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.