[Excerpted from Janaka Stucky’s
forthcoming book, Ascend Ascend (Third Man Books, April 2019). The accompanying
portrait of the author is by photographer Adrianne Mathiowetz.]
Blessed
is the lotus
The
day’s bleeding wound
Blessed
are the spiders their alphabet
Twenty
six stones my corpse is dancing
Blessed
are the worms the maggots
Sexless
and probing like tongues
Through
the rotting soil
Blessed
is the loam
Blessed
is the loam the darkness
Mushrooms
blooming teeth pushing
Through
the earth’s black and putrid gums
Blessed
is the Maw
The
Great Maw the mouth the gnashing
Of
continental shores
Blessed
are the stones the rocks
The
island all the world a promontory scab
Hardening
around the earth’s myriad
Molten
wounds
Blessed
is the blood the bile ascending
The
gross moss of shapeless years forming
On
the eyeless trunks of trees
Blessed
are the snakes the dragons
Breathing
the giants eating each dumb
Beast
our mothers our fathers filled with blood
Blessed
are the black cricket’s legs singing
Furiously
until the whole lake is on fire
Blessed
is the fire
Blessed
is the lake
Blessed
are the cricket’s black legs
Blessed
is the trembling nerve of now
The
great topaz hurtling through
Galactic
dark
Blessed
is the dark the knotted roots
Of
the first tree the fearful serpent
Uncoiling
still as even the first
Stone
turns to dust
Blessed
is our fear
The
Great Retching which rips us
Wide
eyed hairy and blood spattered
Terribly
laughing up from the mud
Blessed
is the transfiguration of terror that wakens
The
crimson thread within
Blessed
is our weaving and braiding
Our
crawling
Blessed
is our climb
Blessed
are we who flop from mud
To
soil to grass to trees
Blessed
are our lungs our hands
Blessed
is the transmutation of air
And
fruit and meat to spirit
Blessed
are the bees
Blessed
is their hive returning
Through
each flaw of rain revealing
The
heirophany of nectar
In
the fresh light of the cloud’s empty womb
Blessed
is our moaning and shitting
Our
walking on quivering feet
Blessed
is our walking and running
Our
speaking each day our dying
Our
struggle toward freedom our dying
Blessed
is the fight for freedom
Even
more than to be free
Blessed
is our life
Blessed
is our instrument responding
With
purity to the collapsing
Sigh
of the world
Blessed
is our cry
Our
cry our radiant repeating
The
gleaming cinder
Like
honey like wax like roses
The
world vanishing and nothing
But
us remaining beneath the abyss
Of
god singing
I am
the one that is not
And
when the cry comes to no longer
Be
the vessel the cry comes
Not
from your mouth
Alone
it is not you talking
It
is ancestors of ancestors speaking with centuries
Upon
centuries of mouths it is
Not
you alone desiring it is
A galaxy
of descendants desiring
Down
the long fathomless
Pillar
of your infinite heart
For
between the void and the abyss
You
alone struggle and are imperiled
And
in your small earthen chest
One
thing alone struggles and is imperiled
And
when the cry comes
The
cry comes in the cryptic tongue
To
pass beyond my body bastion
Of
sugar and bone
My
body
Monstrously
shining above
Black
lichen rivers
Its
curse like a star of blood erupting
From
my throat
A
promise roaring
Jackals
howling
Awful
and grim
My body
my body
Lust
magnificent
Views
of Byzantium
Crucified
awake in me
In
me among
My
body idle and brutal
Let
light thunder
The
first to adore
My
body my ghost
My
retinue of ghouls
Profane
and dancing
Dizzy
drunk and shrieking
Through
a phantasmagoria of stars
My
body exquisite
Thighs
streaming with blood
My
body hungry and gaping
Threaded
with hands
My
body my tongue distended
And
dangling amid corpses
And
noncorpses
Gun-gun
drone the bees
My
body my mouth
My
penetrated mouth singing
Through
the honeycomb locked in its jaws
My
penetrated body
Levitating
weightless
Rotted
by this leprous alien song
I am
penetrated
I am
penetrated
I am
pierced
My
body my elephant my chariot
I am
pierced
I am
penetrated by men
I am
penetrated by insects plants and beasts
The
ecstatic march of flesh
I am
penetrated by birds by stones
And
the wind’s twisted shell
I am
penetrated by seas and fires
By
colors by wings
By
horns by claws
By
constellations
Butterlfies
I am
penetrated
By
great hemlocks blackening
The moonless
sky
I am
penetrated
By
water by dreams
By
lightning cracks in mute night
By
night by night thick as death
It
must be death
I am
penetrated by death and cannot see
And
beneath the night sky the universe
Of
every eye judging acutely
With
their small fires
Igniting
to the orchard within
Me
the path of names
Every
word along the way
Lit
like a flame upon
The
wick of its origin
I
kiss each name and make
For
it a temple on my tongue I name
A
stone I name an insect I name
An
idea dancing across
A dust
mote’s horizonless stage
I
name a nightmare
Ecstasy
I
name sleep
A
fertile wall of storms
I
name the air choked
With
a blizzard of blossoms
White
origin of apples
Buzzing
on the wild threadless sun
I
name the eye of the earth blinking in my blood
A
phenomena of swarms
I
name the hour black lightning
And
its children golden sheaves of fire
Burning
Lanka to the ground
I
name this fever a flood like
A
harras of feral horses breaking
On
the blackened plain
And
the trembling shale of stardust is its name
Red
java flower is its name
The
sky lit by heaping nectar
Is
its name
The
cloud whose throne is a corpse
Is
its name
Dwell
in its presence in dread
Is
its name
Reflect
on the root from which you were hewn
Is
its name
An
act without knowledge is nothing
Is
its name
The
seven heavens of chaos
Is
its name
Vilon
is its name
Raki’a
is its name
Shehakim
is its name
Zevul
is its name
Ma’on
is its name
Makhun
is its name
Aravot
is its name
A
book like the hum of a severed head
Is
its name
The firmament
scattered like a riddle
Is
its name
The
millstone grinding bright miracle of wheat
Is
its name
A
silver bridge of the dead returning to their infinite numinous source
Is
its name
A
choir of thousands terrifying slow and rising
From
a single mouth is its name
Scorched
by the awestruck jism of a new element
Is
its name
Amen
amen nezah selah is its name
There
is a precise instant when the world
Is
marvelous
Now
Is
its name
I
hear its cry
I
hear its cry
Lacerated
by a paradise of sadness
Devoured
by brutes
I
hear its cry
Ashen
with the incandescent
Dust
of rubies
I
hear its cry I rise
Weeping
A
moth emerging
From
the innocence of limbo
Beneath
the green bowers
I
hear its cry
Dissolving
in a golden beam
I
invent new beasts
New
flowers new stars
New
men new holes
Pool
of Bethesda
New
flesh new tongues
New
purity O purity
This
vision of purity
Erect
for the brief bliss of the void
With
their pestilential breath abating
I
leave the hazel copse
I
depart through nameless
Numberless
years
Climb
the cosmic mountain
Parapets
of jasper shining
Above
the waning cypress
Wading
through thickets of mallow
I
approach the navel of the earth
From
the trunk of a gum tree
I
fashion the sacred pole
Anoint
it and climb
Belligerently
ascend
And
climb
Further
still
I
climb
And
disappear
Into
the sky
[author’s
note. Ascend Ascend was written over the course of twenty days, coming in and out
of trance states brought on by intermittent fasting and somatic rituals, while
secluded in the tower of a 100-year-old church. It is rooted in the Jewish
mystical tradition of merkabah literature, documenting an ascent up the kabbalistic sefirot
to witness the chariot of god. My own attempt at this was initially unplanned
and spontaneous; the first experience without agenda or tied to any tradition.
What I saw could have been a UFO, a palace of Mayan gods, or Terence McKenna's
"machine elves" just as easily as it could have been Ezekiel's
vision. However, after talking with some fellow practitioners I felt that my
experience—and any future attempt to document it—resonated most in the
kabbalistic tradition. So I secluded myself and went into retreat. ... While the majority of canonical merkabah literature is fairly dry
and legal—composed of prose focused primarily on preparations for the journey
while finally demurring to describe the experience itself—Ascend Ascend uses poetry to touch the ineffable. This larger work
is therefore a kind of poetics of ascent, a long poem documenting the ecstatic
destruction of the self through its union with the divine.]
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