King of the Strung-Out Soldiers in the Night

YES

I am the king
of the strung-out soldiers
in the night
for I am the most
strung-out of them all


What saves me
is that I’m a Poet

establishing reality.

That poem was written after the fall, from within the abyss. Imagine a saint who had fellowshipped with the Lord Jesus in glory (in spirit, by faith), now thinking himself bereft of His life and Spirit and become vampiric in nature, one of the living dead who walks without God, of the lineage of zombies. A faulty faith begets a faulty life.

As one can see in the story, “HORROR ON APOKALYPSE FIELD,” there is indeed such a realm where zombie and vampire walk, but for a saint to be so deceived as to think himself thus is horror multiplied. In these days, desperate not to lose touch with my awareness fully awake, I resorted to the old sorceries of my past, acid and grass, and a new one, angel dust.

With Teresa, upon first writing to her, my poems and letters bringing into realization the state of my heart, I first became aware of my utterly hollow core; worse than hollow, a hungry vacuum, the ravening desire for the life-blood of the living, not the blood itself, but that to which it gives life, the soul. Not the soul per se, but the love of it, thence the life of it, for love is the heart of a life. It was her love I craved, but for an utterly hollow creature with absolutely nothing to give — thus no reciprocity at all — this is the essence of vampirism in the spiritual realm, and upon the earth as well. That is what the vampire in the real world craves, and that what the werewolf ravages in his raging assaults. To drain or otherwise despoil the life of the soul. Concerning modern love, one may not properly call it love, not when there is no chance of true reciprocity. So you see, were all the illusory and delusional aspects of modern “love” stripped away, vampirism is not so uncommon at all!

One time while high on grass, and writing a poem where these things came to the surface of my awareness, I wrote, “O zombie I!”, and the horror of it so overwhelmed me I….not fainted, but passed into “bummed-out” unconsciousness, so terrible was the knowledge of what I now was.

When writing the poem, “A GRADE ‘B’ HORROR VISION”, this represented a further development in the awareness of my state. I realized that the quality — the nature — of my voice was such I had withal to lift my song on the world stage, but what manner of song could such a monster sing? The strange thing about poets — those in whom the art is woven into their breath — is that they must sing, as we learned and took heart concerning from Arthur Rimbaud. Le courage d’être. The courage to be.

What if Dostoevsky
were a poet
after acid
in this day

what if Rimbaud
were alive today
in children of integrity
come what may

what if
Dylan
had a brother
who now took his stand


Un Poète terrible

So, in “A GRADE ‘B’ HORROR VISION” I lifted my voice as a poet of the human condition. What? Do you think I was writing simply of a sheer and peculiar madness of my own? I tell you (if you are yet blind to what is called “the doctrine of human depravity”) this is the human condition in those who walk not with God; they are the living dead now, and will be forever save they turn to Him for mercy unto life.

Because this is not widely spoken of does it mean this is not true? The Bible says it clearly enough: “Dead in trespasses and sins,” and “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 2:1; 5:14). “He that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). It is the custom of civil discourse, and the unspoken social contract, of those who live “in the region and shadow of death” (Matthew 4:16), not to make mention of this consequence of alienation from God. It is a very law of society to keep one’s mouth shut about such things, for to speak of them breaks the spell of false well-being and hinders one’s savoring the pleasures of flesh and mind.

Anyway, this zombie poet spoke up, even though he was alone. Seeing as he was the premier poet (first among no others!) of the walking dead and damned, the only one to speak (“Better terrible truth,” he said, “than none at all, or the usual hype and jive”), all others asleep in their dreams, he seized the laurel and in a fever of vision and self-loathing, called himself “king of the Zombies,” true poet of the damned. And yet, as that poem shows, there was a hope yet alive of redemption, of salvation from this most awful state of being.

A dubious honor, is it not, such a title? Not such as one would care to announce in polite company, nor any company at all, save when recounting visionary adventures among the damned and the blessed, in the realms of the spirit-world.

Am I mad
I better read
my poems
to see if I can tell

often I pondered
what madness might be

Solomon pondered it

mine heart is utterly alive

naked bare Destiny a flashing sword

O heart this is madness divine

He would not forsake you
not psalmist no

of these o beauties
terror living dying
love

Imagine having this consciousness while on grass, or worse yet, acid? And worse even yet, PCP, the notorious angel dust? Little wonder I secluded myself from most all, save my poor little daughter, and those somewhat superficial relationships at work. I was a horror unto myself, reckoning myself akin to the dread Gorgon, Medusa in whose eyes to look was to be turned to stone, this figurative of the profoundly deadening touch of one whose spirit dwelt among the dead and damned. I shunned all social intercourse. On those occasions I sought the spiritual help of older Christians in the various churches I visited (and I visited many), I think I frightened people. I remember one time after a meeting I told a leader of my struggles and failures in spirit (sparing them the deep inner knowledge I talk of here, for who could bear that?), and they looked upon me with horror in their eyes, as though I were already one of the damned, whom they had the dire misfortune to meet! Such encounters tended to extinguish my behavior of seeking help in the churches!

Yet the love of Teresa did indeed quicken me (this story told in the short piece, “A Great and Terrible Love”) even in these depths, and I now had withal to continue my odyssey in the Abyss.

After many years (riddled with repeated attempts to return to the Savior) God had mercy on this burning wretch of a poet, and lifted him into the life of His Son, granting him the understanding of how to walk consistently, which amazingly he was able to do. As told in the story, “Stripped of the Gift of Poetry,” he had lost the ability to write, and this, he discerned, by divine fiat. It was a great relief, in some respects! But now, he realized, upon his return into the presence of the King and His glory it was his again. It had only been the divine life within that was wanting. Only He could re-integrate the poet's broken soul.

He had come from the regions of the damned, survived the howling wastes, the pool of terrors where one becomes the various horrors of legend and myth, and come back into the world of the living. For a good while he did not write anything. He looked at the dark laurelled crown he’d worn as a badge of his madness in Hell, and it had been transformed into a wreath shimmering with glory. He himself had been changed from the representative voice of the damned into….what? Still poet of the human condition — his condition — he had been changed. The human condition he now knew was of the blessed eternally, humanity indwelt by the Spirit of God, not yet glorified as was the Forerunner of the new human race, but filled with the Spirit of glory nonetheless, even while only “an earthen vessel” containing this treasure. He was now one of the archetypal new humans, and he sang a new song.

He pondered again the strange quality of his voice, able to lift as a poet the way prophets of old lifted to the nation. The issue of identity for the children of God is not easy for them, they are so used to mistaking littleness for humility, finding safety from megalomania in micromania! It remains that we are a nation of kings and priests, queens and priestesses, though we mostly live like oblivious serfs! Which ought not be. Still, I will be to my King that which He has made me, and I will sing as He has given me voice and vision.

DECLARING THE VISION

Where there is no vision the people perish.

—Solomon

Because I am silenced from the place of open utterance
by opposition and unyielding circumstance, my voice walled in
by forces of him who cast Death-Spell in the deeps
of being, in whose thrall the world lurches and reels....

Because I see my brothers and sisters planet-wide
go the fatal way of the world unaware and unwarned
by any credible witness and kin of spirit,
the roar of whirlpool Thanatos in the subtle sphere unheard....

I lay hand on that great Blade reposing in the heart
of Zion's mystic Stone, Lightning Sword of the poet-king and seer,
to build in the heartlands a realm of vision
and vital force, a place from which the spell of death is cleared.

I break Death-Spell for all who draw near this art,
this pure, last, great weapon of the heart,
and I know the wave of Destiny I ride
will scatter the potent words of these poems far and wide.

This speech issues from the halls of Beth-Or
— in ancient Hebrew, House of Light — fierce citadel
withstanding both flesh and subtle-sphere legions of the Dark Lord,
spirit-refuge of pilgrims who wander globe wonderland made hell.

Who wields like sword and who abides in the house
must have clean hands and a pure heart according to the word
not of this world, spoken by Him whose blood cleansed the world.
Those without, death’s bright fools, hate that wise mouth.

It would seem that all the world would flock to this rare door
esteeming the dear price of entrance nothing for love
of them within — especially Him who dies no more
having died as our ransom once, then mightily rose above

the Dark Lord’s ceiling of death, scattering the strong guard
which panicked and fled at His might — but strangely they rather
mock this pure champion than love Him, their hearts hard
to follow the glitter without the house, lure of death-father.

This is the vision, the house, and Him whose life lights it
into eternity, past the resurrection of all bodies,
and the two destinies: the House of Light, and its counterfeit,
whose death-door leads to terror lake, dump of follies.

This is the vision, that one chooses one’s destination
according to the sight and the love given one’s heart:
to abide under Death-Spell, with this world’s decaying rations
one’s fleeting joy, or seek the light breaking in this art.

In the song, “Chimes of Freedom,” Bob Dylan had these words, his flashin’ chimes

strikin’ for the gentle, strikin’ for the kind,
strikin’ for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
and the poet, and the painter far behind his rightful time…

Those who know him realize the title of this story is taken from his song. May he take those words about the poet back, for you do indeed now gaze upon chimes of freedom flashin’!

HORROR ON APOKALYPSE FIELD

The Goddess and the Monster

The Goddess stood before him, the archetypal monster with his muscle and steel and weapons of death, his lusts and endless cravings gleaming cruelly in his eyes, and she said to him, “You have ruined the earth, you and your brood; and you have enslaved us long enough by your force! With your wars you have slaughtered my children, the earth red – with blood – instead of their precious flushing cheeks! Now is the time of your reckoning, for my power is in spirit and in the energy of soul which lights my flesh, and although you have your steel and fists and toys of death, I have the power of love – which you are unworthy of! – and the power of the earth, our great mother, and I will now rule by that which I have, and am, and you will not stand before me! Thus says the Goddess, nemesis of men!” And with the sword of her spirit she smote him to the quick, and turned away. He crawled into the bushes outside the Gates of Eden in the fiery night on Apokalypse Field, on the charred and cindery globe of the planet.

Eve did not say this to Adam, but one of her daughters did to one of his sons, a generation to a generation. He had been speaking his stuff and doing his deeds for millennia, and her time was now come. What Eve said was too deep for words, but she had her own voice, and it was cut off from his in its source. That was the beginning, and this is the end.

This monster was the true and archetypal monster – no matter he had a wondrous skin-covering – whose shadowy presence illumined the horror genres of world fiction and myth; this was the zombie, the living dead. He had a mate in ancient times, a female monster, also a zombie. In an unremembered past these two had fallen prey to the dread sting of death, and became what they were. They knew themselves, but could not bear to keep in mind the reality of what had happened, and a blindness arose in them, a blindness maintained partly in the raptures of their awful needs finding momentary respite in each other, and partly from the power of the death-spell that was upon them.

After age upon age of endless oppression and savagery by him, in the latter days of their time on the earth, she transformed herself by the power of archetypal fury, and his empty, dissipated heart could not stand before her; he and his brood crawled away, utterly wounded, and she clove to her sisters. Although undone, his violence and savagery increased; lurching and reeling in the thrall of unshakeable death-spell, he would bring them both to the dust, Goddess and monster alike.

