this valley. This journey is for those who
ask of love only, that it should give them courage to
look upon the horrors of the world, and not grow
faint.

Second Vulture:
We have had to look upon three and a half
Years of Horrors in which all things have been
burned away. Because we are not of your species,
we do not feel the pain that you should, when you
witness how your brothers and your sisters have
been killed. But as you can see for yourselves, this
beautiful garden has been turned into a desert. The
sun shines now, and we have only bones on which
to perch. There are no longer any trees to shade
our weary flesh.

Third Vulture:
Even we have cried for solace, under the
moon of the night, when the quiet breeze stirs a

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carnal odor that still has not died, so many years
after the massacre.

Fourth Vulture:
It is not for the coward to walk through this
valley of death. But you who are lovers must
persevere, even through this wasteland in which
both joy and sorrow are cast away. Under this sun,
we expiate the wickedness of our karmas.

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´
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THE BUDDING OF THE ROSE
Myths must become alive again –
But living is the opposite of classicism
Perhaps, when we begin to dance with naked feet
The world shall become living.
St Patrick's Day, 2000
It might have been!
As the snowline retreats up the hills, we can finally
believe that one more winter is coming to an end. This is
the spring of the year that shall end the 2nd Millennium
After our Supposed Redemption.
By this time in our evolution, we might have
become creatures among whom empathy and cooperation
would have come as easily, as dancing on a breeze comes
to a tree.
Instead, everything has been fenced in with barbed
wire. In the cities, certain types of barbed wire have
evolved into bright flashing neon circuitry that dazzles
even as it imprisons.
Because we are dazzled, it seems that our fears are
ungrounded. Fluorescent electrical flashes make

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everything seem alive, even while they keep us from
even seeing that we are bound in by a wall.
It isn’t the sort of wall that becomes obvious,
because it bends around us. The only time it really holds
us back, is when we reach for the sky. Then we discover
that we have been thrown down, because we had
imagined that we could be the Gods, who could make
our own way into Heaven.

Old Soldiers Who Chew on Each

Other
It Might have been!
We might have been!
We might have been more patient
With each others’ In-Recovery needs!

I can see, Renata, that you are trying to apologize –

but that doesn’t quite satisfy me. We could have
been much kinder to each other.
“We could have been,” you defend, “if we had not
been fighting a war.”
But of course. We know we were attracted to each
other, because in some way, we identified with each
other's suffering.
“We have taken great pride in the thought, that we
are the Warriors of Truth,” Renata confides to me. “The
sad thing is, we may have stood for Truth once – but how
long has it been since we performed a reality check, to
see where Truth stands now?”
“Honey, I know all too well, that if we had not
sustained each other, we would have given up the
struggle long ago. And we could have accomplished so
much, if only the world had been more open and more
honest – even the love between us could have been more
true. But because this world of vicious covert agendas
17
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
has torn us so badly, we all are creatures in recovery –
and so we find that our love must be in recovery, too.”
a
As Soon As the Play Has Two
Actors
So let us turn our microscopes on love.
It’s possible, there may be higher states –
But it is through the fires in this valley
That Base is converted to Noble

So let us turn our microscopes on Love. Of old, the

Patriarchs have taught, that Love is but the first of
many doors we must pass through, in our search for
Higher Treasures.
Of course, it’s so much more comfortable to feel,
that we ourselves are at One with the moving hand of
the Universe. To be in Dialogue is sometimes a rapture
and sometimes a torture – the mixed experience on
which we must embark, as soon as soon as there are two
masks in the Universe.
As soon as there are two masks, there are
questions. As soon as there are two masks, they may
beat each other up. What then shall become of the
Mystic Oneness of the Universe?
As soon as there are Two Masks, there is the need
for a relationship which can create a Synthesis. So what
is Perfect Love?
“If you want to see what is wrong with our love,”
japes Renata, “you probably shall need to use a
fluroscope. I know exactly what is wrong with it – the
same thing that is wrong with most of my patients.
They tried to lift too much, tried to shoulder too much of
the burden, didn’t get the support that they needed,
until finally, they get a hernia in one of the discs in
their back. That is why our relationship is hurting,
because our love is trying to accomplish too much.”

18
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
So now there is a mask that is sprouting with tears.

When Wounds We have Been

Sharing Begin to Cry Out
Cast down from Heaven, Jealousy howls:
Love gave us cosmic perspective –
Now that our love has become carnal
We find that we must wrestle in the mire.

Is that the reason why the fire between us now has

changed to the infernal kind?
The more this fire grows, the more it seems to hurt
us. How are we to persevere in perfect love, when we
know too well just what it is to be wounded by the thorn?
How are we ever to recover our innocence, now that
we have discovered that cruelty has a life of its own?
What lust is it within ourselves, which causes us to look
on each other, as if we were roaring lions?
Whether we had been in love or not – we know that
we would have suffered. It simply has been easier for us
to endure the wounds we suffered in our war against the
Nations, because we had allowed ourselves to believe,
that we were suffering in penance for the wounds we
had inflicted on each other.
When the wounds we were sharing began to cry
out, they began to warn us, that if the songs of the
tormented lovers do not give birth to new myths,
humanity shall go down to extinction.
But look! The searchlights are becoming active.
Perhaps somewhere, a few of our comrades were able to
escape. If only we could be sure that this is not just one
more piece of disinformation.
The problem is that, except for the inmates,
everything around here, even in the guard tower, is
cybernetic. The only thing around here that is not
19
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
mechanical is Teddy Roosevelt’s ghost. Everything else
has been programmed by a crew that left ten years ago.

Conscripted by Heaven
What shall remain, when all our myths have died?
Great storms shall descend from the Solar Corona.

T he lightning shall crackle, and John Brown shall rise from the
dead.
We look down on the ground beside us, and see the body of a White
Man. The style of his white shirt, trousers, and suspenders,
informs us that the present frame is set in the 1850's. His
hair is unruly; he has rope-burns around his neck, and a red
stain on the front of his shirt that has come from an
abdominal wound.

W hy should it be, that of all the gibbet birds sacrificed by 19th

Century justice, this ghoul should be the one who haunts us
most?
We look up now at lightning, which divides the clouds of the sky.
We see a moving finger that points down.
“We’re not done with you yet,” the Spirit cries down to John Brown.
The eyes that the crows have plucked out begin to see, but do not
comprehend.
“I’ve got a job for you in Africa,” the voice in the clouds shouts down.
With mute incomprehension, John Brown’s body lifts itself on wobbly
elbows, as he stares at the Angel in the sky.

Is there no innocence?
It’s now the year 2000.
We’re still waiting for the myths that died in 1935
To come back to life.

East of the high mountains, the Baltimore schooner is sailing through

the storm.
Lightning breaks from the dark sky, and the sea is troubled. The moon

20
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
breaks free from the dark clouds.
There’s trouble down there in the hold. Revolting slaves are singing
“John Brown’s Body.”
There’s no innocence here, but there are sharks, stirring up the waters
of the wake. There’s grog enough spilled in the Captain’s
cabin, to make the sharks as tipsy as the crew.
Before the storm, this ship had been bound for Jamaica, to take on a
cargo of rum. But then, when lightning hit the mast, the
slavers looked upon a light sent from Eternity.
That light dawns on the drunken men, and all of their fears come to
life. The chains fall from the men bound in the hold. Above
the deck, beneath a stormy moon, a muscular angel flies by.
“God did not create this nightmare,” the body of John Brown declares.

Geometric Colors of Designer

Sheets
What is it that we may call love?
I look upon your lineaments and recognize –
This human form indeed was modeled
After the image of God.
This vision alone may be called Love.
All else is pretense.

May 12, 1994

Regina and I are waking between the geometric
colors of her designer sheets. Her kiss is a solace to me.
I guess that Tarrico Zamora must have been right,
when he suggested to me, that my fascination with
Renata was driving me nuts.
I must admit, that I am perhaps too fascinated by
the fermented salsa of Renata’s decadent romanticism.
Her breasts inflame my spirit, as her dark eyes haunt
me with the cry: Do you not see how I suffer? Confronted
by this Leviathan – how could I help but be snared?

21
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
As our psychologists have shown, what we call
passion is a brutally intoxicating cocktail in which eros
and thatatos are blended. The problem I have with
Renata, is that she mixes a little too much thanatos into
the drink. As an endangered revolutionary, I am pleased
by the indifference she can demonstrate in the face of
Death. But insofar as I already have enough collateral
casualties to repent for, I am finding myself compelled to
look elsewhere for the eros which I need, if I am to be able
to balance my passion and my reason.
“Tomorrow, the death-squads may find us,” sighs
Regina. "So let us love each other while we can”
I waken from my reverie with a start. I have been
contemplating her breast, reflecting on the contrast
between her rather light skin and Renata’s very dark skin.
I am shaken because, beneath her facile mock-heroic
romanticism lies a historical trauma with real teeth.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what it was like to be
comrades in the Resistance?” she asks with that de-
Beauvior smile.
I realize that it shocks me because she is invoking
something I’ve been trying to forget. I wanted to get as far
as I could from the struggle to save ethnic and religious
minorities from all of the varieties of Ethnic Cleansing –
but it seems that the more that I run, the more that I find
myself right there in the center of the storm.
I nestle my bare, hairy chest against her smooth
breasts, and kiss her lips.
“Tomorrow the Nazis may find us,” I reflect with a
detached air. “That’s all the more reason we should love –
since only love dares lift a fist against the Fiend.”
Tomorrow, the enemy may lock us both away in
some stone tower, where Good and Evil both are far too
obvious, and yet where only those who do not fear the pain
of martyrdom dare to be good. But for the moment, since
the Angel With the Flaming Sword has gone away to serve
the Fascist State, the two of us have crept quite secretly

22
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
into a garden, where the fruits of Good and Evil remain
still green, and still unpicked upon the Tree.

What is The Spirit, and what is

Fermentation?
Waking between designer sheets,
I find her kiss a solace –
Otutside, the barbarian parade
Multiplies attrocities.
We are back to the days of tyrants
who have forgotten their humanity.
Too many women and children
Live under the rule of the shotgun.
It is time once again for the 13th
Wampum Belt to become visible.
The president must be baptized
So that his spine may be straightened
In all seven places,
And his soul redeemed.

W hat is the true spirit of the soul, and what is its

corruption?
I slip down the skirt from Regina’s willing hips, taste
the brackish spring that rises up under a rock within her
sacred grove, and finally leap up to embrace her flesh. I
dance upon the single foot I drive down deep into her
hidden grotto.
And it's kiss, kiss, I love you. I don't know what to do
– the train is beginning to take me to places that are
feeling really strange.
But then, there's not much I can do but dance to
satisfy her. I stiffen, as I march across the dunes.

