Kabbalah

200 Years (Every Praise)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 61 Comments


“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”-Alexander Fraser Tytler

(Every Praise)

Now oh Judea before what rides, a strain of white lightning across the Galilee sky. G_D of all your mercy before you I rise in every praise.

200 years of lies and scorn, against the better reasons we all are born, how will we rise to greet the day from years of nightmare, of nuclear decay. 200 years of crazy thoughts, anarchist dreams of the fiddler’s knot, of that purgatory that knows no end, a socialist dream, a socialist sin. Where are you when black shirts come, to deliver your daughters to prosecute your sons. Know it now, know it true when they come for the weakest, they come for you. Oh believer, oh my heart, know thy love when all this starts. Know thy faith, honest true, what is forever starts in you. 200 years a circle starts, look toward the future is it dark? Clap your hands is it still dark?

If I had a telescope, in that saw real time, I would train it skyward and look for the shine. I would send it forward through present gloom, 200 years beyond our ruin. What would I see, what would I know? Would we be mortal, or demons without a soul? Would we still dance, or move around, would we have ego’s or would we be a part of a collective sound? For the want of an answer then I pray, for the need of a vision I turn my back on this day. For an open conversation I kneel and I say “YOU are my G_D”. For an open conversation I kneel and I say “YOU are my G_D”.

200 years of going before the storm, finding you in lightning in a different form. Finding you in weakness when I cannot see there you are in all that I believe. Night birds calling before the end of time, plague and persecution from what we thought was kind. Not an ideology or personal belief there you are. Going forward now from way back then. 200 years backwards and 200 till then, you are light eternal, the better of sin, you are every praise. Now oh Judea before what rides, a strain of white lightning across the Galilee sky. G_D of all your mercy before you I rise in every praise.

200 years of what we are. Bowing in our terror of what we see afar, every cloud, every thought, every praise. Oh, my creator of thought and psalm, oh my creator of thought and dream, bring me to you where I can see. Where I can see. Every praise of thought from inside of me, past present future to the ides that be. 200 years that goes beyond me, let light be. Every revolution before the dawn, sing hallelujah our inward song, oh my little children that our yet to be. Sing every praise. Sing every praise.

(Every Praise)

“I said it in the darkness, as the change flew under head. G_D is not changing, and neither is he dead.” – 08.17.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

When on Red Mountain

/ Daniel Swearingen / 67 Comments


“And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Adonai-nissi.”-Exodus 17:15

Northern Colorado some twelve miles North of Fort Collins.

It was a natural altar, alluring in the July sun. Red and jagged against the blazing sky. A normal place to celebrate both life and grief. Mortality and immortality. A place to call the lightning, and watch her come.

O’ great lord of Red Mountain, I need a new perspective that is very clear, need your veins of metal and granite to breathe heavy in my ears. I need you to lift me higher, bend my back into the sky, let me feel the heat of summer, release the challenges of July.

I send a storm unto your heaven; your heaven sends the storm to me. Everywhere I feel dry lightning, grabbing inwardly. Whip lashing me. G_D you are the chair of energy creator of twisted me. One that is made of angry illusion, one built on quiet complexity. You have asked me to the mountain, now burn your inward soul in me. Let me not succumb here earthbound, like a wailing, shrieking need. O’ grandeur of this arid edifice that rises up to me. Let not scorpion and rattlesnake reside beneath my feet. For I am one with wind and place that taunts eternity. Do not I pray let me slip beneath this sandy sea.

O prayer that rides the summer skies beneath a sun drenched leak, a boomerang of sounds and syllables a want, a need, a creed. I strode this path to someone’s calling, was it you or a mental disease. To feel the touch of this “Red Mountain” when I cry “Adonai Nissi” When I cry “Adonai Nissi”.

