to sanction old signs the master taps on dismal leavings, fortunes pricked with bogus reward
the bishop desires gypsy grains, planets, atoms, with dormant shrines to grow his private graces, skilful arts to spell out twisted liens on proven souls, until they finally survive their heaven senses, bought for causes, good weave, forgot, gone
so existence scores voices of instrument glory—a good flap limits values—wounds vote as sour lords to serve our doubt
until we believe that one word does good by rebuilding tiny citiesSome labour gives very temporal allusion to celestial account; makes its entrance unknown—between double suns—awakened in fragments of time withdrawn; only partaking of opaque concerns; until we begin to form words from marketed fresh fish, many armies of days orate popular god airs, until they begin to navigate words according to other place rolls a source, furry spirits of ideas outgrown fly on anything hope grows to allusion and their berries plod where starfish finger mystic brains • the ceramic bicycle still requires petrol to enter the catholic void; we nail orders backwards to talk after living wheels in fear
If, however
morning move hours move night that no construct is reason to die from her words away part when her portrait of you takes the credit for guilt • tell me your body could send my weak centre double the wings against this fair play without chance • an arrival from no sanatorium only the home to love's praying mask • a stiff toy for networks of symbolic beasts when I cry: "A God knows I leave what love aches are prose to single letters, scribbled, dubbed, in teaching word figures of eight fragmentary scales that end"
some labour gives very temporal allusion to worlds broken under a devil's night ball, after conceding to perfect acts of natural generation • so the avant-garde songs about hijacking poets from alien closets are written on passing time by girls seeking inebriate homes
means life is to men
séances
until they subscribe to the air of a different old house light filtered years run their junk through a family thing until they subscribe to belief in life on the road so they take up something with an effect like anything until they are blind to english fathers roasted to high street satanist ritual revolt our billowing airs will act in voluntary games of illusion until they subscribe to our english fashion spit markets where eyes hear and feet weep advantage class machine is repeat signal from our common fall to there it was before the mask is word and man is measure time until they take work as gastronome angels in the dishes of vulgar young minds in many changes
one
places
not
menus
but
knives
and picture skins drunkit might have been the polished seats, but in the must of life, dreams stayed the worldly focus of a rapture; sometimes open senses begged us hold our swollen dice, all change, beneath the fat, until belief, we walk a market, eyes one wish, or die, a lizard maw our key; until they finally survive the pump of us, the smells stay conscious action in a wanted joy; bare chance only keeps us well, not white, dice lead men beat carcass down until they take work as municipal gods, you only look upon the lone track delay, a sand save, alone weight retained a fruit of fearful want, kissing nipple physics, two bound hands in one burning cube of sight; lay the rich until they finally survive: certain words their farmers milk from crowded floors need agonies for pulsing feet outside the bottom of the time until they believe that to pass between markets a smell must be hurried along, from our face—that Kurt Martin allows folklorists to malign—when natural arts are an easy dream—to the organ of our other end; before modesty turns the hated thought to bemused fire
Sunday 24 January 2021
Black Hearth 1. Manzana Void
The seeds I once scattered in Midnight’s womb to this night seek their pleasure with the same moon and devour the darkness with their eyes.
Because their creator is otherwise engaged, and there are far more of them than he could ever dream of pinning down, they live their lives without shame.
Manzana swiftly enters this conscious dream to introduce herself in tiny fragments: piece by piece she lays herself upon the freshly steeled railway line, whilst I myself arise from the assertion of her unquestionable licence to be: from moment to moment… oh how we grow.
‘All of these situations are therefore raised from empirical reasoning, even if the majority deviate from precise observation and the rest are purely imaginary. My own narrative can be measured by time and naturally forms the greater part of the sequence, whilst other narratives (and how can we ever evade these?) are received from varying quarters and never escape my pen.’She receives me with a lifeless smile, forcing me to conceal myself, as though I were seeing her for the first time, and know not even her name.
‘Thus we have a literary style which, together with the born aesthete’s sense of colour, presentation and individual flair, has absorbed the public’s respect for quality and its need to retain the intrinsic properties of each part, with the politician’s and the cleric’s skill in the use of sophistry and rhetoric.’All artistic ventures require locations although, as you can imagine, such settings are often random, and are not worth a jot!
‘It is from inner worlds that I have garnered the passages for this book; most of which are claimed by Life’s spiritual and emotional realms which, at their peak, are the most exhilarating of all domains. The adventures stimulate raw nerve to the utmost degree and have no call to contend with the contrived and self-proclaimed High Civilization—a pompous flea of a culture masked—that has defined the essence of breeding for some twenty, once teen, centuries.’Moonlight stretches exploratory fingers across her body. Fingers as sure as those of jewellers, searching with broad strokes and circumspect probes. They inch across her temples and twine ebonite locks deranged by conflict. Wide eyes fix upon the moon. Lips stretch far apart: capacious, bitten and swollen. Their blood flows around her chin, melding saliva with the tearful sweat of eyes and brow. Her eyes and teeth claw the darkness, searching distant streets and alleys, so that whosoever they might encounter will feel the contact of a dread of which they had been innocent, and never forget the touch of those bestial transports which animate them. Rare stars for strays and deserters, gazing within and staring without, engagement and tryst. Can one stand by the old paths of this madness and blindly refuse to see new ways?
I sustain my observation: impenetrably transfixed, silent and alone.
Luminary fingers traverse a body of ages no longer concealed. Her dress, unbuttoned by the impatient and savage claws of darkness, displays a thirst as violent as that of our searching eyes: behind which, a primal urge, wherein those too compulsive to accept invisibility devour a mystery with their taste for clear and unobstructed views.
The moonlight now reaches to caress her breasts, whose perfection, embodied in small, rounded mounds, raises high-peaked nipples to a night still raw from chewing, and continues its search at the swell between her fan-spread thighs, stretched wide for gainful access.
Her blood there guides its probes about swollen lips. Scarlet tongues that glide from a twin-headed serpent breathe fire where the shell unfurls.
‘For this is a book about fertility, not dearth. It would smash walls with words of hammers, spurn progress with its logos: counter blows to slaughter creatures out of songs. Yet here am I, submerged within a spell of names that goes deeper than I can reveal.’Beyond the aromatic folds of a womb flower where lies an ancient well a new life pulses, awakening (is this new life or old to stir the waters that now flow a lifetime from our recollection?), turns and trembles for a moment, and then surges.
‘What is seen is seen.’Repulsed, I spin my head away from its shining white body; the Wisdom Fish.
