The leaves indexed, borders their only vines, dripping juice down his leafy beard,
the old man searches for nuts and berries. Wandering, ever abundanted for,
antlers sauntering from his brow the shepherd amoebas the flock, osmosing his
leafy borders. His hair a yellow digger, his sheath ensuring accessibility he
leans back trilling his satiety to the landscape like a wolf, a laptop an old man
hiding amid the roots of a great tree till the insect laughter of green eyed pans
rings no longer in his ears. The right of way will be protected because its
hooves are roots. It grew up like permissible hessian, like a dream that I had,
and filled the orange sky with branches. The shepherd cannot be both a regulator
and a trader just because the branches all just twisted into these epic pianos. Their
doors tremble to certain magics and you see the wood is not a problem, not a goat
but an old man shivering under the ground. Before our teeth, this was a desert.
The shrine’s in the cellar if you want to check it out. The twigged logic of
this present great dreaming informs us we are termites. Termite pan informs us
our hands are fences. We made him, out of mud, left to dry in the afternoon sun.
Monday, 25 April 2011
Bear
In the maze he calls each frame.
Their hands like humans hands when they stand up, their eyes
Are black < > and he dies into the cards which he has not invented
their doll eyes spool his memory.
Their hands like humans hands when they stand up, their eyes
Are black < > and he dies into the cards which he has not invented
their doll eyes spool his memory.
Fog Chance
She had stepped off the bus onto a wide and dark road overarched by bending trees. Leaf mulch was on the ground. The houses were old and separated by large gardens. There were few cars. There was fog. The street lamps fuzzed orange through the fog. She wasn’t sure why she had left the bus at this place. The road had stretched ahead, a seemingly endless tunnel of branches into ever greater darkness. The street lamps becoming further spaced apart until the winding hedgerows, the black fields where anything at all could be going on.
The fog clung to her coat. It was a good coat but the night was cold. The bus from which she had just alighted was probably the last one. It was an hour or so after twelve; her phone’s battery had died. The driver had not mentioned to her as she alighted that there would not be another bus, nor had he expressed any concern as to where she was going or why. It was not his responsibility to enquire after that kind of thing. One was never suspended in this way in the city centre, suspended on the fog threads and so on. The uncaring efficiency of individuals smoothed out in the overall benevolence of the system. The system always supported. There was always a vehicle to jump on.
She somewhat regretted getting off the bus, but did not know if staying on board would have led to anything better. It might have taken her to a bus shelter. She had slept in bus shelters before and was ambivalent; they kept the rain off but they attracted others. She could have hidden on the top floor of the bus and slept under her coat, exposed but undetected, but the driver would probably have found her when checking the vehicle over at the end of his shift. He might have been tired and skipped it, but she was never that lucky.
From the corner of her eye she saw a small orange light appear at the far end of the drive across the street. The front door, small at this distance, was opening. Someone had turned on the porch light, which looked to be one of those ones made up to look like an old fashioned lantern while actually of course being electric. A low shout came through the fog. Being fearless she walked to the bottom of the drive, close enough to hear the import of the shout; being wary she went no further.
‘Are you alright there?’ went the shout as it repeated. She did not reply. ‘Are you alright there?’ repeated the voice again, concerned-sounding, warm but dull as a rusty gong.
‘Who’s asking?’ she shouted after thinking a moment. There was equally a pause from the other side.
‘I live here,’ was then the reply, which seemed insufficient from her point of view. ‘Are you lost?’ the shout continued. She squinted from the bottom of the drive to gauge the shape of her interlocutor. It was not clear, a smudge against the orange light. It was cold, and the damp was creeping into her coat. She walked up the drive. She did not answer the smudge’s question regarding her being lost or otherwise. She asked, ‘What’s your name?’
Still silhouetted the smudge answered, ‘I’m Geoffrey, I live here.’ As she walked closer she saw a small old man in a dressing gown, a round crumpled face. ‘Are you lost? I’m sorry. I happened to be awake and saw you from my window, and you seemed to be lost.’
‘I’m alright,’ she said.
He looked uncertain. ‘Would you… like to come in?’ he asked, motioning into the dark hallway.
‘What are you offering?’ she asked.