Too long have we believed Gardner Nerval has become a lamp-

There are no virtues but the martial post
ones.
War is a madness – the fruits of It was only after we tasted
experience cannot be denied. The fruit of the poison-tree
Outside my door, That God died

23
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
The spirit of John Brown has carried me away. The sweet chariot sweeps
down low, so that I am able to look down on the wide Kansas
plain. The railroad tracks recede to the horizon -- how is it
they can travel on so far together, yet never quite manage to
touch?
That sun which hangs low in the West -- shall it ever be able to redeem
us?
We fly on till that sun is above us. Down in the Atlantic Ocean, the
escaped slaves light a fire under a huge iron cauldron, stirring
in chunks of meat that once were the limbs of the captain.
They’ll celebrate their resurrection with a feast.
It seems God’s forgotten the captain. He now is no more than a
nightmare in the hearts of souls that still remember whips and
chains. The angels lift the Afric souls on high, while the Flying
Dutchman’s voice still echoes against the ink-stained clouds of
heaven.

Why do these tinsel faces Enchant us with these pangs of fear

Of so many Flying Dutchmen & guilt
Bound to the winds ‘cause they can’t That sting us like the Voices of the
go to Heaven Mad?
“Why do all men fear Death, except for a few
glorious fools?” I find myself asking Regina.
“You are the one who always talks about masks,”
returns Regina. “The reason is, that we are in a play,
and most of the actors are so in love with the stage, that
they believe that the role is the reality. They are afraid
of the moment when they must go backstage and take
off their masks, because they don’t know how to live if
they don’t have a script to lead them.”
After we have made love, we shower away the
bodily fluids that we have exchanged, and go out to have
our breakfast in a burrito joint.

24
 BORN AMONG BRIARS

“So what really is beyond good and evil?” Regina

challenges me. “Of course God is – but I don’t think that,
as mortal creatures, we shall ever get there.”
“Maybe, when we are completely in love with the
work of the Creator, we begin to approach that point,” I
find myself reflecting.”
“But that is what you were seeking, isn’t it, when
you brought your company out into these hills? You were
trying to produce some sort of epic around the theme of
the Necessary Bandit. But what this Necessary Bandit is
all about – the whole point of it is, that he is trying to get
to a point that is Beyond Good and Evil, so that he can
move civilization.”
We kissed then, the way that lovers should in the
springtime grass. We found ourselves dreaming of a time
when life shall be sweet, when the wrongs we inflict on
each other in our struggles shall be small enough, that
they can be easily forgiven. We long for a time when
people shall no longer need to defend themselves by
shedding the blood of others, when nations shall be led by
their respect for beauty and for grace.
It is important for those of us whose lives have been
crushed by the wars of Powers & Principalities to believe,
that lovers shall someday be happy.
We who have been wounded in our battles know too
well, what it is to be led on by hopes which can lead us
only to death. Desire for this world is something we only
pretend.

Dodging Used Condoms

Where’s virtue now?
Can this be the Abomination of
Desolations –
This compulsion which must reach
for the 6-gun, or dump trash
Whenever it sees a flower?
Perhaps that’s why the flowers are
gone now
And all that remains in the gardens
Is rock cocaine

25
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
As we walk out into the parking lot outside of the
burrito joint, we find ourselves having to dodge the used
condoms and broken hypodermics that have been left
here by the roving creatures of the Night.
We laugh about this vision of the Abomination of
Desolations, but something clutches at my heart with
solemn spell. Just what would John Brown say, if he
could see the way in which the kids are being treated in
the Inner Cities today?
Again, I am shocked into awareness, that all is not
as good as it would seem. Do we not know, we are in
Babylon? The Great Pimp shall make sure the Harlot
rides the Beast – full knowing just how much she shall
get hurt when he finally gets weary of her wares. He does
not need to care, since he is Light, and she is the Dark
Mire. He is the Unconquered Sun, and she is but the dark
face of the moon.
But look upon the ground – you’ll see the evidence,
that Babylon’s in chaos. Perhaps we should be thankful
that the kids do use condoms – but what is all this glass
upon the ground? What are the terrible diseases that may
be carried on the tips of needles that once injected
surreptitious glee, but now may condemn someone to a
life of misery?
When women are degraded, the sons shall grow up
mean.
“Sing sorrow, sorrow – but let good win out in the
end!” Regina sighs pensively.
I find that I am sharing in her feeling of malaise.
I’ve tried so hard to believe, if only I could just repent of
my perversity, the rest of the world would repent of its
own wickedness also.
We sit down inside the burrito joint, and Regina
takes off her coat. I cannot help staring at the low cut of
her blouse. There’s little I can do right now about the
social entropy that’s leading this society on the same
journey to perdition that Spain and Iran took long ago.

26
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
All that I can do is to appreciate the fact, that I do have
compatriots.
We do not know how long it shall be, until those
men who have gained power through jealously
manipulating those around them, remember the
chastisements of the Goddess, and fear to excite Her
kinky side any more than they already have. We do not
know how long the honor killings and the mutilations
shall go on.
We only know, that where manners are proper, a
love affair should not be considered a capital crime

Beyond the Land of Good & Evil

There lies a Sacred State
Which some call “Dialogue”

“My name is Anna Pearl, and I have seen Hell on

Earth,” the lady with kinky hair testifies. “I have seen
too well, the way that fear and guilt confuse the soul and
make us do things that degrade our faith in ourselves.
Pain can make you scream and beg, but you’re not
conquered till you let your fear take over.”
I can see Tarrico Zamora wincing, as she gives a
testimony that would be far too provoking to be uttered
anywhere else, save at this private meeting of the Old
Survivors’ Guild.

We sit together gathered round a leaping and

flickering campfire. The smoke rises up to tickle the
night stars between their legs. Down on the ground, we
are trying to help each other recover from the times
when all the good animals died inside us, and we wanted
to flee from the earth.
Sing sorrow sorrow – but Good Two ships approaching in the night
triumph in the end become compatriots;
We know so well the chorus of the The low cut of her blouse brings me
tragedy: back to the Adriatic Sea

27
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY

I suppose, this campfire that we are sitting around

should remind us of the Eternal Fire of the Pythagoreans.
“Why are you giving all of the credit to a Sicilian?”
demands Anna.”Don’t you realize, that the Greeks have
been slave-catchers from the very beginning? Athena’s
priests acknowledged that their Goddess of Civilization
was an immigrant from Libya. But once they had learned
the civilizing arts from African Goddesses, the wicked
Sons of Javan got tired of fishing and became fishers of
men.
“In order to relax his Wife’s hair, Zeus of the
Shining Sky had to hang her by her locks from a tree,
with anvils tied to her feet. He was the same back then,
as when his latter-day priests settled Virginia. Believe
me, the tribes who followed Zeus were just like their
Fearless Leader. Not only were they bad boys; they were
so ungrateful to their Mother, they would frequently
return to Her homeland to capture Her people as slaves.
Finally, under Caesar Augustus, they succeeded in killing
the African Queen, and imposing their so-called True
Faith on Egypt.”
a=a
Sit down by the Ancient Fire Worshipped a Goddess from Libya.
The Eternal Fire – the Fire that marks Older than all, are the fables of Aesop,
the Centre of the Universe: The Ethiopian slave.
Reflect on where these traditions came Beyond the garden wall, there once
from: were only beasts.
We learned them from the Greeks Now, when we look, we see:
The Greeks, in turn Pears of Paradise, slowly ripening.

Where’s virtue now?

How can the qualities that bond us in meaningful
relationships have strength, unless we can have
friendships in which we can be brutally honest?
I guess that’s why we’re sitting together in our
support group, and staring into the campfire. The bright

28
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
stars shine down upon us; somewhere in the distance
the antelopes are hiding from coyotes.
The problem is, the leather jackets that hold our
ribs together know too well that everything beneath
those damaged ribs has been shattered by the passions
of war. We always find the blessings that life gives us
fall too far short of our dreams.

29
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
E
m
b
l 3.
e
m

HOLDING THE CORNERS OF THE SKY

Apr 29, 1994
I wake up with Renata entwined in my arms. The
window is slightly open, and the morning is windy.
She wakens with a start. She is afraid that if any of
Dr. Payne’s familiars catch her in bed with me, she will
be injured again. She is really only beginning to recover
from last September’s broken femur – and she is
constantly tormented by the fear that her next
punishment will hurt even more.
It always seems that she is suppressing a scream. I
find myself looking on her with a sort of compassionate
amusement, but I am also noticing that the wind is much
colder than I had realized before.
Her arm is clasped about my shoulder. Is she
beyond Good and Evil?
I know that her quest is a difficult one. But what I
should be asking – is she finding what she has been
seeking?
Is she my soul-mate? Have I gained anything by
allowing my heart to wander? What I seem to have
gained, has been a capacity to look more objectively on
her struggle.

30
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
I am beginning to appreciate why she is so adamant
in her mistrust of obsessive love. This is why I seem to be
able to appreciate her more, now that I am learning how
to refuse to be fanatical in my fidelity. Perhaps, as
Renata would insist, it is only this sort of appreciation
which really can be called love.
A past age could glorify the sort of compulsive
romanticism which leads two teenagers to leap with
flaming hearts into one grave. But in our day of suicide
bombers, we’ve seen too much of thanatos. Marriage can
be temporary, and mankind will survive, so long as we
restore rituals of atonement for sins against women and
children. But if we fail to cultivate a compassionate eros
which can intercede against the Hojjatayah government
of jealousy, we’ll find that the Djinn from the Empty
Quarter have foreclosed on the whole earth, and are
auctioning us all off to the highest bidder.
What is this swirling dance of illusions, through
which Renata and I conduct each other when we lead
each other on? We each have our illusions – and of course
in each case they are different. But the fact that we keep
coming back to fight with each other, seems to indicate
that these delusions actually disguise a common core,
which we both share.
Maybe the problem is, that the world has collapsed,
and that the Gods whom we are accustomed to
worshiping all have died. As a result, Renata and I find
ourselves having to hold up opposite ends of the sky.

In Retrospect, it’s Obvious to Me

Is the dream nothing more than the flame
Produced by the burning of the soul?
Shall this be all that we have left
When we have forsaken our bodies –
These restless, unslakable passions
Which create bodies of fire?

31
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
In retrospect, it’s overwhelmingly obvious to me,
that the reason I was attracted to Renata was because
her pattern of suffering seemed so much like a reflection
of my own. As my own personal terror became
romanticized, passion leapt on me. I knew too well, the
thrill I got when she begged me for sympathy derived
from my uncertainty – would I be as brave as she was,
when it came my turn to scream?