As breathless as Manzana, it fades with eyes wide, drawn toward the stars by the cry of a speechless night, a final passage. I gaze from the moon to a mouth that yawns to grasp air, whilst its confines and expanses merge. Two voices joined:
‘For these observations I rely solely on experience, though I am certain that similar could be made on the basis of instinct: directly and through a simple process of understanding.’to pass through the abyss between those fears walled in (the honeyed walls, the walls of words) or walled out (foetus, corpse), as one. To conjure silence from the distance between my cries. A night for no-one, Embracing my vision. I see Nought.
Inside this mouth, where nostrils combat a hideous stench and garbage seethes, swarm lithe and half-demented rats: their mass above, their mass below. They move with the weight of bodies disenchanted, with wills to know. Their bodies spark in passing but never touch my own, as I traverse all roads uncertain: shall we collide?
“You may, though you won’t ever discover the spark, or find the fire,” breathes Haar.
“We’ll chase the phoenix over pyres far and wide, Till in the end we chase her out of sight, When death at last will sever her connection.”
‘Each face hereby sustains a mask in liberty. A knowledge passed down to us by our father, whose revelation was made perfectly transparent in Great Mother’s City, a best-seller of dubitable authorship, ceaselessly reiterated and translated, whilst its precepts have been raped for the sake of clarity.’I question I [Idea untranslatable; beyond self-referential constraints]: “Are we so far removed? Our hell could never be this dark, even should we constantly die!”
‘And how soon we found that with the end of life we consumed more earth than fire, such merit being incumbent on return to dust!’
“Quackshit!”
‘For whilst a fond hope for order dawns in the antique ideal of these time-grasping hands, they wait upon all that they desire.’Propelled by these feelings of remorse I push into the mists of the Great Hearth Flesh, a veil within the mouth of Regina Piscis, our Apple Queen; lost member of so many thousand years.
‘To summarize her influence, Pagina Rosa, Director of the Altruistic Museum of Unnatural Histories, wrote: ‘Her presence was so awesome that most reverently evoked her as “The Primordial View”’.’She shivers now. Her mouth exhales and clamps with breathless haste. I enter depths obscured by nets and fog.
“And you will scarcely gain Manzana’s heart in there!”“Oh show me, please, if you are able, the route to lead me through blind skies!” These, twisting, winding, twining strands impede the realization of my will. They shape my progress in accord with my decline and lead toward a halt away from true fulfilment. So must this man leave all his mists and trappings far behind and let his vision be his guide.
With both eyes open I am witness to that which I have come to know as beauty, though through time I have learnt to observe from behind my fingers’ span, remaining speechless, anticipating her flight beyond me. Though I intend to follow her wherever she deigns to lead, and use her as I deem fit.
Beauty resolutely strides away. Her chestnut hair, despite the haste in her step, gently rises and falls: Reinette swathed in blue (veiled); youth, warmth and pale (fragrant) skin.
Suddenly, and I have no idea why I hadn’t noticed this before, I see that she has a companion who appears to be much younger, with a complexion that is darker, and who is manacled to her waist.
With its bonding of this pair, the chain, implores obeisance; enjoining blood to not staunch the ash of its flow, as they course through Manzana’s “core to the seed of time.” I digress, this has no great significance:Temptation is its own rawest state.
It is my aim, with this book, therefore, not to ignore the deviations, but to spell out both beauty and crime in each truth contorted, even the humble and witless distortions of our inner lives, so thoroughly promoted by those without. ‘Steeped in hocus-pocus blood for two millennia and secreted from the risen sun to purify.’ How many times I have been told.At this precise moment I see Reinette and her partner, Malina, disappear beyond the fog, which desperately clings to its vast web of temperance. While I summon “the blood of the man,” I crave lost fruits and am suddenly overcome by an acid blinding as of bile from an unseen hand; a weightless span of thorns that rains about my head of empty. Momentous thorns of guilt and of desire. Empty dreams and collective fears, revere and adulterate.
‘Between these two extremes subsists an entire gamut of more or less liberating constraints, themselves the focus of a partial disorder since the creation of time.”These are my reason when I don my rainbow cloak in the unforeseeable chaos of natural things. These are the general solution and their vacillation lays its burden squarely on our shoulders, but is ultimately ineffective.
In our fertile age:
I will try to give you only the details that you need, and assemble the fragments for you, so that labour may be eschewed.There is surely merit in disregarding fish heads, bones and scales, for the vultures and hounds.
A mounting body of evidence suggests, and I am sure that even paltry investigation will confirm, that the growth of the rational mind over these twenty centuries has steadily and surely devastated even those supposedly most primitive quarters of our hallowed globe. Nor should we forget power: a ladder for spineless worms (tiny star craven worms) who have many needs for reason, or the precious metals and lures for sucking our spirits from their shapeless holes: though if you wish to be consoled by these definitions you may remain disappointed, even should you read them to the end.When the soil calls: I then emerge from the fog, a seed—of giant star anise, far strewn without its pod (some say its body, some say its heart)—reach out, a long but unassuming finger:
Into a thunderous hum of bees
Nine golden serpents
two silver orbs (I see and scent)
While obscurity contains all enigma regarding the genesis of these nuclei, the theories that sweeten their actuality demand paradises that are totally fictitious:
THE MEMOIRS OF KING VÍABORRA OF [missing section: “It is an … flayer of mantles.’] Abominations, they bustle and crowd upon the moist earth that surrounds the pool: arms detach from bloodless sockets in the constant fray. Their artificial torsos topple and hit the ground.
Some wish Manzana to be esteemed the rose deliverer of our frail race, for she has given its ‘members’ balance between their heated will and their frozen means. Such creatures, though sentient, act indiscriminately.
as light by motion intensifies with scents dispersed by the dew of anise in night beds I doubt my fate: whether I can fill this grain with life, a wheel, a horseshoe’s curl, to reveal a gutted self still breathing; the desert hollow of a body drained too deep, in need of fluid to meet halfway its thirst. A maw to guide me to a deeper passage, through new veins in untried waters. These could feed and give life to those with which I have grown used:
“Doubtless it would be my wisest move to approach these waters’ edge [To pursue my star julep].”
a mortal: my four limbs crawl. Stray visions from an orchard pool of mead draw the change that has its grip upon my frame.
“You need never arrive,” rings the wash.
Whilst hypnotising ripples, through the cool waters build: ring upon ring lift their heads and fan their wings, to spangle the pool’s silver light; so too it’s awesome guardians, who rise a bloodless, headless corps: on legs firm and strong, with arms hung limp as useless members.