His eyes remained concerned; a small smile crinkled his lips. ‘Well, I could make some hot chocolate, I always enjoy hot chocolate on a cold and damp night.’ He paused. ‘You could sleep here, if necessary. It is late. On the settee. There is a spare room but it’s full of clutter, I’m afraid.’
She liked hot chocolate. It was cold, and her legs were tired. She had a penknife in her pocket if it came to it. She nodded. The old man led the way down the dark hallway out of the orange light. A little fog crept in after them. At the end of the hallway was a lit kitchen with brown tiles and a big stove. The man lit the gas on a small ring, placed on it a battered saucepan and filled the pan with milk. He went to the cupboard and took out a large, old tin, creaked open the top and began spooning brown powder into the pan. She watched. He did not speak. He was wearing striped pyjamas under his dressing gown. She left him hunched over the pan and walked back through the hall to the other lit room, at the front of the house. It was a large but worn living room; dark velvet curtains hung to the floor, parted slightly to show darkness through the bay window. She sat down in a leather armchair. In the corner opposite was a small, dusty television. Bare floorboards showed around the rug. She was searching around for the remote control when the old man came in with a tray bearing two mugs of hot chocolate and some biscuits. She took a mug and no biscuits, and thanked him gently.
‘So what brings you here tonight?’ he asked.
‘The bus,’ she replied.
He nodded and sat back in his chair. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Another part of town,’ she replied.
He nodded. He gestured towards the television. ‘Did you want to watch the television?’ he asked. She shook her head. He nodded. ‘Nothing much on at this time of night, of course. Only the news, on channel one.’ She sipped the hot chocolate. It tasted rich and dusty. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘a little while ago there wouldn’t have been news at this time. It’s this twenty-four hour business now. They show the news when there aren’t any other programmes to show. There’s another channel where they show nothing but the news, I’m told. You’d know about that, I expect.’ She sipped the hot chocolate. She remembered a friend whom she had visited in halls, whose housemate had often stayed up watching the television all night, slumped in the neon lit communal area. He watched the Russian news on the digital television that they provided because it reminded him of home.
‘I don’t like to watch the news too much,’ the old man continued. ‘These riots. You’d know about that as well, I suppose.’ He looked at her without malice. He leant towards her. ‘You’ll have wanted to get away from it, I suppose. Out here where it’s a little quieter. But there’s still fog, of course.’
After a pause, she nodded. There had been fog the other day as well. She had lost her friends in it as the streets became indeterminate. ‘Still fog,’ he repeated. ‘But no riots, not here. Of course, I know of riots. But it all…’ He hesitated. ‘One can only be brave for so long,’ he said. She shifted in the chair. The old man was now staring downwards, thinking of something. She looked around. This house was different from the halls, from the neon lit communal area. Similar to the way her old house was, sometimes. She felt the knife in her pocket. She relaxed a little. She was tired. After a short while they fell asleep in their chairs.
She woke as grey dawn began to creep through the space between the curtains. The dark was heavily settled on the room but began to lift. Her neck was at an odd angle but she was comfortable. She yawned and settled back into the chair but did not return to sleep. She heard small noises from outside; birdsong. There were few cars and no sirens. She turned her eyes towards the window. The fog had lifted a little perhaps, and it was drizzling. She turned towards the chair where the old man had slept. He was still there, mouth open and head tilted back but not snoring. In the light he seemed more like her grandfather. She looked back at the window. She wondered when the first bus might be. She began then to drift off again.
As her eyes closed a memory returned to her. In the night, just as like now she had been drifting off to sleep, she had thought that she heard a knock at the front door. Three knocks on the brass doorknocker. She had tensed up a little, but the knock did not recur as far as she remembered, and at the time she then doubted if she had really heard it. Anyway, she had thought with sleeper’s logic, the old man will hear it, this being his house.
At the memory she tensed up again and felt suddenly that she ought to leave. She stood up and picked up her rucksack from the floor. She was still wearing her coat and shoes. She stretched out her cramped limbs. The room seemed smaller.
As she walked past the old man to the door she heard him say something under his breath. He was still asleep, as far as she could tell. She leant her ear closer to him. He said it again, more distinctly this time. She tensed, and frowned, and walked more hurriedly towards the front door. The cold, damp air met her. She pulled up her hood and walked toward the bus stop. The lamps were beginning to blink off in the daylight.
