The Lords of Birth & Rebirth diet on dexedrine, slimming
their auras into afterglow. Their skins luminesce
with a milky sweat. Bloated with dopamine, their limbic clusters
buzz. A mother expecting might worry her prolactin into hiding
its hordes of vital allergens. Your central nervous system
is a bath, abundant & sudsy. But these Lords splash there.
An overflow of shining spilth.

Michael the Stammerer, emperor of Byzantium, sent
in 827 Year of Our Lord to Louis the Pious, King of France, a copy, in Greek,
of the writings attributed to the Athenian companion
of St. Paul named Dionysius the Areopagite, which included
“The Mystical Theology” & “The Celestial Hierarchy.” With this act
the Kings of Western Europe vanished
into a dominion of words. The heavenly beings, because
of their intelligence, have their own permitted conceptions of God.

What lustrous initiations suffer in the reuptake? Speed
hurries the theophanies into eyeblinks, inside a sparrow’s
heartbeat. The Kingdoms we reign over are inwardly radiating places
whose palaces usurped by the Lords of Birth & Rebirth
darken in their intelligence. Who scoffs at the wise? I bid
adieu to these kings. Farewell to their
energetic dynasties. Upwards, outward,
fires concelebrate with a long lost lullaby.

Peter O’Leary (© 2001)