Their world was filled with monsters – no matter their glorious garb – and vampire and werewolf both came from the seed of the archetypal zombies (see how some drain the vitality utterly out of their fellows? and others, raging mighty ones, see how they gnaw on the spiritual faces and hearts of their victims?). Things were not as they appeared to the outward eye. Even the Goddess was but death warmed over by subtle fury and wondrous illusion. He was bereft of such inward power, and although he sought to deceive her by taking into himself demons who gave off the semblance of spiritual nobility and light, she knew better. The one were twain, never again to meet.

Her cup of suffering and wrath filled to overflowing, the female – the “Goddess” – finally turned from his need and coupled with her sisters, leaving him without comfort in the abyss of horrors. Those of her brood who still coupled with the males lost their sense of ancient loyalty that had been their mutual comfort, and the females went from one male to another as they pleased, and as they tired of the pain – the ancient alienation and discord and oppression – many males afflicted them with. The image of the female monster who utterly turned from the males and coupled with her own was the mightiest and purest of the female’s images (its seeming beauty was wondrous to behold), and was truest to the unalloyed nature of the female monster, and its presence touched all females, even those who still used males. The females increased in strength, and the males diminished. More and more the males were used for pleasure, or for babies, and then discarded; to fill needs, and then replaced. Thus was the male monster wounded without remedy, and his violence increased with his pain.


Archetypal New Beings

In the midst of the violence and pain of this world of monsters a race of archetypal new men and women arose, although it was hard to tell by sight alone who they were, as they all had the same wondrous skin-coverings. There were many monsters who entertained the delusion they were not monsters, and sought to act so. Others were obviously monstrous.

The origin of the new race of beings was remarkable. They came, as all did, from the line of the zombies, but had found access to a dimension that cancelled most of the force of death-spell, and it was through a Wounding – the Second Wounding – that they entered this realm. And they spoke of a time when death-spell would be completely undone.

The Third Wounding was that which the Goddess gave the male monster, and it wreaked further havoc on the earth. The First Wounding was the sting of death, which made the zombies what they were. Before this death-spell came upon them they were glorious creatures, light streaming from their depths to illumine all their being, and there was no death in them. They were equals, male and female. Ancient records spoke of these things, although no one remembered. And these records had also told – but only in seed form – that one would come from the light and bring them life again; thus in some of the monster race a spark of longing and hope was not utterly extinguished! Even before the Second Wounding some were given to see it coming – in vision – and trust in it and so enter the dimension of life.

The new beings who arose out of the lineage of monstrosities and inwardly lived in the new dimension banded together. They learned to rid themselves of the ways of both male and female monsters – as grotesque infections lingering in their souls – yet it was hard sometimes to put off the old patterns completely. They learned to be patient – as well as forgiving – with each other, and for the first time since the far distant beginning males and females danced in harmony instead of battle. These archetypal men and women stood together in unique peace and joy – a peculiarity of the dimension they walked in – as the storms unleashed by the monsters and their demons destroyed the earth.

This Second Wounding happened millennia after the first. The father of the original beings of light, although he did not live on the planet, was deeply grieved by the plight of his children, and devised a plan whereby he could alter the course of their horrific destiny (which was to join their captor – the cosmic prince of demons – in his eternal lair of agony, he now being their ontologic father and possessor). The father of light knew how to secure a brazen and terrible escape, for he loved his children even though they had become monsters, and were now possessed of an evil nature. His heart wept for them!


The Second Wounding

Before the world began, the father of light and those two others who comprised with him the Council of Light decreed a plan whereby many in the foreseen lost race would be rescued, both from their captivity to the demon-prince and their grotesque and horrific condition of being. They agreed that the father’s son would go to the earth and be born into the cursed race, even taking on their flesh and nature, although at the same time he was not of them, but of the father’s light. In him alone on the earth would be the dimension into which the others could escape. He would become the elder brother of all those who entered into him, allowing them to become adopted sons and daughters of the father of light, no longer ravaging monsters. It was in the power of the Council to create this realm of existence within the word and being of the elder brother. But first he had to blaze the trail – a terrible trail it was! – into the very heart of death.

Into the madness and havoc of what was now called Demon-World he came, and, from the womb, took on a body like all the other captives, yet inside he was not like them at all. Disguised as a zombie he was a light-warrior, archetype of the new males and females, the gatherer-back-to-the-father of the lost ones. He thwarted every assault and wile of the demon-prince to pierce his heart with the sting of death. He triumphed over every demon who came his way.

The unspeakable wickedness of the monster race – zombie, vampire, and werewolf – had to be reckoned with: they all deserved to die and forever be with the demon-prince, so awful were the things they had done to one another, and in violation of the glory of the Council – which glory they lived in before the sting of death – but the Council knew how to solve this problem as well. The outraged Justice would be loosed upon the pure heart of the son of light. He, as their new king, would take their place. Their record would then be clean. The Council had the power and authority to do this thing, so that Justice would be satisfied, and mercy then shown to the depraved wretches.

The son who was not pierced by the sting of death, and did not deserve to die, died – under the fury of long-withheld Justice now unpent. He himself entered the door of death.

The Council accepted his taking the place of the monsters, and, as he had done no wrong himself, gave to him to be alive again in the same body he had on the earth, but now no longer subject to death as it once had been, but was glorious, filled with the light of the father, far more glorious than the first couple’s before they fell to the sting.

He stayed a while among the friends he had made, teaching them of the dimension that was being prepared for them, and directing them to continue his work after he left the world to go back to the Council, and to prepare a place for them there when their lives were done. And so he left, and his younger brothers and sisters continued his mission of rescue.

Entrance into the Dimension of Escape – as some called it – was given by the Council to those the father set his love upon, and it was simple. By the light in the son, or his light in those who continued his work, former monsters were made alive in the new dimension, and – astonished, broken in remorse, grateful for such undeserved mercy – joyously received the father’s provision and thenceforth lived in the Realm of light that was in the vast being of the son.

Entering into him was to be accompanied by a simple rite, going under the water, be it underneath completely or underneath it sprinkled or poured, and they called it “the seal”: it was the seal of union with the son, in his death and new life. It was an outward sign of what had inwardly taken place. When they entered into the dimension of the son they actually entered into his death (so great was the power of the Council it could create this reality), and their lives as monsters ended. But the son not only died; he was made to live again, and so all who entered him came to life again as new creatures – what wondrous alchemies of heart! They looked the same as the monsters on the planet – had the same skin-coverings – but within they lived another life, the life that was the very life of the father and son.

Yes, they still struggled against old patterns of wicked behavior and evil inclinations, but they struggled against them, as they were no longer monsters, no longer the living dead, but the living. And they were loved of the father, and he gave them many precious promises of the new kingdom he would establish with them on a renewed earth, where there would be no more monsters, no sting of death, and no demons.


Light in the Zombie World

The invasion of monster-world was accomplished, the power of death-spell broken, and the fountain of archetypal new life opened. Yet before the day of the new earth came, the family of light – as they liked to be called – lived among the monsters (those who died went to the realm where the Council was).

The monsters, female and male, raged against the archetypal new beings, for these latter exposed the zombie reality of the monsters’ lives, and this exposure the monsters would not tolerate. Yet the light-bearers brought many of them into the family, as it was given them of the father to love the light they saw in the new men and women. For many zombies suffered, and hungered for life. These came easily to the elder brother. One of the zombie poets, a seer of sorts, wrote about their state, such as:

A GRADE "B" HORROR VISION

the king of the Zombies
rising against the King of Hell's kings
with this speech

You walk the earth
so proud
of your plan

but we
the Vampire, Werewolf
& I
remember how once we were
Priests, & Joyous, & Alive
'fore you swooned us
'fore our wombs

may you wither
where you stand

for we have one Ace
wonder
left
up our ragged sleeves
agot to us
in the Darkness
by a stranger of Light

we have hid it
but it is handy


And then the vision ceased
progressing – seeming as if frozen still –
while light quietly invaded the darkness
below the radar of vision
destroying its strongholds in the hearts
of mighty captives, loosing warriors
for the coming Rebellion of Light.

This poet – who once had cried out in a poem before fainting in horror at the knowledge of himself, O zombie I! – wrote again:

I woke up in the twentieth century
still-born but for the Father’s love,
a Zombie under Death-Spell, and worse:
of the houses Vampire and Werewolf
was my lineage cursed.
Before I was wakened it was the sleep
of living death, of the unwitting damned
doomed to live out the nature of him
my foul father, caster of Death-Spell,
king of monster-world and hell.

But I was wakened
and given to enter a new realm
and a life of being alive
and to love and be loved!

And now I call upon the Council
I know has an ear to my cries
(though it be in a realm I cannot see yet
with these eyes):

Have mercy on the Vampire, O Father,
and on the Werewolf, and on their parents
the Zombie.
For some of them do not even know
what they are, and some know, but fear
they are doomed to their nature.

Grant them understanding, Father, to know
from whence they came, and whence they go
and the terrible remedy
for their cure,
indeed
the salvation
they do not believe can be theirs.

Have mercy on the monsters, O Father of light!
Save them from the devouring night.

Many monsters set themselves against the light-bearers. Those zombies who took demons into themselves to give off a semblance of the nobility and illumination of the light-bearers bitterly opposed those who showed the illusion of this. Many light-bearers were persecuted and died on their missions of love for the zombie race. But those of the light did not fear death, for they knew the time of their kingdom in their illumined glorious bodies – just like the elder brother’s – was close. The goddess and her spurned consort tore the world to shreds until the elder brother came back to end things, and make quick work of them. For the time of the unending adventure was at hand.


Dark Myths

Some artists among the monsters dreamed many interesting myths of the houses Vampire and Werewolf – and their ancestor the Zombie – but these fantasies darkened understanding, and many were tired of yet more fiction. Those denizens of the monster world were either left ignorant of their state, or – for those who were somewhat aware – there was no relief of their agony. As the zombie Poet used to say, “Better terrible truth than none at all, or the usual hype and jive.”

This poet-occultist who had formerly been titled “king of the Zombies” (more on that dubious title another time), and became an archetypal new being by entering the dimension of light opened in the Second Wounding, saw a movie of the Vampire and Werewolf clans called Underworld, and pondered how this mirage image over the heartlands distorted what was real.

The movie was well done, the storyline clever with even a dark romance, but the understanding of the states of being of the supposed “monsters” was fantastic to the point of nonsense. Attractive actors and high-tech action effects cannot make up for profound confusion.

To project out into fictional characters what properly belongs within the human heart is to disassociate us from the essential core of our being. In the “monster world” of “ordinary” humankind the union of vampire and werewolf is commonplace. Sometimes they coexist, and sometimes they destroy each other. There is no essential difference between the two houses, as they have the common zombie nature; their differences are in the more outward structure of their personalities and feeding styles.

What is attractive about the movie is the subject matter: at least it deals with real topics, although it “romanticizes” and obscures them. Perhaps the greatest horror of Monster World is the pretense we are not monsters, but happy human beings!

