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.

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.

The Erotic Dream of Miley Cyrus 5

Then they reappeared, lying upon the floor of a dingy cell. A man in furs approached and they rose into the air. He grabbed them, one in each hand, and wielded them as a shield. Against the noise.
   He was in a state of anxiety. He was losing consciousness. He dropped to his knees, oppressed, and helpless with self reproach.
   He held himself aloof, as though he had been blotted out by a dark stain.
   We then saw him riding desperately on horseback, still clutching the shit encrusted bats. His eyes were fixed intently, upon what target I know not and fear that he was likewise ignorant of his cause. He rode at such great speed that the faecal shrouds were stripped from the bats, followed by their skins, which, together with those of the man and the horse, flailed about in the air behind them as they rode onward, twining and untwining into a form that resembelled an animated paper ball and finally unravelling to reveal a sphere of light.
   This was the catalytic fuel.
   From it was born a child of blood, who let out a most hideous cry. It was Alice, who flared up like a candle, although her face was wreathed in laughter.
   I shook her hand and she, in turn, looked me up and down. Her hands were cold as ice and her stomach palpitated as though she was ready to heave.
   From between her lips there slowly spun a helical web and as her mouth gaped I thought I saw a chasm filled with stars.
   She chomped at the web with her tiny teeth, breaking it down into irregular pieces, as golden blood flowed.
   She unfastened her robe and removed it, then lay upon the ground face up, as though she wished to sleep, but instead drew a hand gun.
   Undaunted, children ran in and formed a ring about her, then danced gaily in a circle as they sang.
   One stooped, in passing, and took a nipple into its mouth to suckle, then immediately collapsed, as though death itself had been siphoned from the teat.
   Things, however, were not what they seemed.
   I snatched the pistol from Alice and armed myself with it. I looked around cautiously and saw that some kind of stage had been erected before me. A car drew up and from it stepped a lady who approached me and folded a hand over mine, reassuringly.
   I was gripped by a comforting sense of magical nostalgia. The lady stood casually to one side and peeled an orange, then squeezed the juice onto her breast and spread it around with her fingers, painting a design upon her skin.
   When she had finished she whinnied with laughter and left, as all the props were lifted into the air and borne away, leaving a single cell, without windows or doors.
   A canonball dropped from above and shattered, revealing a skull, which rose gracefully into the sky, as light as a kite, trailing a mysterious long thread.
   I felt a touch and realised she was back, only this time she was almost twice her size, in fact, she was quite colossal.
   Her presence excited and ennervated me. I was a butterfly, basking in the warmth of her glow. I rose, sparkling, into the moonlight air.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 5

Initially, the discharge forms isolated droplets that are not so very threatening, but gradually spurts with building vigour until it builds to torrents, flooding everything.
   There is one mound of the stuff, however, that particularly attracts my attention and I plough into it without regard, uncovering a plastic shopping bag that contains a costume; a costume that combines elements of the scholar's robe and the garb of Pulcinella, which emits colour in the form of light.
   A ladder now reaches into the sky and in my new outfit I endeavour to climb it, laughing in the face of the lightning that seems to want to frighten me back.
   I rise into a hole that rends the sky and discover that I have entered a capacious golden balloon. As if on cue, a wind now grips the balloon, but it is like no wind I have ever known, because the grip itself and the movement it provokes are more evocative of a giant hand, lifting the balloon and placing it down again.
   I now look around and see that the girl with the zigzag scars is here, at least I think it is her. She is wrapped around with sky blue ribbons and sits, isolated, in a corner, and as I look in her direction the balloon is enveloped by a strange illumination. She seems to be brooding, but what is it that she wants?
   I approach her and start to slowly peel the bindings away, handling the ribbons with sensitivity, as though I don't want her to notice that I am removing them. I perceive that she is perhaps blushing. Her hands are bound and it would appear she no longer has legs, but as I free her from this egg shaped cocoon I realise she has become a bird, or to be more precise, a human, angel, eagle hybrid.
   At once I mount her and we take flight, through the clouds to the site of ruins I presume are the ones about which I had been forewarned. However, all forms here are transient: at once in a state of collapse, or buried beneath the soil, and simultaneously whole, or full of life. One moment I may see a thing in all its glory, the next it is as likely to lie shattered, destroyed. Sun and moon likewise alternate rapidly, but without the discomfort of strobing light. It is in fact my head that flashes in concord, like a Belisha beacon — on when it is dark, off when there is daylight, and the sequencing is such that it is never truly dark.
   Through the flickering light I see projections of text, poems, quaint drawings and photographed memories. The walls are weeping blood into pools and slow moving streams. Church bells toll noon.
   Somewhere amidst these ruins, within a place of concealment, there is a void. This void contains another, and within this there is another, and on, until an exit point is found, and it is at this juncture that I believe I will find the Book of Lies.
   Muffled drums can be discerned, and would appear to be beckoning me inward. The belly is open and nothing can block my descent, but am I moving towards the mind or the anus?
   Fleshy spheres swell and burst to reveal, firstly Ubu, in black, then Gyron, in red, Pile, in green and Cotise, in blue. Ubu starts to declaim his verse in a voice that recalls the gutteral flush of a toilet: "If nights are taboo but work contrite try hard to hallucinate harp's purr fat thus howling forces heart ride home thus knives recorded art spot crack. An invite in black, in a rock left from up fall, is party base average. Avoid."
   All four characters start to turn on their axes and tear through the organs, the flesh and the bones, in an act of total carnage. They leave behind them an unidentifiable odour. It seems madness itself has been set free.
   But those free wheeling bodies are now drawing me in. I feel I am being pulled towards a ritual space, as the road through which I pass is lined with figures depicting gods.
   A light above my head defines an opening, and it is towards this that I ascend.

The Erotic Dream of Miley Cyrus 4

Suddenly, I was awakened and discovered that I was stretched upon a couch in a therapy room, whilst an analyst stood before me, with arms extended, palpitating my sides and observing the way that I was breathing.
   Satisfied, he took a palette of colours from beside him and started to paint my face. At the corners of my eyes he painted tears of blood. He felt my chin for stubble. He started to mould my face like plasticine. He would shape for me the perfect face.
   Next, he concentrated on rearranging my body. Firstly, he plumped me up, and then he patted me down: fat then thin then fat then thin. I started to rise, free from my physical trappings. I was an oak.
   The Psych laid offerings of food and flowers at my roots. My bark opened out to reveal the interior of a small theatre. The front of the stage was lined with little people who waited patiently in anticipation of receiving a gift. The Psych removed them one by one, pinching the napes of their necks. He set them down before him and started to tell them a story: 'Once upon a time we walked together through a forest, hand in hand.' There was something in my mind, but could I bear to speak out? Truth or Art? That those around me were simply hollow fabrications into which I had pumped life. But I was distracted as I listened to him speak and imagined us passing through an avenue flanked by applauding spectators. I affected the demeanour of a pantomime artiste. I was the puffed up king.
   Before us was a large, square room with no ceiling and one missing wall. Into this I guided my faithful entourage. We were greeted by a woman, tall, lithe and fair. I was fascinated by her, but the others clearly were not. One by one they each drifted back in the direction from whence they had come and when the woman herself attempted to approach me she suddenly collapsed to the floor, quite dead, and started to rapidly decay.
   From the place she had fallen there flowed two thin rivulets which stretched like arms towards me. At their apex a solitary acorn poked from the ground, opening out to reveal a child. I was afraid.
   A hatchway opened in the floor before me and from below rose the grinding sound of a horrendous machine.
   I froze and took a long moment of deep reflection. That done, I felt the brief perception of a chill breath upon me. I felt, furthermore, as though I was ready to take my own life. I laid down upon the grass.
   From behind me I heard the beeping of an earth moving machine reversing. It was trying to tip me into the hole, like a coin into a money box.
   At this point everything started to blur. However, I could perceive, in the distance, a place of anguish, lit, it seemed, by flashes of lightning.
   Memories that had been concealed rose to the surface of my mind. A peasant house in which a very aged couple stood, hand clasped in hand, before an altar. From their free hands they each released a bat then called out "Stay!" at which command the bats froze, suspended in the air. The couple then grasped the bats like stones and hurled them with a mighty force, as though they were missiles, through an open window, towards the distant town, which they entered via the jaws and passed right through, to the anus, from which they made their exit, covered in excrement, floating freely in the night sky, unattainable. Suddenly, they were snatched away, as though they had been torn from view.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 4