O’ draught that is unquenchable here on your immortal brief, that I would always own this moment, and not its grief. That I would see you counting my compassions one by extra one. Touching my body with your kisses, under this “Red Mountain’s’ July sun, and its third week black moon, on once the night begun. O’ terror may you find me not bedeviled by this form, the one created here on creation the one that is often torn. For it is frame of just reflection, that you stilled in me. That you stilled in me.

O’ great lord of Red Mountain, I need a new perspective that is very clear, need your veins of metal and granite to breathe heavy in my ears. I need you to lift me higher, bend my back into the sky, let me feel the heat of summer, release the challenges of July. – 07.13.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

SI (Act 1)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 86 Comments


“Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow.”- William Shakespeare

And brevity takes me flying, in everything I am not, a second in a lifetime that for SI was not I brought. Oh Lord have you not formed me like the eagle and the hawk, forever in this instant am I not. Forever in this instant am I not.

I found I was only a measurement of time, a sand in G_D’s eye, numbered by moments and found wanting. I died and rose again at the start of each day. Day after day, while the angels watched within my dreams, and begged to know if they could play. “While you are human, they whispered, let us play”. Undefined I flew across a lifetime age to age. Grace to grace, atom and nucleus, a speck in the seconds of the space age. A second or two of breath so high and then I was gray. And I said, “Oh G_D unto you I give all these days, a brilliance of light these instances, in which I am a flight of wind that mocks kings. Eyes and wings and blood finally dust in all things. For I am forgotten, I am remembered, salvation and iniquity, a human immortal born in my sin to finally rest in the exhalation of G_D’s sigh.

For in the second, the last breath, the instance when I am naked no longer shy. The SI, the doorway open from death to freedom before the wide open sky. I will praise G_D for the instance of quantum instances of assurance in my previous life, that let me know that I was SI, always an instant breathing, always SI. Your instance, your energy, a sum of answers why.

When I kissed, and kissed, my tongue wet against my lover, with her wide-open eyes.

An instance of a second as my two baby’s cry and cry.

A boy, a spirit, down on shaky knees, crying before a cross that is thirsty to give me needs.

A young man, an old man, both seeking to understand their greed, a moment in loneliness when a great eagle comes to feed.

Life in high country where no one but G_D knows my needs.

Oh, SI you are an action, an art of life and breath. That brings us from our screaming self, to a death upon our beds. A warrior’s sword in violence, a writer’s pen in peace. In the moment I have always known you, a lover in my psalm. A generator of spirit that cannot wait until I am done. You love me in a second, and then my breath is one. Only one and then my life is done.

And brevity takes me flying, in everything I am not, a second in a lifetime that for SI was not I brought. Oh Lord have you not formed me like the eagle and the hawk, forever in this instant am I not. Forever in this instant am I not. – 05.21.2020 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

 

 

 

 

Lake (His Anecdote)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 104 Comments


He sees at times that G_D comes down by the lake, dressed in a refinement that makes it easy to see that he is she. And it seems she wants to comb his brown hair with her fingers, wetted by the waters below.

Her cold air comes from a sweet mouth, a hallucinatory word of a devious faire. Spoken by a thin light of possible imagination, he’s never certain if she’s real, or a picture born in defense from his mind’s own devious lair. Is it true she tells him of her lovers, is it right she tells him how she really wants to care? “Meet me by the lake”, she whispers in the darkness, we can enter the blackness where no one really cares. Her picture becomes one of animation, one a Psychiatrist can say is never there, but still as the days turn their light into dark shadows. What once was neverland has eyes that really stare. For he knows she wishes him her secrets, the ones that dance where no one cares. The magic to walk upon the moonlit water, whose to say what afterlife is there.

The night songs come as much more frequent, framed within her blackened flowing hair. Words and gilded eyes that appear now much too frequent, no longer a doubt of if she’s with him there or just a faded belief. “Trust is a neurological vessel”, she whispers as she sails upon his nighttime seas, “and when the time is right, I will take you home. To far beneath that lake with me.”

