INTIMATION

In the late-twentieth century, the nearest thing

To a meditation centre and, by implication,

The Social Transcendentalist culture

That could be associated with it ...

Was a Rock concert, particularly when indoors

And associated with light shows and synthetic drugs.

Such concerts were especially prevalent during

The late 1960s and early 1970s,

Before Rock succumbed to Punk,

But some Rock still prevailed in the 1990s,

And there was also Jazz to serve the same purpose -

Essentially one of religious aspiration

And cultural self-realization.

One could argue that these psychedelic concerts

Intimated of future meditation centres,

Much as though they were unofficial manifestations

Of theocratic Centrism in a state age,

The participants effectively outsiders

Within the existing civilization,

Their penchant for synthetic drugs illegal

From a state point-of-view,

Their culture unofficial,

Caught between two ages,

Tail-ending the democratic and intimating

Of the future theocratic,

Somewhat in the position of early Christians

Vis-à-vis the pagan status quo,

Frowned upon by the Establishment,

All those 'straights' who related to democratic,

Not to say autocratic, tradition,

The great middle-class masses of Western civilization,

Who would never 'trip' or 'snort' or do anything -

Sexually, socially, or otherwise - that wasn't

Psychically middle-of-the-road

And hence broadly intellectual.

How they loathed those who were morally better

And more spiritually courageous than themselves,

All those 'freaks' that they preferred,

In their democratic ignorance of higher criteria,

To regard as socially worse and less intelligent -

The evil 'lower class' of an alternative culture,

A counter-culture to which they remained

Both deaf and blind, imprisoned within

The inner darkness of their purgatorial lunacy,

Shut off, like Dante's damned in blocks of ice, from

The liberating spirituality of the inner light!