A moonlight deer bounds this way and that, over rivers and between trees, until the blue light returns. Although the balance between day and night remains unstable.
   But think again. The evidence is right before us.
    Whilst I am enraptured by the visions and the silence the children sneak in around me and swiftly lop off my head, which rises as a sun, while my own world view remains one of darkness only.
   As my head floats away I feel roots connect it to my body and life and death will not detach from each other, so I let out a peal of laughter.
   Silver unicorns, signifying purity, pass through the darkness. Up and down, mimicking the rise and fall of celestial bodies, appearing random in motion, but held in unity by an unfathomable design, and as they start to dimly radiate I feel purified and youthful once again, as though reborn, innocent as a child.
   I turn my head and see my body, naked. I shut my eyes and vomit to the ground and  when I open them again my body stands, now dressed in a pastel blue t-shirt with an image of a dinosaur upon it and a suit of deepest black. My pose is relaxed, unaffected, candid, and I feel that I am in some way soiled, as though the gaze to which I am exposed is in some way inappropriate; as though I was being studied to determine my sex.
   I am washed, as an infant would be, and a resounding slap upon my arse cheek sends me leaping, into a cot, which may just as easily be a coffin. I dangle, as though suspended from a string, and thus am I tethered to my female counterpart. An angel? A work of fiction? Is she real? Nonetheless, I am floating freely and feel happy to do so, until I receive a blow to my mouth.
   It is a freshly plucked heart, and blood drips down my chin. My own heart is now exposed, as though I was Our Lady.
   I start to whistle, in the same way as a kettle when it announces that it is ready.
   She comes at me in a storm of angelic light. The air crackles like shifting ice. Her hair seems to sing. She is everything. She wants me, but is it love? She throws herself upon me and we roll.
   Her demeanor is simultaneously wanton, coy, open and censorious, as she peels aside her clothing suggestively then conceals herself again, spreading and unspreading, in a coquettish yet childlike way. I pull out a telescope with the intention of examining with greater intimacy the minutest particulars of her beauty.
   No holds are barred and I savour every detail, especially those places that are typically regarded with modesty. Her flesh weeps roseate tears. A wind that rises straight from the earth turns these droplets to rivulets then to a flood that threatens to submerge this land, and through which swim a team of sea horses, then a sailing boat. As they pass she floats into the air and upon the water.
   A line of fish floats past. They appear to be bound together, pursued by a naked baby who is trying to catch the one at the back, though as it swims its limbs detach then float upwards and away, until all that remains is a sphere.
   This is the sun and the líquid vapourises as new life starts to emerge. The air is now a crimson fog.
   A phallus has risen from the ground and now uproots itself and rises into the sky, where the fog condenses upon it in droplets of dew. The liquid thus formed has an astounding brilliance, whilst the penis spits venom and in this way seeks to debase everything.

The Erotic Dream of Miley Cyrus 3

These ruins contain a secret: a book of lies, which also acts as its heart.

The skins moved. They bent and folded, they formed into spheres and rose as balloons. They steadily floated, with deliberation, in a direction I felt compelled to follow.
    The belly was open to me, and there was no obstacle that would prevent me from entering, but there was also no way to determine whether I was travelling toward the neck, and beyond that the mind, or whether I was passing through to the anus.
   The flesh balloons had become heavier and descended to the ground, rolling away then bursting to reveal Gyron, in a flash of red, Pile, with sparks of green, Cotise, in a shower of blue, and, ahead of them, a dark, shadowy figure, exceptionally fat in protuberance[. True enough, it was Black Ubu].
   He started to declaim his poetry in a voice that sounded uncannily like the flush of a toilet: "If nights are taboo but work contrite try hard to hallucinate harp's purr fat thus howling forces heart ride home thus knives recorded art spot crack! An invite in black, in a rock left from up-fall, is party base average, avoid."
   All four turned and plunged deeper into the belly, causing the utmost damage as they rended organs and bones, leaving behind them an undefinable odour. It seemed that madness itself had been set free.
   Those free ranging bodies drew me in, and it seemed it was a god's hand that guided me within, towards a ritual centre, and I thereby feel protected, the safety of my journey assured.
   A ring of light above my head soon marked an outlet. I rose towards it, as though born on tiny wings, whilst all the while I felt the tug of the ground, as Gyron, Pile and Cotise passed me by, travelling back in the opposite direction. I started to sweat blood.
   My mother's warning rang in my ears: "The saddles of wishes trap the husbands we farm."
   A pulse of sunlight was emitted from the aperture and I was as one transformed: as a bloody fish I was sucked through the pouting mouth. I was a whale, ejaculating: stars into the depths, the firmament. I was buoyed by a wave of voices that slowly intoned: "Breaking." I was a new species of human. My old attachments were now washed away; they burst from the bubble of my skin as a grape dispels its juices. I was filled with the will of a supreme being, embracing my destiny. I was a cold sun, a false eye. I burst.
   I was born away to the region of dreams. Here I sat wearily, my head in my hands. The attendant took a ticket from between my fingers and tore it. There was a long low peal of thunder, as darkness descended.
   The screen lit up and there proceded a vision of the future: a lightning flash, illuminating the body of a woman contained within a cell, who lay naked, shivering, upon the cold earth.
   From out of nowhere a metal booted foot delivered her a swift kick at which she, recovering her composure more quickly than I thought she might, tapped upon the ground three times with the tip of a finger and lifted her head, enabling us to see her face; offering us an insight into her heart and mind, in which could plainly be discerned love, as though the transmission of that signal were her sole purpose.
   Whether owing to the countenance she projected or something within me that yearned, she seemed uncommonly beautiful, and as she rose wings unfurled at her back, although they would be of no use to her in her current state of confinement.
   She turned away from us, looked into a mirror and recognised herself. The mirror itself glowed with the feathered green hues of an Emerald Beauty. She spoke, but we could hear nothing and witnessed only the motion of her lips. Frosted tears adorned the corners and the lower lids of her eyes. She pressed her face to the glass, as though she were peering through a window, then passed into it and beyond, as through the skin of a pool, rising into the sunlight, with water clinging to her body like a gown, and so she disappeared from view.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 3