The fog clung to her coat. It was a good coat but the night was cold. The bus from which she had just alighted was probably the last one. It was an hour or so after twelve; her phone’s battery had died. The driver had not mentioned to her as she alighted that there would not be another bus, nor had he expressed any concern as to where she was going or why. It was not his responsibility to enquire after that kind of thing. One was never suspended in this way in the city centre, suspended on the fog threads and so on. The uncaring efficiency of individuals smoothed out in the overall benevolence of the system. The system always supported. There was always a vehicle to jump on.
She somewhat regretted getting off the bus, but did not know if staying on board would have led to anything better. It might have taken her to a bus shelter. She had slept in bus shelters before and was ambivalent; they kept the rain off but they attracted others. She could have hidden on the top floor of the bus and slept under her coat, exposed but undetected, but the driver would probably have found her when checking the vehicle over at the end of his shift. He might have been tired and skipped it, but she was never that lucky.
From the corner of her eye she saw a small orange light appear at the far end of the drive across the street. The front door, small at this distance, was opening. Someone had turned on the porch light, which looked to be one of those ones made up to look like an old fashioned lantern while actually of course being electric. A low shout came through the fog. Being fearless she walked to the bottom of the drive, close enough to hear the import of the shout; being wary she went no further.
‘Are you alright there?’ went the shout as it repeated. She did not reply. ‘Are you alright there?’ repeated the voice again, concerned-sounding, warm but dull as a rusty gong.
‘Who’s asking?’ she shouted after thinking a moment. There was equally a pause from the other side.
‘I live here,’ was then the reply, which seemed insufficient from her point of view. ‘Are you lost?’ the shout continued. She squinted from the bottom of the drive to gauge the shape of her interlocutor. It was not clear, a smudge against the orange light. It was cold, and the damp was creeping into her coat. She walked up the drive. She did not answer the smudge’s question regarding her being lost or otherwise. She asked, ‘What’s your name?’
Still silhouetted the smudge answered, ‘I’m Geoffrey, I live here.’ As she walked closer she saw a small old man in a dressing gown, a round crumpled face. ‘Are you lost? I’m sorry. I happened to be awake and saw you from my window, and you seemed to be lost.’
‘I’m alright,’ she said.
He looked uncertain. ‘Would you… like to come in?’ he asked, motioning into the dark hallway.
‘What are you offering?’ she asked.
His eyes remained concerned; a small smile crinkled his lips. ‘Well, I could make some hot chocolate, I always enjoy hot chocolate on a cold and damp night.’ He paused. ‘You could sleep here, if necessary. It is late. On the settee. There is a spare room but it’s full of clutter, I’m afraid.’
She liked hot chocolate. It was cold, and her legs were tired. She had a penknife in her pocket if it came to it. She nodded. The old man led the way down the dark hallway out of the orange light. A little fog crept in after them. At the end of the hallway was a lit kitchen with brown tiles and a big stove. The man lit the gas on a small ring, placed on it a battered saucepan and filled the pan with milk. He went to the cupboard and took out a large, old tin, creaked open the top and began spooning brown powder into the pan. She watched. He did not speak. He was wearing striped pyjamas under his dressing gown. She left him hunched over the pan and walked back through the hall to the other lit room, at the front of the house. It was a large but worn living room; dark velvet curtains hung to the floor, parted slightly to show darkness through the bay window. She sat down in a leather armchair. In the corner opposite was a small, dusty television. Bare floorboards showed around the rug. She was searching around for the remote control when the old man came in with a tray bearing two mugs of hot chocolate and some biscuits. She took a mug and no biscuits, and thanked him gently.
‘So what brings you here tonight?’ he asked.
‘The bus,’ she replied.
He nodded and sat back in his chair. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Another part of town,’ she replied.
He nodded. He gestured towards the television. ‘Did you want to watch the television?’ he asked. She shook her head. He nodded. ‘Nothing much on at this time of night, of course. Only the news, on channel one.’ She sipped the hot chocolate. It tasted rich and dusty. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘a little while ago there wouldn’t have been news at this time. It’s this twenty-four hour business now. They show the news when there aren’t any other programmes to show. There’s another channel where they show nothing but the news, I’m told. You’d know about that, I expect.’ She sipped the hot chocolate. She remembered a friend whom she had visited in halls, whose housemate had often stayed up watching the television all night, slumped in the neon lit communal area. He watched the Russian news on the digital television that they provided because it reminded him of home.
