waking up from a coma.
on spiritual descent and baptism by fire
Trying to channel the relentless spirit of Henry Miller — the self-anointed bastard heir to Rimbaud’s spiritual throne, while I sit here on my own hollow throne, heir to no one, clawing through a coma of sedation — strapped to the bed, hooked to an algorithmic ventilator feeding me digital rot.
Pressure is building.
“You need to post.”
No, I don’t.
It’s a waste of time being a poet in a way even Miller or Rimbaud couldn’t have imagined — like a dog chasing its tail, or Pan’s shadow: mischievous at best. A ghost at worst.
I’m not seeking redemption. I want baptism. A reversion to childhood. Totality. The same obsessions I’ve always carried, repeating endlessly the closer I get to breaking through.
But no one cares about my problems. All that matters is if I can make you feel.
Can I?
Better yet — can I make myself feel?
It’s not about some grand arrival of self, but combustion of the senses. Ascension through creation. Arousal of spirit in a culture that thrives on flattening it.
And while a paper ladder to heaven dangles just above the scalp, I know the futility in climbing it; I’m ceaselessly drawn toward its illusion, yet too aware the path to paradise runs through purgatory.
So, I prepare for descent.
I kick my feet up, warming my toes on hell’s crust. It’s not enough to burn me. I wish it was. But I’ve seen what fire does to men. What it did to me. What it did to Rimbaud, who, having ingested the entheogen of the flame, chose to trade transcendence for commerce.
If I’m heir to anything, it’s to that same ill-fated venture. The rapid descent. The betrayal of my task. The inability to control the blaze.
But just as Christ descended into hell before rising, we too must pass through the flame.
The path is narrow. A steel cast fastened to the skull. And only by burrowing deeper can we taste the heat that burns all metals. Only then can we be free.
Some remain buried. Others wander among us in their death-day clothes. But if we’re brave, we can strip ourselves bare and make torches from the flame.
That will be the light that wakes us. The beacons we follow. The altars we build.