I pick myself up and approach the feast. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that the food, which had previously seemed so bright and tempting, is in fact composed of wax or has been carved from wood and painted. It is the sculpted replica of a classic feast, but none of it is real.
   As I move away I become aware of a terrific ululation, which could easily be an echo from my own stomach, as I am feeling the strains of hunger.
   I step onto the train of a long glow that emanates from a window ahead. It conveys a sense of promise.
   However, this feeling is foreshortened as I witness phantoms fleeing out through the window with a hellish warbling din and off into the darkness, as though their aim is to evade a danger I am unable to perceive. Behind them comes JD, waving a ghost-like handkerchief to shoo them away.
   Once he has seen them off he leans out to me, and without a hint of irony, intones 'The tang of wild orange'.
   He gaily waves a sistrum in my face then spins around and makes a swift departure, rattling as he goes, though in his wake he leaves a silence that seems burdened with shame.
   Upon the ground lies another note:

   "Clare behind the statue of
   cupid beasts. Crazed babe, as
   cute and simple power devoted
   to each daily shade of style."

But as I pick it up and head down one of the bifurcating passages I perceive a crowd behind me. They must have come from the other passage.
   I look back and see decapitated men, chickens, quails and other flightless birds advancing quite quickly, but in a clueless way, as they jostle and bump against each other, spilling blood before them.
   'Am I destined to become one of them?' I wonder. If this is to be my fate I cannot accept it.
   The pooling blood thickens and starts to swirl, then disappears into the soil, as down a plug-hole. The air fills with a steam of vermilion hues which condenses upon the walls but is quickly absorbed, as though stolen away, leaving the passage dry, as the last of the blood is sucked into the earth and man and bird collapse, thoroughly drained.
   A heavy "clunk!" as of fallen metal, draws me deeper into the tunnel, where I see distant figures in crimson robes, but all too briefly, as they retreat into the shadows. I pick up a medal from the ground and hang it around my neck. It is a reading award, or, to repeat the legend scored into the flat pane at its back, it is a medal awarded for the Consumption of the Written Word.
   With the medal hung I stand proudly and a two dimensional figure stretches from my torso and emerges from my body. A female child, naked but for silhouettes and shadows, whose first act is to grip my arm and from there feel me over, to make sure that I am real.
   I am so absorbed in this process that I do not notice the two men who have approached and now flank me, each swiftly grasping one of my arms, as they carry me along between them, though as we progress I realise it is in fact I who is leading them, and so fast are we now progressing that they start to spin like cartwheels.
   I decide to pull us to a halt and when I do they lift into the air and coalesce into a solid globe.
   Now I am approached, somewhat apprehensively, by the children I had seen earlier but who by now are feeling courageous enough to lay their hands upon me, the stranger in their midst, and, like the two dimensional girl, probe to see whether I may be real, or an apparition.
   As one, they inhale deeply, then each attempts to insert a slither of bamboo under one of my nails, but as they force it in they disappear, as though they were being sucked into my finger.
   I feel surprisingly little pain and am compelled to lift my arms so that my hands are projecting outwards and from the tips of my fingers I shoot arrows of fire, which turn back to children as they penetrate the ground.
   The keys that they now hold, the keys of binding and of choosing, signify that they are at last free.
  One girl kneels to prey. My heart stands still, I tremble. Someone rings a hand bell. Another takes my hand whilst her friend takes a snapshot.
   Blooms rapidly erupt from all sides of the passageway until its hideous walkways are concealed beneath bright and colourful flowers and from the hearts of these gush fountains of blood, milk and "water".
   I feel intoxicated but equally succumb to drowsiness. I stretch my palms before me like a blind man as I dream.
   Three sharp blows serve to shape the darkness into the vision that now forms before me.

The Erotic Dream of Miley Cyrus 2

I had been hit by a clod of earth and thin rivulets of dirty water ran down my chin. I needed to defecate, and when I was done I started to whistle. I was ready.
    The air around me was suffused with a stormy, fairy grove light, cast by blue tulip torches, and I felt compelled to speak, but what I said surprised me:
    'I espouse inevitable friendships. Touch an arm and power gives truth artistry. Intuition cuts across the poetry prayer and knows a new papa, for children linked with joyous sins offend normality.'
   As I made my way towards the flashing EXIT sign I noticed that a copious quantity of blood was now pouring from my mouth, as the neck of a headless bird emerged from between my lips. It rose into the air where it turned and hovered above my head, as though it were studying me.
   My twin, now wearing the severed head of the bird, ran up beside me, agitating wildly. His arms, neck and legs had become the pipes and drones of a living bagpipe and as he ran he wheezed an unholy din. Without warning, he viciously swung a scimitar through my neck and I dropped to the ground, where I lapsed into a deep sleep.
   A golden globe slowly lowered itself from the sky to alight upon the ground between my partitioned head and my torso. At the centre of this Golden Orb was a book. The orb rose into the air, where it floated, as the book opened out to reveal that it was, internally at least, a spelling book. The first word we were able to see was spread across two pages. It was CHILD HOOD, and thus it became obvious that the book was in fact a mirror of my own mind. The page turned and the next pair of pages read SEA SONS, then came COUNT LESS, followed by SET TING.
   My hair started to lift and vibrate excitedly, but this sudden surge served to occlude the word for which I was seeking; I saw instead RAIN DROPS. My electro-charged hair then seemed to reel my head towards my neck, as though it were imitating the mechanism of a tape machine, and the next word revealed was DOG MA, then BE CAUSE.
   My hair was gripped, clenched into a bunch at the top back, and my head was lifted, with my heart hanging in the air beneath it; radiant, but invisible. From its base blossomed and opened a vagina, wide as a zero. Beneath this hung a long golden thread with, at its end, and planted firmly upon the ground, a foot.
   The vagina slowly diffused a light that sheathed the body thus far created and started to flesh it out. It became immensely hairy, and an audience started to gather around, as though they thought of me as some kind of exhibit. I blushed, for I was naked, and raw.
   Now winged, however, I took to the air. I was an eagle knight. I soared through the clouds to some distant ruins. But this was a place where all forms were transient: at once in a state of collapse, or in graves, and likewise whole, or living. One moment I might have been looking at something that was in every way complete, but the next it would lay before me, destroyed. The sun and the moon likewise rapidly alternated, but without the discomfort of flashing light, whilst it was my head that appeared to flash, as though it were a belisha strobe, if such a thing were possible. On, when darkness surrounded. Off, when the day became light, in such a way that the area was never truly dark.
   In the flickering light, projections of texts, quaint drawings and photographed memories. Walls and doors that were draped with skin, which acted as some kind of barrier, but which could be brushed away as easily as cobwebs, or that is at least what I thought, because what was actually happening was that my hand was passing through them, as though I were a ghost.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 2

It is at this point in the tale that a man with a fabulous tail strides in to introduce himself. He swishes it firstly to the left and then to the right, as he steps up briskly to face me and slaps me with a finger on the nose. I must admit, I turn quite pale when he rolls his eyes and digs in his heels, before leaning in close to me. I feel I might die, although his eyes do not convey malice, and not for a moment do I believe I might actually be harmed.
   "Russian!" he pipes. "Well I'll be damned! I've lost sausages here. Do you want some?"
   He flicks a toe and spins around, and in a moment is gone. What a character. I've no doubt I'll see him again.