Nov 13, 1993 (new moon)

She is begging me for solace.
She is learning just what can happen to women
who don’t follow the “rules.”
Since she is one of those who is “blessed” to be the
recipient of a jealous love, her expiation also must be
exceptional. This is why, only about a month and a half
ago, the brakes in her car gave out and her car missed a
turn and crashed down an embankment. Ever since
then, she has been limping and howling in pain.
All of this was arranged, it seems, by a certain
malicious Principality who has been using her
internship supervisor as a familiar. Once she gave Dr.
Payne reason for believing she would no longer be his
faithful love-slave, she found she was in for a beating.
She’s on pain pills now, but they don’t seem to do
much more than to keep the pain down below her neck,
so it can’t quite possess her brain.
“I know you want to touch me,” she howled, “but
you don’t know how wounded I am.”
When she pulls herself up to hop around, her leg is
encased in a soft cast. She pulls this off now so I can
see. The thigh that was so enchanting is now sliced and
bruised. On the inside of her leg, down by the knee,
there is a nasty gash that is held together with staples.
The older incision, high on the thigh on the outside, is
still red and angry. I find it upsetting to see her this
way, but I know all too well, it is even more upsetting to
32
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
be her.
There is enough pain in her flesh to bring tears,
even to her stoic eyes.
I want to give her solace, but it is all I can do to
solace my own burning heart.
She is in so much pain, she will defend herself from
everyone – even from me. Her heart is picketed with
guided missiles that are pointed at me. She will do
whatever she needs to do to make the pain more
bearable.
No wonder, when just a little over a month later, I
trespassed with Regina into the Garden in the Perilous
Place, the Angel of Prohibition was nowhere to be seen.
Of course, as she had marked the Turning of the Wheel,
Regina had banished thoroughly – but the credit was
not all her own. Jealousy is, after all, a veritable dog
among demons, who must obey the Master’s Voice – and
Dr. Payne is certainly a master at conjuring by jealousy.
“I can’t promise you anything anymore,” Renata
begins to sob. “I need your sympathy, but right now the
only thing I can feel is that I want to crawl away and
die. And I may die, And I may die, if Dr. Payne gets any
more angry with me. If I do die I want you to know that
you were the one I really loved – but since I’m not sure
that I have a future, I can’t give you promises that you
can hope will come true.”
There are times we only know that we are alive
because we feel the pain of the wounds. Sometimes
indeed, I have a feeling that life is just a consolation
prize for those who cannot die.

Bursting With Angry Energy

Apr 29, 1994
So often, I have heard her voice upon the phone, and
wondered.
33
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
She has been distant and defensive – yet when I
would listen to her voice, I could feel that she had such a
passionate desire, just to touch me.
Now she tells me that I am her secret love, but that
our love must be kept secret.
So much is this love like a peace movement, taxed,
tortured and controlled by the forces of a military state,
and yet sublimating itself into a dragon that invades the
dreams of the farmworkers. Out on the street she
pretends not to know me, but when we are alone she is
adamant in calling forth the Admiral to sail his mighty
trireme and ram her Castle Gate.
No, it isn’t each other we fear. It’s more that we
fear that if we are caught in bed together it shall be
discovered, we have been peroxiding our hair. Beneath
the skin, and for that matter, within the skin itself, we
both remain aborigines.
Of course, the aborigine within both of us
understands, that in order to become an adult aborigine,
one must endure an initiation which involves painful
experiences. The the thing that tests our faith, is that
the Old Demons who are initiating us are taking too
many liberties with the script. The time is supposed to
come when they take off their masks so that we can see
that they are only our uncles and elder cousins.
All along as we dance, Renata and I have been
unmasking each other. The problem is, that when we
look outside the circle, we don’t see any of the demons
taking off their masks.

I f the demons could take off their masks, they would begin to see
what we see: the paradox of a culture which believes in the Garden
of Eden, but which cannot give up the profits which are to
be made from the sale of Flaming Swords.
These demons make the best guided missiles, and export them on the
installment plan, with creative financing. All they demand in
34
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
return is that you must be vigilant in making sure that your
people do not take up arms to protect themselves from Uncle
Alligator's pirates.
What could this Body of John Brown have become, if we had honored the
treaties of multicultural commitment, and the Native Culture had
been allowed to flower? What could this land have been if the
Covenant had been honored, and the Covenant Chain had
remained the Law of the Land?
Fate is ironic; Atlantis has only been sunken for 500 years. Now that most
of the Natives of New Mexico have given up believing in their
ancient languages, the Guardian of the North Pole has found a
new way to speak.
What the leaders are spending on arming their potential enemies
makes the budgets of all of the UN Agencies that are
working for peace seem pretty small. But our scientists are
beginning to gather evidence, that all the Elemental Forces of
the Earth are bursting with angry energy. They call it global
warming, but maybe it ought to be called – cosmic irritation.

The Cosmic Irritation

Mar 18, 2000

35
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY

T he People of Constitutions fear the terrorism of the People of the

Book. The People of the Book fear that they will be overwhelmed
by those who are Not Of The Book. But those who are Not
of the Book are the Aboriginal People, children of Sky-
Maidens and Giant Turtles, who remember a Father and a
Mother who made love, back when all of us lived in the
mountains of Africa. There lives still a Power in the mountains
of Uganda and Ethiopia, and it is this power which all of the
Intelligence Agencies, Assassination Squads, and Terrorist
Organizations are most afraid of. Somewhere in the mountains
of Africa, the links of a Covenant Chain which was broken
when the Vespucchi came into power, are being hammered out
once more on propane powered forges of the village
blacksmiths.

W hen we try to save the fragments of our loves so that we can

still be friends, the lost Native artifacts begin to rise up from
the soil. We then find ourselves wondering what could have
been, if the Covenant Chain had been given the respect that it
had earned. What if the big European ships had not bullied
the little Native Canoes, and battered them to near extinction?
Just how far do we need to go, in our search for the Sunken Atlantis?
Since no one today will listen to advice which is spoken in an
ancient Native language, the Guardian of the North Pole has
got to shout and wave his tomahawk.
That is why the fear of nuclear destruction is being imprinted on the
consciousness of everyone.
The fools ask when the North Pole and the South Pole shall trade places. The
truth of the matter is, the poles have already shifted. They shifted
when the population of the earth exceeded the sustainable
proportion. It has begun with a shift in our consciousness, a rather
subtle change of perspective. It’s a shift that is only noticeable when
36
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
a man and a woman begin to see eye to eye. Of course, women will
keep loving men and women will keep having children – to a
degree. But fundamentally, the burden of the woman has shifted.
It used to be enough to just keep producing heroes. But of late, the women
have been noticing that the heroes have not been behaving
themselves too well. In fact, it is getting harder and harder to
distinguish between a hero and a troll.
All the women are beginning to complain of just how
desolate this present Abomination is becoming. That’s
why the Lost Atlantis is beginning to rise up, out of the
sea trench that was left when the Natives were forced
to give up their homesteads on the Kansas plain.
Perhaps it’s for this reason that, whenever I fall in love, I
feel the burning of an alternating frequency which
ranges between hope and dread. I know too well, the
Sulfur Steers are waiting in the sky, for those who
have not had enough of Hell by the time they are done
with the earth. Hell is an evil refuge, for those who
must hide themselves in a place that Allah did not
create. The problem is – as anyone knows who has
listened to the midnight sighing of the poor – is that
there are far too many souls who shall be attached to
Hells, because they cannot let go of their own creations.

The people who sigh at midnight have begged them to stop

manufacturing Hells – but the Cowboys who have been
recruited to chase the Sulfur Steers just keep on refusing to
listen. Or perhaps, it’s simply that when they get into the
manufacturing business, they can’t create anything that’s any
better, because the Angels of Inspiration are withholding the
key ingredients.

The reason that Babylon can’t have anything to do with

either inspiration or angels, is on account of an agreement that
was made with the Indians, back in the 19th Century. As you
recall, the Indians would get the Happy Hunting Ground, and the
White Settlers would get the real estate.
The Angels were a witness to that contract. And since the

37
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
job description of an Angel does not require him to spend all of
his time redeeming a Hell, ever since that social contract was
made, the Angels of Inspiration have pretty much been leaving
Babylon alone.

Mar 18, 2002

“We must have been trying to hold up the sky,”
Renata sighs. “That’s how we got so badly injured, when
Heaven came crashing down.”
After the Catastrophe, we found ourselves in the company of a lame
Blacksmith, who had a tale to tell, of how an angry Goddess
had cast him down from Olympus, simply because his hair
had been too kinky. We found that we had fallen into a place
where whips and chains seemed to just grow from the soil.
We learned that it was the religious duty of priests who only
followed orders, to keep flogging us, over and over again.

W e learned that we were dangerous revolutionaries. We cried to

the stars in repentance, but the stars only replied, that when
we betrayed our destinies we also were betraying our humanity.
When we became resigned to the destiny which raised us up to
challenge Olympus, we realized that the pain was not only
within us, but everywhere about us. We began to recognize
just how much slavery there is, even within our supposedly
free world.

There once was a poet who discovered, to his

dismay, that the destiny of his nation had been given by
Satan to the Crude Oil Brothers. He found what he could
of salvation in the arms of a Creole mistress by the name
of Jeanne Duval, and died of a social disease.
In the course of a seance, a Cuban lady named Aje
38
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
introduced me to Sir Charles, whom she addressed as her
great-great grandfather.
“The Creoles know the truth, as the magnet knows
the rose,” Sir Charles confided to me. “Alas, that the
Philistines are confounded, because they try to believe
that Jews and Blacks are creatures of another species. Do
you see why I became convinced, that the truth could only
be spoken, after the poet had given Lord Satan his due?”

Felon Apollyon, and The Great

Desolation
Apr 30, 1994
“I’ll tell you why I’m such a dirty little bitch,”
Renata confesses to me. “I respect you as a revolutionary
– and that is precisely the problem. You want with all
your heart to be a liberator – and I appreciate the way in
which you’ve helped me liberate myself. But that is
exactly the problem. I know how to deal with a man like
Dr. Payne – I can lead him on till he does things that he
would be afraid to admit in a court of law, and then make
him do what I want. But I would be afraid to confront
you before the law, because when I consider the way that
I have treated you, I know that God’s law would not be
on my side. I would bring only pain to you – and that is
why I cannot trust you.”
Love has been tortured too often – and I guess that
I was attracted to Renata because her suffering reminds
me so much of my own. And so I must brandish my fist
against that Great Pimp whom most people worship as
God, but who is referred to by John of Patmos as Felon
Apollyon.
39
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
So now, as we watch each other endure the clever
floggings the Great Pimp of the World has devised, the
hardness of our cruel hearts is melted in sympathy. We
have in consequence endured enough infernal fire in
this life, that in the next world we shall have grounds
for filing restraining orders on Felon Apolyon. He shall
henceforth be prohibited from having any contact with
either of our souls.
In this world, we have scrubbed with might and
main to wash the napalm of Lord Apollyon out from our
pores – but we’ve found that the more that we scour,
the more the horrid poison sticks and burns. No matter
how hard we have tried to fight against it, it seems that
we have been involved with cruelty so much, both as
perpetrators and as victims, that it has become part of
our natures.
Because we cannot wash away this knowledge
that we have of cruelty, it burns. We try to soothe each
others’ hearts with kisses, but find that these kisses
have left scars. We thought that we could play with fire,
but the cringing of our flesh soon reminded us, that fire
does not like to play games. Fire may not be constant,
but it asks us for our serious commitment.
After we have been burned we seek to draw away
– and are shocked when we see, that the fire which will
not die quickly is causing the space between us to glow
with fluorescent radiance. We may have been blind
before, but now we have eyes to see.
This is, indeed, the end of the guilt-ridden
innocence, and the beginning of the visionary life. Of
course, there are many things we shall not want to see.
When we begin to see, how we have allowed the false
Gods to compel us to crucify each other, we shall
recognize that it is better to allow each other to sin
within limits, so that we shall be able to enjoy it when
we are brought to the carnival, and the tail of a donkey
is stapled to each one of our hind quarters.

