Mysterious Reality (Revised)

By Matthew Theisen

This is a revised, more readable version of the 2006 edition. The ancient hero, Achilles, unites with the great Hindu warrior, Bhisma, to preserve the heavens against a demon invasion that threatens cosmic order. As the two spirits decide on battle plans, they try to convince the gods and goddesses to join their confederacy, but Lord Shiva has gone insane while incarnated on Earth, and Vishnu is no longer interested in human affairs. It is left to Ganesha and the goddesses to ward off the intruders or flee for protection in the new universe being created. The intrigue deepens when the wind god invents a plot to ensure peace. Written in pentameter rhyming couplets, Mysterious Reality has a combination of battlefield action and thoughtful dialogue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532025235

Matthew Theisen

Matthew Theisen apologizes if this volume is more somber than Part One. Too many people died over the past few years and he became more philosophical and, perhaps, more repetitively morbid. He still thinks it's a good read, though.

Book preview

1. Heavens Collide

Sing, muse, of Achilles’ and Bhisma’s war,

how the two undertook their bloody chore

when on Earth they were replaced by Hamlets

whose eloquence lay in voting pamphlets

and screen teleprompters’ speech, line for line,

which people would heed as they sat to dine.

Diva awards became matched to stars’ fates,

yet were like Black Hole vacuums no thing sates:

a lesson to the public’s wit to gorge,

and thus in their minds’ void arose King George.

He worked to shape the world’s hierarchy

to control all the stems of energy;

like vines have stalks connected to ripe fruits,

which when consumed gives acting its base roots.

So George Bush Junior ran the power trade,

demanding obedience lest light fade;

like Yaweh at play in a new Eden,

the choice was brightness or a gloomy den.

The deathly ocean of life has daughters

act from love’s fire to avoid the slaughters

of ritual austerities and prayer

ascetics use as emotions’ slayer,

reining in senses and quelling passion:

to many ‘tis a trendy fashion.

Thetis and Ganges flow to ocean’s life,

regaling us with tales of their sons’ strife.

Lord Bhisma and Achilles were not fooled

by wiley tongue’s craft: the first should have ruled;

the other was a prince in his own right,

taken by wrath through Agamemnon’s slight.

They are united, being waters’ sons,

with responsibilities neither shuns.

In life they took orders from lesser men,

now they range free in their own social pen,

for Samsara drowned their life’s tipsy rafts:

they exist on Earth only in art crafts.

The two warriors gather at time’s end,

with aid from what scribes and messengers lend,

to compare what is and what might yet be.

Muse, open my mind’s door that I can see!

Achilles, fresh from an afternoon’s nap,

dons a gray tunic with a brown loin-flap.

He does calisthenics, washes his face;

his mind at ease, though his body in place

like that of a panther about to spring

on a heedless man with no spear to fling.

He calls Ganymede, telling the fellow

to recite dire news from the world below:

computer breakdowns, bombings, and firefights,

which has Earth days seem perpetual nights.

He enjoys the tragic reports at ease,

paying his own apocalyptic fees.

Bhisma takes no pleasure in such stories;

does not laugh at the Whigs or the Tories.

He thinks Achilles sleeps too much in songs

of dream-world politics and the mass throngs

organizing Armageddon on Earth,

perhaps hunting for a new place of birth.

But Achilles laughed: ‘Why do you worry?

They plot a demise which will be gory.

Now we can watch them bicker to the death,

led by avaricious chiefs with the depth

of a blurry photo of a felon,

more absurd than my war over Helen.’

Bhisma had shook his head, ‘My eyes tear up.

As Will Shakespeare’s Macbeth put it, I sup

with horrors. The grand pageantry of life

need not be told by a fool or his wife.’

Achilles said, ‘You have not had a mate;

you keep yourself pure, like a tablet slate

unwritten by a woman’s ambition;

you lack their vanities’ contribution

always whispering in your ear and head,

whether wide awake or sleeping in bed.

Feast on ox-thigh, my friend, and we will share

favorite tales to forget worldly care.

Remember the time we felt like we soared

on mare’s milk with the Khan who had no sword,

lamenting the loss of his great empire,

his corpse turned to ash on a blazing pyre?