The sky is now filled with apocalyptic black clouds and a rain of golden flakes begins to fall. Loud rumbling is followed by a legion of black clad militia on bikes, wearing full face helmets, emblazoned with the insignia of the Noose. For the most part they stare straight ahead, but not one, who is presumably chief and is scanning the horizon, which is how he comes to see me.
   He breaks from the group and heads straight for me, then plucks me up in his strong arms and drops me into the carriage of his bike before rejoining formation with the others. They are heading for the Reconditioning Centre for Dreamers. "Here's another one" he announces to his men "Roaming around in the open. Almost certainly a dreamer. Maybe even a poet."
   The terrain is quite featureless, although before long the entourage starts to navigate its way through streets beneath grey edifices which increase in size as we travel between them. The shuttered windows are occasionally thrown open and through them appear giant heads which appear to jeer. However, the skin on their faces is flaking and peeling. It is red raw.
   People start to crawl from the houses. They cling to each other, then come more, forming a sticky morass that grows into a corpulent, pulsing red member, into which the team of bikers collides and penetrates. Because this is the penitentiary. It is the soul, the brain, the heart. As they penetrate a whistle blows and the membranes of the walls snap shut behind them.
   I am led to the front desk and the man there wants to take my temperature. He rudely seats me down and places a sensitised helmet over my head. The device reads my ears, my nose, my eyes, my lips. Sensors creep from it and move across the length of my body, concentrating particularly on the area of my sex. He reads the instruments and declares "This one's a dreamer alright!" However, the soldiers have all returned to their duties and there is no-one around to hear him. He is now playing at the machine as though it was a games console, and the music is getting steadily louder. He leaves the machine to walk with a female assistant.
   I close my eyes and abandon myself.
   I see them dancing around a pince nez, which spins at the tip of the trunk-like nose it is attached to, but every so often inverts and moves around like a caterpillar.
   I speak and they disappear then reappear either side of me, unplucking the sensors from my body.
   "The sensors can't be wrong" one declares. "No doubt about it, a dreamer" the other replies. And I wait, I cannot say how long. I feel like an innocent, bereft of all moral turmoil. I seem to wander without volition, going nowhere but where fancy takes me.
   And so it is that I stumble upon a lavish feast. As I enter the dining hall my body fades and I float amongst the tables as a ghost. A crucifix that stands before one of the central tables bows as I approach it. The women who are seated on either side breath fire then jump up and briskly leave the hall, as though they had been affronted. They leave behind a pair of notes:

   "It is a book that lies apart."
   "It passes through the scripted ruins."

And then I plummet to the ground.

And then there will as sure as love be weeping 1

The cat has left a gift upon the kitchen floor. It is a mouse. Its heart still beats, though it is at pains to do so. A bubble of thought rises soberly into the air: 'Please let me be', but the guardian cannot hear this. She is turned the other way. Her thoughts sink slowly to the ground: 'Where are they?'

The floor has recently been washed and the pulsing corpse could be the sordid decoration on a ceremonial cake. A something to be proud of. 'They must come soon'. In the distance a bang and the sound of footsteps: approaching, deviating, retreating. Silence. Patience. 'Miaow '. Here they come.

But the high sonic reveille that greets her when the door is opened is too much for Ting and out she darts through the cat-flap, as fast as her aged limbs will take her. This may be the last gift she leaves.

Had she stayed in place, however, she would have seen that her gift had brought not joy but resigned anger, as the mouse is quickly scooped up and carried outside to the bin. The bang of the lid as it closes is indeed a joyless sound. But imagine, if you please, that mother and father had taken a turn around to the back of the house in search of Ting and found there a palace of fur and twine, of trinkets and bones. That her mouse had been only a foretaste of the stuff her dreams were made of. 

Imagine then, that they had ventured through a magical doorway constructed of twigs, cobwebs and fish bones and stood in wonder, unaware that Ting, perched up high and looking down upon them in a curious way, was counting the seconds until the commencement of her glorious plan.
   When their hands join they find themselves formless, as suspended light that finds expression in a single spark that separates itself and journeys through the air into the murky dark where it settles at the heart of the gloom (the soul is infinitesimally small - a zygote, a sperm).
It is cold here, a foreign place, not entirely dark, but casting little lustre into the surrounds. It is the centre of a place that is yet to be realized, an island in the shade of trepidation. The spirits of dead mice risen abound. The crystalline centres of their eyes crackle and fizz as ice cold water washes through them. Just above the surf small flies gamble with their lives and often lose. However, it is not entirely silent, footprints splash determinedly through the tide and stop before me.
    I can see very little in this gloom but as I attempt to stand and face my assailant the space grows a little brighter. There is now light enough to see her face, which is rounded and dark. Her hair is pinched back; her eyes large and wide. Her lips are full and, stretching diagonally across her cheeks, from her chin to her ears, are a pair of zigzagging blue scars, like bolts of lightning, and it is from these that the dawning light shines.
   She takes my hand. Hers is soft. It feels like the kind of hand I would want to hold, and she guides me along behind her.
   When she stops we are at the basket of a moored balloon, into which she deftly climbs, urging me to follow.
   Once I am inside she cuts the guys without hesitation, and we rise into an uncertain sky, where nothing can be seen, no birds, no clouds, no ground below.
   It seems an age before the balloon becomes trapped at the edge of a mass of weaving briars, into which she deftly leaps, while I cautiously follow. Though as she starts to weave her way skillfully through the dense entanglement I realise that they are in fact giant hairs and that we are venturing along the brow of god.
   Our passage is slow and cumbersome but we reach the end in due course and she disappears into a hole that marks the position where the third eye would have been located, and I of course follow her through, but as I drop down I realise that I am once more alone.
   The vast space into which I have landed, I soon realise, is the brain of god.
   As I walk deeper into it the dots I had seen in the distance loom larger and I can make out figures: men and women at rest and dreaming upon slatted beds. There are also children, but these are not dormant, they run free, but are forever concealed by shadows, as they evade the realms of adulthood. They play hide and seek, but with every intention of losing themselves entirely, of never being found.
   The adults, who lay on their backs upon the beds, have sheets pulled over their faces and seem at first glance to be dead, but as I approach I can see their chests are rising and sinking and can feel their breath, which is slight but nevertheless regular, when I hold my palm above their mouths. When I lift the veil from their faces their eyes flicker wildly, reminding me of antique computer banks, rapidly saving and deleting.
   I now notice that none of the bodies are in contact with the beds upon which they appear to rest, levitating a centimeter or so above it, although they will not budge when I attempt to move them, not even slightly, as though they are in some way rooted, not only to the bed, but also to the earth beneath it.
   I further notice that some are levitating over thin mattresses rather than beds whilst there is nothing at all beneath others,  but every one of them is equally resistant to movement.
   There is one, however, who lays face down, and I am inclined to believe that this one, being the exception, will not resist.
   I am right, or at least partially so. When I grasp an arm and try to turn the individual to face me everything around me starts to fade, as it would if this were the dream sequence of a film, and when I let go the individual starts to turn freely, as though of its own volition, and then starts to spin and cocoon itself in a web that is the colour of faeces.
   As though this was a cue I sense that the children are gradually approaching, moving cautiously into my field of vision, though when I turn to face them they are gone.
   I also sense that the patch of ground upon which I am standing is starting to shift and sink, but is the cavity that is forming as much a cavity in the skull where my adventures are taking place as it is a cavity in the soil where I stand, which is all that remains as everything fades around me?
   The spinning cocoon gradually tightens and elongates until it becomes so dark and heavy that it drops to the ground, where it cracks and spills its deep brown liquid contents, which start to corrode a deep hole into the earth.
   As everything has now faded away and I am in danger of being consumed by the disappearing world of which I have become a part, I drop down into the hole, trying my best to avoid touching the corrosive ooze that runs down the expanding walls of the funnel, and as I descend I look up to see the children's faces appear over the rim. Attentively, they watch as I fall.