A Great and Terrible Love

As the story ended in “Conversion To Fall,” I found myself in a spiritual limbo of sorts, an eddy of delusion – deception, to be precise – which set me into a backwater pool away from the robust and clear stream of spiritual life flowing from the Throne throughout the kingdom. Having thoroughly devoured the unabridged edition of Jessie Penn-Lewis’ War On The Saints in search of insight into the demonic snare I suspected had taken me, I could not discern it and was still blind and bound, treading in a mill of continual sin, and getting worse. To live, I had to eat, but to eat was – seeing I believed I was commanded to fast – to walk in disobedience and self-will, cut off from the power, vitality and grace of the Lord’s heart, vulnerable to the powers and desires of the present world, having no heart to withstand them. I was as though transported to a weird wasteland in the spirit-world.

In retrospect I can see my plight: there was no proclamation of God’s provision for the likes of me – a refugee from the psychedelic occult, the devil having gained close access to my mind and spirit while in that realm – which marvelous provision I gladly avail myself of nowadays, and vigorously teach to all and sundry. For example, there is the energy that comes from having perfect spiritual rest, and the heart (courage, morale) that comes from being perfectly loved, the both of which together translate into Resurrection Power, which may be quiet and unassuming, yet is the vitality of God in lives and situations. If we as a spiritual community are secure in our Savior’s love and care, and are full of His Spirit as we increasingly know the depths and heights and breadths of His heart for us, we will have a strong and pure energy for activities that glorify Him and help our fellow humans. Such things are the nourishing fruit of sound doctrine and godly preaching.

But this was not what I knew. Instead of learning all that God had done for me, had actually provided to sustain and nurture me in the difficulties of new spiritual life and godliness, I was taught what I must do for God, to please Him, and to attain that degree of holiness that supposedly enables one to enter His presence. The key to this was self-effort and austerity. Add to this a serious deception (the compulsory fasting route), and you get profound spiritual failure.

Even when I wasn’t doing anything wrong – sinful – I reckoned myself (an otherwise good Biblical concept from Romans 6) to be in a state of sin / disobedience. So much depends upon what one believes to be true! And there I was.

After the breakdown when her mom died, Sue had taken off to Canada, whereabouts unknown, and I took (just turned) 3-year-old Nadine and moved to a small apartment on East 4th Street a little west of 1st Avenue, a fifth floor walk-up, 3 room railroad flat – bathtub in the kitchen – for around $80 a month.

I was driving a yellow cab at this point, and Nadine stayed with one or another church family we were close to while I drove the taxi three nights a week, 4 PM to around 4 AM. That was the money shift, without a lot of traffic jams, although there was more danger at night. The meter racks up money faster moving than sitting in traffic, and passengers are happier.

* * * * *

The fallen warrior-priest occultist-poet lived for a while in the limbo of spiritual isolation – utter ontologic aloneness – and his spirit was slowly suffocating. In these days he met a woman on the Lower East Side of Manhattan struggling to carry a table along the street to her apartment. It was the winter of early 1976; she looked Russian, her head wrapped in scarves like a babushka, her body covered in a heavy overcoat. He offered to help her, and from this encounter began the book this story is part of, A Great And Terrible Love.

It turned out she wasn’t Russian, but Mexican and English, evidently well-born, considering the way she carried herself, Teresa Mercedes, an artist in the modern dance. He mistook an unusually-placed Spanish punctuation mark in a note she wrote him to indicate a strong affection on her part toward him (it was not her intention, he learned later), but his passionate response kindled a fire in her, and they came together.

I knew a Spanish maid
hair most lovely dark
as a waterfall
of light

fierce black fire
of the Spanish maid

She was proud
and wild

and lay with
whom she loved

It was a strange alchemy of heart wrought by her entrance into his life; it effected a change that quickened him against the death slowly eating away his breath, a principle of life imparted to him: eros, the power in ontologic-erotic union, and she came to him,

a queen of terrible bearing
her breasts very banners
of loveliness

eyes like lightning
and her love as fierce
as Death.

He did not pull any punches revealing his heart to her. When he told her he was vampiric in spirit – for thus it is with those who fall from glory into the abyss – she said he was being “melodramatic,” but he had to declare his state truly or he could not be loved as he actually was. As he wrote he cried,

Oh how I fear to take pen in hand
not knowing if the drop of pure heart
it is dipped in
will burn as acid
our love

yet this is my life
or death

It was short-lived, his union with Teresa, but it opened a door for him – for his very spirit and life! – providing an escape from the onslaught of Thanatos devouring him within; a human does not fall from Heaven but is vulnerable to excruciating and multifarious death. He sensed their end coming. She had consulted the I Ching and told him she received these phrases: “an undertaking,” “abysmal waters,” and “tears of blood.” Caring nothing for that form of divination, he took the words and put them in a poem, which he gave her at what he told her would be their last time together:

THE UNDERTAKING

Into the abysmal
waters of death
she plunged,

strong-hearted in love
to pull from their midst
a sore-wounded man.

He called himself Jonah,
and she loved him dearly.
He healed at her touch.

But Jonah was a marked man
under the hand of his God,
and so heavy of heart

she cried out in pain
from his words,
and knew her undertaking

was nigh done:
from the waters she saved him
and gave him breath

from her own life.
Then a great storm arose
and he said, Save yourself,

cast me forth into the sea,
for I know that for my sake
this great tempest is upon you,

and you know how I have fled
from the presence of the LORD.
And with these words they wept

tears of blood.
And she cast him forth
into the storm.

* * *

How her Jonah fared,
and she herself,
is not yet written.

It is from this point that his odyssey proper began (and oddly – not being into numerology – ended seven years to the day in the last poem of A Fire In the Lake); an odyssey not only in the hearts of women, but in the world of letters, and in the world of spirits and occult practitioners.

A word about “the occult”: its root meaning is hidden (from view), concealed, covered over, coming from the Latin occulere; in medicine it is used as in the terms “occult blood in the stool,” or “occult carcinoma.” It is used here in a neutral sense, not specifically referring to demonic practitioners (as common usage does) unless so indicated. The prayers (and prayer warfare!) of a saint as well as the spells of a sorcerer are both in the realm of the occult – hidden from human eyes! – or so is the use of this word in these writings.

The title, A Great and Terrible Love Affair, first occurred to him in his days with Donna Lee, seeing the terrible (and yet wondrous) nature of their relationship, as well that with the Lord who bore with him – as with all His people – who loved so wretched a character with a steadfast and unfailing love! But this Lord was also a terrible Lover, for He was capable of severely wounding those He loved to get them back to Him and stay with Him, as the proverbial shepherd who breaks the leg of a young lamb prone to wander and keeps it in the tent to bond with him as he cares for it in its helplessness, that bond remaining strong even when the lamb is healed and grown! A great and terrible love on many levels, this living story!

It was strange how the great sin of taking Teresa as his paramour quickened him (please understand, this writing is not to justify anything evil that was done, but to tell of events, inward and outward). This “quickening” was not of that sort which tends to life, the true sense of life which results from union with the God of life, wherein we partake of the divine nature, and the life we then live in this world being a foretaste of eternal life; no, the life – the new vitalizing power – which came from erotic-ontologic union with Teresa gave him the energy and heart (as in the French, le courage) to begin an odyssey, even upon the heartlands floor of the howling Abyss. In this region the “ground” sometimes disappears and one finds oneself suspended in the netherworld with vast blackness overhead and seething unfathomable depths below. Years later, commenting on this phenomenon, the poet wrote,

For years I lived by the love of woman, and by that love was kept aloft over roaring whirlpool Thanatos of the subtle spheres. Eros triumphed over Thanatos (for a while), and although the telling of it was “pornographic,” it in itself was of redeeming value. If the will to live is to be valued over the will to die, that is. ….But Eros proved to be salvation with a small “s,” for the ways of earthly love are not stable.

In fact, our poet struggled greatly against the will to die. He was suffused by it before she came, cut off from any other ontologic connection – his daughter was precious to him, but this was not a union of beings, she not being an ontologic equal – and that included especially the Lord, from whom he believed he had been separated by his “sin.” Still being possessed of spiritual sight, he discerned in the “seething unfathomable depths below” a power and intelligence projecting into him a will to die. He knew this had been termed thanatos in classic psychoanalytic literature, but he saw it was the heart of the demon prince, Satan, whose spirit was in all those not in union with God, causing some severely wounded ones to despair of life. Particularly in those who were in utter isolation from other human beings, this baleful influence worked powerfully, eating away at the core of being, till there was no strength to resist. The poet called it Thanatos with a capital “T” because it was in truth a person, albeit a spirit.

It was as though a great whirlpool in the subtle sphere, drawing him slowly to its terrible maw – where he saw in the depths of it a horrid and malign satisfaction at his impending demise – and against which he had no strength to fight, had begun the inexorable process of devouring him! He had even bought a long-bladed knife to still his blood.

This was the same abyss he had been rescued from in the story, “St. Louis Blues to Conversion,” but now the veil was removed from his eyes, and he saw the intelligences plotting the destruction of humans, and in particular, his! There was a quiet terror in his heart, for he had the care of his 3-year-old girl on his mind as well.

So when Teresa came near, he gladly – desperately! – drew her to him, and became one flesh and spirit with her. There is indeed a power to eros in withstanding Thanatos, for to be held in the ontologic embrace of another heart is to be not alone, and the power of Thanatos is held at bay.

WILL EVER A GREAT POET

visit this earth again?
And if so
what will he/she be like?
Will they be ignorant
of drugs
and the places our heads go
thereby?
Will they be ignorant
of the road
and this generation of pilgrims,
ignorant of the rape
of our earth
by the "respectable,"
ignorant of true speech
and heart music,
ignorant of how we yearn
and suffer,
how we are besieged by madmen
in costumes,
how we love
at grave peril
to our hearts?
Will they be academic stiffs
too dry to swallow,
or will they be loved
by us?

“how we love / at grave peril / to our hearts”! The other edge of the sweet blade of love is that if it leaves it cuts its way out and we are not only alone but rent and opened to that in the abyss. Often the two wills of lovers cannot abide in union – such is our essential self-centeredness – and one often hears of those who die “of heart-break.”

Now he was in her ontologic embrace, and she in his. She did not know the regions she had taken into herself when she took him in. But he knew. When he confessed to being a vampire, she didn’t understand. He clung to her as to very life. To be loved by her…yes, it was his evil heart; but the One who is sovereign sends even the ants and birds on their paths and winds, and He sent her, even as crossing the paths of Samson and Delilah. (If she yet lives, Lord, grant her mercy, draw her to You, reveal Yourself to her, grant her Your saving life, please!) And he said to Him in those days, “I will not give her up. You will have to take her from me Yourself.” And so came the spiritual storm, even as Jonah knew the Sender of the storm on the sea.

The names desperado and outlaw are not alien to the poet when he ponders his life and heart, for surely he is made of that cloth. But he knew himself as His desperado, His outlaw, beloved by Him though the world hate him for the wretch he is, or rather, had been!