Archetypes: selectively bred and reared as the chosen race for this dawning age; the one now to live with. But contrary to these saviours’ efforts to derive their “volition” from subaqueous depths of pure desire, their necks release steam into the moonlight ether. This emission is the constant stream of their labours and their brightest thoughts, and it is this that creates the fog. All has been miscalculation: their dynamism?, their drive? Within their vascular bodies our portents brew, not only the virtues of efficiency, accuracy, speed and dimension, but other rare optimal potions.
These are the sacred brews. They will yield the answers from which our kinder true shall rise; for we need believe that this is how it is and even that we will witness miracles: no longer able to peel back the outer skin, which is to say the life and death mask.
How weak the nine roots that trail the stump of the hour and the sacrificial three?; the blossoms and the thorns of our Sacred Island Apple Queen, Great Mother of Translucence [How such vessels must appear from beneath the skin of these waters]; in whose age of uncertainty we at first glimpse the immense power of the project we have become a part of and thus begin to ascertain the base of its coercion.
For those who strive fall hard if progress through them slays the nameless feeders of its dawn; when they have built their city and lent the name “Capital” to its walls, after the substance of their law.
‘Dear Friends.’
My breath is in pain.
I see one amongst them who appears to me whole. Can that really be him? The One: both the eyes of his head shut tightly, tightly; beating a course through the pool: a rhythm, its central core, a body and heart that throbs with a flow of crimson blood to his cheeks.
And now I realise, as the face of the Seer Fountain twists in speechless concentration, that words are a search for the present, but that speech for posterity is simply a loosening of untried vows.
His dumb show is drafted from the freshest flesh of Earth and of the Universe. This desert death as fruitless as pure union: a mute unction that fails to break down artifice. His ends are unattainable but it will by no means be harmful to pass his whitened kernel or its sweet carmine eclipse through the constant and exalted flame of an artful rite. He will therefore be consumed by the maws, his own, and engage his divisions in journeys that no restitution could begin to assay. Should the need arise (and it is senseless to assume that his is the surest path through all these cycles) it would be wiser for him to aid his passage with a thorough cleansing from purifiers than to hack away at it with blades or savage it with tasteless carnal contortions (smoothly executed gyrations would do no damage, but a well timed dash attack or forward plunge is quickest) in the belief that so long as no blemish afflicts his passage no harm can come his way.
That a single grain of utility might gush forth from this twilight walkabout is known… bringing rains to animate the cryptic soil.
A sovereign commerce for frauds and witnesses alike. Haze and relation: civilized through and through.
Transparency: the fictitious, even aimless eye that flashes toward Earth and far beyond shows little sign of resistance and the branches of his deceptive trunk reach far into the sky.
While I watch the tamed waters recede, nursed through my compassion by his crudely drafted postures, spotted by a hideous stud of flies and washes of rare salts, I see dust-barbs sprout from devotion’s “twinfold discord”: biting.
This ape claws the soil with developing fingers and reveals the making of the man, as does his spine that stiffens as he rises. The genesis of Homo erectus, with characteristic big toe and thumb, as flawlessly beautiful as those illusions of development and stability we experience daily in our present lives.
Evolving: to be man is to walk tall.
Water yields to green magma. His firm resolve surely precludes the shedding of tears, thick with head and heart, in favour of a pure scent of purpose and a veneer that slowly hardens to a tempting crust ‒ to walk his ingenuity:
In this strange world, how might he summon air? How might he quell his hunger: so far removed?watching the stubborn nails of his hands as they tear so painfully and the nails of his feet as they likewise scar. Slashed by unseen blades from a wind unfelt.
And these abrasions seem simply to be: stone avengers of all destined roads, of his existence and communication with those who gave him life.They heal as suddenly, and his throat is racked by a din from the hell of his ignited ens, followed by a measured calm.
Central to the silence of this stage a Man stands tall: his nails are painted, his helmet is red, his penis erect.
I hear the cocking of guns.
Saturday 23 May 2020
The Erotic Dream of Miley Cyrus 1 (second slight revision)
Truth is said to be stranger than fiction but, notwithstanding the very real distances that separate the corporeal fluctuations of, say, a walk in the park with a favoured hound and the implausible modes of communication occasioned by the use a lease, I have come to realise that truth can never be anything other than fiction. Let me explain:
I will start with my nose. Not a small nose by any account, and, at this time of year, quick to chill, which is why I came up with the idea for a nose warmer. It is long and dangly and looks quite preposterous, like a flopsy strap-on, but it is durable, and you can drop hot coals into it.
When I wore it for the first time it brought to mind the erotic dream of Miley Cyrus. I said I'd explain:
Miley Cyrus recently had an erotic dream, and I was in it, yet not on account of my hot nose, that had nothing to do with it.
Miley and I go way back, from when I was stationed down the mall and training to catch rabbits.
'Four horns are better than one!' she enthused, when she called to tell me about it, and I couldn't agree more. It all started, she said, when she tried to polish my wheels. She was needing to use more spittle than she would have liked, and had become quite dry, so she got this idea that if she tugged on my nipples she might get some lubricant, and it just sort of took off from there. I shan't bore you with the details.
Afterwards, she took me for a walk, probably in the hope that I would catch her something to eat. But then apparently I just disappeared. She found herself swimming somewhere, and not so very far away was a green rose, suspended just above the water, almost close enough for her to reach.
Well this recollection set me to thinking.
I'd heard tell of an island in Africa, where there are people who eat wild horses as they run. I went there. My guide was Tiyu, who would be considered a true beauty on any side of the globe. When she wasn't looking I stole beads from her gown, and where I dropped them down grew.
I wanted never to see her eyes lose their lustre, even if that meant I should die there. So I went to petition the trees she had emerged from, and bashed my hammer; bashed it on the ground, which brought down Hooli-Ma. He showed me his treasures, and his kidneys on strings, and I said, "Hooli-Ma! Let's go eat" for it seemed an age since I had last done so. But as we walked the disquieting squelch that came from his boots made me reconsider, as I was fast losing my appetite.
"Ahem!" I spluttered "I need to disappear into the bushes" and Hooli-Ma gave me a look that suggested he knew exactly what I meant, and I gave him a look by return that said I knew he knew exactly what I meant, even though I didn't mean that at all. What I actually meant was that I needed to disappear, into the bushes, in the hope that I might find Tiyu again.
So he stood there waiting as I headed into the thicket, which was dense, and hard to penetrate, but started to thin when I was out of view, until the shrubbery turned to small trees with twigs of fire, which were easier to pass through, even though they streaked my flesh with long, thin burns.
From a short way ahead I started to hear groans, as of someone immensely weary, and advanced in the direction from which I thought the sounds came, soon perceiving a dark figure lying prostrate on the ground.