Or the visiting blind poet who drew

female pride leaping from Satan’s brain-brew?

We rarely get guests like them any more;

I suppose wit has lost the dullness war.’

So he recalls the past conversation,

while Ganymede gives his recitation.

Briseis serves dinner: to her mate, thick beef;

for herself, bread and herbs with a sprig leaf.

Over the years she became aware,

and now avoids the pain of cattle’s fare

and the brutes partaken at ghostly feasts,

a trait learned from Bhisma’s concern for beasts.

Achilles eats, and as the goblet drains,

he teases the girl on imagined pains:

"Mere phantoms of our Elysian field

should not concern you, so why do you yield?

You act as though they are forbidden fruit,

yet enjoy my meat to its deepest root.

My crude jest has your fair face blush and turn.

Ah, you are always my sweet butter-churn."

He moves to have love dispel the news’ gloom,

but she replies she must work at the loom.

Achilles yawns and says, "That is enough,

Ganymede. Our minds will rot with that stuff.

It simply does not rate my attention;

their sole uniqueness is the invention

of ways to murder on a global scale:

the means of doom center each vapid tale.

For almost ten years the tyrant, Saddam,

held out against foes, much like the Madam

with Paris at Troy plotting sundry means

to ward us off, and we argued in scenes

amongst ourselves, creating split factions,

until we put our words into actions.

George Bush ignores the United Nations’

mandates, so do I. Bhisma’s orations

on Hindu politics has firmer claws

to hold my attention than their mixed laws."

Saying this, Achilles watches the waves

as the other Heaven warns from sea caves:

through dank tunnels to a cobblestone lane,

the guardians speed to a peaceful plain,

where a stacked pyre is lit, bright with no heat,

to foretell that the Heavens soon will meet.

Achilles no longer steers his own realm,

his Heaven careens, no hand on the helm.

The first collision was fifty-five years

short of the third millennium, and fears

of future wrecks keep him from rebuilding.

Ruins lay where they fell: lattice gilding,

granite rubble, translucent pearls, and gold

from Hephaistos lay crushed near the sheepfold.

Achilles allows none to question him;

Briseis’ suggestion, which he thought a whim,

to clear the waste was viewed as an insult,

heeding only himself and the gods’ cult.

While they gazed in pained awe at the rubble,

Bhisma sent men to find out the trouble,

for Ganesh noted the new barrier,

and sent to Bhisma a dove-carrier:

‘This crash was not seen by an oracle.

We must get Shiva’s third eye: its circle

can protect us from further invasions.

Do not accept his tactful evasions.’

Yet Lord Shiva would not be born to Earth

or Heaven, instead laughed in gleeful mirth.

So the two kings met at their new border

to parley and restore broken order.

Their islands were churned at the crushed edges,

reshaped like glacier-rubbed mountain ledges.

They were well-received by one another,

and each talked of his liquid-form mother.

A third scudding island, pulled in their wake,

and having no anchor with which to brake,

collided with the other two nations.

A stocky man from ancient traditions,

alone on his tiny castaway reef,

who at last had a place to end his grief,

landed, saying: ‘No need to be on guard.

I have quit violence and am my own bard:

I invent songs to ease my lonely fate.

Soon I will be reborn, something I hate:

‘tis an eternal war I never win,

compelled to battle for the greatest sin.

The mushroom bursts were near my former land,

turning people to ashes, stone to sand.

My lineage could not defeat Japan,

but they are cooked in a nuclear pan.

A new era is upon us and Earth:

the horsemen ride: disease, madness, war, dearth.

I am known as Genghis Khan and Iron.

I can prophesy a President Ron

will rise from the West to police a war

where hostages buy a godly store

of weapons from America to please

the television audience, a lease

to foes after bombing Marines’ barracks.

Ah, visions that have me shudder in wracks.

Perhaps one of you could spare me a mount.

There once was a time when I could not count

all of my chargers, ponies, and horses,

running wind-swept as they went their courses.’

Though the men tried, no steed entered the land,

not even guided by their mentor’s hand:

they bolted and shied away from the Khan,

who gave up the notion of horses’ spawn

breeding an unmounted ghostly legion

to keep him company in his region.