As the poem foresaw, she did cast him forth into the storm. It was a storm of darkness, passion, faith-not-entirely-extinguished, wrath, love, and horror, and it was of long duration. Yet he entered it as a new man – he had been loved as he was!

O I knew a Spanish maid
by she became I man
loved by woman

Somehow this had confirmed him in his being and he now had the heart to live. It was a gift – un cadeau terrible – a terrible gift; perhaps the giving of it somehow wounded her, bereft her of something essential. (If she yet lives, watch over her, O Most High, protect this one who succored Your outlaw son, and pulled him from depths too strong for him; O great King, have mercy on this one, please! Reveal the light of Your countenance to her.)

Hers also was a love great and terrible. With a heart fierce to live he proceeded from her arms and tears – the embrace of her heart – on what was to be an odyssey into depths that would overturn the pale wasteland of T.S. Eliot: a journey into the abyss in the human heart. An odyssey on the surface of the world – Apokalypse Field outside the gates of Eden – and in the horrors of the netherworld in the consciousness of humankind.

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

will never be written

because, first, who cares
for even a great sprawling fiction
since there is not one Dostoevsky alive
to fill it with living vision

and then, again, who cares
for but another fantasy
however shot thru with genius
in these archetypal days of our reality

no, a novel is a plaything
of genius, and peoples
to make up for the absence
of an epic Poet

only the actual matters
anymore, only the truth
of these our lives & this our world
has any relevance whatsoever

and it is in the works

THE GREAT AMERICAN POEM

Conversion To Fall

After being arrested by the Lord Jesus upon approaching some inner brink of destruction, some vast room of death in the Abyss – which ignorant mystics call the Void – and placed by Him in the protective custody of His presence, I lived for a couple of months in a state of stunned joy. The closest thing I can compare this to is being in love with a woman who loves equally: giving a sense of the immeasurable wealth of our beings interpenetrating one another to the depths, in what I have called ontologic-erotic union. But this latter pertains solely to the human sphere (wonderful as that may be!), whereas what had now befallen me – for this came upon me unsought! – is union with the Deity. With my spiritual vision I had been given to look in the face of the ascended Jesus Christ, know the exquisite brilliance and majesty of His presence, the ravishing quality of His utterly penetrating gaze, while the glory of His person was brought home to me in the divine equivalent of a shepherd rescuing his lamb from a gory death at the jeopardy of his own life (I knew nothing of doctrine at this point), for He made it clear He appeared to me to save me from the Abyss I was plunging into, and that by reason of His ineffable love for me. Why me? I had no clue, but who asks upon first being so loved?…one rejoices! A seer of a century ago, Charles Spurgeon, said this of a similar meeting, “I looked at Him, and He looked at me, and we were one forever.” [1]

I devoured the word of my new Friend and Savior voraciously (who would not read the love-letters and life-story of a new-found beloved?). I still worked at Schrafft’s Restaurant on Lex in the mid-50s, and was living in a 2-room apartment at 336 E. 95th Street, paying only (in 1968) about $48 a month, with a wonderful view of the TriBoro Bridge. After I had gone back upstate to Croton-on-Hudson to tell Lea the vision I had seen while she was telling me of Jesus dying on the cross for my sins (I’d said nothing to her at the time – the story of these things told in “St. Louis Blues To Conversion”), she directed me to a small Pentecostal church in mid-Manhattan, and which I started attending, going to every meeting, three or four a week. I drank it in. I loved hearing about Jesus from others who knew Him.

I became aware of a great discrepancy between the supernatural powers manifested in the New Testament, by the Lord, the apostles, and the church, and what was happening in the Christian world I was becoming acquainted with. It greatly puzzled and perplexed me why there was so little supernatural power in the 20th century community of His followers. Remember, I had been – prior to conversion – studying Theosophy, the various adepts, the occult, and the Eastern spiritual paths, as well as being part of the LSD-Mescaline-grass counter-culture’s spirituality, and spiritual power was something I expected to see in the Path of the mighty One. I had experienced first-hand the power of God in His revealing Himself to me and saving me.

At the church I heard of a seminar on fasting being given by Christians in Brooklyn, so I went. These folks were into 2, 3, and 4-week fasts, as well as what they called a “complete fast,” which was fasting (drinking water only) until all body fat was absorbed and the body started taking nourishment from vital tissue and organs, which was when true starvation set in, and hunger returned with a vengeance (it goes away after 6 days or so). One then had to break the fast very carefully, first with juices or broth, and then light vegetables and fruit, slowly returning to a normal diet (the rule was, as many days as the fast, so long would be the careful breaking of it). The teachers claimed that this was the way to regain the spiritual power missing in the churches. That was all I needed to hear. I was hooked. And so I began my fasting. I would be the bringer-of-power-and-spiritual-life-to-the-church. Ignorance, pride, and false teaching make a potent brew!

This is a part of my life few know of. It lasted from late 1968 till 1970 or so; I was 26 in ’68 (born on the first day of Spring, March 21st). I was sure, from the Scriptures I read, and from some books, and from the fasting teachers, that after fasting for a length of time (3 weeks, 4 or 5 or 6?) I would receive what is called “an anointing” from God consisting of a powerful infilling of His Spirit which would enable me to once and for all quit smoking cigarettes, be entirely holy in my consciousness and behavior, and have the power to bring His healing and whatever was needed to His people, and those lost He would show mercy to. This “anointing” was sort of the equivalent, in my mind, of a further state of illumination and intimate closeness to the risen Lord. The evangelist Charles G. Finney seemed to have had this, from what I read in his memoirs, and reports of him, and John Wesley supported it – I thought – Biblically. I felt it was God’s will for me to do this, and to vary from this path of obedience was sin.

The trouble was, I see now in hindsight, I knew virtually nothing of a genuine life of faith and of God’s plenteous provision of spiritual sustenance for such refugees from the occult counterculture as I, and instead tried hacking my way through a wilderness of error and satanic obstruction. I knew no teachers of sound doctrine and spiritual power, as Paul said there should be:

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God…For the kingdom of God is not in world, but in power. (1 Corinthians 2:4, 5; 4:20)

Thinking this was the path I was on, I would fast and pray 4, 5, 6, 7 days, and always break the fast “prematurely,” which was horrendous sin and failure to me, and when I was eating I reckoned myself in a state of sin. This was one of the primary condemning Scriptures:

…Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. (Romans 14:22, 23; emphasis mine)

I knew this pertained to food issues other than fasting, but I took the principle concerning “doubt” (i.e., an uncertain conscience) to heart, and was guided by it. On the one hand I was so ignorant of the Faith that I did not have withal to stand confidently in God’s presence, even when I was fasting and had a clear conscience.

When I would “wickedly” break the fast I would right away start smoking cigarettes again, and I would so gorge myself with food (forget the rules of carefully breaking the fast!) that I would have to make myself throw up to feel normal again. I would then “repent” and begin fasting again, or perhaps start eating again. Before I knew it I had entered on the path of anorexia-bulimia! This lasted for a couple of years, I think. I didn’t have much money at that time, and my appetite when eating was ravenous, so I fell to eating out of garbage cans, or going downtown to the Village where there were a lot of restaurants and leftover food. I saw a book title once, Holy Anorexia, and the dynamic sounded somewhat familiar to my ears. The aspiring saint had fallen to quite some depths! Would that these were the worst depths to which I fell!

The only times of sanity and fellowship with my Lord in those days was when I was fasting; if I was in a state of obedience I had direct access to His presence, and joyed there. I would go for long walks by the East River next to my house, as the footpath along its edge, next to the FDR Drive, was just a minute or two away. Along this path, up into the East Harlem area, and down to the United Nations area, this was my prayer ground, joying in my Lord, and resisting the devil and his demons. The sight and sound of the river water was soothing to my heart, as were the “wide open spaces” of river, sky and land. This was my life for a while. I had no real friends at this time.

There was Mother Weston, a large Black woman I’d met at Rock Church, who sang hymns with a piercing power and heart. She sort of adopted me, as she’d had a son my age who died in the drug scene. She gave me some of his clothes – we both were medium height and slim build – and loved taking me with her to the various churches she visited in the Bronx and Mt. Vernon. I was her adopted Jewish boy upon whom Christ had shown mercy. She often took me home and fed me; she loved me like a mother. Jane Weston, I’ll see you in glory!

Even though I led this semi-tormented life the Lord still used me. I remember this one young Black man I’d befriended (from some church, I think); he fell ill and went to a hospital near my home; I got a lay minister’s ID card from the hospital chaplain, and visited him, encouraging him in the Faith before he died. Another young man, Fred, I befriended, and from our conversations he came to faith in Christ. Fred is still one of my closest friends these many years later! In fact, I moved from the Upper East Side down to the East Village to share the apartment Fred rented. We opened the apartment as a crash pad of sorts, working in conjunction with a number of storefront ministries of Christians reaching out to the counter-culture young men and women in the East Village. The names of some of these ministries – they took the form of coffeehouses – were The Living Room, His Place, and The Way Word.

I remember one young man who stayed with us at the apartment – older than most at 28 or 29, perhaps – who was among the more mature Christians I’d come across, Bill Ondre by name. He worked among the staff of the coffeehouses, supporting them, and caring for the young people who came in, bearing witness to the reality and power of the Savior. Late one evening we were home sitting at the kitchen table talking about the things of God – Fred was asleep in the other room – when suddenly Bill seized up in the middle of a sentence and fell to the floor, unconscious. It seemed to me he had had a heart attack, and I endeavored to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Fred awoke, and called the police and the ambulance, and they came quickly, but to no avail. Bill died there in my arms.

I knew he went directly from my presence into the presence of God in Heaven, in just moments. Somehow the living faith and godly death of Bill before my eyes braced my own faith, the reality of Bill bearing witness to the reality of God, in life and in death.

Lord, would You please give my love to Mother Weston and Bill, and I thank You for the blessing they were in my early days walking with You.

Nonetheless my spiritual strength and resolve continued to fail. These were the years, ’70-’71, and being some 33 years ago, the chronology of things is a bit jumbled in my mind. I know I began to see my old girlfriend, Donna Lee, and I began to take acid again. And smoke cigarettes. These grew from what I thought to be the root sin: eating again, walking in darkness. The anguish of being separated from my Jesus! My heart had rejoiced in the glory of His presence, and of being granted to walk the highway of holiness.

At some point in this period my time spent in “darkness” began to equal and exceed that spent in the light. Years later, after I began to write of these things, this was what I saw when I looked back:

The protagonist in this tale an occultist-poet warrior-priest who fell from his Master's presence into the abyss in the human heart, and found himself in the howling archetypal heartlands of humanity....where he began an odyssey in search for his own heart, and his Master’s....

This warrior and fallen priest found himself set upon his feet, even upon the heartlands floor of the howling Abyss. No Valley of the Shadow of Death, this – for that was in the world of the living – rather this was in the realms of archetypal horror, where the worst monsters are not those who beset one about, but that which one may oneself become, being impregnated by worse horrors than Sigourney’s Aliens of modern film.

I moved out from Fred’s and was on the street for a while. Fred was aware that I had fallen. I was glad he had the stability to maintain his own spiritual integrity and walk with God.