40
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
Back When Those Vultures Were
Angels
The Vultures look down on us from the cliffs where the mountains
begin. They like to roost on high places, because, before pride
brought them down, they used to be angels. But these days,
when they look down on the Great Society of the Vespucci,
they find themselves compelled to shake their heads.
These Vultures are shocked to watch us in our wicked games, because
they can see that we are becoming just like they used to be. Like
them, we’ve been abased through sins of pride. Like them, we’ve
battened on the substance that once belonged to the dead and
the near-dead. Like them, we have been angry and impatient
with the predatory nature of the earth.
“We also urged people to piety while seeking to get all we could from
the Creator whom we pretended to serve,” they will confess in
accents of lament. “We also used to urge men to chastity,
while seeking to possess all of the pretty women as our own.
But then the Great Creator sent the Peacemaker. We tangled
with those chiefs who’d been converted to the Way of Peace –
and soon were driven out to the highest cliffs in the desert.
When you see us, you must remember, we were once the
handsomest of men, who ruled great cities from the tops of
pyramids.”
We who have been turned into Vultures finally understand, that there is
far too much cannibal blood on our hands, for us to go telling
the people, in the name of that Creator we have learned to fear,
just who should live and who should die. We’ve learned through
painful lessons, that though in God’s heart we may be forgiven,
there’s something in our own hearts that will not rest, till we’ve
squirmed in some painful atonement for the times that we’ve
betrayed our lovers and our friends.

41
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Nov 13, 1993
“Of course I’m not innocent either,” Renata
confesses.
She has only been released a couple of days ago,
from a body cast that kept her horribly immobilized. She
is begging me to massage her legs, which have developed
habitual cramps. I look at the barely healed scar of a long
and horrible incision running down her thigh, where her
bones were held together while a big titanium spike was
driven through her hip.
“You’re right,” she continues her confession, as I sit
down in a chair beside the bed. “The thing that forces me
to have patience with Dr. Payne, is that I know too well
in my heart, that I share his sadistic perversion. Do you
know what really turns me on? I want to suck on the dick
of a crucified man!”
She pauses, to guage my reaction, and then
continues:
“I have felt such rage, feeling Dr. Payne’s cock
forced all the way up to my tonsils, and knowing he
would choke me if he thought he could get away with it.
But then I allow myself to fantasize his arms and legs
nailed to a cross. The only reason I am gagging so hard
that I want to vomit out my gall bladder, is because I am
sharing the pain he is feeling as he hangs on the cross, I
know then that the nausea I am feeling is nothing
compared to the pain he must be suffering, as he waits
for the Devil to haul him off to the place where souls are
digested in baths of sulfuric acid.
“I ask him then if the Cross hurts, and after I have
driven him to rage I go back to sucking him off. It doesn’t
really matter to him whether I get off or not, but later
when I am alone I have a chance to develop my fantasies.
They are so wicked! But if I don’t allow the wicked
fantasies to unfold, I can’t reach an orgasm, and I know
that I will die from the abuse.”
I find myself confirmed in my belief that the passion

42
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
which has brought Renata and myself together is a deep
collective need.
“I have had such orgasms from absolutely wicked
fantasies!” she continues to confess to me. “When I asked
why I had the karma to discover that I had no innocence,
I realized that my birth had been an answer to the
passion of a Carthiginian priestess who had died impaled
on a Roman spear.
I began to realize, that since I was born to fill a gap
which was left when that priestess was murdered, for all
practical purposes I was her. That is why I got an
orgasmic release from remembering the pain of having a
Roman spear run up through my rectum and out my
belly just under my gall bladder.
After 2,000 years and more, the horror has
diminished to a sexual thrill, but the Original Me was
writhing and howling in dire agony for all of 3 days
before I could finally die. The pain would still kill me if I
did not allow myself the sexual excitement. But when I
allow the fantasy to unfold, I can realize that the Romans
were actually so angry simply because I had been
crucifying their comrades, and then sating my lust on the
hard cocks of men who were writhing in the pain of
hanging from the trees.
“So as I have warned you, I am not innocent. Like
you, I know that if I ever had an innocence, that
innocence was murdered long ago. I don’t have any idea
as to the why of it, but I do experience myself as the
present instance of a long line of women who have cried
and screamed as they atoned for their sins. We have been
expiating ever since the end of the Second Punic War,
and I can’t quite be sure for what. The closest I have been
able to figure it out, is that those of us who are the twice-
born are what we are because we trying to rectify the
karmas left by great souls whose sins must be redeemed.”

43
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY

The Lions Have Gotten Loose

Yes, Renata, it is certainly a fact, that the lions
really have gotten loose. I’m not as shocked as you
expected me to be at your confession. I know too well that
our compulsion to torture others and then betray when it
is our turn to take it, is precisely the force of hydraulic
transmission which moves the wheels of all the Empire’s
armored vehicles.
“Do you feel crucified?” I ask her.

Apr 30, 1994

The answer of course, at least for that moment, was
certainly yes. In that moment we were both in too much
pain, to recognize the sun when it began to rise in the
window behind us. We had not expected that the morning
should come so soon, because we had spent the night
crying. It’s only now, after the mist of the years has
softened her memory of the pain, that she can
acknowledge that grace was creeping like a cat on her
window.
Nov 13, 1993
She looked at me with eyes that were furious and
steaming. The steam that was rising from her burning
leg wanted to shout and howl. At last, the tears ran down
her lovely breasts.
“I am beginning to understand,” she went on to
reflect, “There really is something in me which desires to
crucify men. That’s why God has allowed Dr. Payne to
enslave me. I needed to experience the pain of being
mauled by the lions that his lusts turn loose on me,
because I need to take control of the lion within me, and
stop devouring the man who hangs on the cross.
“We should not be like this,” she declares in tears.
“We would not have to endure this suffering, if we were

44
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
not living in a world in which everyone is being pimped
out by the Antichrist. That is why I let myself love Dr.
Payne. He is no saint, but he does see the shame of the
Pimp. He is a coward, and when the Great Pimp
declares: torture this woman for me, he will be scientific
in his cruelty. But he also has kept me alive, all the time
he was torturing me in the most fiendish ways – and now
I understand why. That coward admired me and envied
me, because I had the courage he lacked. When I recover
and get strong enough to let him show me how to give
him the flogging he needs to restore his faith – that’s
when I shall be able to get free, so that I can love you.”
Renata, when I look into the flame, I see how we
have suffered. We have suffered so much, because within
our hearts there lies the knowledge of a shameful
genocide.
“You know about the scar that eats away at my
heart,” she intimates to me. There’s something within us
that wants to believe that we should have the power to
redeem the world. And so our faith drives us to madness,
and we need to atone for that madness by enduring
surgical procedures that make us scream. It’s only when
we begin to wake up that we understand why the dream
has been so tortured. We had to be tortured to wake us
up to the fact that we had fallen to worshiping the God of
Sadism, and calling that idolatry Faith.”
It has taken us both so long to begin to appreciate,
just why we dance together in this way.
“The reason I am angry with you,” she finally came
around to confess, “is that I’d really come to hope, that
the cruelty I was feeling in the hands of Dr. Payne would
cure me of all my desire to ever be loved by a man. But
now I have you to scold me about my suicidal fantasies –
so now you can’t be too upset if those suicidal fantasies
turn into fantasies of flogging you!”
I felt an impulse then to recoil. Perhaps, if I had
known, the sort of procedures which I would have to
endure, when I asked God for the beatings I would need
45
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
to expiate for my arrogance and sadism, I would not
have repented. But alas! Love showed me how helpless I
was before Fate, and my own passion led me to take
down my pants and beg God for the flogging that would
redeem me.
In this way, Renata, the madness of your own
rebellion has led me to join in your struggle against all
the Aryan Gods. And so, though I’d vowed I’d never be in
this place again, my sympathy for you has driven me,
until I take my place upon the battle line. I must confess
that I feel shame about the way I have seen you get hurt.
That’s why the moth flies into the flame – and that
is also why the flame changes the moth into a collection
of highly excited electrons, which etch a charcoal sigil on
the ceiling. And that is why, just like the charge of atoms
which must hop about in the hot candle flame, the
valence of our hearts is always changing.

The Voice of the 3rd Vulture

And yet those who love must seek to atone
for the horrors of the world -- because love is never
individual; it is rather a sort of continuous mobius
strip. To love any single person, wholly and
intimately, is in a very real sense to love everyone.
But this sort of love cannot exist until you have
come to understand that the Creator forgives you.

46
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
´
E
m
b
l 4.
e
m

SHE CONTEMPLATES AN UN-KOSHER

OFFERING
Apr 29, 1994
Because we have gathered in the hills,
You call us Devils,
But I shall tell you that the horns you
fear
Are the prongs of an organ in the
brain,
Whose evolutionary purpose
Is to unite us on a wavelength of
sympathy.
Since the first empires began
We have been subjected to rituals
Which crush and bend
The horns of the Amygdala.
In this way the legs that could
transport us
Are reduced to feeble lotus hooks
And we become easily subdued.

C an such a tale as ours have a happy ending?

I look through the temple curtain, as Renata
complains that even now, she still does not feel free. I see
now, that the Goddess has been there all along. Contrary
to so-called learned opinions, the Prophet never really
denied Her – he simply put a curse on those who would
47
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
divide her image from the feminist consensus which
defines her natural economic base.
“If you care about what is happening to me, you’d
better hurry up,” I’m hearing Her declare. “Because, as
you can clearly see, my economic base is burning.”

The Cinderella Regime

Over the dust
which covers the bones of slain warriors
The morning mist is rising
Aug 26, 1996
Maybe I should be asking Little Caesar, if he wants
the tale to have a happy ending. Perhaps the problem is,
that he has working too long for Murphy, Dolan, and
Riley – and these three Anglo-Norman Gods will only
allow us as much light as they can lock up every night
in a box.
It isn’t just that Little Caesar has been paid off.
The feet upon which his conscience should walk have
been reduced to 4 inch lotus hooks. Therefore it is not
surprising that he has not and will not be able to find
the party responsible for last month’s Tacoma-style drive-
by shooting.
But back to the lotus hooks. Of course the Chinese
had to bind the feet of their little girls, because that was
what was in fashion, and if the girls did not learn to go
along with the fashion they would become lonely old
women. In our day, for some reason, it is fashionable for
conscience to be so broken and bent, that the strong legs
that a conscience needs if it is to stand against public
opinion, have been transformed to lotus hooks that can
hardly support their own weight.
Since our powers to stand on our own feet were
crippled when we were children, we must keep in step
with the fashion. There may be angry rumblings down in
the Union Hall, but under the Cinderella Regime the
48
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
Union Hall is not fashionable. Murphy, Dolan, and Riley
can prove biometrically, that the daughters of the
workers have unfashionably big feet, and if you let them
get into control, the feet of your daughters will become
unfashionably big too.
The Bound Foot Society is experiencing a crisis that
is unparalleled in history. If women begin walking, the
three little monkeys with their hands clasped over their
eyes, ears, and mouth may begin to see and hear and
speak out with clear voices. Brains that had been sleeping
might begin to wake up and scream.
Today, in 1996, all of the money is pushing for the
development of a global market economy. If the Horns of
Conscience had not been footbound we might be feeling
qualms, and we might walk about uneasily until we found
ourselves in front of City Hall, carrying protest signs. But
being obedient members of the Bound Foot Society, we
feel that we have no choice except to follow the trend that
is in fashion.