I don't have too far to go and land quite comfortably upon a meadow, dotted with large white balls that I initially take for stones, although they are very smooth and most perfectly round. Also, whichever direction I cast my eyes there are giant shoes of every description. I can't resist picking up one of the stones and am surprised to find that it is lighter than anticipated. I attempt to toss it into a particularly elegant Victorian boot.

First Fiction • Avocation with the Agent of Dream

Be sure the meat is thoroughly cooked. It will soon be the end. In cold liver fat. Uncomfortable music. Dim expectations. Quickly shifting settings treat the eye.

A wife in secret. A maiden tested. Our love is cooked. Three knocks announce seduction. Onions, nettles, roots or clover and oats. Where sails the boat of our keenest affections? Splicing and combining the lonesome in preordained cells. Restless, disinterested, tired. A vessel with no way to go. Shutting the world out to make believe. Mistaking identity. Maturity an embarrassment. A mask for carnival, a carnival mask for life. Cracked. Blood oven of a dark moon. Black speck against the rising sun. Kaleidoscopic generation of sound. Observing the world by cloistered carriage. Lightly creeping up to the spider's lair. A communal space wherein resides a corpse.

An orb of blood slashes the web, drawing in streams of butterflies, and their several colours envelop the sphere. They bring their own music from within; it resonates through the thin walls of their hearts; a whistle that enchants and draws us in: pulsing with the wax and wane of blood spell; dutifully recorded. Cocooned.

What's not revealed is imagined and what is witnessed is concealed by the silent observer; his body a cushion for pin-pricks of desire: emitting flames of blue light that dance and occasionally touch suggestively, as flowers in a favoured, but unfettered, breeze. Naked.

Spirit possessed. Unsurmounted remnants of an abandoned past; remuneration that seems no reward. Evading easy access. Dispersals in an insectoidal swirl. A glistening dragon ascending, heavenbound, to be regenerated, away from the island of its birth.

Enter the elders, with gifts of obeisance: licquor and tobacco. They lay these down then coil in foetal silence to die, as their bodies are painted red by an ancient mother. Thus are they prepared to be taken back into the womb.

They slide indifferently into the blood drenched mire, sinking to the toll of discordant bells, striking midnight as their bodies shudder and discharge, and hearts start to beat as they disgorge showers of blood which, airborne, turn to swarms of wasps, and as they hit the ground, to grass, freshly mown.

Light pours from their mouths, their eyes, nostrils and ears, as from solar flares. Within their skulls their eyes slowly melt away; their bodies sprawled across the endless expanse of lawn.

The elders return and decorate each of them with panther spots. They pass a metal ring around the neck of a woman and fasten a clump of heather to the head of a man. Her legs are parted; his penis is studded with thorns.

She is dressed in fine clothes. A hole is burnt into his skull above one ear, into which smoke is blown. She lets out a sigh. He groans contentedly. The elders cover their eyes to keep them from witnessing this "primal act". She plays a fish-shaped flute then sheaths his penis with it and blood flows. He puffs himself up, a bird uncertain as to whether it might fight or fly, attracting a cloud of butterflies to his body.

A hill rises before him. Blackout. He forces himself to climb it but doesn't manage to get very far before he slides back down. He tries again, as the woman endeavours to find a way into his skin via the flute. Beautiful things can happen by chance. I don't value the compulsion to make them happen again, and again (and again).

Fire and light are re-kindled from this union.

She enters him completely. Only the skin remains. They rise into the air, steady as a rocket. I love as much as the next person but no longer "invest in love".

The elders uncover their eyes, gather up what remains, and plant a sign: FOR SALE.

A large, dark blue automobile drives onto the site. A group of six or seven year olds steps out. They disrobe and roll in the patches of blood, smearing it onto their bodies, then begin to burrow, unearthing a giant chequered board, with cells sufficiently large for them to stand in. They jump down into the black ones and step from one to another, always avoiding the ones that are white.

Through small connecting hatches in the corner shadows, which they have to crouch to unlatch and crawl through, the boys find barbed flutes, and with these they cover their penises. They subsequently bleed. In a moment they are gone.

The girls press miniature binoculars to their eyes and through these send beams of blue light into the sky, as the air becomes colder.

Plants in flower are revealed, as are wings and spectral twinklings. Sweat floods down their bodies. The blue light and sweat combine to draw the boys back and each joins the nearest girl, who grasps his flute, but the bond is not strong enough and the boys pull away and club together at a space removed, where they pool their blood.

They make their way up the hill, slashing down the tangle of creepers and vines that now covers it; scattering clouds of insects and butterflies, as the girls follow their progress through the binoculars. But they see something quite different. They see wild cats with sleek black hair. These swoop back down the hill and carry the girls off between their jaws. The boys run back and gather up the flutes, which the girls have let fall.

With fortified purpose they jump back into the construct and again progress from cell to cell. As they make their way the outer walls, the floor and doors open like flowers and reveal themselves. They are the panthers and they drop the girls from between their rabid jaws as they growl ferociously and are perceived to be closing in on the children. This forces them to regroup, and each clings to the nearest, but then they break away and embrace their favourite.

As each pair is formed a bubble of amniotic fluid encases them, as though it were a protective barrier. But the girls try to take the flutes back from the boys and the interior of the capsules fills with blood. In this way the vessels consume them. Each is replaced by a blood red head, suspended in the air, spinning on the oblique. The panthers snap their jaws at these but do not manage to sink in their teeth. The heads rise above them and one by one they sink into the corners, dejected.

A light rain of blood falls now and the boys pull themselves from the skins of the panthers. They head back up the hill in search of the girls who they find in a wondrous garden, nursing white swans.

Each of the girls quickly conceals something (a bloody bone?) by burying it, and then breaks into a cold, feverish sweat. They approach the nearest boy and push a comb into his hair, but press so hard that the boys' heads split open, with an outpouring of his most putrescent imaginings, accompanied by a fetid stench.