Barefoot In Winter: Righteousness In the East Village

When Fred moved to Staten Island I found lodging with a young Catholic Christian, Cliff Lichter, who ran a crash pad at 437 E. 12th Street. But before I learned about Cliff’s place I was on the street a while. I remember one evening I was sleeping outside Penn Station, the key to the locker holding my bag of belongings in my watch pocket, and someone very quietly took it from me without waking me. My few possessions were gone, but thankfully not my good stuff – only “travelin’ gear.”

I remember also one notable descent. I went to stay with Donna Lee (who had an apartment on 13th Street and Avenue “A”) and dropped some acid (I don’t think she took any). She was a dear and old friend (a former lover) from my pre-conversion East Village days. She’d owned a small boutique with exquisite clothing she’d made, and other items. She’d been a lovely aspiring actress (come into town from the Mid-West), and alcohol and pills attended her last days in NYC, before she fled back to a semblance of normalcy and sanity in Ft. Wayne. I greatly contributed to her unsettlement with my ups and downs. I’d sought to bring her into the fold of Christ, and the small community of us who clung to Him for life. My inconsistency cost her. When my life was falling apart, she sought to give me shelter from the storm. Alas, the storm was within, and no human shelter availed. I dropped the cid with her in the apartment. I was not “walking with the Lord” at this time (eating as I was).

It was very strange – I had a clear sense of being an elder or prince in Israel, in the spiritual realm of the people of God (not in a mere physical ethnic sense). This pertained to a spiritual consciousness of personhood, and awareness of the opposition and influence of demonic entities, as well as temptation to do evil. This was calmly and soothingly mingled with the cresting psychedelic energies rushing within my being. Donna, I think, was drinking wine.

I did not resist the beauty of my old friend. My identity crashed in the wickedness of sin.

I had been reading The Brothers Karamozov in those days and been struck with some of the things Dmitri said to Alyosha [2], depicting his own heart through a poem of the goddess Ceres,

…And where’er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.

Dmitri explicates his own heart from these lines, and then cites more poetry,

Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels—visions of God’s throne,
To insects—sensual lust.

He then waxes eloquent on this theme of the sensual lust of insects having its correlative in the heart of the Karamozovs.

In my embrace of Donna I plunged into the horror of Dmitri’s theme – the two of us were as insects indulging this lust, but it was worse: this insect-like sense was due to demonic beings using us – possessing us in some less-than-Gadarene manner – to fulfill their own vile pleasure. It was truly a horror!

I remember shortly afterward trying to recuperate my wits and sense of heart, but could not shake the guilt and defilement that had suffused me. I was still tripping strongly.

I picked up a copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy Donna had among her books [3] and began to read – I can’t recall if it was in Purgatorio or Paradiso, I never could find the place again – and while I was reading something that spoke of the Lord a great glory shone upon me, the majesty of His actual presence as He looked upon this foul worm with tender kindness (not the wrath I surely deserved!), and the glory of this grace smote me to the quick, and I was won back to Him in that instant, glory and majesty and joy flowing in my acid consciousness like fireworks of a home-coming in my honor on a black night.

My words to Him were (and these have been repeated many times in various circumstances over the years), “Jesus, forgive me for these sins I have committed, and cleanse me with Your blood.” And I knew from His word – written – it was done. To the devil and his spirits I said, “Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of His indwelling Spirit, I command you to depart from me, and all ground I gave you I now withdraw and give back to my God. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth I break and bind your power over me, and command you to go.”

Perhaps those not Christians may think me mad, but this is reality of life in the spirit world, in which all of us live, but most are blind, not having the Holy Spirit who gives vision.

I said goodbye to Donna Lee (I cannot remember if we talked much then – surely I told her of my giving my heart back to the Lord – but this may have confused her, and I think I felt it best to go), and when I got outside it was cold and snowing.

I remembered that the money I had been living on was the trust-fund allowance of $150 a month (one could live on that in those days) I had promised to regularly send to my elder daughter’s mother in Illinois to help them get by (this is another story), but as I had been broke I kept it for myself a few months. The boots and the belt I was wearing were bought with this money. I considered this stolen money (it was not mine any longer to keep or spend, by my word), and I could not wear the boots or belt any longer, so I took them off in the street outside Donna’s apartment and left them neatly by the doorway for someone to pick up and take. I walked over to the Christians’ Living Room coffee shop on St. Mark’s Place between 1st and 2nd Avenues to see if anyone there had some spare footwear. I’m sure I was a sight walking in there barefoot out of the snow, though it wasn’t obvious I was tripping. One of the men had a pair of military boots in the trunk of his car, which he lent me till I got some of my own.

I was comforted by the spiritual companionship of my friends (for I was known to them, and they to me), and I had them pray for me. This one fine young woman, Sandy (a worker for Teen Challenge, which supported the Living Room), said words to me as I left that have stayed with me over the years: “Steve…be strong, be true.” That profound simplicity – when said in love – goes deep into a person tripping. So I started a fast again. It didn’t last long.

It was around this time I heard of Cliff Lichter’s place. Cliff was gracious, and he had a heart for the young people who were casualties of the East Village dope scene. I think he went off to work during the day (as a cook, I believe) to support himself and us. Eventually the place filled up with Christians, and there were increasingly few who were not. Cliff left after while. We got to be a small community of believers, and when we heard there was another small apartment for rent across the hall (I think it was around $50 or $60 a month) we snapped it up (I borrowed the $120 – deposit and first month – to get the new apartment from some believers who had been missionaries associated with Watchman Nee in China, and currently attended an assembly in Queens, Christian Fellowship Center, comprised of many Chinese nationals who had known Nee, and some who were in ministry with him, as well as Americans from the area. They were good people, and glad to help). The new apartment was for the men, and the old one was for the women. This community thrived for while, and then broke up. A number of the folks joined churches or other Christian communes, which were plenteous in those days, and began to live settled lives.

Pretty soon I was alone in the men’s apartment, and a couple of women – young believers – stayed in the other one. I began to stray more and more, eating, and smoking cigarettes. Another great descent began as I met an old friend from my earlier travels in British Honduras (now Belize), Mustapha. He was a Black man from the Lower East Side I had met in a commune of Americans outside Belize City in 1965 or 66, and here he was on 2nd Avenue. He right away gave me some speed (Dexedrine tablets, I think), and introduced me to the heroin scene kingpins of the East Village, chief of whom was a woman, Emily, and next her male colleague, Lonnie, and a few young toughs who did their bidding. Being as I was tight with Mustapha they welcomed me, and this began my brief foray into heroin use.

I had a day job – working as a chauffer for the boss of a meatpacking plant on the Lower East Side. I was a good driver, and enjoyed doing that. I had worked as an orderly in a nursing home for a while, but the supervisor said I took too long to make my rounds cleaning up my folks, though she said she would give me a good reference as she saw I had a heart for the people and my tardiness was due to spending time and talking with them.

Evenings and nights I went to the heroin hub of the East Village. I had money so I didn’t have to resort to the crimes of the others. One tough guy, Doug – a short but stocky and muscular man – thought it sport to lord it over me, until I told him, “Look, Doug, I know you’re tougher and stronger than me, but you’re going to have to back off – I don’t take this from anyone.” And from then on we were friends. There were some very mean folks in this scene, though not in the immediate clique; this one guy, a tall Black man, I could see death in his eyes, a capacity for profound evil. There were only two white guys in the group, “white Bobby” and myself. All my adult life I have walked among Blacks and Puerto Ricans and have been accepted among them as an equal – would that all whites were so egalitarian!

Another man, “Tree-Top,” called such for his extreme height – maybe 6’ 8” – used to boss smaller guys around, till one man fed up with it sat waiting for him on the steps of what had been the Electric Circus on St. Marks Place with a sharp knife concealed in a newspaper, and when he came up to him deeply sliced open his mid-section. “Tree-Top” lived, but was a more subdued individual after that.

Around this time there was a “panic” in New York, that is, there was a shortage of heroin, and the addicts – my friends – were hurting and frightened. As I was white, and had my own money (i.e., was not a thief or rip-off artist), and a good reputation, I had this one mid level-dealer ask me if I wanted to work for him, for he had a connection that was intact. I did cop for my friends a couple of times, but I did not want to do this any longer. I remember one evening walking along the street mildly high (I think on ‘cid) I came across these two rough street hustlers who called me over and asked me if I knew where there was any heroin. I figured them to be capable of murder to get the stuff, and I told them no. But I could sense their own drug-heightened awareness strangely probing my mind, as if they could see into me and could tell that I did know where. That thoroughly spooked me.

I saw in a flash that if I continued as I was I would have to become a prince of death, one who must be willing to take a life if another got in my way, and to always be carrying a pistol for that eventuality. All of a sudden I saw the logical conclusion to the life I was leading, and it went right into the devil’s lair. Being a soldier in the Marine Corps was one thing, but this soldiering in the depths of evil quite another, and my heart (which despite all belonged to Christ) revolted against it.

I told all my friends in the scene I was leaving the area, and would not be reachable. I had had the prudence to tell almost no one where my apartment was, so I knew that I would be safe there – some half a mile from the St. Marks area – if I lay low.

Still, I was not of a mind to repent and walk again with the Lord, because it would involve another extended fast, which I had no confidence I could successfully do. This was a vicious trap, and I knew there was something amiss in my thinking this was required of me, but I could not see through it to extricate myself. You may say, “How could such a low-life character belong among God’s children, be one of His elect?” You’ll have to ask Him that when you see Him, but I would answer there are many such ensnared in false doctrines and satanic snares, and in part I write this to give such heart and hope, and to open to them the way of deliverance and authentic salvation. I am one of those low-lifes (former low-life, if you will) the Lord uses to reach down into the depths of evil and depravity to snatch others like myself from the pit, as David sings, “Bless the LORD, O my soul…Who forgiveth all thine iniquities…Who redeemeth thy life from destruction”! [4]

Back to the pit of my former life: I was deeply frightened upon seeing the path I had been walking, the path of a budding inner-city “prince of death,” I, who had been schooled in the royal courts of the Son of God, groomed as a member of the royal Family itself to be a warrior-priest in service of the King and High Priest, now on the brink of the devil’s service! And to have the devil’s hit-men keeping an eye open for me as they had “psychically smelled” I had knowledge of what they sought!

The woman next door, Suzanne, the one remaining Christian disciple from the community, became my friend and companion in this darkness. She also was not walking with the Lord. To make a long story short, we got married (this was 1972), and had a girl-child. We moved to a better apartment, and in 1973 I began to drive a yellow cab, which I continued doing for 5 years. In 1975 Sue’s mother died, and she had a nervous breakdown, taking off to Canada, where she had some relatives.

Although Sue’s mom had been an alcoholic, her last weeks were in a place in the Bronx called Calvary Nursing Home (or something like that), a hospice for cancer patients. My heart went out to her, and on days off I would go visit her, fasting and praying, often, and I believe she called upon the name of the Lord in reality, and went into eternity in His care, as Paul the apostle declared, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” [5]

Still, I continued going downhill, despite this momentary triumph.