The Khan chose a sorrel mare and milked her,

telling the others as they watched him stir:

‘Set anchors to bind our lands together

to be undisturbed by fall-out weather.’

While the milk fermented into Soma,

which Khan drank and went into a coma,

they shared their stories: victories and griefs,

and myths that shaped their religious beliefs.

Before he was drunk, Khan told prophecies

of a state’s addiction to pharmacies:

‘They fume and fizzle, believing their myths:

"Accept democracy or suffer scythes

of techno-death sending souls to Allah,"

much like the Vikings and their Valhalla.

They think franchising their own government

is the way to make the world in cement

images of themselves: rigged elections,

packaged, corporate diverse selections

are consumed by all for the correct price:

even I-Ching becomes a game of dice.

Pills for happiness and one for a funk:

up and down they go, hooked on grade-A junk.’

A lunar span of such conversations

made the Khan pleased by the new sensations:

far too long alone he had been adrift,

and moaned when released anchors caused a rift

between the Heavens: wandering again

aimlessly, with nothing to lose or gain.

Achilles braces himself for the crash

as the two islands collide with a brash,

cacophonous roar of grinding thunder

that threatens to rip the worlds asunder.

As when the good grace of the Earth-shaker

is taken from those who give their maker

no recognition or small sacrifice,

not even a flower, which would suffice

to keep the individual from harm,

an offering to be a lucky charm

and protect one from Earth-plates bashed and churned

at the spot where God is defied and spurned.

Sins and crimes accumulate until sway

of karma sweeps the place for a new day.

As when Poseidon was ignored by Greeks,

who built a fort on Troy’s seashore, and reeks

of oxen-thigh were not inhaled by him

as offerings, so memories are dim

of their buildings, long lost to Samsara,

recalled by Homer in epic drama.

Or Babel’s Tower to reach their sky-god:

efforts at eternity lay in sod,

remaining only in human stories

crafted and gene-tagged to spread their glories.

So does the upheaval shake paradise,

like a god at a game of risky dice.

Never rebuilt is Achilles’ palace:

crumpled in gloom, ruins stay in their place,

reminding him that all work is for naught;

so his wife left him to Briseis and sought

a new life, staying at her father’s side

‘til she is reborn by Samsara’s tide.

Peleus’ son became an ascetic,

but time, faceless reaper, begins to tick

faster for the show to be enacted,

causing the islands to be connected.

The gray tent folds about Briseis and masks

her sight until she emerges and asks:

"What has caused the careening collision?

Are there gods involved in dire collusion

to shape our destines as they so wish,

netting our fates together like a fish

caught and flopping from the briney water,

taken from Poseidon’s deep for slaughter?"

Achilles says, "Set the long-legged chair

and create a banquet, a godly share.

Churn the sweetest cream from the fattest cow;

a great friend like old Phoenix visits now.

Bhisma will rise from his golden tower;

he is not one to whimper and cower

at fate’s capricious joy of destruction.

Bhisma shall work at a new construction."

Briseis’ says, "Why not join him in his home

where Maya furnishes a brilliant dome?

This realm is gloomy in comparison.

Let us go and leave this idle prison

and make our way to Elephant City

for a few days of musical ditty

paced to sublime performances of dance.

The fates smile on us, we should take the chance."

Achilles: "Are you too good for the tents

so you scheme for another existence,

perhaps to live in Elephant City?

Make your amends so the gods have pity.

Pour an urn of red wine upon the ground;

we do not need a curse hovering round

to punish us for slander said in haste:

show remorse and let the gods have wine’s taste;

then prepare to receive Santanu’s son.

I will send the boy for news on the run."

The child trots away, given as a gift

to Achilles who won glory to lift

humanity with tales of how he sought

to face his own destiny as he fought

both Trojans and the pressure from a king,

alone when Patroclus met with death’s sting.

Odysseus, too, was given his choice,

having survived the Sirens’ luring voice;

crafting to get home from the Cyclop’s den,

then disguised as a tramp, greatness hidden.

Odysseus chose a brace of minstrel

bards to sing of fights for Helen the trull.

The gods gave Odysseus the cycles

of Homer, but Zeus’ veins ran icicles

when he was told the boy with pretty face,

clean-limbed disposition and pleasing grace,

was who Peleus’ son had selected;

yet Lord Zeus knew what the choice reflected:

the Olympians’ era was finished.