‘I don’t like to watch the news too much,’ the old man continued. ‘These riots. You’d know about that as well, I suppose.’ He looked at her without malice. He leant towards her. ‘You’ll have wanted to get away from it, I suppose. Out here where it’s a little quieter. But there’s still fog, of course.’
After a pause, she nodded. There had been fog the other day as well. She had lost her friends in it as the streets became indeterminate. ‘Still fog,’ he repeated. ‘But no riots, not here. Of course, I know of riots. But it all…’ He hesitated. ‘One can only be brave for so long,’ he said. She shifted in the chair. The old man was now staring downwards, thinking of something. She looked around. This house was different from the halls, from the neon lit communal area. Similar to the way her old house was, sometimes. She felt the knife in her pocket. She relaxed a little. She was tired. After a short while they fell asleep in their chairs.
She woke as grey dawn began to creep through the space between the curtains. The dark was heavily settled on the room but began to lift. Her neck was at an odd angle but she was comfortable. She yawned and settled back into the chair but did not return to sleep. She heard small noises from outside; birdsong. There were few cars and no sirens. She turned her eyes towards the window. The fog had lifted a little perhaps, and it was drizzling. She turned towards the chair where the old man had slept. He was still there, mouth open and head tilted back but not snoring. In the light he seemed more like her grandfather. She looked back at the window. She wondered when the first bus might be. She began then to drift off again.
As her eyes closed a memory returned to her. In the night, just as like now she had been drifting off to sleep, she had thought that she heard a knock at the front door. Three knocks on the brass doorknocker. She had tensed up a little, but the knock did not recur as far as she remembered, and at the time she then doubted if she had really heard it. Anyway, she had thought with sleeper’s logic, the old man will hear it, this being his house.
At the memory she tensed up again and felt suddenly that she ought to leave. She stood up and picked up her rucksack from the floor. She was still wearing her coat and shoes. She stretched out her cramped limbs. The room seemed smaller.
As she walked past the old man to the door she heard him say something under his breath. He was still asleep, as far as she could tell. She leant her ear closer to him. He said it again, more distinctly this time. She tensed, and frowned, and walked more hurriedly towards the front door. The cold, damp air met her. She pulled up her hood and walked toward the bus stop. The lamps were beginning to blink off in the daylight.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
two fragments from a possible novel
The man currently speaking is one who often appears at these meetings, in Manchester at least. He is somewhat older than the students who make up most of the circle, and wears a greying Mohawk and an old studded leather jacket patched with emblems for Crass, Napalm Death, Penetration, Rudimentary Peni, Flux of Pink Indians, Amebix, the Exploited, Dead Kennedys, Extreme Noise Terror and Head of David. George thinks he heard the man had some kind of autism or something on the one previous occasion when he met him, when the man, whose name is Steve he thinks, turned up at one of George’s Warhammer 40,000 sessions. Steve was a friend of Dan, another older man who owned George’s nearest Games Workshop and tended to preside over play. Steve was sleeping on Dan’s floor and Dan insisted that he be allowed to head a legion of Nurgle Chaos Warriors despite the fact that the teenagers making up the rest of the group felt uneasy about his intense mannerisms and reckless battle strategy. The soundtrack that afternoon was Uriah Heep’s 1972 album Demons and Wizards, a work which despite the archaic associations of its title nonetheless assisted George in the conjuration of the mental image of riding on a giant mutant rat through post-apocalyptic landscapes brandishing a stack of his enemies’ heads on a spike. Though this was not an existing feature of the standard Warhammer model landscape, George found his imagination frequently returning to it, often summoning it in the minutes before he went to sleep as an escape from the responsibilities and contradictions that pestered his waking life, as a vision of a world which if it existed would contain no responsibility and because it did not exist contained no responsibility. George was planning to make his own customised model based on this image as soon as he had a spare moment; Steve, however, reacted strongly against the sound of Uriah Heep, abruptly rising to his feet still holding the dice he had been about to throw and marching over to roughly eject the tape. ‘What’s wrong, Steve?’ asked Dan in a voice flattened by having asked this question many times before. Steve remained silent as he slammed the removed tape on the counter and rummaged in the plastic crate on top of the hi-fi system for something else to play.