The ‘x’ in Archetype

May be replaced
By any real number.

The Family Values of Bingbum de

Singsum
We used to think that Bingbum de Singsum was a Sicilian. Now it
turns out that he is a Corsican, and that his ancestors were
emperors of Rome. We’ve seen a great deal of evidence, that
49
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
he is the sort of leopard who can change his spots. Can he
be the Great Beast?
He’s purchased so many indulgences, he’s practicaly bought the
Church outright. This is probably why the preachers who
swear by him want to see the Ten Commandments carved in
stone on the facade of every courthouse, even though they
have not the slightest notion of the real meaning of the 3rd.
For that matter, we might ask Mr. Dante just how Mr. De
Singsum shall fare on Judgement Day, when he is asked
about Commandments # 6, 8, & 9?

Do you really love me?

Cried she
Or do you just need to feel you’re back in the saddle?
May 2, 1994
“I wish that I lived in a world in which the
educated people really cared about social justice!” cries
Renata, with a scowl of disdain.
“After what you’ve learned from Dr. Payne,” I
thrust subversively, “can you still believe that the
women can wait to find the men who can liberate them?
Don’t you see, that the few men who try shall become
martyrs? Don’t you see that this is the engine that
presses the blood of the saints, so that Babylon’s wine
can be fermented?
If it is wrong to steal, then it is wrong to keep
women from having an independent economic base. But
the 10 Commandments that men follow now are not the
same 10 Commandments that people followed in the
days before Nebuchadnezzar cut down the Tree of Peace.
There actually used to be a commandment against
Domestic Violence, but this understanding died when

50
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
the Aliens abducted Elijah.
“After what I have been through,” Renata
enunciates, “I do have the right to expect that the men
who come into my life should respect me as a comrade.
You’ve been in the Movement long enough to know, we
never will have liberation until we have genuine
comradeship! It shouldn’t be a matter of whether we
screw other people or not. What matters is, do we care
enough to provide cover to each other, when the chips are
down?”
The sun begins to rise, not only over Taos, New
Mexico, but also over all of the graves of the warriors,
sisters, and children who had to go under the earth
because their bodies wore out while they walked on the
Trail of Tears. I wake up, and my swollen scrotum
informs me that I got my arse whipped the night before. I
guess that’s the trade-off for my chasing too many women
– the fact I end up with the mean ones.
It’s a soreness that feels seductively obscene, even
though it makes me feel like a rattlesnake whose back is
broken but who still struggles to bite.
She was mean to me last night, so I know that she’s
just trying to tease me when she not only shows me her
naked breasts, but asks me to massage them.

When Old Scratch Is Being Nice

Felon Apollyon is Lord
Of Seven Jealousies,
And only is appeased when we torment each other.
Mayday, 1994
It hurts.
“Would you like to see how Dr. Payne treats me,
when he is being nice?” Renata challenges me.
I am performing for her in a Mayday ritual.
Unfortunately, we both have lost so much of our
innocence, that there is an unnatural cruelty in

51
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
everything that we do. That’s why she now has me
hogtied under the bedframe, with my ankles spread over
my head, and my naked balls exposed to the full fury of
her whip.
“Enjoy!” she cackles harshly, as she flicks the
horsewhip to strike my balls and my buttocks.
“Is this what you and Dr. Payne do for recreation?”
I cry out in pain.
“I only get horsewhipped on the good days,” she
answers. “When he really gets mad, he begins to prepare
me to be the subject of an experimental surgical
procedure.”
She’s gotten me moaning and squirming.
“I know my inconstancy hurts you,” she goes on to
explain. “And so, it should give you pleasure to know,
that the reason I keep running away from you, is
because I am being tortured in a way that only a fiend
would deserve. The only way I can survive is by being
enough of a fiend, that when the time comes to take
another whipping, I shall be willing to submit, because I
know that I have been a fiend. I am so sorry, but
watching you suffer really does help me survive.”
I am laughing and crying at the same time. It
hurts so much, and she is being so outrageous. And in
addition – I am feeling so much indignation towards Dr.
Payne’s Satanism, that right at the moment, I really do
have a need to be subdued and made to take a good
flogging.

“You deserve this just as much as I do!” she

enunciates perversely.
My hind end feels three red hot exclamation
points, one of which ignites a refinery fire in my balls.
“Admit it,” she continues. You have enjoyed
watching me suffer. You enjoy it because Dr. Payne is
very much like what you used to be. So now you have got

52
 BORN AMONG BRIARS
to set an example by allowing yourself to be whipped
until I can feel in touch with my sexuality again. In that
way, I am preparing you to be part of the possee that will
not only ride the criminals down but, what is so much
more important, will provide security to the victims until
these hostages are ready to testify on the witness stand.
It is not enough for Dr. Payne to just get his arse
whipped, the way that you are getting yours beaten on
now. And death would be too good for him, so we need to
capture him alive. He must be humiliated, by having his
sins recited in a court of law, and suffering the penalty.”
I find myself pensive and silent. We know that the
world still writhes within the clutches of Felon Appolyon
& his appointed Crude Oil Brothers.

Does It Make Your Soul Burn?

“Does it give you pleasure,” she asks pointedly, “to
know that every time I go back to Dr. Payne I get my ass
whipped? I know that it breaks your heart when you
have to acknowledge that I cannot be your faithful mate
– but if it makes you feel any better, the times when you
have felt the most heartbroken are precisely the times
when I have been suffering tortures that only a fiend
would deserve!”
Her words make me pensive, and the whip in her
hand makes me reluctant to speak out. I know well
enough that anything I say will just give her an excuse
to bring down the whip harder. Nevertheless, when I
find myself appreciating that her arse gets subjected to
the same pain, it does make it easier to take the beating
that I shall presently endure.
I visualize Renata’s body bent over, so that her
hind end can take the whipping she deserves – and I
can’t help but bursting out laughing.
I can tell she is provoked by the way her whip
burns my hind end – how is it we have gotten to this

53
 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
point, at which we have only our pain to share? We
endure it because the fact that we share the pain assures
us that we do have a “Relationship.” But strangely, the
equation just will not compute, unless we account for the
influence of this cruel enemy, who seems to get his rocks
off by seeing us squirm in the sort of pain that we don’t
have the strength to endure.
Lord Apollyon loves to dish out pain – it seems his
reason is, the more that he can make us feel our lives are
lost in darkness, the more that he can make us turn
towards him, and worship him as the source of Shining
Light. Of course, it is his blatent assertion to being the
owner of the Light that caused Little John to cry out
from the concentration camp on Patmos, that Apollyon
was the Lord of all the Felons.
As above, so below. As Bingbum de Singsum claims
his high place on the throne of the Sun above, so we have
Dr. Payne to torture us below. Since the light has been
stolen away from the lives of the people, Renata and
myself must wander about like two ravens. We are two
dark creatures of no recognized moral capacity, who
possess little more than our wits. We are learning to play
with our pain like ravens who pull out the sinews from
the bones of another dead bird. We must make Dr. Payne
think that he is using us, must let him believe he is
Odin, and that he has reduced us to being his two
familiars. Since he is so proud of his Visigoth heritage,
we must never remind him that the word “Aryan” drives
from “Araya Ayuna,” a phrase from sub-Saharan Africa
which signifies "The Blessed Ancestors."
We are helping each other learn to dance in fire, so
that we shall be able to get close enough to the sun, that
we can steal it back from the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
That is the reason why we have become lost in this
drama of Indian Love. That is why we act as though we
were compelled to whip the Devil out of each other.

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 BORN AMONG BRIARS

She’s Making Me Bray Like a Donkey

She is making me cry real tears, because my
sympathy for her pain compels me to confess, that she
really does have a right to beat me. How many times
have I wanted to strap her down just like this, so I
could beat the independent spirit that could say ‘no’ to
me, right out of her screaming lungs?
She’s turned me to a braying donkey, who’s
hobbled but tries to kick, because he cannot stand the
blows his tamer is inflicting upon his bruised hind end.
“But maybe,” I hear an old priest in a Roman toga
confess, “if you learn to be patient in enduring her
beatings, you may find that you are allowed to nibble
the roses of Isis.”
I bite into the leather she has placed between my
teeth. I am finally being tortured in the way a terrorist
deserves.
“There was a time, I used to listen to the donkey-
tamer,” Apulius who was an Ass declares. “Wasn’t he
the one who told all the donkeys: if the Great Pimp
makes you go one mile, take him on a ride for two?”
a=a
My Cruel Lady, now you have really got me. I
bend to kiss your boots, and look up at the laced leather
leggings that wrap around your legs, all the way to the
middle of your thigh. Because your legs are spread, I
can look all the way up your skirt, to contemplate the
little dark bush that is dripping with excitement
because it senses my pain.
“After all,” you scold, as you wave a Spanish quirt
for cruel emphasis, “isn’t it true that most men get off
on fantasies where women are getting hurt? So why
should we women be that much different? If anything,
we women invest more emotional force into anything
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 JOHN BROWN'S BODY

that we are a part of than most men do.

“So now that you have your pants down, how do you
like the taste of revolutionary violence? Of course it’s
more endurable than plain old same old oppression
violence, because it’s only really revolutionary when I use
the whip as a means of helping you appreciate my pain.
It’s only revolutionary if it helps us both regain the
empathy which was maimed by all of our childhood
encounters with Maxwell Silverhammer.”
She still has me in a disadvantageous position, as
she proclaims her revolutionary creed:
“I want you to appreciate the historical injustice!”
she cries. “Ever since the days of Adam, women have
given men everything, because we have loved. We knew
that you were in the habit of acting like beasts as soon as
you were out of the light of the campfire – but we were
willing to go through the pain of trying to educate you.
We even would put up with being beaten on a little, so
long as you would make it up to us, after you got your
dick hard. All that we really demanded, was to see you
give reverence to the Sacred Fire – but we saw what we
were enabling when men began to steal the fire, and used
it to torture each other!”

