Abyss: There are abysses in many mythologies, from Polynesian creation myths to Nietzsche, Kabbalah, and others. To me, it is a trap. No part of it is desirable, if someone forces you to choose a part, push them into it.

Antichrist: If you grow up in a Christian environment, you have a mental construct of what Jesus Christ is in your mind. If you are a Christian, you give it power. Now, if you stop being a Christian, that mental image is still in your mind, but you have withdrawn power from it and may even oppose it. But to oppose it is to recognize that there is something Christ-like within oneself that has power. Antichrist should therefore be like a process of vampirism: sucking the power out of the image of Christ and reinvesting it in a new philosophy, mythos, etc. But if one gets caught in opposing Christ because one fears him, then you are basically at war with the part of yourself that Christ represents. This is masturbatory auto-crucifixion. Self-destruction is a waste of time, no? It may be even more enlightened to recognize that there is always a part of oneself that shares features of Christ, that one can never fully remove him from their psyche, and to do so is to simply deny the existence of the neurons which hold the "Christ-programming" when they will always be present. Antichrist therefore is a terrible place to be, a state of war and confusion and conflict. Who said being a human in this world was easy?

Anus: An anus is a gate that waste passes through (and occasionally a source of pleasure). But humans control their bowel movements, the movement of waste through said gates. Control is learned in the anal stage, where one learns to hold one's waste until it can be properly disposed of. Those obsessed with control have issues with their buttholes.

Death: While I am actually quite concerned with death in its not-so-symbolic form, symbolic death is to be placed in the light where the constant dross of fear, self-delusion, and fantastical notions meant to calm oneself cease to be and one accepts the nature of reality without judgment and attempts to control it. It is usually fleeting; humans are prone to the worst types of self-delusion, and admittedly this is so to a great extent with artists and poets as well.

Deva: It is inspiring to think of one's self as a ruler of a portion of some portion of an infinite singularity, is it not? Is seeing oneself as an interdimensional deva sent to warn the world about fear a delusion or itself a fear? Maybe, but I'm not going to tell.

Dreaming: The solipsistic narcissism of our current age reduces life to a meaningless dream in the minds of those gripped by it. Is this stupid? Banal? True? None or all of the above? Getting out of your own head is essential to avoid being victimized by those who pull the puppet strings of the dream: the liars, demagogues, and con-men of our age.

Eden: The amoral world of nature, where it's OK to have sex with, dominate, or kill anything you can get your hands on. Not to be confused with Sodom, which is more civilized.

Frozen Sun: Perhaps the most distinctive symbol of my poetry, I guess you could say that the frozen sun appealed to me as the opposite of heat: of an agent of dissipation and dispersion of heat, emotion, feeling. It crowns the "Kaleidoscope Tree" in Sodom on the Cymbals. It is remarkably beautiful but freezes the life from those under its thrall; it destroys the punishment of fire, but with the fear of fire leaves its hope.

Funeral Bell: Used as a symbol of fear and fascination with death. It tends to be destructive in and of itself: people listen to death's voice and they lose their ability to live in a healthy manner because of it, and "drop dead".

God: An attempt to make money through metaphysical means by the ruling class of society, and maybe some other things, but mostly that.

Green: I once saw a green mask signifying tragedy in the gay neighborhood of Chicago (Boystown). Next to it was a red mask signifying comedy (or rather, success of the hero). This stuck with me and green has been the color of tragedy for me. Money is green in America. Stop lights tell you to "Go" when they're green. I don't know if there's any significance to this.

Hell: Let's consider for a second the traditional notion of Hell: a bunch of people in a lake of fire burning forever. This, to me, will not do. In the poem "The Throne of Lucifer" from L.U.N.A.: Let Us Now Ascend I do explore this traditional notion of hell, but Lucifer himself is sitting bored in a freezing-cold, abandoned, skeleton-filled factory on his "throne": a folding chair. He shows his position to be decidedly inglorious, perhaps downright lame. In later poems, Hell stops burning. Why? Disbelief in it may play some role, or perhaps a desire to quench it was stronger than the hate that allowed it to exist. At any rate, the sky was once red, but it turns grey. The afterlife of moral reprobates is not nearly as grim, it is simply a consignment to obscurity, if there is an afterlife at all. The notion of burning people who don't agree with you in a lake of fire for all eternity is completely insane and is rightly condemned by all people with brains that still work after 2000 years of genetic maladaptation to this and similar notions.