I got a small apartment I could afford, so as to care for my daughter, Nadine, and myself. I remained separated from Sue, even when she returned to the states later. We eventually shared custody of our child.

Spiritually I was in a strange state. It was to me as a limbo of sorts. When I stopped fasting (in 1972) and became involved with people the anorexia-bulimia symptoms ceased, and I ate normally. Every time, however, I was moved in my heart to seek the Lord and walk with Him, I was bound to commence a long fast. Even when I was not involved in any actual sins (violations of His commandments) I reckoned myself in a state of disobedience, and thus in sin.

In my life and heart I had fallen from the presence of Him I loved, and walked in darkness.

-------------------

1 Cited in, The Strong Name, by James S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1946), page 92.
2 In the section of Part One, Book III: The Sensualists, 4. The Confession of a Passionate Heart—in Verse.
3 The handsome 1948 edition by Pantheon, translated by Lawrence White and illustrated by Doré.
4 Psalm 103:2-4, King James Bible.
5 Romans 10:13.

ST. LOUIS BLUES TO CONVERSION

I had just left the Macrobiotic community in the Roxbury district of Boston, disillusioned with Michio Kushi’s vision of “the Kingdom of God,” which he said one attained by proper eating, namely the brown rice (& etc.) diet. True, one did attain an exhilarating state of consciousness when on the #7 (strictly rice) diet, but it was clear to me that what had a beginning must have an end, and if one entered the kingdom of illumined consciousness by “proper eating” then if that eating stopped one must leave it. Nor was brown rice available everywhere in the U.S. in 1967, so it was at best a tenuous illumination. I wrote Mr. Kushi a note as to why I was leaving, hopped in my ‘65 Volvo, drove down to Westchester in New York where I left the car with a friend, and hit the road hitchhiking with a few dollars, a light carry-bag, and a sleeping bag. I forget the highways I used, but I remember snow falling as I left NYC headed for St. Louis, Missouri – and from there, who knew? The part of the city I arrived in seemed sort of small-town and desolate, but I connected with some folks who looked like they were of the Human Tribe (as hippies were sometimes referred to in those days) and was directed to a crash pad, where I found a place to lay my head and stash my gear. In the evening I went to a counter-culture nightspot called The Crystal Palace and hung-out for a while. I met a biker there, John, who gave me some speed in a pill, which I took right away, for I was hungry to get high – I’d been straight so long! It hit me pretty hard – that is, I was tripping – for my system was still fine-tuned, as I’d only been off the rice a day or two. John and I hung at the Palace for a while, and he went back to the crash pad with me, then took off.

There was a young woman in the house, Eve, blonde and friendly and pretty. I was attracted to her at first sight. But I was having visions of sorts, or one might call them insights into the deeps of being. During this time the Doors’ album, Crystal Palace, was in the air, the song with the words, “a Roman wilderness of pain, where all the children are insane,” burning into my awareness as if it were the motto of our lives! Another archetypal evening in the wilds of the howling psychedelic heartlands.

An excruciating awareness rose in me to counter the desire I had for Eve: the very act of desiring rippled the still waters of perfect union: the effort of our souls to obtain the object of our desire was incompatible with the perfection of ontologic-erotic union, and thwarted the realization of it. In the realm of spirit whatever we strive to grasp eludes us! It seemed that the souls must each – and together – be in a state of perfection before they could join in a union of perfection. It was beyond me, and I did not know the laws of being so as to attain this.

I’d intuited these things from various experiences and insights: pondering the vision of illumination held forth by Wilhelm Reich, how that the “genital character” – his view of what the optimally healthy human is – contains bodily the universal energies which are the illumination sages mistakenly sought through non-sexual mystical experience; and combining this Reichian “sexual mysticism” with insight I’d had on acid and mescaline: the lively interaction of a man and a woman within each other’s beings, which did not disturb the perfection of their union in love, gave me to envision how pure and exquisite an interaction could be.

Why at this time it came to the fore of my consciousness I don’t know. Somehow I knew I was an alien to Eve’s heart, that if I tried to enter I would defile and disturb it. Our beings could not be united in love, not in that union of hearts and bodies I sought. This was a devastating revelation, for after half a year or so of celibacy, and high for the first time in quite a while as well (getting high was looked down on in the macrobiotic community as propelling the being into an intensely yin – spiritually feminine, ultra-receptive – state), and after a year of Reichian therapy (dismantling “character armor,” not the orgone box route), my longing for the love of a woman was profound!

O for a woman
‘s love

o for the lightninged
o for the Eros ruby-fired
o for the sweet and wondrous lipped
o for the ontologic embracing
o the fierce succoring

love of a woman.

I could see it was not to be, and this impasse between what I wanted with all my heart and my inability to attain it showed me I was broken deep in the springs of my being. I went downstairs to my little room and crashed in a state of terror at the devastation that was now manifest in my consciousness. I had no downs to knock myself out, and would just have to ride it through.

And then horror upon horror! I could hear in the closed room across the hall a woman groaning in pain – I knew it was Eve! – and two men talking. I knew she was being raped! I had the hunting knife in my bag I’d had with me in Mexico, its tip broken but restored on a grinding wheel to a sharp point, the blade honed keen. Having been in the Marines seven years earlier I was still in good shape, and not afraid to fight, and I wanted to get up off my mattress and route those men and stop what was happening, but I was so ravaged with my own terror I couldn’t move; I had no strength to even get up!

In the morning John came by to see how I was. I told him what had happened; he went next door, but they were gone. He asked around, and then came back to me and told me they’d given her heroin, and when she was incapacitated took advantage of her. I asked him if he’d get me some downs as I couldn’t bear my consciousness. He came back with some a while later, but I had a different plan by then. I’d thought of Ginsberg’s Howl, and the lines in it of some in our generation who, in a state as desperate as mine,

“presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with…shaven heads…demanding instantaneous lobotomy…”

That would do it! A lobotomy would fix my inexorable anguish, would remove the guilt, the self-loathing, the awareness of the impossibility of love! So I asked John if he would find a mental institution and drop me off there, as a lobotomy was what I wanted. I declined the downs as I needed to stay in touch with what I was doing. I had my gear with me; I would not have to go back to the pad. We drove and drove, never seeming to find a madhouse. After a while it didn’t seem necessary anymore; the pain had receded; I could live without a lobotomy. John dropped me off somewhere in the “straight” section of town. I’d had enough of the “Roman wilderness of pain, where all the children are insane”!

I think back, writing of this now some thirty-eight years later, and ponder the care, patience and helpfulness of John, to the stranger that I was to him.

Away from the house of my (and Eve’s) woe, the speed having mostly worn off, I managed to call my sister (I forget what state she and her husband were living in then), and told her I’d had a nervous breakdown in St. Louis, MO (how else to explain my condition to her?), and needed some money to get a cheap hotel room, eat, and after a few days catch a bus back to NYC. She came through for me, and I ate pretty much plain oatmeal for a while, and my system stabilized, and the wounding of my heart withdrew into the depths so that I could live again without a mountain of anguish crushing me down.

Back in New York City, I borrowed some money from the mother of an old girlfriend of mine (which I paid back in a few months), and got a 2-room apartment on 95th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, with a brilliant view of the Triboro Bridge, a fifth-floor walk-up for around $48 a month (those were the days!). I had my sleeping bag and a few belongings, and was comfy. I got a job at Schrafft’s Restaurant as a dishwasher, and then got promoted to coffee-boy, which meant I got a large coffee urn on a wheeled cart that was filled up on lower shelves with pastries and coffee cakes, which I took to office buildings in the area (the restaurant was in the 50s on Madison Avenue).

During my off time I would visit friends on the Lower East Side, do some grass and acid (but always had some Thorazine or Vitamin B-12 or downs to counter a bad trip if need be), and kept a low profile. I remember meeting one of my dad’s old friends (both he and mom had been dead some years by then) on the street in midtown – Nate was his name – part of the Jewish business, legal and social community dad belonged to (he in real estate and insurance), and Nate asked me how and what I was doing. I told him I was a coffee boy at Schraffts’, and doing well. He paled when I told him that, evidently embarrassed at my low station in life! But I was a poet, with a paying job, and content with my lot, and marched to the beat of a different drum than my dad and his colleagues. I remember dad once telling me, “I’d rather you earn one honest dollar than write a thousand poems.” I was for years the black sheep of the family, getting kicked out of this school and that, a wild and unprincipled youth. Around age 20 I’d had a vision – while on organic mescaline (my first trip) – of the depth and profundity of life and of people’s beings, and was on a quest to plumb what I could of these, and the counter-culture seemed filled with kindred spirits, and thus I was pretty much “a rolling stone, no direction home,” 25 now, a seeker, a hitch-hiker, two of whose heroes were Kerouac and Dylan.

On my rounds with the coffee cart one stop was at the editorial offices of Seventeen Magazine. Among the people who came to me for coffee was this petite, lovely young woman, an editor there, Sherry. I was quite taken by her, and she responded with great pleasantness. (I had deeply buried the awareness of my ontologic dilemma, and this was not on my mind.)

I wrote her a poem, and the simplicity and beauty of it stunned her; the menial servant whose palm she daily crossed with silver was an accomplished poet, a seeker in the deeps of being, and a seeker also of her love.

She waited till I was alone one day, and told me she had a man, though she was deeply touched by the poem. I accepted her words quietly, though inwardly set my heart to pursue her.

I was occasionally tripping in the days following, and also writing poetry. Writing to / of Sherry the ontologic dilemma surfaced again in my awareness, with a vengeance. This time it was without the anguish of my failure to help Eve in her trouble (though that pain remains in my heart to this day!), yet by itself it was as a light that shone throughout my being, revealing afresh the broken deeps of my self. I had, in line with Reich's view of illumination, and my own sense of spiritual experience from mescaline and acid awareness, come to believe that I would enter into an experience of salvation – perhaps with a small “s” – through the love of a woman.

But it was so clear to me that to desire a woman, to seek to “grasp” her into my being, to exert any effort to this end, would irreparably trouble the still waters of effortless union, and break the perfection I sought. This may not make sense to some, but it hit me like a death-blow. It meant that I was alone, seeing as I could not effect such union as I sought by any effort, and my heart was too needy for love to acquiesce in that state. I was in the Void, absolutely alone, and without the illumination that gives Life.

I went up into the countryside to see Lisa, an old and true love, and she said to me, “Steve, I love you, but I can't help you.” Back on the road again, death hounding me like a nightmare dog, noiseless but steady.

As I was up in Westchester already I went to Croton to pick up a camera I’d left at a camp for disturbed children I had worked at.