The Shadowgraph Speaks Back

We have projected so much shadow on the women
in our lives, that they have become our shadowgraphs. In
the name of our proud sense of higher meaning, we have
compelled the women to just lie down and take it. Of
course the woman’s position arouses our sympathy, but
we allow ourselves to be convinced that it is a natural
division of labor. The women do the stinky work, while
the men take watever they want from the harvest. Being

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 BORN AMONG BRIARS
a revolutionary, I have always known that there is
something wrong with this picture. But then, as a
revolutionary, I can also understand that there are times
when innocent menbers of an oppressing class must have
the grace to accept revolutionary violence. After all, it
was a minor incident of revolutionary aggression which
caused Goethe to utter the dictum that “an injustice is
preferable to a disorder.”
I am looking up between her legs, and her laced
leather leggings are reminding me that she can be cruel.
A scar that’s still angry and red reminds me that she has
paid her dues. I realize that when we ignore the view of
the woman who struggles on the floor, we find ourselves
believing our own lies concerning the nature of sex.
These rituals of self-torment began as fertility rites.
The problem is, that you’ve got to slow down the wheel or
it will spin our of control. Bouncing Betties, wars that
kill and mutilate, societies where children are bringing
up the children, and a world with far more children than
can possibly survive to the 30th year – there’s something
very significant that our fear of revolutionary violence
has kept from becoming conscious.
“How did we know that the Men’s Club had
betrayed the Sacred Fire?” Renata continues to screech.
“How could we not know, when we had to watch you
devise horrible games, in which men would gang
together, to kill and torture other gangs of men? But
that was not even the worst! Men try to keep their
secrets, but women have the advantage, because women
taught language to men. And so we found out soon
enough, that no sooner had you beaten up some other
gang and compelled them to follow your orders, than you
began to speak of them as women. We might have had
questions before, but now our worst suspicions were
confirmed.
I quiver in anticipation, as I kiss the feet of my idol
in black leather.

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 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Renata is enjoying playing her role as high
priestess. Perhaps this is what she must do in order to
develop the mojo that can get the upper hand on Dr.
Payne.
“Do you still expect women to still go on enabling
you?” she now is howling at the moon. “We see now, the
logical outcome of your ‘let’s play Superman’ game. All
of the four-legged animals quiver, and even the winged
ones and slithering ones have sad tales to tell the
Creator. So many of these sad tales have been verified,
that the Creator has decreed, that the next species
slated for extinction must be the Male Chauvinist Pig. I
pity you, because it is your karma to love women who
must hurt you like I do – but I believe that for the most
part, you actually enjoy the game too.”
A smart stroke of her riding crop spurs me to
renewed attention. Beneath Diana’s moon, she’s
making me take the sort of flogging Spartan boys had
to take when their women complained that they were
being bad. And yet, even as I writhe and moan on the
altar of Artemis, she compells me to confess, I need to
take this flogging so the Goddess will forgive me for all
the wounds that I’ve inflicted on the women who had
the hots for me.

“There is something within you and me,” Renata

scolds, “that passionately wants to believe that our
suffering should have the power to redeem the world.
Unfortunately, that is just the voice of our addictive
masochism that is speaking. That is why I must strap
you down now, so that I can beat that sick romanticism
right out of you, and you can start acting like a sane
man – or at least you will, until your butt starts itching
for another whipping like this one.”
I hope she is getting a thrill; I’m finding the pain
quite obsessive.
“You know you need to take the beating you need
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 BORN AMONG BRIARS
for some foul crimes against women, if your relation to
the Grandmother Bitch is to be restored,” cries this
woman in black leather, as she brings the stiffened quirt
down on my ass.
“I repent! I repent!” I cry. “Let me take my beating
right now, so that I do not need to atone for my crimes
against women, before my case can be cleared by the
Queen of Heaven!

It Burns With Cold Blue Fire

It burns with cold blue fire. The cruel stroke of her
lash is turning my hind end into black leather.
“Oooh Baaby!” she cries excitedly. “I want to hear
you whimper and moan. The cruelty of this world has
perverted my natural sensitivities; I can’t help it if I
only get turned on after I”ve been able to prove that a
man can cry in pain just like a woman! I want to see
you cry and quiver, so I can be assured that you are just
like me!”
At last, when she feels she has got to relent so
that I will allow her to play this game again, she asks
me to kiss the scar that was left after the surgeon had
to drive a spike through her broken bone. She is using
all her powers of enchantment to make me fascinated
with the horrid pain that she was going through during
those days.
And so I beg to kiss her scar – and wander about
on the shore of her flesh like a raven, until she grabs
my aching balls, and makes me come all the way in.

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 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Before we parted, Anna Pearl used to tell me that
she felt concerned about the way that Renata was going
to hurt me. Naturally, I tended to discount the
information on account of the source. Of course it was
natural that Anna should want to put a guardhouse
between herself and Renata.

May 3, 1994
“I am beginning to understand,” reflects Regina,
“Why your Vespucci settlers have never been able to
make the transition to being true Atlantaens. Marxist
critiques of socially conscious agriculture had always led
me to believe, that the answer lay in the soil. But now
that I have you to help me understand the results of my
observations, I’m seeing something else.
“The modern Vespucci agri-business operator has a
very bad relation with the soil. But as a whole, I have
found that your Vespucci managers fear digging in the
soil, because they have an irrational fear that too much
contact with the soil would turn them into Mexican
women.
“In order to come to terms with your fears that you
might become women, you have got to believe that you
have got a soulmate who was destined to be with you
from the beginning to Time. But of course, if existence
precedes essence, we make certain moral choices now,
and then eventually become the angels or the devils
which we have elected to be.
“If you want to have a relationship, you must
recognize that we are all struggling with problems of
ethics. When a man and woman are joined in the
courtship dance, they help each other turn toward the
Creator’s way. Unfortunately, your certified preachers
fear that this would tear away their robes of European
imitation, and cause moss to grow on their pulpits. Your
problem is that your preachers discourage the young
people from engaging in the normal courtly behavior
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 BORN AMONG BRIARS
through which adolescents become civilized, by insisting
so harshly on responsible standards of marriage, that
men and women pair up before they are ready.
“Don’t the Shiites make it all so evident that
moralism does not foster ethical behavior? There are
certain discoveries men and women make when they get
off the cross of supposed moral perfection and start
galavanting. For one thing, any sensuous woman will
discover, that gross indecency is no more appealing than
a gross stomach.
“While you were away in the mountains with
Renata, I was having a conversation on the astral with
some of the Little Green Men – and do you you know
what they said? They are telling me, that if we want the
cooperation from them that we shall need in order to keep
producing Paranoid Alien Radio, we are going to need to
warn the people that Hell’s Angel Morality is a dangerous
contraption that needs to be banned from the road.
“I understand too well, that Jealousy really is the
God of the Banking System. The Trinity Broadcasting
Network People think that they are being good in order to
please God, but they are really just acting the way that
they’ve been conditioned to act by the World Banking
System.
“The God of Babylon may be teaching you to follow
his Ten Commandments, but he is still a Graven Image,
who speaks with a blasphemous voice. You know what
reaction you will get from the Texas preacher if you try to
convince him that the State of Texas has an obligation to
restore all of the stolen Indian land. And so you see quite
clearly, the Ten Commandments that Felon Apollyon
shall compel you to abide by are in no way the same Ten
Commandments which were revealed by the Transformer
to Moses, on the day the volcano erupted!”

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When the Fishes Became People, &

I Became a Rattlesnake
Maybe this is why the Gods have changed me to a
rattlesnake, whose venomous nature would dare to take
on the whole world.
Maybe this is why the Earth has become separated
from Heaven. We had to become venomous creatures, so
that we could bite the feet of those who persist in
behaving as though they were Gods on this earth. The
reason is, when Heaven is too close to the Earth, there is
no space between them in which a man and a woman can
stand up and embrace.
Until we have determined that there must be a space
between the Earth and the Sky, everyone who seems to
mar the illusion that Earth is only Heaven reflected in a
lake, must be executed as a witch. Before we can attain
our humanity, Heaven and Earth must be forcibly
separated. This is felt by both Heaven and Earth as an
excruciating surgery – but it is a surgery which must be
endured.
Until Heaven and Earth have been separated, we do
not have the right to make mistakes. Unfortunately, if we
do not err, we shall never learn. As we understand this,
we begin to understand the testimony of the Rocks. In the
beginning, Heaven and Earth were quite closely joined,
until between them, something began to smell bad.
Eventually that bad smell became a worm, which evolved
into a sail-backed crocodile.
This crocodile lorded it over the banks of Life’s river,
and devoured those fish who came up to look at the sun.
The fish who’d seen the crocodile but escaped reflected
back to their fellows, that the essence of life is pain.
On account of this conviction, these little fishes who
lived in a time when earth was still too close to heaven
have been transformed to rocks. They wait now to be

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 BORN AMONG BRIARS
discovered by Little Caesar, who has just outfitted an
expedition to locate new sites on which to drill for gas
and oil.
These prehistoric fishes want to save his soul –
that’s why they have presented their remains to his
corporate geologists. And so these fossils have been
donated to the University Museum – along with the
request that the university drop its study of the
economic transactions between his syndicate, and all of
the paranoid aliens who cultivate the lettuce fields.

We are the Paranoid Aliens who caught the

Prehistoric Fish, and slowly built up coalitions and
alliances. We are the ones who found that we had landed
in a world that was toxic and lonely. Our backs
developed toothaches that went all the way down to the
roots of our toes. We felt the hot sun of your hatred, as we
knelt down before the flashing red and blue lights of
your cartels of Power & Control.
You fled the Prehistoric Beast, until Sky-Maiden
wove an Archetypal Basket. We put fishes and loaves
into this basket, and discovered that they just kept
multiplying. The Great Beast tried to sacrifice the
runners who were carrying the Basket. We watched
while the bodies of John Brown and Leon Trotsky rolled
down from the pyramid.
A time came when Wheatsly-Poctli got to lay his
trump card down. It was a time of war, a time in which
the world was dominated and controlled by warlords.
We who are Paranoid Aliens parked our flying saucers
on the other side of the clouds, and watched. We knew
that the Time of the Warlords would be followed by a
time in which the men of power would rule without
morals, and even the mountains would be uneasy.
We who are Paranoid Aliens know that the Dead
shall return when the People have ears to listen. The

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 JOHN BROWN'S BODY
struggle between Bingbum de Singsum and Benito Juarez
is coming to a climax very soon. Beneath the ancient
pyramids once claimed by Mayan Gods, the struggle for
self-determination has just begun.

The Dream of Lost Atlantis has been kept under

the Sea by the belief that social aggression must be both
coercive and lethal. The Gods of Atlantis knew better.
One little bangle out of their medicine bag created the
all of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and Madison
Avenue. But now that John Brown and Trotsky are
having dinner with the Old Mayan Gods, a second
Mayan Wampum Belt has been discovered by oil
prospectors in an abandoned field outside of Roswell,
New Mexico.
As this wampum belt unrolls, it shall appear on
the screen as a media production. As we read the film’s
opening credits, we shall observe Handsome Lake
joining John Brown and Leon Trotsky at a well set table
in the clouds high above the mountains of the Sierra
Madre. The Old Mayan Gods now join them in
confessing that, just for today, they shall give up their
addiction to eating human hearts and drinking human
blood.
They will not commit human sacrifice again, – not
unless Dr. Wheatsly-Poctli in Washington D.C starts
sending in his agents. As John Brown proclaims to the
Mayan Gods, true revolution has no need of brutality. If
the Gods can give up their habit of devouring men, they
can become Blessed Principalities that can lead us in
building a more just order on the Earth.

