A Brain Simmers & Bubbles within
The Cracking Tenement of the Skull²
In the Celestial Palace of the Blazing Skull³
Consciousness Blooms – as a dark drop of Ink⁴
Your Soul takes on the Color of your Thoughts⁵
I Hang my Head – Ostensibly – and subsequent, I
Find, that such is not the Posture of Immortal Mind⁶
I Embrace in a Single Thought the World of things
As they are and of things as they could have Been,
And I realize that a Single System includes All⁷
Ordinary Mind – includes Eternal Perceptions⁸
Emancipate yourselves from Mental Slavery:
None but ourselves can Free our Minds⁹
Some strange Thoughts Transcend our
Wonted themes – and into Glory peep¹⁰
¹ William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
² James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
³ Padmasambhava tr. Gyurme Dorje, The Tibetan Book of the Dead
⁴ Vanessa Stauffer, Pygmalion
⁵ Marcus Aurelius tr. Gregory Hayes, Meditations
⁶ Emily Dickinson, To Hang Our Head
⁷ Italo Calvino tr. William Weaver, The Origin of Birds
⁸ Allen Ginsberg, Cosmopolitan Greetings
⁹ Bob Marley, Redemption Song
¹⁰ Henry Vaughan, Friends Departed