Poseidon went to those who sailed and fished,

as gods divided among favorites

who performed rituals that culture knits.

Hermes descended to the scribe jokers;

Bacchus to the drinkers and hemp-smokers;

Athena preferred the dress industries;

Artemis went to parks to keep the trees

alive and growing in cement cities;

Apollo to those who record ditties.

The ones they impress make popular cults,

which the gods enjoy as their own results.

So the boy joined the Greek’s after-life field

that Achilles guards with Hephaistos’ shield.

Ganymede travels to Ganesha’s glade

to watch the fillies sing in the trees’ shade:

"We celebrate another victory,

and regale ourselves with the short story.

For a fleeting moment we lost control,

yet have regained our senses so we stroll,

happy again with a new lease on life:

banished from our minds are rage, pain, and strife."

While the bliss-moved ponies sing and caper,

Ganesh watches the process of paper

being skinned from the trees like the trappers

who take beavers’ pelts when syrup-sappers

retire for winter, and fur becomes thick.

The gana imps swarm the trees, every stick;

the bark is peeled and soaked in a cauldron,

while they chant with mouths and hearts wide open:

"The trees have their own music, which they sing

in honor of the Goddess and our king.

We spin our bodies in imitation

of Shiva’s dervishing conflagration.

The trees do not suffer, for they repair

their coarse bark like a person grows new hair."

Ganesh approaches the lad on the hill,

saying, Here are some dainties. Eat your fill.

He offers bits of refined gelatin,

a defining trait of the plump Dantin.

Ganesha observes, "At times I divide

my true affections, though I have contrived

ways to make amends for it. In my sight

it is a vast epic battle they fight:

I hold the Goddess and her mate in awe,

yet while I watch the ganas as they saw,

I would sell my kin for a bag of treats:

enlightenment given away for sweets.

On the cover, one is whole and a sage-"

Please stop, or I will delete my message,

says the cup-bearer. "Your wit can have one

lose his objective before you are done.

You are invited to Achilles’ tent.

I may sound brusque but ‘tis not my intent."

Ganesha: "I am somewhat offended

by your hasty rush, for I have fended

off Krishna’s attack in my father’s cave.

Since neither of us is a drone or slave,

do not turn down our hospitality

or speak with impudent hostility.

Though I know of the crash that seemed cosmic,

I play my role, which is to be comic.

As I was saying, the roots go untorn

by the ganas who are a mixed breed: born

to make trouble, so we keep them at work,

shredding and rending as though ’tis soft cork.

They are a lineage made from Skanda

and I, stretching like an anaconda

flexing to wrap the three worlds all around,

yet we keep them from causing the roots’ ground

being stripped; so my love of sweets does sway

my attention like dead leaves blown away:

I am tempted from love of my parents;

yet even as the coarse bark splits and rents

from its own kind, made into papyrus,

wrote on and read with a divine iris,

singing songs of my parents’ satori,

and sweets, which I write into the story.

So oneness follows the great divisions,

and I still have my candy provisions."

Ganymede: "Pardon, I meant no offense.

I was sent on an errand past your fence."

Ganesha: "Did you encounter trouble

in the sea cavern’s dank gloomy rubble?

For they have been picking up passing beasts:

some are mere tramps, others have gana feasts

on those who wander too far from the trees,

as we wend our way through Sattwa’s light breeze;

chewing them down like starving barnacles,

as though chained there with strong iron shackles,

clinging fiercely to the sides and bottom.

Santanu’s son sang, to the beat tom-tom,

that the creatures are akin pilot fish,

which inspired a poem on Shiva’s wish

when he regained Parvati as his wife,

after he had madly taken her life.

Rudra had chopped her up into fine chum

when she rudely slept, muttering, ‘Ho-Hum’

while he postulated from his book stack:

all of which set up his white shark attack

on a small village where she was reborn;

for after a time he became forlorn,

devoid of her Shakti as a consort.

The fishing-town had a contest to sort

heroes from fakes to slay the king of sharks,

battling the monster from their canoe arks.

Shiva had changed his mount, Nanda the bull,

to a deadly fish that was never full.