The lady and her family who were caretakers of the place were Christians from Estonia (I think they had fled the Communists). This woman, Lea, was an evangelical born-again Christian. Wouldn't you know, she started in on me. I thought she was a real fanatic, and when she began telling me about her version of Jesus I resisted her vigorously. After all, I taught reincarnation and the spirituality I had learned among the Sufis and Theosophists to my friends, and was not interested in what I saw as retrograde primitive religiosity that was ignorant of genuine spiritual consciousness. Notwithstanding my desperate spiritual state at that time, I wanted no part of this lady's Christian stuff, with her “Jesus died for your sins on the cross” as a constant refrain in her incessant raving. I was getting a headache listening to her. I was a very forceful character, but she was as forceful as I. It was a clash! And while she was speaking, and I on the verge of leaving, a light from Heaven shone into my heart, and with my inner sight I saw the glory of a Being whom I knew to be the Lord Jesus, and He looked upon me in His heart-rending love and majesty, and it was as though He had been crucified – for me! – and yet was alive, similar to what I later read in John's vision in Revelation 5:6, “And I beheld, and lo...stood a Lamb as it had been slain...”

I was struck speechless! She kept talking, but I hardly heard her. This spiritual Light and Glory was what I had longed for in all my searching! This was the Life that lifted one above the wheel of birth and death, this was the Love that made one complete and not driven in the seeking of earthly loves. And all this was in a Person! Jesus! I had been sure it was “a state of consciousness” I attained to through effort, or meeting an enlightened Teacher, or my karmic due. But it was an actual Person who was in Himself Deity! I was thoroughly shocked and humbled. I was so proud, so arrogant, so sure of my own way. It was with me as with a seer (I'd later read – Charles Spurgeon), who said, “I looked at Him, and He looked at me, and we were one forever.” From that moment on, I was His. Love at first sight.

I couldn't even say anything to Lea. I told her, “I’ve got to go!” and on the way out she handed me a little Gospel of John (in the old Authorized Version). All the way back to NYC I was aware of the presence of Jesus Christ. Up to this point in my life I'd never read the Bible, save as literature in college, or a book among other “holy books.” During my conversation with Lea, I had said to her, when she talked of worshipping Jesus, “What is a man that I should bow the knee to him? We are all on the path to becoming Christs!” But that evening, when I got to my bare, simple apartment, in the presence of this One who was to me unequivocally God – while in the shower – I bowed the knee to Him, and wept...for love, for joy, for sorrow...and shortly after wrote this poem:

LORD


How You know

in the river of my heart

flowing through these words

what is too deep for the words to say

sorrow too molten

joy too free

thankfulness too profound

Oh Man, You are my Savior!

What a joy to be in the presence of the Light I had so long sought among the world’s sages, and for this Illumination to be in the friendship and love of – heart-union with – a Person! The little Bible tract of John's Gospel, when I read it, was illumined by Him just as was my heart: the words of the Gospel were one with the Spirit of Him whose presence shone so ravishingly within me! They were His words! And this holy Spirit continued to shine in my heart with an ineffable radiance that bespoke infinite wisdom, love, and power – this was the Person of the living God!

It was this I knew, and nothing else. I did not have a Bible at this time. And I did not know the commandments the Lord gave to those who would follow Him.

I entertained in my mind that I would get a girlfriend I liked, and who wanted to be with me, and we would get married by dropping acid together and joining in sexual union. I thought – in my abysmal ignorance – this was proper and holy.

Two weeks later I drove up to see Lea again, and tell her what had happened to me. I figured Christians were supposed to wear crosses, so I bought a silver one with a chain and wore it about my neck. When she saw me, she asked with some disbelief and dismay, pointing to the cross, “What’s that?” I said, “I’m saved.” And she, incredulously, “How did that happen?” And I recounted the events starting with her telling me about Jesus. She asked if I had a Bible, and said I had to get one. And she directed me to go to a church in the City not far from where I lived.

So I went back home to the city and began more properly to live as a believer. As I read through the Bible I saw a passage that said we were to “submit…to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13), and I realized my drug days were over – no more acid or grass, etc, as it was my new Lord’s will. On my wall I wrote with a marker words from Proverbs, to beware falling into sexual sin with “the strange woman…for her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on Hell.” Any visitors saw these words that reflected my new state of mind. All who knew me were fairly shocked.

I continued in my job as coffee boy. How communicate to Sherry my new state of mind, my new love? The people on the various stops I made (in more than one building) continued to be friendly (who wouldn’t welcome the guy with quality coffee and pastries? – this way before Starbucks et al came on the scene), and they’d regularly say, “How ya doin’, Steve?” For me to just answer, “I’m fine, thanks,” did not accord with the blazing new truth and reality of my being. So I started to say, “Thanks to Jesus I’m alright” or “Thanks to Jesus I’m fine.” It was difficult to do that, as I was very proud, and the disdain I often received upon saying that hurt. I could see that the Self I had built up was arrogant and enamored of grandiose conceits, and this did not want to yield to the Lordship of Jesus, and so it was a battle of loyalties, Self versus Jesus. Nor did it help when people asked me, “What do you mean?” when I confessed Jesus. I really didn’t have sufficient knowledge to give a coherent answer. But as I read the Bible, and the few Christian books I found, I was a little more able to give an answer for my faith. I took to writing Scripture verses in a little 5 X 7 picture frame which I hung with string from my coffee urn, such as, “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. –Psalm 121:2” or “Hear my cry O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. –Psalm 61:1”

After a month or so I had the confidence to ask Sherry to meet me for a cup of coffee after work and talk about what had happened to me. I had been going to Rock Church, a Pentecostal assembly in the ‘60s on the east side, and I thought I was getting an idea of what the “normal” Christian life was like, although a lot of the Pentecostal stuff was strange to me. I tried to tell Sherry how wonderful Jesus was, and that He was the Savior of the world, and how my life had changed radically. I don’t think she believed. In 2005 I still pray for her, assuming she is still alive on the earth. So many women I have known and loved! Many of you I still pray for.

This was the spring of 1968. Thirty-seven years later I look back, marveling on the skill, wisdom and power of the Shepherd who undertook to save my soul, but more than these, on the longsuffering love and patience He knew beforehand He would need to extend to me to secure my eternal well being.

O, a great and terrible love I sing.

EXECUTING JUDGMENT

“For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” 1 Corinthians 11:31

How I got to be sitting in the police chief’s office tripping on acid is the exterior heart of this story. But I will begin by approaching its interior heart.

The year was 1985, and the Lord had two years earlier broken me of seeking the love of woman outside wedlock. The story of that, in the mostly destroyed book of poems, A Fire In The Lake, tells of His using a woman (did He use Delilah of old?) to effect great change – and devastation – in me. From the last lines of the last poem:

My adventure and song are finished.
If I sing and adventure again
it will be as one raised from the dead, Heaven-sent.
For she who stripped me utter was God’s instrument.

This “adventure” was the odyssey of an occultist-poet warrior-priest who fell from his Master's presence into the abyss in the human heart, and found himself in the archetypal heartlands of humanity – a waste and howling wilderness – where he began to search for the way back. He could not fathom the cause of his fall – there was no fault in the Master – and he could not see the snare of deception he had been taken in, and the demons wasted no time in seeking to kill his will to live. The “song” was the story of all this, as well the ontologic-erotic unions with the women he met, for such only kept him aloft over the seething abyss and the gnawing hunger of dread Thanatos lurking therein.

A brief word about “the occult”: its root meaning is hidden (from view), concealed, covered over, coming from the Latin occulere; in medicine it is used as in the terms “occult blood in the stool,” or “occult carcinoma.” I use it in a neutral sense, not specifically referring to demonic practitioners (as common usage does) unless so indicated. The term “occultist-poet” may also refer to the spiritual activities of a saint. The prayers (and prayer warfare!) of a saint as well as the spells of a sorcerer are both in the realm of the occult – hidden from human eyes! – or so is my use of the word in these writings.

Back to 1985. A year earlier, in the summer, I sent my daughter to visit her mom in NYC, and I went up into the mountains – a remote area in the wilderness of the southern Catskills – to fast and pray. After two weeks I became discouraged and came out. This whole business of fasting was at the center of the snare, erected on a foundation of spiritual ignorance, but I could not yet see that. He nonetheless heard my cries, the One who watches over His children, and was preparing a terrible deliverance, snatching me before I plunged over the edge. But that is another story, too far ahead!

And so I went about my life in the small town of Woodstock, New York. Like a lion caged, tormented by its wardens, I went. The cage was my sins – keeping me from the air of Heaven my spirit longed to breathe – and the keepers malign spirits. My closest friends knew I belonged to Christ, as did most of the town, for I would write in the local paper – under the nom de plume Steve Levin – about my adventures in drugs and love, and also of my true but lost Love. In Toleration City I was accepted and loved; in those days I spoke for myself, not for Christ, although it was clear for whom my heart longed. I say I was caged – a prisoner – as I didn’t know how to escape: repentance supposedly required a long fast, which my distorted faith would not sustain. And even when I did fast well, I did not have the inner stability of a sound faith. I must have fasted and failed some hundreds of times. It was when, some years earlier, eating had become sin to me, that I – with grief – forsook the Way.

My 5-year-old cub and I came to Woodstock from NYC in 1978. I had just wrapped up publishing and distributing a journal, The Lightning Herald: Un Journal De Poètes Terribles, and wanted a simpler life for us both, she now of age to go to school. So we settled in, the town receiving us warmly. I did free-lance child-care work (having good human services references from NYC), and then was a Teaching Assistant in a special-needs school.

I continued to write my book. I sought out the local seers and leaders among the Christians, seeking to gain insight into my condition, which no man could speak to, and so I remained aloof from the churches, due to the kind of life I lived, and the heart I had. From a letter to the editor of Woodstock Times in 1979, when Dylan’s newest record came out:

To the Editor:

Why I just broke my record of Dylan’s Slow Train Coming: it ain’t that I don’t love ya, Bobby, and it ain’t that I don’t think you’re true, it’s that I don’t want to hear none a’ that stuff till that train done come and stopped. Maybe you’ll tell me, “Now is the day, and this is the hour,” but I heard them words before, I even read ‘em in the Bible, but I also read about “a kingdom that cometh in power, and not in word,” and that ain’t here, not by a long shot.

It ain’t no use for me to listen, it don’t do nuthin’ for me except to break my heart, tear it between love and my own integrity. Got I any integrity to speak so to you? My own peculiar path I walk, and if any man on the earth can minister the spirit of Christ to me according to my needs, and the needs of my world (is it not mine? am I not its poet?), him I will listen to. But don’t you preachers come beatin’ a path to my door if you can’t raise the dead, heal the sick, and establish your kingdom of grace in full power, ‘cause I’m sick of guilt-trippin’ spiels and words that break but don’t quicken. Try to quicken the stones if you will, but don’t come knockin’ on my door, my heart is as hard as a diamond to anything less than the apostolic reality, and I do make short work of preachers who come preachin’ anything less.

I don’t reckon you to be preachin’, Bob, but rather singin’ love songs, that’s why I broke your record—rather that than my heart. An’ I’ll go my own path through this bloody world, and know what love I can, an’ maybe I’ll see ya at the station. Oh yeah, an’ I got my own song to sing, an’ I know it well.