The girls now paint the images spawned from the boys minds onto the cell tomb walls from their collected blood: depictions of themselves in congress with the swans, and as they paint, sure enough, the swans move in, but fights ensue between the birds as they attempt to approach who they will, rather than the one who has chosen them, so the girls intervene and, kissing their eyes, sends each into the night sky, into which they rise steadily, as though drawn by the light from the stars.

As the girls retreat and scatter blood runs down the walls and seeps into the earth.

An infant appears and runs from the tomb womb to a secluded garden, where he lies beside a pool ringed with willows.

Now a bishop rises from the matrix and approaches the boy whilst a knight rides around the pool to meet him. The bishop draws a gun from beneath his cassock and holds it to the head of the sleeping boy whilst the knight calls out his name. The boy wakes and blushes as he realises he is naked, and the bishop's bullet misses its mark on account of his trembling. The swans arc across the sky, blazing midday suns. The bishop ducks, perceiving them to be meteors, and spews streams of foul smelling liquid, then presses the barrel of the gun to his own temple, but a sudden hail storm arrests his hand.

The boy snatches the gun from him as they are forced by the torrent through the thickening mist and exit at a place of ruins. Here there is a hut built from debris, inside which the children are busy putting things in order, but they are warded from entering by the redness of the interior and the childrens' bodies. However, the boy rushes in and heads straight for a bowl at the centre which is filled with an assortment of invertebrates, which he offers to the men, but which they do not want, whilst the boy swallows them down voraciously, as one intoxicated, then proceeds to offer the gun to the knight, then the bishop, all the while making it obvious that he intends for them to use it on him, though each in his turn refuses.

A sand viper coils before his feet, hissing, with tongue lashing, but he talks to it gently and calms it down, at which each of the girls punches him once on the back and his body takes on the same ochre hue as the other children. He plucks a cigar from the table, lights it in the fire and steps out into the rain. He wanders through the wreckage and along the coast, disoriented, until he stumbles across the tomb grid, which has now filled with tide water, where the body of a woman floats purposefully to the surface to greet him, her lifeless gaze fixed upon him, her eyes flashing coldly.

She lowers her head and spews gold onto the sand at his feet, where it turns to a heap of ochre red dust. The boy grabs her by the scruff of the neck and drags her away from the sea onto a long straight road, along which he proceeds, with the woman in tow, as it once again starts to rain.

His passage is suddenly blocked by a rock that falls from the sky. He rolls this forward, drops her into the depression, and lets the rock fall back into place, but he is instantly wracked by fever and the colour drains from his body as the earth swallows him whole, leaving a large, circular, red ochre stain, which slowly turns russet as a bruise on a cherry and starts to rot away, whilst the rain becomes increasingly frustrating and a portentous gloom descends.

An eyeless eagle settles upon the stain and claws at the now blackened earth, opening a channel that would seem to offer some means of escape from this oppressive world, although a band of blood red that rings the interior hints at the dangers of venturing deeper, and from the depths a pair of threatening eyes gleams. A tiger's roar is heard and the sense is strong that one more step inward would provoke an attack from whatever lurks inside.

A tiger rushes out, but is tethered by the neck with the blood red band, and an unseen force tugs it back inside, as a group of trolls emerges and forms a ring.

Whilst their attire is surprisingly elegant their skin is strange and translucent, and exposure to the air causes it to blister. They hurriedly commence rubbing ointment upon each other as their skins take on an ochre red hue and start to peel, releasing an unblighted double, which leaves the festering form to die away as it disappears into the distance.

A truck pulls up. From it leaps a brightly dressed man, who hops from foot to foot, crashing together a pair of battered cymbals, and this noise draws the tiger back out of the hole, lusting for blood. But the troll doubles are returning and the beast seems more concerned with preventing them from re-entering the hole, which it does by consuming what remains of their old bodies, and this indeed slows them down, although an explosion to the side compels them to head in that direction and investigate the new hole.

From this appears a man who would appear to be king of the elves, and seems ready to speak:

   "Some episodes are coming out from ant-roads after stretching the night comb, then sleeping-life."

At this his subjects start to appear from the hole and set fire to whatever around them will burn. But the trolls seem ready to launch an attack. So the elves sneak into the troll hole while the trolls sneak into theirs. But as they each approach the hole they have chosen to enter their feet start to lift from the ground and they gradually disappear as they float, leaving great uncertainty as to whether they might have entered or not, until their shadows sink inside.

The cat would pounce upon these ghosts and shadows, but they are too many, too fleeting. The frantic tramping unearths an ornate bird-charm, with red and blue beads and pink fringes. Beneath this a pool of seeping waters slowly rises and we are tugged beneath the surface.

We emerge from a pool of blood. This is the moat surrounding a tall tower, and we are quickly plucked from it, as though with a net. We are carried into the tower itself, to meet with the shadows of the elves.

They behave in a curiously seductive manner. Meanwhile, they cocoon us with elfin strands. Once wrapped, we are overwhelmed by a feverish heat. The shadows start to ornament our hair. Steam evaporates from the tops of our heads as we overheat. The mist, however, clears, and the room is filled with light that appears to emanate from filaments woven into our hair.

Once finished, they gesture for us to leave. We bound away with elfin leaps. We would like to impress our benefactors. Gaily, we spring from a tall window, down into the moat and away, across the thicket.

A crowd has gathered. Some are chopping at the trees and constructing, whilst others are collecting sap. They build barricades against the massive creatures on the other side. But over we go, sending startled birds into the sky.

We are instantly assailed by wild creatures. However, we feel that if we were to act like them we might passify them, and away they run, as we glide onto an escalator that guides us into the centre of things.

As we escalate we are showered down upon, and from within the streams of water glimmers of snakes appear to guide us.

We follow, and are met by two masked men who take us to a hole in the ground, where lies the king of the trolls, who seems at peace, even happy. My feelings vacillate between love and hate.

One of the men draws out a small, testicle shaped pouch and takes from it a pinch of tobacco, which he drops into the troll king's hand, where it becomes a coiling red snake, as a ring of elves with torches closes in. My escorts remove their masks. One cracks a whip. But the elves leap onto their shoulders and heads, as they ride into the air, turning 90° as they go, so that the elves are sitting cross-legged upon them, and streams of blood and urine flow from between their legs, coiling away in serpentine strands as they hit the ground.

They brush each other's hair. One pulls out a whistle and blows, though no sound is heard. Inanimate objects spring suddenly to life. Chicken shacks, clogs, pebbles, eggs. The wild cat of our soul leaps at them, but whether to play or to destroy, it is impossible to say, though our hand is gently stayed, with a vague consciousness of reprimand. The inanimate objects are taboo. They leap into the blood pool. We leap in after them: to attack, to aid or follow? We are without motive.

Emerging on the cracked surface of a time-honoured lava flow we discover that an egg is pursuing us, although when we see it it falls from the air into a small nest of straw, as though freshly laid. It cracks open and from it unfurls The Plan, which shows us a way to escape from this labyrinth. It is so complex we are reduced to tears, though I suspect the plan is false; how could anyone have devised such a thing? If word of inside got out those responsible would be punished, and for this reason I suspect that the escape route has subsequently been mythologised, and that if we followed this plan we would lend credence to the ruse, whilst remaining ignorant of whose interests we are serving.