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 BORN AMONG BRIARS

She Who Hanged Herself, Back

When the World Was Young
She dances down from the moon.
In the night of the new moon, she will hang from a rope which
dangles from the stars.
At the beginning of time, she hanged herself.
Why did she do this?

“I was repenting of the crime, of teaching men

civilization,” Señorita Ixtab declares. “I taught men the
civilized arts, so that their lives could be less arduous. But
what did they do, once they had become civilized? It was
one thing for them to build pyramids, so they could be
close to the sky – but what did they do on these pyramids,
once they had built them?
“Once the Earth had given them everything that she
had, the men on the pyramids cursed her. Because they
were too proud to dig in the soil themselves, they made
wars so that they could enslave others. On account of the
burden of these wars, human life became even more
arduous than it had been in the days before I taught them
how to grow maize.
“I understood then, that I had one more lesson to
teach them.
“There must be a limit to the power that men have,
to oppress other men.
“The high and mighty will not listen to this teaching.
It can only be whispered to the downtrodden.
“Everybody wants to make the most of the life that
he has on earth. But those who are denied any possibility
for happiness must know, that there is a way in which
they can escape from this world. And they must know, that
if they choose to commit suicide because they refuse to add
anymore to the burden of life’s misery, I shall be on the

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Other Side to smile on them, and to help them find their
way into the Heaven of those who have learned self-
sacrifice.
“In order to teach this lesson to the suffering
people, I went by night into the temple the priests had
built on top of the pyramid. I tied a rope to the lattice of
the roof-comb, and then I hanged myself.
“For the sake of all of those who still suffer on
earth, I ask that you remember me, whenever the moon
is eclipsed.

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 BORN AMONG BRIARS
´
E
m
b
l 5.
e
m

THE ANTI-SWASTIKA
A Taxing Argument
I wish I knew how
It feels to be free –
I wish I could lift
These chains holding me!
— Lydia Penske

May 5, 1994
Upon my return to Paranoid Alien Radio, I had a
rather taxing argument with Inga. In retrospect, I am
glad that she is only an intellectual associate, and not
an emotional entanglement.
We were speaking on the cultural role of women.
As I am quite aware, this has become no-man’s land.
When crossing these bomb-craters you must crawl on
your belly – and still wonder whether the passing shells
shall take your ears off.
I can agree that even under Communist ideological
superstructures women as a class still took a lot of

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beatings. But I must argue with any interpretation
which puts all the blame on the historical influence of
Islam. For one thing, where women are concerned, there
have been different ideological orientations in Islam. The
present Pan-Arabist position only gained its ascendency
after the fall of the Fatamids – and even this neo-
classicism was strongly challenged by the revolutionary
Shiites of 18th Century Persia.
Inga’s argument reminds me of the savage attitude
of the European Diana. It’s true enough that in the
modern age, motherhood has become a full-time job.
What we do not realize, is that this is one of the side-
effects of the filth that is produced by the factory system.
On account of the social division of labor, the owners of
Capital are allowed to function as benevolent sadists,
while labor and the normal layers of management are
expected to prove that they enjoy being made to bend
over and take it. Common decency rebels against the
exposure of children to this sort of environment, so they
must be maintained in incubator tanks, which must be
industriously patched up because they are developing
reality leaks. The labor of the mothers is further
aggravated by the fact that predators adapt well to
laissez-faire capitalism.
In pre-capitalist tribal societies, women had
occupations, but motherhood was easier because the
children felt that being mother’s little helper was a part
of learning to act like a grownup. Being sent to go fetch
father from the fields was, more or less, the first step
towards becoming initiated into adulthood. Even where
it was Patriarchal, Pre-capitalist societies were usually
not intensively woman-exploiting. To the contrary, the
wish to become like the father gave the sons incentive to
ease the mothers’ tasks.
Most men lived in harmony with their women, until
the Conquistador came. Unfortunately, the Conquistador
left us with a social disease that made us hate our women

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too. We hated them, because we could not stand the
thought that our children would grow up to hear of the
things that we who were the warriors of the men's lodge
had had to do. And so we had to leave the children to the
Little People, while we became ogres who rode across the
hills, seeking for White Men to scalp.
The children could not know what we had done,
because they would have to live with the White Man. And
so we went away to live under the hills where the ponies
still graze. We took the dreams with us so that the
welfare department could give your generation parking
lots.

Back in Europe, Diana had to defend what was left

of femininity by adopting some nasty and brutal tactics.
She became a secretive huntress, who teases the hunter
and then leads him on. She tortures him more and
more, the closer he gets to her. It sounds to me like
Diana must have been suffering from that same
outraged sense of exploitation which caused Lakota
warriors to shoot arrows at the White Man’s covered
wagons.
I wish, though, that your Feminist scholars would
spend a little bit of time studying Native solutions before
you go imposing the standards dreamed up by upper-
class White Men. The Iroquois, Lenape, Cherokee, Coast
Salish and many others, developed indigenous solutions
to the problems of child support and women’s rights.
They were time-tested solutions that worked, because
the Native Woman knew how to use the good part of the
warrior to chain up his worst part, so she could give the
wicked man the big ass-whipping he needed in order to
become whole.
Unfortunately, capitalism breeds women who are
too nice – at least toward men of the Possessing Class.
As a result, there is too little fear of the Power of the
Feminine to censor and impeach, for decency to have any
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more than a merely normative meaning. This is the
real answer to Plato’s question, why the children of
aristocrats create democracies, while the children of
democracies create the Imperialist Repressive State.

EXHIBIT B
in the ongoing case of Aboriginal
Peoples vs The Empire:
What Plato left out, is that Athens became a
democracy simply because it was only by giving the vote
to “all men” that the pirates of the Late Archaic Age
avoided being flogged for their sins against women, the
way that men got it in Sparta.
The dirty little secret behind the cascade of social
entropy, which causes progressive republics to
degenerate into Cesarean Empires, can be found in the
closets of those young women who are being so
efficiently cracked and polymerized that they no longer
know who they are. If they had been able to grow up
with a childhood confidence that they were
meaningfully engaged with the life of the world, they
would demand more compensation for the pain of their
plastic surgeries, than simply a moment in which the
breasts which have become the art of the surgeon could
be flashed across the Big Screen.
So maybe I am a Male Chauvinist Pig. I’ll grant
that I have had my own involvement in the fine art of
tormenting women. But the reason they keep coming
back to be tormented again, is that they have come to
realize that in return for scars they will secretly prize, I
have left them with a sense that they have danced on
the margins of history. The scars I have left have
enabled them to reflect on who they really are.

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The Revolution of the Goddess
We find, alas! we know too well the pain which
numbs, even while we scream for deliverance. Like so
many patients in the surgical recovery room, we
discover the pain killers we are given are not nearly
enough.

I think what hurts the most, is that the Revolution of the Goddess
has compelled us to recognize that The Creator’s little
brother, the perverse mind who loves to dominate and
oppress, is someone whom we have allowed to drive our
hearts all too frequently.
Are the Vespuicci women overly fond of provoking violence and
contention?
We know that all over the world, women have been blamed, simply
because they have not been able to resist becoming a part of
the devouring machine which threatens to chew us all up and
then spit us out.

May 7, 1994
I am sitting with Thieu Eratna in the garden
behind the pottery shop.
“The Revolution of the Goddess,” she intimates to
me, “is a multi-dimensional engagement. In our Buddha
Nature, we must struggle against the demons in
ourselves. Unfortunately, the Aryan world was created
by demons. In the beginning, these demons were simply
animus spirits who had to be propitiated so that the
hunt could go well. But as they grew more powerful,
these animus spirits became more sadistic. At first they
simply demanded that the people torture themselves
and offer their blood. Then, as your histories and those
of the Hindus will tell us, Zeus whom you call God
proved his ascendency over all of the other Djinn by
beating up his wife, while everyone in Heaven and
Earth had to watch.
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“Once he had subjugated his wife, the violence of
God escalated, until he came to demand human
sacrifices. He became so aggressive against peoples who
still worshiped the Flame of the Mother’s Hearth, that
the Hindu Vedas called him the destroyer of the Black
Nations. Nevertheless, since it was in the interest of God
to maintain that He alone can determine just what is
Black and what is White, Black tribes which had held out
valiantly in war but had finally converted to Godin
became Aryans too.
“So it was, that God continued to direct his Aryans
to conquer the nations. No one was able to oppose him
until finally, in a border district of India, a black child
was born to a king. This little dark boy grew to be
exceedingly handsome, and they called him Guatama.
Guatama learned to worship at the hearth of the Mother,
and realized that all of the Masculine Animus Spirits
who are called Gods in this world, were in rebellion
against the Ground of Being.
“Guatama’s mother and father became very
protective, because they feared something horrible was
going to happen to their nice little boy. They married him
off to a nice girl, but Guatama remained tormented by
the fact that, even though everyone accepted him as an
Aryan, he had within him a very Black soul. One day
Guatama just couldn’t take it anymore, and just left his
wife and children to manage the estate for themselves
while he went out to live with the Black People.
“Guatama discovered that the spiritual leaders of
the Black People had developed various ways to torture
themselves in order to get high. But he also discovered
that these techniques could never restore our sense of the
Feminine Seraph, because the compulsion to torture the
flesh beyond the moderate degree that tones us and
enhances our sexuality, is in itself a form of hatred of The
Mother.
“When Guatama realized that the Blacks had

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internalized the perversity of the Aryans, he came to the
gut-level appreciation of the reality that all of the Gods
are really just the projection of our human nature, and
that these projections are amplified as the projections of
sentient beings unite. The fear of the rabbit becomes
united with the hunger of the tiger. Through bonds of
fixation which link the predatory natures of all sentient
beings, a repressive state is formed, which worships
animality and therefore enforces submission to the Aryan
Gods. If we wish to break this enchantment with which
the Ancient Hunters have bound us, we must begin by
learning not to feed the predatory instincts in ourselves.
It is then that the Hunter can be led to kneel in
submission at the hearth, and learn that the cruelty of
the hunt can only be redeemed when he offers the meat
from the hunt, to be distributed by the Nurturing Power.
"When we have achieved balance within ourselves,
the flame in the hearth shall be restored, and the Law of
Compassion shall regulate the affairs of all sentient
beings. Women shall be able to let their bodies be seen,
since the sight of their breasts will now incite tenderness
rather than predatory scorn. There shall be Gods and
Goddesses again, but they shall know that their existence
is provisional.
"The Buddha had this vision underneath the Bo
tree. He opened his eyes, and a young and beautiful
cowgirl gave him a bowl of milk. It was then that he
became fully enlightened.
"He had learned, that even the Buddha can gain
solace from the glance of a woman whose heart is
inspired by compassion."