I was at a bar in Goa, and it was the end of the world. The building was a kind of open hut, with bamboo canes plastered over a metal structure to create the appearance that the hut was made of bamboo, and through the side of the hut that was open to the beach I could see hot storm clouds massing over the sea. There was a song playing, which was ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ by Shakira, and a man and a woman were dancing to it between me, sitting at the bar with a rum and coca cola, and the beach. They were the only people dancing. The woman looked in her early forties, with bleach blonde hair, wearing a strapless top. She was grinding her tanned abdomen against that of a man of similar age with his hair in braids, wearing a mostly unbuttoned white shirt. Though my interest in this spectacle was largely prurient I gradually realised that the expressions on their faces were almost completely innocent and blissful, and it then struck me that Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ might be the most beautiful song ever written and the most fitting music to be played now, at the end of the world. The combination of its exuberant carnival rhythm and the yearning purity of the synthesized horn sounds, purer precisely for existing solely in the digital realm, seemed to gather up every moment of perfect communion ever experienced between human beings in the history of the world and re-broadcast it as the soundtrack to this bar in Goa where only a few people remained sitting, at 3.40 a.m. as the splashes of rum and coca cola on the floor became sticky and it began lightly to rain outside.
I was at a bar in Goa, and it was the end of the world. The building was a kind of open hut, with bamboo canes plastered over a metal structure to create the appearance that the hut was made of bamboo, and through the side of the hut that was open to the beach I could see hot storm clouds massing over the sea. There was a song playing, which was ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ by Shakira, and a man and a woman were dancing to it between me, sitting at the bar with a rum and coca cola, and the beach. They were the only people dancing. The woman looked in her early forties, with bleach blonde hair, wearing a strapless top. She was grinding her tanned abdomen against that of a man of similar age with his hair in braids, wearing a mostly unbuttoned white shirt. Though my interest in this spectacle was largely prurient I gradually realised that the expressions on their faces were almost completely innocent and blissful, and it then struck me that Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ might be the most beautiful song ever written and the most fitting music to be played now, at the end of the world. The combination of its exuberant carnival rhythm and the yearning purity of the synthesized horn sounds, purer precisely for existing solely in the digital realm, seemed to gather up every moment of perfect communion ever experienced between human beings in the history of the world and re-broadcast it as the soundtrack to this bar in Goa where only a few people remained sitting, at 3.40 a.m. as the splashes of rum and coca cola on the floor became sticky and it began lightly to rain outside.
poem
Ah the day you passed out in my bath,
mainlining on cavorite as fields of CGI deer gently lapped up your dayglo blood.
I understand, and by understand I mean love. Beached and watching jackal films on fried rice, you think you hear her walk past your window when 5 billion things that you disagree with come suddenly marching out of the hideous clarity while at every shore skull faced mermaids try to sell you real estate.
You sign up to write essays for plagiarists but find both that someone else has plagiarised your essay and that your essay was in the first place plagiarised from a paper originally published in 1924 by Squid Lizard, the nation’s favourite only Squid Lizard to come with a freelance alienation dinner, or similar.
Where are you going, twenty-seven year old man? You accumulate books like a hotel room yet still twitch and are incapable of love. Now behold as I save this document in three places simultaneously.
We don’t dance, we shoot people yeah? They found you, in a coat of nails listening to guitars with yr hair tied back. That time you thought you heard crying yes it was me. Go to bed without brushing your teeth, later when they drop out it will be a gift from yr past self. Spend not these nights cursing your earthly works.
You are making a terrible mistake. The only modern ism is everythingism. The only modern CGI is Squid Lizard.
mainlining on cavorite as fields of CGI deer gently lapped up your dayglo blood.
I understand, and by understand I mean love. Beached and watching jackal films on fried rice, you think you hear her walk past your window when 5 billion things that you disagree with come suddenly marching out of the hideous clarity while at every shore skull faced mermaids try to sell you real estate.
You sign up to write essays for plagiarists but find both that someone else has plagiarised your essay and that your essay was in the first place plagiarised from a paper originally published in 1924 by Squid Lizard, the nation’s favourite only Squid Lizard to come with a freelance alienation dinner, or similar.