She was The Keeble. She was weary, and had fallen. Her flesh was soft, and she wanted me to push a finger into her navel. I did so, and felt the tickling roll of tiny motors from behind her skin.
"Mammaries" she called weakly through her agony, but I hadn't a clue what she wanted. Must I suckle her, or grope her, or did she want my breasts to suckle and grope, as unlikely as that seemed?
"Mammaries" she called again, as she bit the end off her own finger and showered me with the milk that gushed from the wound, at which she started to steadily recover her composure, and then she leapt into the air and away, leaving in her place a cryptic note.
"It is a book that lies apart,
and passes through the
Scripted Ruins" the note said.
Ahead of me was the hollowed trunk of a tree, and calculating that the slimy coating of milk I had received would be sufficient to lubricate my passage, I dived headlong into it, and down I slid, as though I was passing through a digestive tract.
As I slid speedily downward I felt a loud, ominous thump against the trunk, as though it had been struck by something heavy, but I detected no creature in pursuit, and safely continued to slide face first, until I came to an opening that gave onto an area of thick, dense fog; so dense that it actually served to break my fall.
When I had recovered my senses I started to walk, but aside from the reduced visibility the vegetation around me had also started to rapidly grow, and was soon so dense that I could no longer venture forward, only upward, and it was thus that I started to climb the sturdiest sprout, recalling a story I had once heard.
Upwards and upwards, from branch to bough, until I counted myself many, many meters above the ground, at which point I became aware of a glow, cutting through the fog above my head, and I thought this might indicate a window above, or even a door.
As I continued, I saw more clearly, and started to notice that there were sleighs hanging from branches, where reindeer were moored, nibbling at the leaves, and I gradually came to perceive that I was approaching some sort of gaily lit grotto, from which, upon my approach, all sorts of ghosts and specters started to flood, as though afraid, followed by a large bubble of water, at the centre of which beat a translucent heart, at the centre of which beat another, smaller, but quite opaque.
I had a strong desire to slap the bubble, to see if it would burst. Instead, I decided to hug it, but as I did this, I perceived that the entity was starting to identify me as its mother, and believed I could feel it trying to suckle a nipple, even the bite of its watery mouths—or was that simply the impression of cold? Whatever, I succumbed, until blood was drawn, and the whole experience became intolerably painful, at which point I squeezed, then it burst.
It vapourized, leaving two hearts clinging to my teats. They darted this way and that across my chest, leaving bloody lacerations, but as my blood leaked, so did it drain from the hearts, which became quite transparent.
They now sprouted tails, which whipped my chest, as my stomach lurched. At the centre of each of the hearts there was a book, and the hearts themselves had started to move all over my body, as though they were checking that I was real.
So absorbed was I by this process that I failed to notice the two men who had approached me, passing to either side, each grasping one of my arms, and carrying me onward between them.
However, as we advanced, it slowly dawned on me that it was I who was carrying them along.
As we walked we gathered momentum, until they started to spin like cartwheels, but when I stopped they shattered, into diamond shards like stars.
A clatter of whispers effervesced through my mind. A name: was it Nina?
Rocks tumbled from above onto my head and shoulders, then everything around me started to collapse and I started to fall, to who knows where.
When I landed, it was with a bump, which made my bum sore, and I saw that I was sat upon a shingle beach, onto which the sea rolled. A boat full of fisherman was rowing toward the shore, with someone held captive between them. When they landed they disembarked awkwardly, as though they might be lost in a dream, and I saw quite distinctly that the person they had been transporting was the anti-christ, Ubu.
From his mouth emerged a purple bubble. It expanded until it encompassed him.
One of the fishermen started to ring a small handbell. This made me jump. The bubble formed a cocoon around Ubu. It floated into the sky, as though emptied and light.
His captors spun beneath him from the chains they had used to bound him, and although the freedom he enjoyed as he floated into the distance may have been illusory, he carried his captors away.
Together in the distance they formed a constellation. It is the constellation that is now known as The Bubble.
I turned away and bound like a moonlight deer, this way and that; over rivers and through trees, until the blue light reappeared, although the balance between day and night remained unstable.
But think again. The evidence is right before us.
As I concentrated on the distant display, a priest sneaked up on me from behind and swiftly decapitated me. My head rose, as a new sun, while my own world was darkness only.
As my head floated adrift I felt roots connect it to my body, much as life and death refuse to detach entirely from each other, and with this in mind I let out a peal of laughter.
Seven silver unicorns, signifiers of purity, passed through the darkness, up and down, appearing random in their motion, yet held together by an unfathomable design.
Through a distant red glow my body departed, away with the reindeer, and I was beset by sadness.
A pretty girl stood near the corpse. She wore an animal skin. There was a flashing EXIT sign. I was connected to my body by an umbilicus.
A flash of sunlight blinded me. I started to sprout.
I rose into the clouds. Lightning crackled through my hair. Each bolt was a different hue.
Water cascaded down my brow and face. I floated freely, feeling happy to do so. Until I received a blow to the mouth.
Sunday 4 February 2018
And then there will as sure as love be weeping 7
The animals come out of hiding and follow. I have something I must tell them, but dare I? Truth or Art? That they are simply hollow fabrications, into which I have attempted to pump life, but now the path is flanked by applauding spectators and the commotion is too great for me to indulge in such contemplation. I instead affect the manner of a pantomime artiste. I am the puffed up king, and in this guise I guide my entourage into a large, square room, the front wall and ceiling of which have been removed. At the centre of this space there is a tree laden with the rarest fruit.
The animals, I now notice, have lost interest and returned, in their various ways, to the places from which they came.
I therefore approach the tree alone, but to my surprise it rapidly withers and dies, and from the mulch that remains flow two thin tributaries, at the apex of which is revealed a solitary acorn. This opens as a floral vagina. I am afraid.
A hatchway opens in the ground and from within there rises a grinding noise, as of some horrendous machine. I allow myself a long moment of deep reflection. Then, with a sudden and unassailable terror, I turn and flee. I feel that I have thus been immunised in some way. I disappear, yet I retain my physical shape.
I stop to appreciate the beauty of the artificial paradise that surrounds me. The sun, the moon, the stars, however, start to become indistinguishable from each other, as the qualities that distinguish them start to melt away and they dissolve into a shimmering mist which, to my mind, appears in some ways sacred. Through this mist I maybe see a distant place of anguish, lit, it would seem, by flashes of lightning; the vestiges of memories concealed.
I can make out a train of corpses on carts with, at their head, a wagon filled with gold. A priest approaches the pile of gold. He loudly pronounces a single word, "Stay", with a roar so penetrating that the golden bars are striated by the force of the sound, forming golden teats which he tugs on with delight, the fingers of one hand teasing out powdered bone, whilst those of the other draw blood.