The Reason Why the Peasants Must

Be Honored
“Look at my garden,” she implored me, as she
waited for her pottery kiln to fire.
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The sun was as low as the neckline on the short
slip Thieu wore as a blouse. It did not reach down very
far on her thighs. The deep bronze of her body glowed in
shafts of light that were let in between leaves of the trees.
Among the rocks set in the style that gave birth to
Zen, are horns of blue and discs of pink and gold. These
are the flowers that rise from the green grass.
There had been a dismal sadness in my heart. I
was starting to feel the melancholy vertigo of knowing I
was in a country whose politics were poised on a slippery
slope. My sojourn in Darshishkan had opened my eyes,
to just what it must have been like, to have watched the
Third Reich come down. Now I was beginning to fear, the
nightmare had followed me here too.
What solace I gained, when I looked on the cleft
her breasts! There are here two suns, rising from the
Primordial Ocean. Eloquent in voices vibrant and warm,
they recite the history of how the Universe began.
Hidden just below the horizon of her very low neckline,
two roses blossom with secrets that can only be told to
those whose hearts are pure. These are the two
Fountains of Paradise, the Ganges and the Indus Rivers,
which both have their source in a crystal which lies in
the heart of a mountain. Within that crystal, the
meditating Buddha offers the milk of compassion to all
sentient beings.
There has been a dismal sadness in my heart. In
the space between the polarities of our hearts, atoms
begin to glow. The stream of ionic attraction draws our
two bodies together, until I feel the soft flowers of her
breasts embracing me.

“Perhaps,” Thieu whispers to me, “the sun has

fallen in love with the night.”
I realize that I am clinging to her primarily
because the warmth of her flesh gives me strength to
resist the seduction of Valkyries who are flying out there,
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just beyond the trees. These Valkyries were women once.
They are ethereal pearls; their astral bodies glow
because they were spun from the dreams that sustained
unhappy women through lives of suffering. They wait
now for men who can find no solace in life, to bless them
with the sort of kisses that no lips on earth can match.
Thieu and I linger in the peaceful foliage of her
garden. The sun is going down, but the nipples of her
breasts are rising, up above the low neckline. The breeze
carries the sighs of flowers that cry: “please remember
me.”
The garden is filled with their astral presence.
Rachemnia, Aje, Ninianne, comrades who died in the
struggle against Ethnic Cleansing, are hosting a ball for
the slaughtered heroes of all nations. Because Thieu and
I are nurturing each others’ resolve to remain alive here
on earth, they are now feeling release.
As all of these risen stars begin to sing in the
breeze, a lady comes by who committed suicide when she
was only 17. She is dressed in a full gypsy skirt and a
mankiller blouse. Her air is festooned with flowers. She
begins playing the flute, leading the heroes and houris
away to a place on the dark side of the moon.
“Even those who commit suicide still want to be
remembered,” Thieu intimates to me.

All these loves have been like flowers, which have

their summer, and then fade away. But the seeds of
these flowers remain here on earth. Another spring shall
come, and other flowers shall cry out: “Will you
remember me?”
”Does not the Buddha remember all sentient
beings?” I found myself asking Thieu.
“Love is an awakening of the Buddha nature,” she
answers me. “The only trouble is, that when the
Buddhas first begin to waken, all of the demons in the

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world come out of their coffins and dance. That is why
lovers commit suicide – because the world must be
reminded, that if one must choose between love and the
world, one always must choose love.”
“And yet, if we would be loved in the flesh,” my
waking dream prompts me to respond, “we must nurture
and strengthen the flesh.”
“That is why the Peasants must be honored,” Thieu
answers me. “If the farm people fail in their love for the
soil, there shall be no beautiful men and women, whose
tormented loves shall provide the meat for future epics. If
the farm people do not sacrifice themselves in the fields
to make the earth fruitful and beautiful, there cannot be
any higher civilization.”
“There is something in the nature of beauty itself
which wants to be remembered,” I found myself
reflecting. “Isn’t that why women dress down so that they
can tease men?”
“We do that so we can tell which men have Buddha
nature and which have demon-nature,” Thieu answers
me. “If a Buddha smiles on your teasing, it is a good
omen. If you find that your teasing is attracting only
demons, then you know you must be very careful.”

“I want you to tell me honestly,” Thieu asks me.

“Did European people really believe we were savages?”
My bad conscience knows the answer.
“We had everything that you had except for the
steam engine,” she prods. “We even developed
gunpowder, but we didn’t make guns because we didn’t
need them. Or at least, we didn’t need them until you
Europeans came along, to steal our arts and sciences, and
then leave us in chains. I guess that we can thank Louis
Napoleon for that.
“You Europeans brought us the heresy which
taught that the peasant should be despised because he

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makes himself a love-slave of the Goddess of the fields.
We had resisted similar heresies when they had been
brought in from China and Japan – but now the Black
Lady of Han Che found herself betrayed on every side.
“Our friendship is only beginning, so I shall not
burden you with everything that happened during the
Year Zero. It is enough for you to understand, that in the
years just before the Year Zero, there were many
beautiful men and women who deserve to be
remembered. Perhaps the hopes that died in the Year
Zero shall be reincarnated. We believe that it will
happen. It is for this reason that we sustain the fire of
our culture, even in the hearths of a foreign land.”

If the soldier does not honor and obey the farmer, then he is a
pirate.
This is the teaching of the Lady in Black Pajamas.
But do you not see, how many pirate flags are being raised
All over the land?
To be a revolutionary is to take up the fight of the Buddha
Against false Gods of caste and class
Who’d profane the Hearth of the Mother.

The Wheel of Karma Keeps on

Turning
Cinco de Mayo, 1994
I’m on an irrigated ranch outside Rosales.
It’s evening, and I'm meditating on the stars that look
down on a sea of sagebrush & dried grass -- this "Great
American Desert" where, just six score years ago, the buffalo
still ruled.
I guess, the 1880's were a little like the 1980's -- a time

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when great technical progress and great ecological devastation
went hand in hand. The Reds had finally been beaten down;
they would not save democracy again -- at least not till many
moons later.
I'm out on the veranda, looking back to Texas, and
realizing that the war is not quite over. It's true, the FBI
is always a visible presence on the reservations -- but
they have a hard time keeping up with the actions of all
of the outlawed ghosts.
That's something I am beginning to learn from the
Medicine People. I'm learning that to be a real warrior, is
something different than the dominator culture taught.
Daniel Boone was a warrior. He wasn't so much an Indian
Fighter as a fighter in Indian style – he may have been adopted
into the Cherokee tribe. Towards the end of his life, he declared
he had only killed three – or at least, only three Indians.
That was fighting in Indian style -- murder was not the
objective. The Indian style of honor did not know the meaning
of totalitarian struggle.
Maybe that's why the Indian warriors were so dazzled by
the deceptions of Mr. Forked Tongue Swearing On His Holy
Book. But maybe also, that is why the Indian resistance to the
Totalitarian way is still alive and well, a hundred years after
Chief Joseph.

Ashes of Burned-Out Obsession

May 6, 1994
The spring may come with verdant leaves again, but the
Moon is dying and the Sun remains hidden. The flame of my
love for Renata has burned so hot it has burned out the
obsession within me. I now am able to feel a sense of gratitude
for her coldness, since it enables my own need to take solace
from miscellaneous encounters with various women.
I look now mournfully on a glowing pile of hot ashes,
where fires of compulsion once burned. I know too well, the
desolation the Lady of the Flowers felt, when she was taken

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from the arms of her beloved Rain-God, and conquered by the
raging lust of the Tornado. And yet, so ancient codices
remember, it was out of her desolation that the Redeemer was
born.
“Renata is doing a typical New York hustle on you,”
Tarrico Zamora is trying to explain. “She’s already sold
her pussy to the highest bidder – but like the typical
capitalist, she’s not satisfied with what she can get
through trade on the open market – and so she will start
trading in speculative futures. Of course there is a
gimmick – she will appeal to your sense of decency, as well
as to your conviction that women have the right to be
chaste. She will appeal to your sense that the Revolution
has used women harshly, and make you forget that
women have used revolutionary men just as harshly.
“Someday we will have the revolution that will free
women from having to live as whores – but we haven’t gotten
there yet. When that time comes, men like you shall be blessed
– but right now, the women are taking out their hostilities on
you by shearing you like a sheep. Renata probably feels she’s
doing you a favor by teaching you to be a little less naive.”

“You are beginning to gain an appreciation of what

happens to us as women when we get raped,” Inga is attempting
to explain. “The man who will bully a woman into having sex,
just takes and takes, but the only thing real he gives is a big
empty hole in the heart, and rushes of adrenaline which interfere
with one’s natural hormonal balance.”
“Is that why,” I find myself asking, “instead of any real
culture, the Vespucci simply have a system of defenses against
an all-embracing paranoia?”

“The war of the Aryans against Atlan has taken many

forms,” Cora Medicine-Otter explains to me. “In order to cover
for their rapacity against us, the Aryans had to become very self-
righteous. When they observed that we could go around in the

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summer with hardly any clothes on, because rape was
extremely rare in our culture, they invented the myth that
carnal love was in itself a sin. Once love was a sin, they only
valued women for cooking and sewing.
“The hopes of our warriors who died became
reincarnated in the programs of the Abolitionists,
Socialists, and Feminists. Our dancing ghosts inspired
the IWW, arousing the movement of the 1920's which
raised up trade unions which could stand against the
power of the Repressive State. Because our fathers died,
a new Victims’ Movement is rising, to challenge the
violence that steams from the earth wherever the Many-
Headed Beast steps. The Restoration of my people shall
be aided by the Resurrection of the Goddess. Once
women have made their stand against rape, our people
shall be able to explain what has happened to us.”

Come forth, Oh soul, from roasted meat!” I hear Regina

sing, as she dances on the gravel of the prairie, about a
plumed buffalo skull.
I think that she is coming to an understanding, just what
her own witchcraft really is all about.
We have observed the People of the Beast, devouring
and enslaving the captive. Whenever we see curly clouds in
the sky, we know there must be a Day of Judgement on which
this Beast is bought to trial for his many crimes against the
women and the children and the gentle men who have refused
to allow compulsion to become a part of their religion.

We are the ones who have risen from ashes;

We are the body parts of the Harlot
Who kneels at the feet of her Lord;
He smiles with a wondrous pleasure
As she – the dirty little Coyote Bitch
Washes His feet with her tears.

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Did we ever hear Satan howl!

The rage of his jealousy tore the earth;
He rent the Temple curtain
As he accused Little Mary
Of the crime of witchcraft!
He chased her from the Holy Land
All the way to the Great Plains.
Whatever shall become of the Aryan Gods
If she starts appearing to the women
And they start behaving like aborigines?

Let us call on Coyote Bitch

To lead us in walking the Circle;
Now that Old Godin is dead
The sacred can be reborn.
We don’t care anymore about credentials –
Dear Mary Magdalene –
Are you a college graduate?
How is it you alone have got the power
To make the prairie blossom and the buffalo return?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Cygny was born in Washington State, shortly after the

end of World War II. He studied psychology and comparative
religion at Evergreen State College in Washington and Sonoma
State University in California. During his graduate period he
became personally acquainted with several of the surviving beat
poets, and has served as an associate editor for Aristos Literary
Quarterly and Raven Chronicles, South Sound edition. He is
presently drumming with Congo Productions and working with
Consultants for Indian Progress, to bring about a revival of our
multi-cultural roots.

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