It was intolerable to me that my consciousness should be that of a meat-head, someone with no spiritual or psychic awareness, existing simply in the baser appetites, such as eating. This is why I got high, so my heart would have a life in the realms of consciousness. Better to exist spiritually in the outlaw regions than not at all! Better an outlaw than a meat-head! And so I lived my life, thinking myself hero and anti-hero at the same time. For how it pained me to knowingly enter and function in the realms of sorcery in disobedience to the worthy King I was sworn to serve. And in this darkness how terrible the ontologic depths: once, while still in the City of New York, I saw in my own heart the reality of the living dead and cried out in a poem, “O zombie I!” For such did I see myself to be (and mistakenly believed): without the life of God, the living dead. To knowingly be such a denizen of the realms of horror! But as I wrote in those days, “Better terrible truth than none at all, or the usual hype and jive.”

What if Dostoevsky
were a poet
after acid
in this day

what if Rimbaud
were alive today
in children of integrity
come what may

what if
Dylan
had a brother
who now took his stand

Un Poète terrible

A title I had given myself was just this, un Poète terrible, a new breed of being on the earth (not un Poète maudit as some suggested I change the journal’s name to), for I loathed the term sorcerer yet functioned in that realm. And hated the powers of darkness.

You who think to judge me, what option would you have had me take? To end my life? Or to exist bereft of consciousness? Which latter would have been an intolerable form of death to me. I found no help among the Christians. I sought the Lord with long fasts among wild dog-packs and bear in remote wilderness. No! Better an outlaw than dead meat! My blood was too hot, and heart too engaged with the worlds of letters and spirits and humans to lie down and die. I would live!

One of the poems of that time:

WOODSTOCK BREAKFAST

Never heard of it? Well, it’s
coffee & acid

lean and hearty fare
for those
with feet on the earth,
hearts in the tower
of vision

on this the dark planet.

Breakfast of fools
and champions.

But in ’85 I was thinking more and more of seeking once again to walk with Christ. I may not have talked about it much – my friends in town were not interested in this – but it was on my heart. When I thought of my ongoing life without Him, and of my young daughter without a true knowledge of Him from my heart to hers, I was filled with a quiet dread. One of the things I sometimes did when I felt my mind filled with cobwebs, and my heart shallow and restless, was to take a hit of acid. And so I sought out two different friends to cop from. In case one was beat I’d at least have the other, as I hated expecting to trip, and nothing happening.

One friend was a street person with good connections, and the other a human services professional, likewise with access to quality stuff. They both came through, and so I had two hits on me.

I dropped one in town, I think at my friend Karen’s house – she like a sister to me, and a fellow poet – as that was where I often hung out, and from there I went to the village green, but when awareness became as intense as a storm I realized I wanted to be somewhere more peaceful.

I drove home some three miles to Peter Pan Farm (the real name of the place in those days), and went to a field near the cottage where my daughter and I lived. She was nearby with another family who were friends of ours. I had bought a pint of muscatel to take the edge off, and sat in the field sipping my wine, relaxing in the increasing awareness.

I don’t remember when I first became conscious of it, but I sensed an evil spirit, and it did not go away. This is one of the problems with these kinds of drugs – they give you direct and immediate access to the realm of spirits. Often I have no awareness of them at all – I avoid like the plague even any hint of such, but occasionally it happens. Once in New York I was on acid and interacted with this man whom I sensed was into deep evil, and even after I left him a spirit’s presence I felt when near him dogged me wherever I went, and I walked down the city streets, actually haunted. It is a terrible feeling being in their presence, the foulness, the malignity, the horror that such an entity has a personal interest in and direct access to my being. And one never knows what evil may materialize under their influence. It is unnerving!

Some of you reading this will of course think me mad and given to hallucinations – I expect that from those with an anti-supernatural worldview – but others of you will know I may indeed be speaking the truth. And mind you, the genre of this piece you are reading is not fiction, but visionary adventure, non-fiction. I mean, it happened as I tell it. Yes, my perceptions and understanding may be off in some things, and that is a key part of the larger story, but you must judge for yourselves if I have my wits about me, and see clearly in these things I say, or no.

I could not bear it, being vulnerable to a demon, and not knowing what might occur. It is not just a static entity, emanating like a street lamp, but a being sworn to my destruction – and under orders from beings higher up, and answerable to them in their horrid cruelty, yes, even to their own – and if we were already in each other’s presence….I was not ignorant of the possibility of a direct assault upon me, and what would be the outcome of that – at best – but me undone in a mental institution somewhere.

I could not endure this infernal creature’s presence in my perceptual field, unpredictable and violent. I had to take up a weapon against it, and there is only one place in all of existence where such are forged, and available to those who know their proper use. Regardless of the grief that may follow – the failure – I had no choice but to avail myself of the armory of Heaven, and get ahold of a Spirit-blade – the one issued to me called Lightning Sword – and go after this spirit. You attack one rightly and they flee.

And so, tripping, while I poured the wine out into the field, I went to my Lord, approaching the presence of His majesty with these words, “Lord Jesus, forgive me and cleanse me with Your blood.” He and I had been through this before, and we minced no words. His little brother come to Him in desperation and repentance would be received. We knew each other’s hearts. (What I didn’t know – and needed to know to walk what Isaiah called the highway of holiness – I would not learn till I was as good as dead, at the end of my own strength and wisdom. This would be some years away.)

The glory of my King flooded through my heart, and I was quickened with Power, the life of Heaven. Against such no demon can stand. I turned to the demon and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and in the power of His Spirit who is the life of my spirit, I command you to go from me.” It was that simple. My words were as sharp and penetrating as a razor-edged blade, but such a blade as would cut into spirits. (John Bunyan called such a weapon “a right Jerusalem blade.”) The spirit left, and did not return.

I drew near to my Lord. It had been so long I was away from Him. What a joy to be approved and in His favor once again! And so I remained a while, rejoicing. Then I received intelligence in my understanding – the Lord communicates with his people in various ways – indicating a course of action He desired of me, and the reasons behind it. I suppose I could also put it, this was my conscience, and my intuitive grasp of the implications of my having taken the acid in light of my having made a profession of faith in the town, however faulty my profession and life were. Even so, it is the light of Christ’s Spirit that informs and quickens my conscience; He is the intelligence of my intelligence.

I saw how my friends could easily say, upon my speaking of my renewed communion with Christ, “Steve, that sounds great, but as I see it this ‘communion with Christ’ is just a part of your acid trip. You got any more of this great acid?” And they could rightly say that, for it was in the midst of the trip I sought and found Him, and the distinctions I would try to draw separating Him from the acid experience would be but sophistries in their eyes, just clever words covering what they saw (or seemed to see) was the truth of the matter. For everyone knows – who is experienced with LSD – that there are many so-called “Christ consciousness” experiences folks have while tripping, and this would seem to them but another such delusion, or peculiar subjective experience.

I saw I needed to do something to nullify the grounds for these conclusions. I would execute judgment on the criminality of the act by turning myself in to the police, thereby condemning the having taken LSD, while leaving my union with Christ inviolate and free from the impugnment of it being acid-based, for it was in Christian respect of the law I judged myself a transgressor.

I was afraid of what might happen at the police station, but it was crucial I follow my conscience, and maintain the integrity – the credibility – of my testimony of Christ. So I told my daughter I was going into town for a while (it must have been 5:30 or 6 in the evening), and that I would see her in a while. I said I was leaving the car, and walking. I walked because it was against the law to drive while under the influence of drugs, and Scripture enjoins I should obey the just laws of the land. I walked the few miles into town rejoicing, and also a little nervous at what might happen. I went straight to the station house, which was on Tinker Street – one of the two main streets in the village – and asked the dispatcher at the window if I might speak to the Chief (which is how we called him), who at this time was Richie Ostrander. Chief Ostrander came and opened the door, and let me in, and invited me into his small office. He said, “How can I help you?” He knew me from around town, had given a talk on police work to the children in my special ed class, and I was on nodding terms with him. Part of my disguise as high-flyin’ outlaw poet was to have my hair cut short in a military style, which I had often sported since my days in the Marine Corps, and to officialdom I appeared Mr. Straight, compared to the long-haired hippies in town.

I said, “Chief, I have a confession to make. I took some LSD, and as I’m a Christian I know it’s wrong, and I’m turning myself in.” He asked, “Are you on it right now?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Excuse me a minute,” and walked out of the office. I think he alerted one of his deputies to be at the ready in case I were to go crazy. He came back in and sat at his desk across from the chair I was in. He said, “What can I do for you? Do you want to go to jail?” And I said, “No.” “Are you carrying any of the drug on you now?” I replied, “No.”

I liked the Chief. He was gentle with me. I knew he went to the Methodist Church in town – I had seen him there when I visited that congregation. So I knew that at the least he had an understanding of Christian thought. (I had seen a number of good men – and later, women – on the Woodstock police force, where kindness ruled in their dealings with the people.) I knew he was puzzled as to why I was there in his office. “Chief, I’ve turned myself in because I’ve been talking about Jesus Christ to people in town – and I have tried to live the Christian life – but I got depressed and discouraged, and reverted back to my older ways, and took the LSD. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. When I came to my senses I asked God to forgive me, and He did. But I know I have lost my credibility as a follower of Christ with some of the people in town, such as those I got the drug from, and others. So I wanted them to know that I didn’t look lightly on this that I have done, but knew it to be a sin in God’s eyes, and a violation of the law of the land, and I have executed judgment on myself by turning myself in to the law.”

He said, “You don’t want to go to jail. Will you tell me who you got the drug from?” I said, “No, Chief, I’m not a rat. And these are just street users, not dealers.” He said, “Well, what would you like me to do to you?” And I replied, “Let me go, and I will not do this again. I have learned a hard lesson. I just needed to execute this judgment on my actions, for the sake of my testimony to Christ in town.”

He asked, “Where do you live?” And I told him. He then asked, “Does anyone else live with you?” I said, “Yes, my 12-year-old daughter. I’m a single parent.” He said, “Is she home now?” And I said, “Yes.” He asked, “How will you get home?” I said, “I’ll walk. That’s how I got into town. I like walking.”

He asked, “Can I trust you to go home and not have any trouble?” He could tell I was calm and emotionally stable with him in the office (the Lord’s Spirit was the peace of my heart). He said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you go home, but I want you to call me here in the station later this evening, and let me know how you are. Will you do that?” I said, “I will. And thank you for your understanding.”

I left the police station and stopped over at Karen’s house, looking for my street friend, as I had given him the extra hit of acid once I knew the first one I took was good. When I saw him I said, “John, would you please do me a favor and give me that hit back? I know I gave it to you, but I really need it!”

And so he did. As soon as I was out of his sight, and passing on the bridge over Tannery Brook, I tossed it in the water. I didn’t want his or anyone else’s trip on my conscience. And I never took another such drug – imagine having to go through that again! With cause I could be thrown into an asylum! And I would not trifle with God in this.

I was now free. Free to speak of my Savior without fear of the rejoinder that my faith – and experience of God – was simply an extension of an acid trip. And I rejoiced in the wisdom and graciousness of my Lord. I walked home with joy and peace in my soul.

This is one story from a visionary adventure, which still goes on twenty years later, part of A Great And Terrible Love.