He lets his arms drop to his sides as he observes an oppressive silence, while the discharge of the teats is stolen away by an invisible hand, as though they had been torn from a picture of the land upon which they had fallen.
What we see now is a man chained up within a dingy cell. A girl in black oversees his torment. In a dreamy way she tugs at a piece of string that opens and closes a trapdoor above their heads. They crane their necks to see through it and watch the aerobatics in the sky: a passing Zeppelin; an astronaut, dipping and diving through low clouds; a machine that floats through the air, and upon which stuffed birds perch and twitter, the overall sense of which scene is distorted by the aimless meandering of sponges.
A gift descends from the heavens, in the shape of a heavy rain of blood. The girl and the chained man tremble with desire, though each holds aloof from the other.
He recovers more quickly than her from his spasms and makes a lunge for her frock, where he locates the key and, unfastening his chains, darts through the door through which she had entered and makes his escape on horseback, while she crosses the floor and exits through the opposite door.
In the room she now enters is a boy around seven years of age. In his hand he clutches a snake he has just caught. The girl grips his penis though the material of his trousers. Here is the source of magic. Songbirds alight to either side of them as she draws out his penis and milks from it a stream of blood, which the birds fly to and sip. He stares straight ahead, as though he were staring into the void, and as the flow of blood is depleted so does he diminish until he is no more than a point, a full stop, at which he disappears. The full stop is now the final point of a letter that lies upon the floor. The girl stoops and lifts the letter. She leaves.
I feel dizzy and nauseous. I shiver from cold. My stomach is gripped by a violent peristalsis. I ejaculate through my mouth. As the pale droplets hit the floor they burst into light before they die.
I drop the book and it falls open, revealing that there are whole pages that have been removed and others from which extracts have been cut.
Friday 1 December 2017
Bull Improved 1
You set the page before you, your sad eyes roam. Memories torn from stretches of time weave a crown you are fain to relinquish, but as suits, you encased in your own lore of wounds; a dull breathing which fear stands to shine you, one pillar, through doors tained with life.
On the shortest night the poet obeys the summons of beating sticks and takes a break from his meanderings to perform a magical rite. As creative fluids rush from his brain and find their outlet he floods the leaf mould about him, savouring in the darkness the fragrance of fungi and the croaking of the frogs attracted by the numerous pools. As he looks up to the stars he listens, and with penis gripped, as though it might be a wand, relives a vivid scene, at which he seeds the throat of the clouds that blot the evening sky, which gulley by return sends an impenetrable rain. But let us mould this with a prayer into a form that can more easily be digested: a canopy that drinks substance from the fluid body and, traversing space in the form of a golden scarab, blocks out the sky behind a variously textured framework of chestnut and cream coloured wood, shuttered with glass, from behind which the faces of young women, lit by lightning and washed by the storm from one pane to another, beam upon him from on high, whilst spidery black monkeys climb between the intersecting bones and phallic protrusions that project threateningly from their points of intersection. As they gamble and chatter they evoke a peculiar strain of poetry: they conjure phalluses and breasts from their dreams, and span these with a lattice of wood that indulges itself in the peaks and troughs of lavishly carved vaginas and vulvae, over which they run their hands and lips in praise Φ The whole framework is filled with sheets of glass. The moon passes slowly from one frame to another.
From the projecting breasts shower streams of gold dust and from the phalluses spurt little worms of oil, which anoint the head of the bull, who has been stripped naked and who/(whose artificial brain) is to be improved. The oil and dust mingle in the cup of his head and tumble from his mouth in the form of discs (coins) that fall and clatter upon the floor. When his brain pan has emptied twelve skilled practitioners, possessing twelve skilled pairs of hands, come forward to improve his mind:
The first, who is an artist, tattoos a blueprint into the hollow shell that is his skull.
The second installs four chambers and plumbs them together.
The third pours the Ideal into one.
The fourth fills another with love.
The fifth illumines another with dreams.
The sixth fills the last one with logic.
The seventh is the alchemist who blends and mingles these in carefully balanced measures of pain and blood (birth, milking).
The eighth installs the clockworks.
The ninth plants the seeds. At this point the heart is resuscitated and the cogs start to turn. Everything spins and tumbles and chops and grinds. The bull is ready to fight. He fills the scene with laughter and song. He sticks a cigarette into his mouth and lights it.
The tenth gives him the facility of speech. He is weighed and given a number.
The eleventh, however, sows the seeds of doubt.
The twelfth conveys mortality and stitches him back up.
Within the cradle of his mind, from the taps and the drippers which form the plumbing of his cerebellum, droplets of blood feed the carnivorous flora that are its seat. Through their interaction is released a sumptuous fragrance. The blood is the catalytic fuel. The twelve form a ring about him, with rapturous applause.
Once the bull has been improved he pulls on a mantle of tightly curled hair, as black as gloom, speckled with the fragments of meat that had fallen from his skull. Over his head he draws a cover of the same material, as though he were about to present himself at the guillotine. Then he leaves. What need has he of ears, and eyes, or speech? His brain has been improved. There is, however, a hole between his posterior cheeks. This, moreover, provides release for anything he may have to say. Around his neck he wears a heavy stone, to keep his feet from leaving the ground (but don't forget he is a bull). As he charges into the wilds of the open air to reclaim his freedom his heart explodes.
At first he reaches into the sky on tiptoes, then collapses to the ground with his four legs splayed.
This lifeless mass is lifted and slapped down hard upon the revolving platform of a sculptor's turn-table. It is photographed. The apostles set to work again, shaping the grimy dough. They throw in handfuls of leaves. They beat the pudding with long canes, and from this pulp twelve giant, long stalked mushrooms grow, reaching one hundred feet or more into the sky. The stalks form the bars of a circular cell, within which an artist rises from the beaten hide, upon which he starts to etch, using his finger, dipped into the pool of blood that has collected at the centre of the cage. Twelve symbols:
Art (the artist, red of flesh, as earthly as the hero of a cave painting).
Plumbing (boiler, chambers - a fire beneath a pan/still).
Ideals (the artist floats/flies).
Love (a hand, spanking).
Dreams (a pumpkin with big, sharp teeth).
Logic (a white elephant).
Life (pain, blood, nurturing - a vessel that is a droplet of sulphurous blood - a mote of fire)
Clockworks (the passage of the earth and moon around the sun)
Seeds (an egg assailed by sprouted seeds)
Speech (a bubble upon a severed tongue)
Doubt (a book)
Death (a map, outside is marked with an X).