Shiva appeared in their tiny village,

taking the best woman as his pillage:

he slew one mount to retrieve another,

so was reconciled to an Earth mother.

What can one hope from the cosmic pillar?

Lord of creation and dancing killer.

I shaped it into an oral poem,

then scribbled it while letting my mind roam

through scripture and a long list of begats,

and how I was born with the help of gnats:

taken from Shiva’s semen to the womb,

which I first believed was an open tomb.

It was a foresight of my quick demise

before Shiva re-shaped me, and my prize

was being formed with this elephant’s head,

because Uma cried aloud I was dead.

Now you come from the Elysian king,

and I yield to his message that you bring."

Ganymede patiently says, "Like moly,

received from quick Hermes on his holy

mission to protect Odysseus’ skin

from witchcraft that would change him to hogs’ kin,

are your words. The sun’s daughter desired sex,

yet she also worked her vehement hex

to guard her island from man’s invasion

so as to keep her natural vision.

Is that goddess I see in an old book?

She descends the mountain, and by her look

has been untouched by man’s depraved vices.

She grabs my being with her devices."

Ganesha: "Fair-skinned Uma, the daughter

of Himalaya, has done her slaughter

of senses’ delights with meditation.

Now Shiva will have a hesitation

before teasing her on her skin’s dark tone:

he will be caught in her snare to the bone.

At times I think he jibes her skin’s color

just to get Lady Uma to collar

her emotions, which too often run wild,

to spin them off her shell and become mild.

She knows the sacrifices to perform

to release dark passions for a new form.

I will have to see him unknot this snatch:

Lord Shiva has met his sexual match."

The boys watch Uma float over the grass;

the ganas observe too, and spill the brass

cauldron, making a muddle of their work,

but Dantin says naught of the chore they shirk.

Ganymede speaks: "I feel split asunder.

How much different she is, I ponder,

from Aphrodite riding a sea-wave:

sweet laughter’s darling seems a girlish knave.

Oh, I flee lest my mind begins to toil

like the foolish Natives plotted to spoil

famed White Buffalo Calf Lady’s person.

Do you get the same feeling, you, her son?"

Dantin: "I need a lawyer for how low

my thoughts have sunk, tarnishing my halo.

Most times she settles her own male accounts:

splits in half those crazy to be her mounts,

using disintegrating purity

she has won with her bright austerity.

We shall celebrate how she did not fail,

and I hope she delights us with her tale."

Ganymede says, "Lustful stirrings smother

my desire to leave. Besides your mother,

what reason is there to be so festive?

Is Attila the Hun once more restive

and attempted to usurp you again?

He never seems to learn, nor do his men

gain war strategy; his brain is hollow,

and victories over him are shallow."

Ganesh: "Attila is not in the runts’

smart department anymore: now he hunts

to gather followers and make a tribe.

He even approached Bhisma for a bribe:

the Huns would make no raid upon our home

if Maya would build him a golden dome.

Shape-shifting Maya demurred, pointing out

that he would never work for such a lout.

It took Attila several hundred years

to evolve the complex plans; yet our fears

are it signifies a great destruction

wherein will arise no new construction

‘til other spheres are reached by our one soul,

which splits again to water and hot coal.

We are not planning a war festival,

except that our clan has firm self-control:

like Uma, we do not yield to senses,

and rebuild our home with needed fences.

Even the gana imps at this work-site

are led by Shiva’s oracular sight."

Ganymede: "You have conquered indolence.

Despite the singing I can hear silence,

and far above that a clear sounding om,

which buzzes like bees in a honeycomb."

Ganesh: "We invite you, but peace banquets

are not your man’s style; though he mulls and sits,

he hearkens to combat celebrations

that describe war in bloody orations.

Relay him this message, friend Ganymede:

we will feast tonight and toast amber mead."

Cupbearer: "Achilles will likely spoil

it for Briseis, saying the brassy roil

of war celebrates dual love and hate;

a peculiar self-control shapes his fate.

He loves your King Bhisma as a close twin,

though no incest like Skanda and his sin."

Ganesh laughs at the joke on his mother,

and the boys part ways from one another:

Ganesh to admire Uma’s golden shape;

lust still raising hairs on Ganymede’s nape,

as when Lord Zeus desired Heavenly rape.