Where are you going, twenty-seven year old man? You accumulate books like a hotel room yet still twitch and are incapable of love. Now behold as I save this document in three places simultaneously.
We don’t dance, we shoot people yeah? They found you, in a coat of nails listening to guitars with yr hair tied back. That time you thought you heard crying yes it was me. Go to bed without brushing your teeth, later when they drop out it will be a gift from yr past self. Spend not these nights cursing your earthly works.
You are making a terrible mistake. The only modern ism is everythingism. The only modern CGI is Squid Lizard.
Two Skins
This is an assemblage of things, not all original to me. Credits at the end.
One
There was a man once who lived with his brother on a cold plain where they sold animal pelts and ate the meat of the animals, and sometimes he dreamed of his mother with grey plaits and bloodied arms.
Ten years after seven perhaps also brothers had cut his mother’s throat when the wind blew to stop your lungs sharp the man walked out into the cold and ate raw things till he reached a forest. He helped an old woman cut trees for a fire, and she told him how to find a wife. As she told him to he hid in icy branches till fourteen black feet touched the snow.
By the lake the last swan tore her breast’s flesh with her mouth till hands burst out into woman, slim and placenta black. She washed the blood with her sisters in the hot lake, and he took her dead feather cloak from where it smeared the ground grey-red. Returning to find her power gone and hung on some unseen tree she bared her gums to bite out his heart. Come out, man, I am a sow or pack of hounds to tear you up, she said.
The other birds flew off in ignorance. The man held up his bloody hands. We’ll marry then, she said, and when you see me pulling out down for pillows I’ll fly away. But the man pointed her to where seven men who wore the skins of hunters hung their hearts that burn from what their lives are on their tent pegs to cool in the night wind. Somewhere on the frozen plain too big for me to search there is red meat steaming to the black sky, he said. Take your skin to fly and my purse to carry the organs, and I’ll take your heart to draw you back, he said.
With a nail she scraped down her tight ribs, pulled the heart out beating and sealed the tear with spit. He put the heart in his other purse, she slipped her head beneath the white and was gone. He made a shelter from branches. Next morning the swan wife stood over him, red mess twitching in the bag. You can’t hide on the plain like in the forest, she says. With my wings and bird eyes I saw the tangled arteries. As I left they must have felt the tug because they are near, she said.
When the men were close he spattered their hearts on the ground and they fell. The last one told him where to find the rest of his mother, skin gone but her ghost collected in a purse. The man took the purse and wrapped his legs round the woman’s swan hips and she flew him to his mother’s grave. He shook a drop of blood from the purse and it steeped the frosty earth till her grey hand came through.
The mother joins the man and woman’s hands together and blood runs between them. I love you and cannot return your heart, he says. The woman runs her finger down his chest and pulls his heart to herself. See how easy it is, she says, softly. Choking at my red ripped chest I take her heart and hock it to the air, above the clouds where things no longer fall. Fly for it. She, gasping hollowed, throws my heart up the same way. We are bound, and our knees fall to the cold.
As they lay panting in the snow his mother trudged through deep drifts to the boiling lake. Onshore the last swan tore breast’s flesh with mouth till hands burst to woman, slim placenta black, blood washed, and she took the feathers and held up bloody hands. Come out say the bared gums and
the other birds fly away and
Give me your heart, she says, I’ll give you skin and you must retrieve two hearts that orbit somewhere above and you return them in this purse and I give you it back. Swan rolls black eyes, opens chest, gives heart to mother flies to where the hearts bob in clouds spewing steam to the stars till they frost over, takes them in her beak and swoops back white to mother is but mother will not give her it back and she
takes my mothers heart and she
and we bleed immobile on the snow breathing white in each other’s eyes and
my mother pale and choking comes and gives us hearts back but her heart is still in the air and my swan wife puts on skin and flies to my mother’s heart and the other swan heart and brings them all back in the purse and see now, all our hearts in the air and flies free in soft white and hard black and blood drips steams through stars and runs together spiral to tongues, lick freezing sweat from black ribs and eat her heart and wear her skin and
scatter feathers to the dark.