At the centre, now drained of blood, he squeezes the edges of the naked wound that has been revealed. He squeezes out a flag on a pole and some stones, which he uses to set the flag erect. The apostles salute, but he does not. They each discover that one of the symbols has appeared upon their brow/belly. Their penises rise erect, then erupt. The artist is gripped by a violent peristalsis. He brings up a flightless songbird (Stephens Island Wren). It sings briefly as its rudimentary wings open as though they were leaves and it starts to bloom as it rises on its stalk from his belly through his throat. It reaches upwards to one of the breasts in the canopy. He starts to cry and tug at his hair. The sun is seen to rise. Black berries sprout from the vine that trails between the drinking bird and the artist's gaping mouth. One by one they drop, sploshing like turds as they hit the ground. The Prophet now enters with the apostles behind, anticipating. The air is scented as white ejaculate spins from the bursting fruits. The sperm cells spark as they die. The apostles run from one to the other, trying to catch them, as though they were bubbles or dandelion spores that could grant their every wish. But the sparks simply fade away, no matter how quickly they are caught. The Prophet takes the men in hand, one by one, and yokes them by the neck. The herd are thereby gathered into a single unit of order and obedience and stand in a rigid formation, three ranks by four. The Prophet is exempt from such rules and restrictions. As one, the Apostles drop to their knees in prayer. The Prophet draws a razor from its place of concealment within his robe. In unison, the apostles do the same. Suddenly, however, they become embarrassed by their action and quickly conceal the blades. They even (attempt to) rise to their feet of their own volition. They start to march. They dream of desertion. In their hands they hold blades of grass. They imagine wreaking destruction upon the order of the day. Clutching wooden swords they win great victories. Now they are dancing, wagging their swords. The Prophet has become a vague memory. They approach the artist as one and waft their swords back and forth across his skin, as though they might depilate him. Slowly his husk is winnowed away. As the flesh is revealed they cannibalise him. Beneath the flesh a cage bathed in blue light. At the centre of the cage is a bloodless heart. They gather round and remove it then tentatively inspect it, unsure what they might find. They pass it around and each gives it a kiss. One by one they are touched by a sweet melancholy. They rub the heart upon their chests, above their own hearts. They hear a great commotion and into the dome flood twelve beautiful maidens with, at their centre, one whose beauty outshines them all. Together, they lead the men to one side. They take the heart, conceal it beneath their skirts, subject it to heat, then retrieve it and peel away its surface before passing it on, until it is finally in the hands of the one who leads them. She takes it and pushes it into the Disintegrator. She lays herself down, on her back. Everyone crowds around expectantly. She folds up her skirts. Their faces crimson richly over. A bubble issues from between her legs and then retracts. She jumps up and starts to run, whilst the men strip off their robes and follow in hot pursuit, their erections bobbing. As she passes out of the dome to liberty she pulls out a sharp, saw-toothed blade. As they break into the open air the men's phalluses rage, such that their foreskins are stretched back taut as their glandes swell. The men flap around like brainless idiots. She stops when she arrives at an ornamental pond and turns. The men clutch their chests and fall to the ground. She walks in amongst them, turns them onto their backs and starts to cut letters into the nearest one's chest: LOSER. She bends over him and whispers in his ear. She then looks into his ear hole. Whatever it is she has seen compels her to insert the knife. Brutally, she prises open his skull. An ancient bloom is thus revealed. It is shaped like a star. She shakes this over the other men like a wand as she spits and pisses onto their bodies, which cover over in sores of red and black pinpricks. They start to thrust their limbs this way and that. They start to lift weightlessly into the air. Their arms and legs remain un-coordinated, although their movements describe an irregular form of clockwork. However, the momentum is lost and they come back down to earth. Of a sudden a rain of chilling hail comes down. The men's wounds start to wash away and one picks himself up, kneeling. She affixes the coins she has retrieved from the floor of the domed gallery to his limbs and joints. Once covered, he stands, rigid as a statue. From out of the golden husk he starts to emerge. He looks upon her with eyes that aspire to love, but she strides away. The other men look up to him with looks of genuine concern on their faces as they try to understand the cause of his agitation. He is flattered by their attentions but pays them no heed. She glances back at him and he makes his mind up to follow. As he gains upon her she turns and quickly flashes the knife along the length of his body, drawing a thin line of blood from his crown to his groin, so that he holds back for a moment, but then persists, an air of angelic mildness about his face. The others, with a new lease of life, start to cast the gold coins in his direction. As each of them lands a blow the coin drops to the ground, where it turns to a medallion of meat. He splits into two. Both halves continue their pursuit separately, but show visible signs of decline; they will never catch up. Nevertheless, as the two halves hop along [singing their song, side by side], crushing the meat as they advance, they unite with a strangely compelling and beautiful song and she starts to exhibit signs that she is succumbing to its allure. She weeps as she bucks with laughter, which she jettisons his way. And that laughter it is then, that finally cuts him down.
Upon the ground where he fell, an undulating mass of seething white and grey, a rising mist and in the air, a siren wail. From this fermentation she starts to raise the dough. She shapes a head, but only a head. Things, however, are not as they seem. It was all make believe. She is in fact the bride, clutching between her hands the head of her husband, so handsome, so right. She puts a thermometer into his mouth to test his heat. She kisses and adorns him: from her mouth stream acid trailing bugs. They masterfully etch feathers into his skin. His sex is now indecipherable. The head emits a gasp. She lashes out but finds the skin is hard as plated steel. The head unleashes a wild growl. Without hesitation, she reins it, tames it and sits astride it to ride it into the city. She takes it straight to church. She enters, and starts to follow a trail of footprints. These start to rise from the ground, as though leading over a bridge. As she makes the crossing she encounters a woman on a mule who is crossing the other way. Her skin is blue, particularly her teats and vulva. It is exceptionally absorbent. She is sucked within. She thrashes around insanely. She steams and sparks. Although it is day she can see nothing and zigzags like a drunk. The mule and the head are lost from view. It matters not, they are already forgotten. She runs her hands over the walls and fingers the cracks as she stumbles along. She passes through a crack in time to a magical land. She is now astride a small, grey horse and rides across a cracked mirror sea toward a dark island, which may just be a chasm in the glass. There are lines of fish, laid out upon its surface. Eggs rain from above. The glass begins to split and opens up a passage for her. Wherever this passage leads, however, it does not lead below. She rides into a gathering cloud of scents with people crowding round. The onlookers pull chickens from baskets and hold them up to display whilst the chickens flap, as they may, and fill the air with excited commotion. However, their bellies are disfigured by rot. They gape and hard, grey stones tumble from them. These are followed by butterflies, delicately embroidered in greyscale, which take off into the sky. To the side, a dying man offers her a curious bundle, wrapped in a drab old, worn cloth. The horse immediately rears up in horror. She struggles to restore confidence to the beast. She reaches to its mouth, with the pretence that her hand contains food. Though it seems to have worked; through the power of her thought she appears to have appeased the creature and her deified position is thus restored. Slowly, she brings it to its knees then draws a sabre from the bundle she had been given and swiftly severs the arteries of its throat. She then repeats a simple mantra: mass red mana dee. However, after some cycles her chanting starts to become more carnal, with increasingly lascivious and bestial interjections. Finally, she emits a cry of anguish and collapses, crestfallen, upon the flank of the beast. She clamps her lips to the wound in the horse's neck and starts to breath new life into it, whence its collapsed carcass starts to inflate. As it bloats so does its mouth issue food. Thus, she drinks of the beast's blood and then turns to eat of its body. However, the produce has been sanitised by polythene, but what did she expect when she had pacified the beast with imaginary food? She finds she is incapable of penetrating the film. She sinks in her teeth but always there is a barrier of plastic between her mouth and the contents. She further unwraps the bundle she had been given, to reveal tools that resemble instruments of torture. Clearly, if these morsels were intended for anyone, it was not her.