And the pictures of his mind pass by all description of what analysis would seek to tell. An ancient witch of water coming forth in spell, or a broken right hemisphere, in diagnostic tales. A question or a myth in a modern world, a place of science or a supernatural scale. For what does he see, beckoning him by the lakeside. Is she a delusion or an interstellar bell? Ringing in his mind of the season, syllables and signs and beckoning tales. Oh, her perfect arms that reach to take him, from a mad world to the lake, her wishing well.

For a moment he sees himself, floundering in cold lake water, drowning in an indescribable sad dream. What a bad drama, or a lie of a story it would be if all he had seen, was not what he had deemed. But then a story is never just a story, a fable has a truth that’s really gleaned. She pulls him up, just when he is able to live his dream. She pulls him up, just when he is stable to live his dream.

He sees at times that G_D comes down by the lake, dressed in a refinement that makes it easy to see that he is she. And it seems she wants to comb his brown hair with her fingers, wetted by the waters below. – 03.11.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל

She and Ordinary Men

/ Daniel Swearingen / 2 Comments


“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.” – Nelson Mandela

The angel came…

The homeless guy had a slight English accent, maybe from Worcester I’m not really certain though. He had been drinking for three days straight he said, still his accent was fairly firm, and his thoughts spoken plain. “I saw an angel of the Lord“, he said. “He looked right through me and said he was interested in ordinary men”. “The angel told me great things come from ordinary men”, he said. When he said that, I noticed his eyes lost color. Watered down almost. Supernatural almost, and yet quite ordinary. In that moment I wished to be the most ordinary, the most common, for there was the heat. There was G_D

The angel came…

Saw a boy through a thin glass, saw a boy dancing near Tupelo, saw a bright spot, a big bird sailing high above. In the indigo sang a child, under the moon, dancing near the moss oak that holds the old coon. The questions came as questions can. Is he a shimmer in the dark, is he a twist that makes you want to twist too? Possessed by thoughts of what he can’t say. Does he sing to the stars, does he move in you, is he chosen by all sides? Is he fame, or is he shy just lost now as a typical man? For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came…

Saw a stutterer, a man who needed tamed, saw him leaving through puzzles in the dark, lost inside, for want of purpose, lacking spark. And a big bird flying high, to a burning bush, a symbol, that can haunt you. Words in syllables and flames, G_D of shadows, fire and rain. G_D who chooses losers known by any other name. Is he fame or trying to hide, gone tomorrow, here today, archetypal by test of man? Commandments given; nothing hides. For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came…

Saw an answer in a dream, walking deserts, moving through streams. Moved through time, watched my children born, what does it mean. Watched a big bird flying close to me, and wondered why. In the open, under star lit sky’s, followed by the G_D of need, seeking answers in what I see. I ask above, I ask again, let me go for nothing ends. Still she sends the bird of prey, holding me until it’s day. Then I understand the art, understand from where I start. For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came… – 02.21.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל

Beneath the Leaves (Ever Dream)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 90 Comments


“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” – Arthur Conan Doyle

“Would you do it with me”*, lift the wood that brings mystery; fall forever with me, through the portal where phantoms scribe magic free. Feel your breath leaving air, your body writhing in an orgasmic sea. Trace the hand that you see, draw its lines around your heart comfortably. Be damned to be, would you ever dream with me? Beneath the leaves.

