Graffiti under the bridge says,
“Life will pull you apart like mozzarella strips if you let it.
And you should let it.”

Your reflection in the mirror says,
“We were friends once, long ago.
Let’s be friends again.”

A fungus angel dies in a forest at dusk
while coal cranes coo a lullaby.

A genius dies in a nursing home
without ever once being seen or noticed.

We are tossed like leaves in a hurricane of tenuous agreements
(form ineffable, source ineffable,
nature ineffable, outcome ineffable),
and we worry what some Cathy Whatevernut thinks of us.

We stand on the precipice of a plunge into chaos
(form unknown, source unknown,
nature unknown, outcome unknown),
and we argue about Republicans with strangers.

I once met a dead man in Barcelona
who has been with me ever since.
I showed him my hypochondria
and my disdain for my body
and the scars that cruel men have rent in my flesh,
and I said,
“Well? What can you do with this?”

He turned me around on the balcony and showed me the universe.
“This is medicine,” he said.
“Swallow it.”

And even now the aches still return,
and tears flow like melting glaciers
and I shatter as easily as eggshells in a blender.

But now I am upheld by the same might which swirls the galaxies,
and I know I can never truly fall.

Hail,
Holy Queen.

Hail,
holy moment.

Hail,
thunderous majesty of being.

Hail,
cold air in my nostrils.

Hail,
shameful errors of the past.

Hail,
emaciated bodies of Yemeni children.

Hail,
whale corpses choked full of plastic.

Hail,
teenage soldiers inflicting harm out of boredom.

Hail,
belched-up delusions of ancient grandfathers.

Hail,
flocks of featherbeasts.

Hail,
rays of starlight.

Hail,
frailty.

Hail,
smallness.

Hail,
vastness.

Hail,
boundlessness.

Pull me apart like mozzarella strips,
and let only the real remain.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either YoutubesoundcloudApple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemitthrowing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypalpurchasing some of my sweet merchandisebuying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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21 responses to “Hail”

  1. This poem is about…embracing the bad with the good, but not the fake? Total guess.

  2. The poem bespeaks prayers for patience, alertness, focus, gratitude, humility, and positivity. Bend the will to Ya-ways will; bind the way to Ya-ways way; bond the love to Ya-ways love. Venerate the sacred now. Behold, love, obey, praise, honor and trust Ya-way, the eternal, the ineffable, the unknowable, indestructible God within and God of the universal consciousness. Venerate the scared now.

  3. Hail the Magister Ludi

  4. And the real, what remains, is nothing.

  5. Thank you Caitlin for your poetry. I will learn this one by heart, recite it when the time comes, and repost it.

  6. victor vasylenko Avatar
    victor vasylenko

    Thanks Caitlin, I want you to feel the happiness from knowing that your poem is a real creative work that has brought something valuable and positive to the world
    xx

  7. “The world at present is full of angry self-centered groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilization rather than yield an inch. To this narrowness no amount of technical instruction will provide an antidote. The antidote, in so far as it is a matter of individual psychology, is to be found in history, biology, astronomy, and all those studies which, without destroying self-respect, enable the individual to see himself in his proper perspective. What is needed is not this or that specific piece of information, but such knowledge as inspires a conception of the ends of human life as a whole: art and history, acquaintance with the lives of heroic individuals, and some understanding of the strangely accidental and ephemeral position of man in the cosmos—all this touched with an emotion of pride in what is distinctly human, the power to see and to know, to feel magnanimously and to think with understanding. It is from large perceptions combined with impersonal emotion that wisdom most readily springs.”
    Bertrand Russell, “Useless Knowledge”

  8. Thanks for this and every other thought you share. Should do but don’t always stop to say so.

  9. Just curious. Do you write this drivel yourself or do you copy it from graphitti off some wall. Seriously not a fan but everyone is entitled to their opinions on such things.

    1. Why then do you come here every day? Something is attracting you. Perhaps you should listen closely to what it is trying to tell you.

    2. Caitlin, i give you permission to ban this creature for good, or at least delete a worthless drivel like this “comment.”

      1. True, that person was just really mean for no good reason but I find it more useful to practice dealing with the inevitable real life trolls, where the consequences of losing control are tangible and I can’t snap my fingers to make them disappear.

  10. BARTENDER….DRINKS FOR THE HOUSE, ON ME!!!

  11. Returning the great favor of “Hail”:

    “For the New Year— I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:—I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!”

    Nietzsche, The Gay Science

  12. Charles Dietrick Avatar
    Charles Dietrick

    Re: “Hail” – Brava, Caitlin, brava.

  13. Thank you for sharing your wonderful visions!

  14. Liked it You’re goooooooooooooooood

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