The subjective world is just that
A world
Infinitely expanding and complex
A complex network of attitudes
Perceptions foresights and hindsights
As we discover when the doors of perception
Are cleansed

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment
And let me add to Blake’s demonic observation
That sensual enjoyment often resides
In personal interaction
But also occurs in interactions
With those artificially-devised subjectivities
Namely works of art

And so to my theme
The Catholic Church left me
With dread that has persisted
From childhood into my old age
And yet amid the dread I find gratitude
For Sister Nathaniel at Our Lady of Sorrows
And for my second-grade teacher Mrs. O’Connor

All the persons we know are humans alas
Weak vulnerable rather pathetic organisms
We do not find gratitude in the animal kingdom
Gratitude an emotional posture of reason
For I have reason or have not
To acknowledge the benefaction of another
Or indeed their destructive ill will

Therefore do I hereby retract the innuendo
That I have been left with only dread
For in the immense precincts of subjectivity
Dread shares its quarters with other less destructive moods
Such as thankfulness approval and love
But I am forced to admit
Not tranquility

For in 1962 when I was learning to dread the pains of hell
That psychotic nightmare
I lived each day in frank terror of nuclear weapons
And of their hell fire
And of the crystalline perfection of Communist evil
That somehow would become God’s instrument
For my punishment

And to this day I hate myself as a scaredy-cat
Even as I reason that less objectionable traits
Must surely lodge somewhere in the recesses
Of my character
And why the traits that might give strength recede
While devastating dread and self-damnation dominate
I do not know though I have my suspicions

Parents schools
Don’t punish your kids
Neither listen to the lie
That success matters most
Nor hear nor repeat
The stupid rhetorical question
How else will they learn to be good