A green flash acts as a signal for us to commence, and an opening door unfurls a jungle of blue. As we pass through the door we start to visualize what might be beyond so that we may not be shocked by it

Seven panthers prowl as we hang by our feet from the canopy above them. Blood trails down our bodies from our genitals and to a pool on the ground. But the real threat comes from non-organic objects. The panthers and all other living creatures are likewise threatened by such things. A man enters the scene and leads one cat away. A surveillance team then walks in, followed by a group of gunmen who take down the remaining animals. Then comes a group of officers who fine the gunmen and string them up, whilst the blood from the panthers runs into the pool already formed and from it rises a giant snake to swallow the men whole, followed by swarms of birds that quickly stitch together the canopy of branches and leaves above our heads, but living gloves start to climb down the trunks of the trees. They grab the guns and open fire upon the men, who remain trapped in this woven prison, whilst the cameramen move in, followed by the analysts and the traders.

The money begins to trickle in, then shower, from the nests above into the open palmed gloves, and onto the ground, where it flows through the rows of assembly lines, followed by trails of fire, as one by one the workers are beaten with wooden paddles.

This image fades, leaving us with the shadows of the remaining panthers. Although we are free to continue on our way we are now coated in blood, to which feathers, seeds and leaves are stuck, but nonetheless feel invigorated.

Night descends and all falls into silence, typical of the hour before dawn. We feel trepidation. Everything has its shadow, it's double identity. Nausea asserts itself. We wait beneath the canopy of silence, hardly daring to make a sound, when the forest explodes in a mass of flames and the door slams shut again, excluding us; leaving us to wonder if what we saw was a portrayal of our reality or an external interpretation, constructed for our amusement. Is this contradiction the point? Can we ever believe what we are told without accepting that we are being manipulated? There is a less palatable other in all things, and vice versa.

Blue light forces its way from behind the door, producing a wide corona which augments the atmosphere of this club, where the rich and fabulous are sumptuously attired. I push my way through the dancing bodies, punctuated by beams of light. They are all boys and cry like newborns, from time to time thrusting their penises into muddied palms. An acrid gas seeps from behind the door and the tears start to flood, whilst the boys slowly collapse to pools on the floor.

As the gas starts to clear a pygmy people emerge. They walk upright, but they're stinking. They squat, and each deposits a steaming egg then ambles away. The floor is covered with the damp footprints of the departed, which in turn burst into flames, and from these there rises an indistinct figure, slowly metamorphosising into one at the prime of youth, beneath whose skin writhe young women of an equal vitality, though his mind remains featureless.

The women prepare to emerge, so we avert our gaze, and as they exit they join in tentative song. They turn about and surely start to become aware; they turn their heads, listening. Each adopts a sequence of positions from Sins of the Imaginary Doge's Animals then runs away and hides. Darkness descends, illuminated by a sole candle, but hope is retained in the voice of a child singing nonsense:

     "I creep from your house
     And say nothing at all
     About those who have been there
     And those who are gone
     For you are not like me
     You know, Mrs. Claw
     You are not like me
     You're more like the person
     I met at the door
     And I know that that
     Was not you, Mrs. Claw
     Because you are you, Mrs. Claw
     You are you, but not them"

     "The men dance on watches
     From sticky rock vermin
     Whilst lobsters display
     The heart of their dance
     And kangaroo women
     Slide from the wild
     Minds of sadness".

As dawn breaks and scurrying mice scatter this way and that in their hundreds. Wherever they stop, falter or turn a bright poppy springs from the ground.

The young boy runs down the hill, lays an object on the ground then quickly runs away.

It is a "vagina dentata", which flips over and starts to forage through the grass, consuming whatever is in its path. It is a viscous serpent that invites as it repels.

Our hero, Stylus Alias, steps forward, grabs the beast in both hands and twists its neck  s u r r e n d e r  i s  n o t  a n  o p t i o n  Saddened, he embarks upon a dirt track, through the unsettling courtesy of a wind.

Journeying by craft over water and land. Measuring intuition against learning. Listening. Appraising and questioning the beauty of the objects that surround.

A red moon rises and from it uncoils a red snake that drops to the ground and flows toward us. Stylus Alias grasps it and inspects its alien proportions, which makes him jolly. He refuses to live his life through people who "dare to". He is diverted by no illusions. Blindfolded. He is guided by a strange bird. Together they dance. But despite his joy he longs to be free once more.

He sneaks away through the night but as a moonlight shadow the creature pursues him, intending to penetrate his body for good, but it is a struggle for both of them. He reddens and deliriously smears himself with plant salves and resins. He falls back and from his bowels emerges a white foetus:

"Progress doesn't exist. It is the eradication of those who are happier and freer than us. We need to pursue the bitter course and they're an embarrassment because they remind us how ridiculous we've become."

Suddenly a storm blows up. A thick darkness envelopes and conceals him. He rises and walks through the endless passages of night, not knowing which way to turn.

Seven tiny lights rise in the air at a distance, or so it seems. He likewise starts to rise, as though he was ascending a slope. He is no longer controller of his motion, although by obstinately facing the current he feels he may be able to influence its pull.

In this way he arrives at a great and seemingly impenetrable wall, above which rises a many headed serpent, whose belly swells and starts to split, puffing out a huge, blue-grey cloud of smoke, which, once cleared, reveals a locked box, but no key. Gingerly, he takes it into his arms and waits for a sign to continue. He looks around, hoping to see something that would remind him how he should advance. The box starts to spin as he realises no external sign will come. In his turn he starts to spin, at which the box starts to slow down and stops, as blood leaks from the seams and drips to the ground, where it seeps deep into the earth.

The sides of the box fall back to reveal a delicate frame in which gems like glittering stars circulate. Their movement appears to be governed by instinct rather than by law, and as they conjoin they flare up and a single droplet falls to the ground, cooling the others as they move aside and re-combine, and from this conjunction of elements there also emerge tiny human figures which remind Stylus of himself, although their features are blurred.

They start to rave and some attempt to kill each other with their bare hands, whilst others tug at the frame to escape, and fall towards the ground, but sprout wings, like those of cranes, and fly away in pairs.

He claps ferociously, in order to scatter them and bring them down, but when they land they jump up and run around, gathering sticks and twigs, with which they start to construct a tower, so that they can get back to the top of the wall and to the cube.

Whilst some build the others play on lutes, flutes and cymbals and set off firecrackers.

Snow starts to fall and Stylus's interest fades.

The tower rises quickly under the little ones' skilful hands as the lower tiers are buried under snow. Shafts of laughter bursting violently from the cold white banks and the scaffolding sways and says, refusing to stay upright, as the sky starts to swarm with small helicopters, which let down rope ladders for them to clamber up and make their escape. They are swiftly carried away, leaving only silence.

Stylus is enveloped by a luminescent mist, light jade in colour, although this gradually disperses, presenting an image that he is regaining consciousness, or even emerging from a dream.

Giant shadows reveal themselves as giant fingers on a giant hand, reaching out to grasp him. He feels an urge to defecate, as though that might dispel them, but the hands pass right through him, as shadows are inclined to do.

