Cathedral of the New Age

In the beginning,

You and I are as One Light

Similar in our differences;

Alike in our disparity.

Suspended above the Physical Plane

We are Summoned, and gently parted.

Suddenly we are Alone and Afraid,

each longing for the other.

Forever now distant, now forever apart:

The great Yearning of our Love is born.

We Fall...

Shimmering and spinning; down, down, down

Down through the terrifying darkness of

Cosmos and Eternal Night, and into the open arms

of Earth Mother.

For a brief moment in time, She will gladly receive us,

Protecting our fragile forms in the great, good bounty

of Her flourishing benevolence.

We cling, like babes newborn, to the fulsomeness of Her breasts,

Safely concealed in the fragile breathe which is Her Life.

At first...

We know only struggle:

Sense only gnawing, blinding passions,

and childlike, ravening hungers.

Apart, we forget our Starry Origins,

The Celestial Home now unknown to us.

The Yearning that was once our Love becomes a Seed,

A kernel for the baser passions of a crude, crass physical life;

We consume and dispose, we toil and sleep. In time,

these brutish compulsions engulf, and overwhelm us.

And while our bodies rest, our minds, Sad with an unknowing Sorrow

Reach out, briefly freed; to span across the thousand dimensions

of Time, Space, and Reality.

We Remember, and in that remembering, we thirst

For a Love to which can be put neither name, nor face.

And yet...

Sometimes, the Light Within must be heard.

The voice will not be stilled; it is a tormenting hunger,

A longing, which cannot be ignored.

A desire,  which must be fulfilled.

So we search...

Each with two eyes that see, but are yet Blind

And a Third that is sightless, but fathoms All.

We try. And fail. And try yet again.

The Two That Cannot See deceive and mislead us;

We cannot trust in their fickle, faithless counsel.

We know not that force which compels the Physical Heart,

Nor what thing drives us into the arms of Desperate Need.

Yet, we cannot long deny that ancient, pervasive call,

Or the yearning, which we unwittingly call 'Love'

For it will be denied no more.

Though it may take the whole of our brief, pitiable lifetimes

We pensively wait, and of its own accord, the Third Eye Opens,

and All is Revealed.

Suddenly, we cannot discern the form others wear, for when

the Third Eye Perceives, it is then the Two which will not.

We sense only the aching need, the Apartness,

The wish to be fulfilled, to be joined, to be whole again.

Our physical bodies, now oafish and clumsy,

Cannot stand in the way of our divine, frenzied desire.

Nor can they fully express

the godlike passion that trembles in our cosmic essence,

Or humbles us with its magnificent and unyielding power.

It is an obsession that transcends all the realms

of Earth and Flesh And Love and Sorrow.

And, at long last,

When we finally reunite,

And come together under the fearful,

sobering power of our great need for each other,

Only then will all the elements be combined

To erect a shining Cathedral to our Supreme

And Unconditional Love.

ghetto light

At the back of ravaged lands

They stand, those Sentinels of Despair,

With their thousand pocketed, honeycombed hells.

Raising red and yellowed bones to the iron sky,

They hold fast the light, ever silent in communion

With their steadfast, unwavering brothers.

Their ravenous shadows swallow up the sun's glow,

Disgorging in its place, a pallid, slick, and dismal gleam,

A Ghetto Light, without shine, or warmth or hope.

A faded, tinny sheen, a lusterless anti-darkness,

More a sister to shadows, than child of the Sun or Moon.

That Ghetto Light,

Weak and Wan, and Powerful and Strong,

Makes black skins pale, and pale skins black.

It will tear, and rip, and claw, and find its way

Into every pore, every heart,

and every brain.

Colorless rays, like phantom blades;

Long, cold, brittle, hard;

Newly forged on the anvil of Hopelessness,

And cooled in the brackish waters of Futility,

Will beat down brown eyes, beat down brown eyes

Beat down brown eyes

Until heart no long feels, mind no longer comprehends,

And shuttered, swollen brown eyes no longer weep;

But instead, crave only the pursuit of Unknowing Slumber,

and the savage, soothing balm of cold indifference.

That ghetto light is a powerful light,

Perhaps more brilliant than the Sun's,

Perchance more subtle than the Moon's.

And yet...

It is not as mighty as that Light

Carried deep within every Soul,

The Flame Everlasting,

Whose imperishable spark, if given only a smoking ember

Can rage with the vehement fervor of five billion suns.

Who, then, will ignite that Fire?

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© Copyright, 2015, Louis Ellenwood Barlowe .
All Rights Reserved.