Moon: This is a pretty normal interpretation: the moon represents the night, light in the darkness, femininity, mysticism, and the subconscious. I had a fascination with it for a while, but moved on a bit from it in my later writings, although it's still referenced a lot.

Neurons: Notable for not being a symbol very often. Neurons are the raw, physical place where cognition occurs. It is the non-spiritual, materialistic interpretation of how the life of the mind occurs: a bunch of neurons sending signals to each other.

Poison: Some in recent decades have attempted to identify poison with writing. If my words inspire you to drink poison, you have probably got a bad interpretation of them in your mind. They are, however, poisons fatal to certain delusions, that cause parts of the self to wither and die under their influence, hopefully!

Red: Red is the color of victory in the masks I saw painted on a wall in Boystown. Stop lights are red when they tell people to stop. Blood is red. Red wine is red. Hearts are red.

Satan: It is fashionable to think of Satan as the Lord of this Earth and worshipped by its rulers, among many other myths. Why have a Lord of Darkness? Wasn't that a really dumb idea, and doesn't it bring into the world the notion that there's some powerful being (that is, one more powerful than you) spreading evil around for no good reason? Isn't this a poison idea? Can't we not have this? Of course, in modern society, white people are considered the Devil by many, but the people who consider this true do not, as a rule, act much better than those they criticize and if given the opportunity to have power would probably make Devils of themselves as well. However, whether or not this trope is ridiculous, it has been a mainstay of popular culture for some time now. This is not to praise white people, there is good reason the notion of white-devilishness exists in the first place: genocide, slavery, racism, and ludicrous forms of gnosticism. I deconstruct the assumptions that Satan is based on into many different symbols, and sometimes present myself as speaking through them, but this is probably an illusion and an extreme form of sarcasm, right? I would hope so, for the sake of all that exists!

Silicon: Essentially, computers. The silicon is used to create the chips in computers that network together to form the Internet, our best chance at immortality yet. At the very least, the constant ocean of data on the Internet is constantly morphing and evolving but there are projects to preserve what can be preserved. Hopefully that includes all of the art humanity creates, not just what pleases whatever moralists happen to be in power in the world at the time.

Sodom: Freedom to have pleasure in the context of civilization; when sex can't be controlled, the mendacious, anus-wiping forces of control and orderliness converge and dismantle any Sodom they find, drop bombs on it, etc. Sodom is a great place to be, but look out for enemies.

Soul: The soul is simply a way to consign yourself to death. To me, it's like saying "let's get out of this body and go somewhere else!" It's a death wish, it's based on fear of death and egotism, and it prevents one from identifying their true nature.

Serpent: A penis, a reptile, the Devil, a cherub that has lost its wings, it slithers through your mind and sinks its fangs into your delusions, draining them with its bite. Knowledge doesn't make you any friends though, and beware of false knowledge. Real knowledge lets you create things. False knowledge just gets you lost.

Torch: The torch is the light that illuminates certain things. Is what is illuminated an actual reality? This is a question pertinent to understanding why what the torch illuminates withers.

Virus: I am more concerned with idea viruses, or information and art that propagates in peoples' minds and influences them than an actual RNA virus like COVID-19. I do not spread disease to human beings, I'll leave that up to nature (which does so quite often), but I do put dangerous ideas in peoples' minds. Is this not a proper thing to do? All artists of any originality do so; it is the nature of art, it puts notions in peoples' heads and those notions are spread around through the world.

Yin: Darkness, the inside of the womb, the receptive aspect of nature, the desire to receive one's opposite. Is yin and yang sexist? In many of its traditional interpretations, yes. But receptivity is not exclusive to women, it is just traditionally ascribed to them because it seems obvious to do so. Men can be receptive, an ear is receptive, an eye is receptive. But for a time I had the idea that women should be placed in charge of the world, that they are more suited for running the affairs of the world than men have proved themselves to be. I inherited this idea from my father, who believed the same thing. This relies on mostly traditional ideas about gender at its core however, and in practice there are a lot of men who are emotionally in tune with themselves, and a lot of women who aren't. There are spiteful, selfish women, just as there are men who are like this. It ultimately is one's character that determines one's suitability for leadership, not gender. There is yin in men, and yang as well, and likewise for women, and neither sex have proven themselves worthy of much respect in this world in terms of leadership, if I may be crass.