Gnosis 1

"I think the Gnostics were right."

Standing on The Great Bridge beneath the umber sky, the eternal cold undying breeze caresses their faces.

"How so?"

Sandpaper on sandpaper the sound of their shoes as they turn their backs to the breeze, gaze for a while in mutual silence over the empty endless city.

"Is it ever warm here?"

"No." Silence. They look outward, across the expanse of the eternal city. "Somewhere out there is The Street of Books."

"A Library?"

"Yes... No... It's, The Street of Books. Someday... time... how, maybe we'll find ourselves there, then you'll understand."

"Ah." Silence, and the passing of may be time. "There should be trash you know. Blowing down the streets."

"If this were a place of the living."

"So you think we're dead?"

"No. But... Sometimes I wake up back in The World...."

"You what?"

"Wake up in the world. It may happen to you someday. I don't know. Like you woke up here, you'll wake up back there, suddenly, it may not be Earth, or even the time you left. But there will be people... Living things... Life... Warmth... a Sun in the sky."

"But you don't stay?"

"No. There are things I have to do. And I do them. And then I return here."

"The Church got rid of Purgatory years ago, I wonder if this is limbo."

"I doubt it."

Both smile.

"The Gnostics?"

"The world was a mistake."

"What?"

"There was an emanation from Being, the real, the eternal and timeless...."

"God?"

"Not as you understand it. Wisdom made a mistake, and gave birth to a deformed, blind, psychotic being, and that evil being created the world of men."

"That's not what I was taught in sunday school."

The man who is not a priest laughs.

"That's because the Gnostics lost the war..." Quietly, to himself, "and so did Yeshuah." Quiet again, the breeze whispers for a moment, picks up a little to moan softly around the form of The Bridge. "There are some people, not all, just some, who have a spark of the divine wisdom, spirit, something...

"Soul?"

"No, it's not a soul, at least not like you're thinking. And the thing, the mistake... one of the names for it is The Demiurge... anyway, The Demiurge trapped spirit within bodies of flesh. Separated fragments, sparks, of the spirit from wisdom and the great Being."

"And these sparks, their task is to...?"

"Remember."

"Remember?"

"Remember."

cutting edge

Should one use the sword of damocles
to cut the gordian knot?

Suspension,
shame falls upon the one who hangs from a tree
suspended by a thread
suspended in time
frozen, solidified, crystalized
potential energy
drives the toothed wheels
swings the pendulum
suspended from the release pin
the pit and the pendulum
the blade and the sound it makes
the walls glowing
with the unholy light

balanced on the razors edge
that moment
that moment
just before the fall
when all the world
hangs in the balance
that moment
that moment
just before the towers collapse
the inflection point
where all the load paths
reach their limit
and gravity takes over

Gravity is patient
has all the time in the universe
how mysterious
this attraction
this drive
this coming together

Oh the waiting
the suspense
waiting for the sun to rise
waiting for the savior to appear
waiting for the prophet to return

The dark is patient also

If you await the savior
You must get used to disappointment