Ignis Fatuus

The only solitude is sleep or death
We were not clever enough
Kind to others and cruel to self
When self ask for mercy and was denied
The holiest privacy remains waiting on us
And all that was misunderstood or abandoned
Will come together
Let my failure be your fortune
This that was broken in careless error
Let it be known that to know your own death is to die twice
Once really
And then hardly at all

Let it be known that there is nothing as ugly in all its tangents
As the human beast
A trick set against the blood of your soul
Let it be known that solitude is the only mercy
And the only lover
Let it be known that a man need not be Christ to be crucified
Let it be known that a man can be crucified each day
Each moment
Each breath
To sleep and awake and be tormented again
Let it be known that a man can die and die and die and die and still feel the pain
And know he his dead and still feel the pain
And know there is nothing he can do and still feel the pain
Let it be known
Let it be known that the temples are nothing
And the bells are nothing
And fame is nothing
And victory is nothing
And sex is nothing
And that solitude brings madness
And the crowd brings madness
And drinks and eats the body like a tiger
That there is no voice to speak with, no ear to hear
Let it be known that there will be other men such as I
Lifted from the lion's mouth
Burned down by false loves
Tricked by kindness
Misled by intellect
Dizzied by posey
Sacrificed for profit
Used as cheap labor
And these will be the kindest of happenings compared to what will enter the eye and ear and the brain
and seep to the innards to begin their death-work
I pity all such brothers of mine who will follow me in the centuries
Unable to love because there is nothing to love
Unable to kill because there is nothing alive
Forever hanging and bleeding and dizzied by the beast-human
The walls, the gardens, the sun, the flowers, the kisses, the flags, the seas, the animals, the food, the liquors, the paintings, the symphonies
All uselessness
Let it be known that most men love when they can see
And they see each other
And they love this because they see very little
Let it be known that I am bitter and damned and tired and useless
Let it be known when the final hope goes, there remains but a staring at the dance and a watching of the feeble intercourse of the idiots with very little note-taking
Let it be known that I am dead but there is no anger
Let it be known that most men are dead many years before burial
Let it be known that many men die in childhood, that many men are born dead
Although their parts move and they make sound and grow and advance into adult behavior and do things in civilization
Let it be known that these men never existed and that their funerals were extreme farce
And also the dead tears for the already dead
Let it be known that the worms themselves were nearer to truth in that they did not cry
Let it be known that birth is not holy
That death is not holy
That life is not holy
Let it be known that I have bled without crowns
That I will bleed in a moment
That I will bleed forever, red, red, red
And the hawks will dance within my bones and rejoice
Let it be known that I do not die for man's sins
But that I die for what man is, and for what I almost was
They, too little of anything
And myself lifted enough too see the horror
To sicken and go mad and wilt

Do not take this personal what I say about life altogether
Or man altogether
Unless on another plane, you consider yourself a defender of life and man
Which is only another natural weakness of the species
Like a rat guarding its nest
And for which I cannot hold you
Totally to blame
The only solitude is death
But not this death
Not this death
Not this death