2. Victory

Lady Uma walks garbed in golden light,

singing a tune which makes the valley bright:

"Glory to love enlightened by

purity of purpose in sex;

glory to carnal desires my

gold body gives over to vex

the one who thinks darkness a shame,

and puts upon me love’s dire blame.

Glory to fulfillment of drive

toward a feast of fleshly love;

great glory to they who deprive

their outer-bodies’ gripping glove,

and fit themselves a new hands’ grasp:

for the body is like a fist

that takes and gives ‘til its last gasp,

and memory recalls the list

we make of what we most desire,

and what our lesser wants had meant:

our ghost takes a form pured by fire

to partake of a true intent."

So Uma sings and the citizens’ cores

respond gold reflections as if she pours

a honey mixture and seeds of Siva

to their inner-self, the creatures’ jiva:

the form’s soul in the consciousness of all.

She takes her child’s hand with a breezy call,

"Darling boy, do you have a joke on her

who gave you birth? Is that how you honor?

I, who made your father replace your head

while you laid in a lump, broken and dead.

He sent demons to find an elephant,

and you were resurrected, triumphant.

Now you cackle at incestuous jokes.

Have you been taking marijuana tokes?

Humor is fortuitous, my dear son;

you write with Vyasa behind the sun,

but beware the last joke is not on you:

a victim of cosmic pranks, a vast brew."

Ganesh: "Well said. I am also the first

jokes in the Soma chalice that will burst

forth goodness and light until Shiva drains

the tainted dregs. Now tell me of the stains’

removal from your soul and how they fell,

I hope, like stones in a fathomless well.

Was it like a Lakota vision quest?

My friend goes through it when he is our guest;

though his own perspective would be unique

in the desires which Ganymede might seek

to fulfill, even if they cause despair:

violation can bring its own repair.

Creatures seem to sweep onto our bottom

like a pile of fallen leaves in autumn

that stirs and swishes with the Northern breeze,

until winter arrives in nipping freeze.

‘Tis especially bad when we plan fun

to celebrate that our spirits are one;

even my mammoth head is quite attached,

and I like to think that we are well-matched."

She strokes his arm, "Yet being thus engaged

brings strife, for the bottom beasts are enraged

they are excluded from our joyful play,

and unlike us, are made of mud and clay.

It appears as though I am a sibyl

like the one sought by Saul in the Bible:

her oracle sight predicted death’s sting

upon the Israelites’ first chosen king.

I remind you that exuberant feasts

are often let go on the bottom beasts;

for I made you from the scurv of my bath

and you guarded the door, to Shiva’s wrath.

A bizarre way to become a mother,

yet slime is freed one way or another."

As the deities walk while conversing,

Ganymede faces the monsters traversing

the sea caves, made when Uma changed features:

her old form collapsed and shaped the creatures;

as when Phoenix arises from ashes,

but cinders flare giving life that lashes

fire at the rare soaring Egyptian bird.

Except for howls, the ganas speak no word,

yet have the craft to gather on floating

kingdoms, ignoring the borders, flouting

rhyme and reason; they attack Ganymede

to devour him and satiate greed.

Others go to Achilles’ land to raid,

and he notes they are of a higher-grade

as he mercilessly chops them to bits,

while Briseis watches him from where she sits.

She calls, "You work hard, after having slacked

for numerous days; then I clean the hacked

bodies and random limbs tossed here and there.

Why do you bother, since you do not care

enough about the palace to repair

its graceful pillars and shining pearl dome?

You do not even steer us, so we roam,

aimless- Quick! Kill him! He is too near me!-

yet you say that wandering sets us free."

Achilles mumbles as a gana’s teeth

flies from its mouth, and the soul to Lake Lethe,

"Ugh! His grinders are deeply embedded

in my sword-arm. These monsters seem wedded

between themselves in craft and become sly:

no longer attack reasonless, but fly,

then shrewdly circle and once more scatter.

They also seem made of stronger matter.

Now is not the time to fight on two fronts:

keep your peace, woman, while I take the brunts

of their attack so the boy can get home

through the tunnels and the sea caverns’ loam."

I deserve correction, says fair Briseis,

"for we are in the midst of a