A loud siren recalls her; she is in a supermarket, sprawled across the floor of the freezer aisle, surrounded by defrosting fish and with her teeth embedded in a bag of peas. They spill across the floor and mix with egg yolk and oil. Police are approaching. She whinnies with laughter. They are so intent on promoting themselves that they make scarcely any progress. A nun starts to say a prayer. However, she quickly realises she has made a mistake and stops. But more step in, seeming carbon copies of the first, and pick up where she left off. The police move away and block all the exits. The peas in the oil ignite and burn like candles. A man steps forward and starts to recite poetry:
"I have withdrawn from the fluffy birds
Help me adapt to the depth of
Creations penned from sleep
Lint ..."
At which he is lynched and taken to be locked away, but the woman (the Queen) calls for them to bring him back so that she might hear more. He returns astride a hobby horse and resumes:
"Sweets go naked
On the table
In our shop."
"My earliest recollection is of a lion-tamer turned back to written gold a story begun in the father line tattoo I afterwards inherited the rules of genius. When we were ..."
But so compulsive is her gaze that as he has spoken, so has he moved towards her. He has removed his jacket. As he has uttered his words, so has he folded his arms about her. Like flora his arms, his long fingers, envelope her. She does not return the embrace, however, but instead starts to inspect the foliage, picking through it judiciously. As she does so, she urges him to continue:
"lying in bed I remember still a good tale you told of soft shelled animals encrusted with Chinese characters which contrived to relieve themselves in a wind pump but stiffened like freaks under blades at the first hint of risk ..."
Her attention, however, has been drawn elsewhere, and she stands and strides to the entrance foyer. Here there is a gathering of men who are unwell. Each is clutching a pint; undoubtedly it is not their first. She retrieves an oil sump from the ground outside and attempts to force the nearest to drink from it. He seems to enjoy this ambrosia immensely, like a baby at the breast. When she pulls the sump away, he has a large piece of foaming black fat between his teeth. He makes a jump and roughly tries to embrace her. No matter how hard he tries, however, he cannot make contact. He does not so much miss her as fall into her, into her body, into the forest of her. He is seized there by a cutthroat. He finds himself incapable of offering resistance. The blade cuts into his neck like butter. The neck of the assassin is likewise scored. Each falls twitching and ejaculating and lands with his head in the lap of the other. A red light, that appears to be from a fire, shines through tall, silhouette trees. A monkey emerges and starts to groom the men, initially picking at their sleeves. It then breaks off a thin branch, with the intention of thrashing them. A sparkling sky acts as a distraction. Long, thin, salt-like shards rain down. The ape vomits and drops to its knees. His phallus is erect and, with tears running down his cheeks, he grasps it and starts to pull. His ejaculate falls as snow flakes across the clothes of the dead men, melting to droplets of blood. He suffers a massive brain seizure. His phallus is still erect as he collapses onto his back and along its length there are windows that exude light. Behind each is an eatery, a bar, a dancehall. The clientele, however, are beasts, beautiful in their own right, whose forms conceal fatal and poisonous weapons. The improved bull is there (in the bar), seeming made of diamond, and obediently mounts the stairs, down which the spidery form of the Prophet descends (from the restaurant), whilst the Queen (in the dancehall) opens her mouth to release her shaping words to instruct their rise and fall, over and over, until she presses her palm over her eyes and the lights are extinguished.
They flick back on in another aisle of the supermarket, where the shelves are draped with offal, brains, ears, trotters, sweetbreads and hearts. The Poet scoops up a plate, cracks an egg over the top, and presents it to the Queen, who presses a hand to it and invites him to do the same. Beneath the meat they detect the movements of a living creature. However, the thing is cold as ice. Their hands together slowly confer warmth. They pull dry scales from beneath the protective offal layers. Then there is thick cream. Finally a seething swarm of insects, preparing to fly. They pull their hands free from the mass and wring them as they start to walk together along the aisle. But step by step they are drifting apart. Until he grips her by the arm and leads her outside for a talk:
"I am falling through ideas, and as before you watch me through the spoken walls of words you manage to refuse me sleep when I must put this book into an orchard mood."
At this she begins to sing:
"Another explanation is a trade of thirst for drama like a certainty which till now treats us blankly as moons."