There was a man once who lived with his brother and his mother on a cold plain where they sold animal pelts and ate the meat of the animals, and sometimes he dreamed of his mother with grey plaits and bloodied arms, and sometimes when the hearth smoked to the black air he thought of the swan woman.
Every animal suggests some crushing misfortune that took place in primeval times. The fairy tale betrays man’s misgivings. But its prince preserves his reason, so that he can explain his predicament when the time comes and be set free by the fairy. An animal, however, is doomed by its lack of reason to inhabit its form for ever – that is, unless man, who is one with it through the past, discovers the redeeming formula and succeeds in softening the stony heart of eternity at the end of time.
Two
A sudden blow: the great ghost wings beat still;
his guts are stuffed with polaroids,
and they're all humiliating.
Above the staggering drunk, her thighs caressed,
sitting alone in the 4am darkness of a pitch-black theatre,
he holds her helpless breast upon his breast, his breasts are
hollow apartments with the finest quality furnishings
he explodes like fireworks on the stage
Sing,
your voice just won’t stop blooming.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
He wrote a play and you're the protagonist.
All the girls you wish you'd fucked make a guest appearance.
His eyes are twin mushroom clouds,
His feathers are unsuspecting cities.
You just won't believe the ending.
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Fly me home, Giant Swan.
Your heart's a diamond, buddy, what's the price?
How can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
Your skin
is cheap
and your hair
is shoddy.
A shudder in the loins. Skin draped over luxury chairs where you can watch the ballerinas kick and spin until you die. Being so caught up,
So mastered by this brute blood of the air you
strip
down to your vulgar skeleton.
It will sting like a raw sunrise when the black swan is gone.
Back at the resort, the curtains closed, you haven't left the room for two solid weeks. With a pound of cocaine under the bed where the call girls perform their services, you left CNN on so you wouldn’t have to think about her newborn son.
Who's at the door, Leda?
Your heart is sweating and your hand's turning black.
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the pixellated beak could let her drop? "Give me all your money! Give me all your dope!" No second Troy.
And the sun is like a painting of your whole life; you scratch
at the canvas, but you can't get inside.
Dark webs, her nape caught in his bill; take me to the river.
one adapted from a story found in sabine baring gould myths of the middle ages ed john matthews blandford 1996 pages 115-6 two comprises lines from jordan blilie johnny whitney william butler yeats quote in between from adorno and horkheimer dialectic of enlightenment trans john cumming verso 1997 page 247
One
There was a man once who lived with his brother on a cold plain where they sold animal pelts and ate the meat of the animals, and sometimes he dreamed of his mother with grey plaits and bloodied arms.
Ten years after seven perhaps also brothers had cut his mother’s throat when the wind blew to stop your lungs sharp the man walked out into the cold and ate raw things till he reached a forest. He helped an old woman cut trees for a fire, and she told him how to find a wife. As she told him to he hid in icy branches till fourteen black feet touched the snow.
By the lake the last swan tore her breast’s flesh with her mouth till hands burst out into woman, slim and placenta black. She washed the blood with her sisters in the hot lake, and he took her dead feather cloak from where it smeared the ground grey-red. Returning to find her power gone and hung on some unseen tree she bared her gums to bite out his heart. Come out, man, I am a sow or pack of hounds to tear you up, she said.
The other birds flew off in ignorance. The man held up his bloody hands. We’ll marry then, she said, and when you see me pulling out down for pillows I’ll fly away. But the man pointed her to where seven men who wore the skins of hunters hung their hearts that burn from what their lives are on their tent pegs to cool in the night wind. Somewhere on the frozen plain too big for me to search there is red meat steaming to the black sky, he said. Take your skin to fly and my purse to carry the organs, and I’ll take your heart to draw you back, he said.
With a nail she scraped down her tight ribs, pulled the heart out beating and sealed the tear with spit. He put the heart in his other purse, she slipped her head beneath the white and was gone. He made a shelter from branches. Next morning the swan wife stood over him, red mess twitching in the bag. You can’t hide on the plain like in the forest, she says. With my wings and bird eyes I saw the tangled arteries. As I left they must have felt the tug because they are near, she said.
When the men were close he spattered their hearts on the ground and they fell. The last one told him where to find the rest of his mother, skin gone but her ghost collected in a purse. The man took the purse and wrapped his legs round the woman’s swan hips and she flew him to his mother’s grave. He shook a drop of blood from the purse and it steeped the frosty earth till her grey hand came through.