My Dad used to say that what comes before us has always been behind us, and that which places itself at our side has always been around us. My Dad used to say that gates that swing inwards are willing to be pushed outwards, and all doorways into heaven, were beneath the leaves, when we went to an ever dream. My Dad used to say…

We discover the door near the river. It is 0.3 miles past the Fruitland Trading Post, pretty much where “Brigham Young Jr’s” House would have been. We sweep away the dead leaves that hide the door in the ground. Their wrinkled husk make a scratching sound as we sweep them from the dark rotting wood of the door to the surrounding dead grass. “Shouldn’t be leaves here”, Jason say’s. “Yep, yep”, I say, “Shouldn’t be leaves here”. “Not a tree in sight”, Jason says, a hint of a grimace on his face. “Nope”, I agree, a little vexed myself not a tree in sight. “No way to get this thing open that I can see”, I say to Jason a little relief in the tone of my voice. The truth is, sundown is near, and there is a chill in the air, that fits right well with the nip that is beginning to well up and down my backbone. “I think we owe it to ourselves to try and get it open”, Jason says. “There might be money or something valuable under there”, he says. “There might be something”, I agree…

My Dad used to say that the mystery in life is life itself, and that which is a pattern leads not to G_D but leads to mediocrity. My Dad used to say, that which leads the head must lie beneath, that which is deep. That which calls unto deep. My Dad used to say would you go with me, go beneath the leaves after an ever dream. My Dad used to say…

We brace our cold knuckles against the grain of the heavy wood, the splinters digging deep into our fingers. We kneel opposite of each other. Jason to the top of the door, I to the bottom. From the heavens, we no doubt look like cherubim’s our small frames bent in labor, looking for the covenant. Fulfilling the covenant. The evening shadows move over us quickly enveloping our effort. “I think its moving”, Jason says, his breathing heavy with exertion. “Yep, yep, I say, trying to concentrate on our effort, my fear of the unknown replaced suddenly by the thrill of adventure, for the door is opening. The door is opening. The door is opening.

My Dad used to say, that there is nothing unseen, that has not been seen by someone, yet those who say they see do not, and those who say nothing, see. My Dad used to say, all doorways into heaven were beneath the leaves, when we went after an ever dream. My Dad used to say…

Authors Note: The two boys were real, the leaves over the door were real. The door in the ground was real. The opening of the door was real. What was discovered was real as well. It was all as my Dad used to say… 11.06.2019 – דָּנִיֵּאל

* Would you do it with me – Nightwish

World on Fire (Lost Boys)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 80 Comments

“We part the veil on a killing sun. Stray from the straight line on this short run. The more we take, the less we become.” – Sarah McLachlan & Pierre Marchand

For I knew in this world of fire it was my destiny……Still the “world was on fire and it was more than I could handle.” *

The phantoms accompanied me through the real forest to the line of demarcation, that which divides the body from the craving. They were muses, if not daemons, and at times they settled upon my skin as if to travel there.  They thought my soul a rest from the long smoke-filled pathway. We walked on to find the shroud. That veil which separates life from the world on fire, and hurls the soul into the blue forest. They whispered that they had been “Lost Boys” too. Unbound in other creations, their worlds scorched by the burdens of fallen men. So, I listened to them, as we passed by the seared headstones near the trail. Those graves of grandfathers, and pioneers, missionaries filled with evil and good will alike. Males of authority, bastards without a story of where or when. Rich and poor men. Those men known to a world on fire, without their boyhood name. Cut in two by lack of identity. A timidity of soul before the vale. Afraid to jump, or believe, and I walked hurriedly by, for I did not wish to know them, or be as them.

The apparitions with me, poked me with memories, as I stumbled through the ash filled undergrowth, reminding me that the delineation boundary was hidden at times, as if G_D wears a mask. I felt myself humbled, bruised, and I did not wish to be hurt or lost anymore. I quickened my pace, as if in doing so I might eliminate those questions that look for hidden responses, when the answers reside in the question itself. As the burning trees consumed the oxygen around me, and in a state of desperation I begged the specters which gave me haunt to know their names. I wished to know them, and with that acquaintance, I alluded myself to think that there was magic. A quickened as it might be. A mirror with a reflection to know whom I was supposed to be. It was then that I stumbled upon an uplifted root and found myself falling. And, as I fell, I heard ten thousand whispers repeating, “We are Legion“, and I knew they did not know their names, as I did not know mine. For I had become them.

