'Here is the Mansion where are born stars and the divinities'
Appollonaire
Culloden-
With the heart poised,
if you value your soul-
and the demons speak,
and the words mean something.
With the attention poised
if you would avoid danger.
Purge, Purge-
Clarify the glass.
An albatross,
burdened by misapprehension
congenitally incapable
of looking the world straight in the eye.
The squeamish type, a romantic.
Hobbled then, and proud with it
(they always are.)
The Pilgrim has lost his way,
Let us Reorientate him.
Dionysus has his Kingdom
you say
The god was awake that night
and held all under his sway.
Listen,
Here is the Town
and here,
The Forest.
There is always a Forest
an unmapped place,
brooding on the edge of town.
The Wilderness, the Wildness,
of owls and foxes and wild wolves
of dense thickets and unexpected clearings
of oaks as old as the world itself and young shoots
pushing through the leaf litter.
Bright springy carpets of moss
gather the light, and streams gush
from hidden springs.
The place where adventures are had,
where tragedy occurs
where heroes perform their deeds
and myths are written.
The Living Forest.
All gods, all demons, all nightmares, all monsters
all angels all skipping faeries are found here
all nymphs and succabae.
Many fear the Forest, and shun it
for others, few and far between
it is the only place they feel truly alive,
complete
and facing foward into time,
moving alongside it,
the dog at the Hunter's heels.
Shattered the dull bone,
green shoot surges from spine,
an efforvescence of flowers
bursts the skull.
Hello Sunshine!
Eat the dirt, like a plant
gobble sunlight.
Rebirth.
Rewrite history,
I was never that person.
This act of chutzpah is rewarded a thousandfold.
I create myself anew.
A delicate operation.
I give myself the plumage of a pheasant and the
undisturbed bearing of an elderly diplomat
who has always enjoyed the most comfortable of postings.
I offer a benificent smile to the world at large.
Hello Sunshine!
The past is something which happened to me.
I had no say in the matter.
These memories belong to another,
not being my own, I regard them with the appropriate degree of aloofness.
green river drags its feet
January Sales! Huge Reductions! Canapés! Twiglets!
actions which crystallise into ritual. back in the world again. embodied.
eat bread. drink wine. plough furrow in time.
The bread and the wine symbolise the willing acceptance of the deal. Embrace material conditions. green mesh. The flesh, the blood, the need to eat. The body, the Gnostic hell.
Every time the body is left, the ritual of return must be enacted. Thank you for the flesh. For the blood which surges, the rivers of blood which transverse the body. The machine, the avatar which negotiates the material world. Only through the avatar can material conditions be altered.
Only the machine can act in this dimension.
Delicate polar flowers, quite unknown to science, bloom once every 5 centuries. Cornflower blue petals assume the shapes of snowflakes, exhibiting the same degree of beauty and variety.
Polar bears lick them for salt.
SATANIC ENGINES!
Dexterous acts of telepathy. Virtuoso extrapolations from existing data.
Daunting canyons strewn with hulks of stone. Small village, ambushed by jungle. Dense jungle sprouts overnight. Sound of tropical birds in tangle of vines. Trees break through slate rooves.
The valley is full of statues, of unknown antiquity. They have always been here. Mighty monuments of basalt. Moss in the eye sockets, beards of lichen.
Egrets perch on the heads of monarchs, sit in the laps of gods.
capstan.
eccentric aunts. opium war.
voluble skylark
pugnacious warthog.
a high-ranking official said to me, at a dinner party, after a few post-prandial brandies
'of course when the oil runs out we will simply revert to slave labour.'
grotesque indolence. narcolepsy of the soul. sunk in torpor.
DO NOT ENTER THE FOREST.
but I saw such beautiful things there!
deer tread softly on the moss. o! timorous deer! mottled light and long grass!
pleasure of the stream skipping over stones,
the silent paths which lead who-knows-where
under the arch of branches
a knot of blossom
stoops
to kiss your forehead.
O! Gentle Forest!
There is no limit
the more intently you look, the more will be revealed
it cannot be exhausted. Even the smallest thing is infinite.
Birds carry the morning's message to all corners of the forest.
The trees and bushes
sing
to one another.
frogs found in the water reeds-
Moses in the bullrushes.
You cannot bury your Future
it always returns to your side
grinning and panting
like a dog,
happy to have found its master.