The mother joins the man and woman’s hands together and blood runs between them. I love you and cannot return your heart, he says. The woman runs her finger down his chest and pulls his heart to herself. See how easy it is, she says, softly. Choking at my red ripped chest I take her heart and hock it to the air, above the clouds where things no longer fall. Fly for it. She, gasping hollowed, throws my heart up the same way. We are bound, and our knees fall to the cold.
As they lay panting in the snow his mother trudged through deep drifts to the boiling lake. Onshore the last swan tore breast’s flesh with mouth till hands burst to woman, slim placenta black, blood washed, and she took the feathers and held up bloody hands. Come out say the bared gums and
the other birds fly away and
Give me your heart, she says, I’ll give you skin and you must retrieve two hearts that orbit somewhere above and you return them in this purse and I give you it back. Swan rolls black eyes, opens chest, gives heart to mother flies to where the hearts bob in clouds spewing steam to the stars till they frost over, takes them in her beak and swoops back white to mother is but mother will not give her it back and she
takes my mothers heart and she
and we bleed immobile on the snow breathing white in each other’s eyes and
my mother pale and choking comes and gives us hearts back but her heart is still in the air and my swan wife puts on skin and flies to my mother’s heart and the other swan heart and brings them all back in the purse and see now, all our hearts in the air and flies free in soft white and hard black and blood drips steams through stars and runs together spiral to tongues, lick freezing sweat from black ribs and eat her heart and wear her skin and
scatter feathers to the dark.
There was a man once who lived with his brother and his mother on a cold plain where they sold animal pelts and ate the meat of the animals, and sometimes he dreamed of his mother with grey plaits and bloodied arms, and sometimes when the hearth smoked to the black air he thought of the swan woman.
Every animal suggests some crushing misfortune that took place in primeval times. The fairy tale betrays man’s misgivings. But its prince preserves his reason, so that he can explain his predicament when the time comes and be set free by the fairy. An animal, however, is doomed by its lack of reason to inhabit its form for ever – that is, unless man, who is one with it through the past, discovers the redeeming formula and succeeds in softening the stony heart of eternity at the end of time.
Two
A sudden blow: the great ghost wings beat still;
his guts are stuffed with polaroids,
and they're all humiliating.
Above the staggering drunk, her thighs caressed,
sitting alone in the 4am darkness of a pitch-black theatre,
he holds her helpless breast upon his breast, his breasts are
hollow apartments with the finest quality furnishings
he explodes like fireworks on the stage
Sing,
your voice just won’t stop blooming.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
He wrote a play and you're the protagonist.
All the girls you wish you'd fucked make a guest appearance.
His eyes are twin mushroom clouds,
His feathers are unsuspecting cities.
You just won't believe the ending.
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Fly me home, Giant Swan.
Your heart's a diamond, buddy, what's the price?
How can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
Your skin
is cheap
and your hair
is shoddy.
A shudder in the loins. Skin draped over luxury chairs where you can watch the ballerinas kick and spin until you die. Being so caught up,
So mastered by this brute blood of the air you
strip
down to your vulgar skeleton.
It will sting like a raw sunrise when the black swan is gone.
Back at the resort, the curtains closed, you haven't left the room for two solid weeks. With a pound of cocaine under the bed where the call girls perform their services, you left CNN on so you wouldn’t have to think about her newborn son.
Who's at the door, Leda?
Your heart is sweating and your hand's turning black.
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the pixellated beak could let her drop? "Give me all your money! Give me all your dope!" No second Troy.
And the sun is like a painting of your whole life; you scratch
at the canvas, but you can't get inside.
Dark webs, her nape caught in his bill; take me to the river.
one adapted from a story found in sabine baring gould myths of the middle ages ed john matthews blandford 1996 pages 115-6 two comprises lines from jordan blilie johnny whitney william butler yeats quote in between from adorno and horkheimer dialectic of enlightenment trans john cumming verso 1997 page 247
Friday, 7 May 2010
Panicle
A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches
(in other words,
a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes).
slightly edited from wikipedia, 2010
(in other words,
a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes).
slightly edited from wikipedia, 2010
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