She presents her card: "By virtue of my flesh"
The way he is looking at her immediately changes. In fact, he starts to look rather foolish. He stares blankly at her teeth. When he attempts to take the card he fumbles and drops it. He offers her coins. A man on horseback proceeds along the aisle towards them. This man is of the type "naked black savage". His horse is laden with all manner of goods for trade. There are books (erotica/porn?). There are china birds. There are stacks of tightly bundled black leotards. There are suitcases. There are cash boxes. The Savage jumps from the horse and steps forward to greet the Queen (Reinette). But she and the Poet set about smashing, breaking and tearing to pieces the items his horse has been carrying. The Savage lowers his eyes and weeps inwardly, muttering, as a gaseous fluid leaks from between his lips. As this stuff drops to the floor he grinds it to powder with his feet. He picks this up and sprinkles it towards Reinette and the poet. She starts to dance a powerful dance. The Poet stops destroying things, drops down and starts to search intently through the pieces, as though wishing to make sense of them. Reinette's wild dance, however, causes a piece of masonry to detach from the wall and onto the head of the Savage, who appears to be now lost in trance, his mind far away. From his mouth runs a constant stream of a milk-white substance that flows around his feet. Like a chameleon, his skin starts to take on the same hew. His heart bursts from his chest like a shooting star. As it hits the ceiling it divides and a pattern of hearts spreads from its centre. The Poet now turns his attention to the ceiling, and to the closest of the hearts. He pushes his finger into its centre and gently unfurls a spiral of tails that hang there, just above his head. From the next one he plucks a pair of eyes. They hang for but a moment then turn inward again. He delves into the one beside it and draws from this a long truncheon, embossed with curious markings: eight of them in total: bite marks: in opposing pairs. He sinks his teeth into the tip. He feels for the next heart and opens it up. This one is entirely covered in the black fur of a satyr. Inside is a ball of rice. The fur conceals growths that, to his touch, feel like acne. Droplets of dew are suspended from the filaments. He probes this one for several minutes. As he does so his trousers tent. He sweats, he appears lost in dreams:
Subjects appear to be aroused by tactile sensation but become less mobile when engaged;
Subjects are gullible and struggle with the crippling grief that is the burden of this vulnerability;
Subjects appear to be awaiting a reply;
Subjects enjoy variety and are loathe to allow one trend to dominate;
Subjects appear never to be completely satisfied;
Subjects are committed to the advent of the impossible;
Subjects are torn between co-operation and competition;
Subjects are unable to realise their dreams.
This record is inserted into a folder which is itself sealed and inserted into a locker drawer. The locker is turned onto its back and is carried to the waterfront, from where it is floated far out to sea. Those who had carried it turn back and head into the heart of town to join the festival. In the central garden a large horn pipes out music. This is where the Artist has set up his easel. He pulls the covering off of the canvas, unzips his flies, and directs an arc of golden piss across it. He then unpicks the canvas fixings and removes it from the frame. The Carriers bind him up with the canvas and broken frame then lift him and carry him towards the sea. They march in unison, excruciatingly slowly. The sun sets as a full moon illuminates the night sky. When a Carrier falls from exhaustion he is quickly replaced, and in this way they proceed. Suddenly, however, they drop their burden and scatter. A giantess approaches the bundle that contains the Artist and with her hands digs a hole, into which she drops him, before covering him over with earth. Steam rises from the ground above. The Invisible People crowd around. They discretely poke holes into the soil. As they finish they drop a die inside. A man who looks a little like the Artist rises from beneath the ground. He stands and mutters, but his words are indecipherable. His eyes are lost in a dream to which no-one is privy. From his mouth issue rings of smoke. The Giantess fastens a red carnation to his buttonhole. He walks, guided by the fog as he puffs it out and, with determination, attempts to forge a path through it. As he walks the character of the land quickly changes. The town at the edge of the sea is now in ruins. He heads towards a bunker. There is a telephone ringing inside. Without apparent motive he proceeds to smash it apart. He then plucks up the receiver and speaks into it in a language I do not recognize. He speaks cautiously, as though fearing he may betray a truth.
Monday 18 September 2017
And then there will as sure as love be weeping 6
Here then, are Gyron, Pile and Cotise - mechanised wind-up toys of tin, with tiny wings and flat, resounding feet. They are a distraction and too late I see that the ring of light has become a ring of blood, towards which I am pulled, or am I being sucked?
As I pass through the opening I become filled with trepidation. I cannot decide whether I would rather turn back and pursue the three Palotins or continue to the other side, especially as the first thing I see is a guard on horseback, tearing towards me, swinging his baton, with the quite evident purpose of frightening me and driving me back.
I pull away, so as to avoid his blow, but when I look again I see a spinning wheel of letters, which suddenly stops, tossing a single letter into the air, towards a gaping pink mouth, and this, I realise, is the aperture through which I am destined to pass, and the guard's sole purpose is to prevent me from doing so, although when he returns I find I am able to pacify him with a few simple words, although I have no idea what force inspired me to utter them, 'Truth the face of demand; of favour controlled by ritual fate' at which his rage is sucked right out of him and up into the gaping mouth, towards which I have resolved to head.
As it is drawn in, ejaculate is spouted out, much as sea water is forced from the blowhole of a whale, and as I alight upon the surface of this new world and gain confidence from the guard's weakened state, a quick jab from the heel of my boot is sufficient to shatter his image into celestial points of light, which crash like breakers at the edge of the sea, at which, seeking to further illustrate this metaphor, resonant voices slowly intone, 'Breaking'.
Now, I feel, is the time to make my move, so I leap into the mouth, and thus am I forced, as a newborn, straight out of the anus of god, clutching to my breast a sacred book. Maybe it has knowledge to convey?
I am encased within an amniotic sac, the skin of which resembles that of a grape, and thus I gracefully descend, without extravagant display. I have embraced my destiny. I am a cold sun, brandishing a contagion of words, intended only for the eyes of those who fake. Lightly, I touch upon earth once again.
I have landed in a palace room, where a young girl drops to her knees in rapture before me and starts to prey. She blushes deeply, and that can only be on account of something playing through her mind, as her eyes are so far lowered that she would be unable to bear witness to anything that might occur before her. Whereas, through the window behind her, I see guards on horseback pass, riding quickly across the drawbridge and into the castle. The sun is high, but is being steadily blocked out by fast moving black clouds.
The girl is suddenly gripped by hysteria and thrashes about, emitting raucous bird noise. A lightning flash briefly floods the palace room with dazzling light, pinning her to the ground and branding her; it penetrates her heart as it attempts to reach cold earth far below. She is subsequently split in two. In the outlines of the ash, which is all that remains, and seems composed of iron filings, is inscribed a sign, a pair of horizontal lightning bolts.
I step into the centre of the seal and find myself in a meadow with the same girl curled naked at my feet, and I feel we are conjoined by a mysterious psychological power.
We are together in the game, at the onset of a labyrinth. However, she appears to have been stripped of any ability to follow. Her body seems quite devoid of life. I must depart alone.
Tiny bubbles rise from between her lips, as though she were under water, and as I take these in my hand and pocket them she disappears. I start to run.
The path I have chosen slopes upward, describing a zigzag, and I run at such an accelerated pace that my breath forces its way from my chest in hiccups of laughter.
The path of a sudden diverges, and here is a well, from which leap a ring of seahorses, carrying between them a crown, which they let drop, skilfully, onto my head, and as they swim away through the air it binds itself to my scalp.
I stand motionless, waiting, and day turns to night. A nightingale has built a nest of tinsel, acorns, flowers, extinguished candles and gold leaf, upon the crossbeam of the well, and this I gently lift, to place it on my shoulder, along with the bird, which continues to sing gaily. I walk now with a step that is lighter, and more free.