I was dropping, falling as the morning star. A burning orb within me, plummeting within and without the world on fire. Plunging as David after the fall. Moving through lives and beyond burning shadows. Failed dreams, and an eternity of futile desire for knowing not my name, or what it meant. For the world was on fire, and every something appeared in a negative sum. A dwindling cool spot under an uncontrollable flame. A crisis that goes without repent. For the night had become the day, and the day the night.

……And I cried out to G_D to judge me, to know me as I am, to amplify my reasons for living under the calmness of her hand. To kiss me, to fill my soul and feel my face. To become me. To believe in me, as I bless the treasure, the mystery that is his hand. To be like Moses, and know it face to face. To be it face to face. For I knew in this world of fire it was my destiny, to be one with the sum.

……And above me was the sound of pleasure, the movement of airborne wings, and what was separated from me, was in me once more. Kissing me in shadows, knowing me in light. For it was eternity beyond the curtain, and I was a child unbroken. I was in the calling, summoned out of a world on fire. I was a man. I was a man. – 10.15.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל

* World on Fire lyrics – Sarah McLachlan & Pierre Marchand

Cellar Door

/ Daniel Swearingen / 81 Comments


Cellar door, are you open to find me, Iron ore shields remorse.
When I look, I look to your beautiful name. – Skylar Grey

Said by my Pappy,

“Be you curious without expectation, be you thrilled to be alive, explore the thin veil of the spirit, not the dry bones where they have died. Take your many steps through a tunnel, to see the other side. Know that every dark dream has an ending that ends in the sweet by and by.”

Said by my Pappy,

“Be you not afraid of cellar doors, or what the traits they hide. Many a good man has found that door protection from the tornadoes outside. Be you not of single mindedness of any issue in your life; remember every problem known to us has always had two sides. Be you not for revolutionaries, the one who rebels against the tide. Know that every rebel of the soul is a tyrant who rules his heart with pride.”

Said by my Pappy,

As he led me through a dreamscape world, my fever roaring inside. His large hands moving as he walked down the concrete steps to a cellar door with words inscribed. How I wished I could move closer, how I wished for better light, but alas this dream led mystery, without a clue or special rite. I knew right then that every virus; every blight I knew inside could stand to show me something, even in my darkest night.

Said by my Pappy,

“Be you quicker than your adversary, that devil that comes in light; know that he is part of a commandment to judge you when the day is night. Be you an ever witness to the shadows, the tricks of light, know that Mephistopheles is your left fists action while the good Lord form’s your right. In truth, there are many questions that go beyond this door. Do your best to obtain no answers until you know what the questions are for.”

Said by my Pappy,

As he turned and bent a little bit, his overalls so blue and wide, I thought him but dead just a while ago, but here he seems so much alive. In a dream that held too much fever, at least I could see inside, but still I could not read the inscription on the cellar door, standing before my pappy’s side.

I was nineteen, when I first dreamed of Pappy and the cellar door. Through the years, I have had the same dream many times. The symbols, philosophy and spiritual mysticism and eschatological character of the dream, have never been meaningful to me. To know what is beyond the iron ore door is not necessary to me. However, there is an ever-burning desire to know what is inscribed upon that cellar door. – 06.07.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל

 

White Sands

/ Daniel Swearingen / 81 Comments


“The wind it paints your face, as it stirs the shifting sand. Nightmare creatures closing in, they leave at your command. Fading lady light, always here with me, singing your song in the wind at night.” – Jeannette Sears

She is a faded lady in the arid early morning, a patch of dream torn from its unconscious birth, a soft passionate cry in the gypsum sand, where ghost lay their hands upon me and breathe light.