Unburdened, he feels infinitely lighter and starts to ascend the ramp into the stars.

He chances upon a golden shaft, fixed to the plane, but when he touches it it bursts into shimmering light, which dazzles as it expires, splashing against the invisible ramp, and flowing away as milken rivulets.

At this juncture he starts to shed his skin. But the being that emerges is quite alien in appearance, of undetermined sex, its skin stained pale and sable with a dark violet splash across its pelvic region. This creature has wings and its face is concealed by a beard (although this may in fact be false). I relish the ambiguity of childhood over the hypocrisy of adults. But now one can clearly see that this is a disguise, as is the garish violet phallus as it rises, which fact the scent of menstrual blood tends to confirm.

The creature starts to spin, emitting an increasingly powerful rasping noise. Scores of children arrive, attracted by the sound, and attempt to climb onto its back and shoulders. They flutter their eyelashes and the light breeze they create gently lifts the creature's wings, at which they bludgeon it, slash its stomach and draw out its guts.

They lay the alien down and while some wash its feet the others adorn its hair with flowers.

As they do this the snow melts away and the sun beats strong, then thunder, then lightning, and rain swiftly falls.

From the belly of the beast two robots emerge. The children quickly turn heel and flee, as though fearing they may in some way be contaminated.

A circling vulture comes to ground and commences pecking at the robots' feet, until a toe has been detached from each of them, and these it conceals in the entrails of the corpse, where it also lays an egg, before returning for another toe, and so on, until the robots' toes and fingers have all been removed. The vulture then jumps into the carcass and grips the innards tight with its talons, presenting an awesome attitude, as though it would be prepared to defend its treasure with its life.

But this posture is short lived, as the bird soars into the sky and tears away so quickly that in next to no time it has attained light speed and disappears from view.

A transporter arrives and in this the damaged robots are speedily ambulanced away. BUT! A question hangs in the air, as three beautiful sisters arrive on the scene: is this all a dream?

The girls are playing. Spinning and dancing in an overtly sexual fashion, cramming their mouths with whatever they can find that is edible, and as they do this they seem to become increasingly real.

The air begins to hum and tremble, as though our world was being shaken apart, and as a fast-fading memory, a lie, this world dissolves. The nice people, the cowards, over-compensate their failings.

We are on a gravel path on a hot, bright, most radiant summer's day, and are headed towards a fabulous lake. But memory seeks to impose itself upon our view, with greater force when the mind is clear than when this intervention is intended. Mindlessly, we travel through our memories, with no thought for when they might end.

Shadows and slight forms flit across the garden space; yet it would seem a permanent barrier had been set in place. A drop-down menu appears, confirming that we are before a screen obscured. From the menu we select Forest House. We wash away our smell to cultivate discrimination. With apprehension, we enter the house, which is infused with a sparkling, bluish light, that is dense enough to prevent us from seeing the walls and windows. Snakes weave in and out of the light, disappearing then reappearing; first red, then green, then yellow, then blue, then orange, then violet. Through this swirling mist we are returned to the first page. This time it is up-to-date, improved, but lacking an engine of volition, as though the rules it seeks to promote obscure the character it attempts to hide (much like a killer who would seek to hide his true nature by repeating "though shall not kill". A fancy costume, if you will, reducing to the "summary" word darkness, Love.

From the primordial glow emerges a woman so very perfect—the summation of every ideal—but cannot embrace her deeply enough. Laughter in a teasing air. A complex dance ensues, carefully enacted, as though a false move would spell disaster.

The patterns of the dance become increasingly complex and unfathomable as she moves around a pole, by turns imitating birds, a monkey, a dog and a goat. Swinging her arse and chasing her tail.

Upon a flagstone she sacrifices a number of chickens and a pair of small pigs, although the controversy inherent in this action is somewhat migitigated when she starts to consume the carcasses.

A giant tortoise arrives. She attempts to climb into its mouth but there is a blockage, so she has a look at the other end, from which she backs away, and is pulled to her knees, as by a force from the ground, against which she impels herself to rise, however, with arms lifted in supplication, as the rear end of this giant mechanical deity squeezes out the words: "Between listening, screaming and achievement, the political hours hope to memorize the scratches cured by threatening rules; the empty suns train knowledge to welcome dance. This illustrates the pyramid of love".

Then, with a gesture for her to follow, it embarks on a tour of the area (the planet).

She seems unwilling to tag along, seeing only darkness and despair ahead, unable to trust in the power of her mind. She is uncertain whether she wishes to be either a witness or a perpetrator in this operation. Her mind is a troubled mind she cannot yet dispel. She stumbles around as one blind.

The sun suddenly shines mightily and she reaches out in supplication. Facing the energy body, she marks a line along the ground, using whatever comes to hand, then leaps up, skips across the line, and runs off, without looking back.

Now it is we who are floundering. Do we have anything left to see, to say, to think? where is there now for our enquiries to lead? No-one can control fate or rule the game now, only chance can intervene.

From the rear end of the automata drops a ramp, down which trundles a trolley full of groceries. In my experience, those who confess to having no imagination generally have an abundance, but are incapable of distinguishing it from reality.

From the trolley bursts forth a pooch, tail wagging, tongue lolling, seeking attention. But there is no-one there to minister to its needs. The dog leaps back and away, down into the depths of the machine.

Out leap cheerful and brightly adorned boys and girls who form themselves into chains and commence a complex, joyful, serpentine dance, winding their way around the standing trolley. These are "The Family", freed from institutional restraint. As their dance becomes increasingly provocative the earth starts to seethe as though something forbidden to attempting to rise above it. Dirt and grime clings to the dancers' legs and crawls to their waists. They quickly divest themselves of their clothing and pull objects from the trolley to dance upon them: a toy piano; a pair of long gongs; an old plough; a new one.

Girls and boys now remain resolutely apart. Phallic columns rise from the earth, lifting them high into the sky, to rest upon the spires of a heaven-bound palace. Here they flare as neon lights, bobbing up and down, as the palace doors burst open and out runs a satisfied customer, shopping trolley filled to the brim. The doors snap shut and are flung open again by another shopper, then another. Each, however, is followed by a haunting figure, dressed to scare, and the terrified shoppers each runs away, as the phantom casts their abandoned trolley into a deep well, followed by flaming torches and the fire consumes.

Onto the scene arrives an omnibus, filled to capacity with the scattered shoppers, and this in turn sets the imitation ghosts to flight, for fear of being run down.

They form a ring about the burning well and sit to beat their drums, dowsing their skins with spirits all the while. As through a funnell, a torrential rain cascades, straight down the well, precisely. An orgy thus ensues (an orgy of bargaining power) as from the well erupts a newborn. But down drops a cylindrical cage, trapping the baby within.

A screen materialises inside the cage, as the bars meld to enclose baby with TV. The newborn, whose sex it is not possible to ascertain, tosses a wristwatch from the cage, which smashes when it hits the ground. The adults gather around and stare at the object with guilty horror. They hug each other tightly, their eyes blind with fear. Blood flows freely from their fingertips and congeals as it hits the ground. The infant starts to cry.