It was in April, that much I remember, well a quarter moon too, there is a memory of that. Perhaps the more I think about it, the more that appears. Those cascading fragments of thought, that drift at first unpieced. Those parts like a jigsaw puzzle, that flow afraid to touch, until the hippocampus is stretching at its very seams, and much like some messiah on a cross you cry out, “Take this cup”. And then it happens from various places in the cortex, a wholeness begins, a picture, a sound, smells and then a story. A beautiful story filled with “white Sands“.

The sands hold a picture that is still hard to find, of something that found me on once upon a time. To see it all now comes to me fleetingly. Perhaps a soft breath that touches my teeth. A buried illusion that comes as a tease. A finger down my spine, when there is no one but me. A vision of eyes turned to stars in a sea, a coven of seven dipping to sweep. The dunes of infinity revealing the keys. Oh, Megrez and Mizar they sing a chorus at first louder, than so silently. The place of death angels, atomic degrees. Whispers by slumber the puzzle recedes. A swath of her garment, as she passes by me, her home in this desert a white sand filled sea. What account can be printed until I finally believe. Memory my memory, come to serve me. Memory my memory, come to serve me.

The questions I have asked, that still haunt my belief. When I took a journey of solace in spring. Slept upon White Sands, under a breeze. Saw shadows and graces that circled beneath, the light of the heavens, the chill of the night. The cosmos of magic, that changed me somehow, made me different under odd lights. For if I could take a minute, relive a single breath. I would be in April my body laying helpless on White Sands. Under heavens probing stare.

Perhaps in this nighttime, as I lie on my bed, hearing my thoughts of distant memories unsaid. The puzzle will gather, and pour through a glass. The memoirs of mystery, a swirling soft quest. That led me to sit up that night on the sand, and welcome the spirits of light to come in. To welcome the spirits of light to come in.

She is a faded lady in the arid early morning, a patch of dream torn from its unconscious birth, a soft passionate cry in the gypsum sand, where ghost lay their hands upon me and breathe light. – 04.11.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל

 

In the Library

/ Daniel Swearingen / 72 Comments


“Oh, my G_D how profound are these mysteries!” – John Dee

Kelley holds the shew-stone with the mist forming fast. The white vapors shoot upwards around the volumes on upper shelves and form a circle as if to task. The days are still some colder but the winter will not always last, voices moving in their language, numbers show me, show me, something past.

For what is the speech of angels?

I set upon a voyage in a hinterland of sleep, a cauldron of air so cold at first, I thought I would freeze. A self-taught journey from places of the deep, to find the ever after answer in the library of John Dee. Symbols all around me some painted legend in the sky, a coat of many colors as millennium flew by. The whispers of the angels said they were drawing nigh, and then my soul dropped from the star filled sky. Like the star, not yet of morning, summoned to a rite of old, my bare feet feel so frozen in the library I well know. It is about the phantoms, and it is about the truth, the long search of the symbols to find if what angels speak is truth. Moreover, in it all, yes in it all I am speechless.

For here among this sceptered place, with pages from strange worlds, candles burn until morning light, all time has come unfurled. The figures of the two men turn as if to see, but then I see them looking upwards, they do not see me. The coven of the angels falls without light or human sound, they whisper in the shadows who is willing, to stand higher ground. Their bodies are like different lights, some common, some spark with sound. It could be some are seraphim, some light daemons who have come unbound. Moreover, in it all, yes in it all I am speechless.

I stood so indecisively, surveying an unreal play. The ghost of Dee and Kelley asked their questions from a book displayed. An esoteric experiment, to know the power of G_D, to wonder at the wisdom, imparted in what they caught. The scene of simple symbols invoking that realm in which the angels play, to not know that they had reached any reason, only the gray at the end of the day. Moreover, in it all, yes in it all I am speechless.

So, this is a little something that happens now and then, I disappear in airs of thought to a library where time stands still. I ask the light around me what is that of shapes and wills, and still I have no answer, and perhaps I never will. Moreover, in it all, yes in it all I am speechless.

For what is the speech of angels? – 01.30.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל