The Apocalyptic Revelation of John:


A Sublime Text According to Aesthetic Tradition?

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John of Patmos was a writer and a seer; also rumoured to be the Apostle, the Divine, and later the Saint. Whoever he really was — it is apparent from most accounts that no one really knows with any surety — ‘he’ was and is the author of the Apocalypse known as Revelation. It is a distinctive piece of religious doctrine, different and distant in tone and brevity from the other works contained in the Old and New Testament, making it ironically one of the most quoted and read books of the Bible. Its apparent prophetic nature and strange twists of style and image figuratively transport the reader to a world of imaginative and spiritual possibilities. ‘Cleaved’ between realms of belief and amazement, most readers, religious or not, become mesmerised by the violent ‘vision’ of John. It is according to the text itself a divinely inspired apocalyptic version of human existence, which, ultimately, defies any definitive interpretation of meaning. It does however invite a non-theological literary or aesthetic estimation of its value, because of its highly evocative rhetorical style, according to principles and theories known to a student of literature and the arts. The contention of this essay is to discuss certain aspects of Revelation and the King James Bible, [1] with the aid of relevant literary perspectives, both modern and classical.
This essay does not attempt an interpretation of the meaning of the text, as this is rather pointless in terms of my own limited biblical knowledge and the vast screeds of criticism already available on the subject. Nor do I intend to give a biographical account of the authors’ lives to contextualise meaning, due largely to the doubtful nature of the authors’ identities of the two main texts I use. The fact that understanding the text in terms of meaning is difficult, leads me to look at the style and technicality of such an artefact, in order to understand its value as a literary work. Aesthetic criteria or a technical analysis applied to the text of Revelation reveals that its most noticeable feature is its ‘sublimity’ in accordance with various theories of rhetoric and the sublime from classical through to modern times. Despite its religious nature, obvious allegiances to rhetorical principles make it both an aesthetically appreciable work of literature, and a mystically devout theological transcript.
Similarly, like Revelation, the question of authorship has been a point of conjecture by critics regarding another classical text: Peri Hypsous or On the Sublime. [2] Originally, thought to be written by Cassius Longinus, and then later regarded as the work of an unknown Greek author in the 1st Century BC. It is the first real treatment of the concept of ‘hypsous’, otherwise known as the sublime. Saint John the apostle and evangelist is regarded as being the writer of Revelation and, like Longinus, his authority has also been called into question by scholars and historians alike. [3] Aside from the confusion about the authors of the texts, they both appear to be written about the same period by ‘cultured Greeks’ as D.H. Lawrence calls them. [4] Rhetorical antecedents inform both texts: On the Sublime follows traditional lines of Greek literary criticism from Homer through Aristotle and Horace to Longinus. [5] Revelation is the apocalyptic pinnacle of prophetic verse. The use of metaphor, symbol, and analogy making it a rhetorically proficient and profound text.

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To say that Revelation is sublime is to pose a hypothetical argument, as well as an aesthetic value judgement, which is exactly what this essay intends to do. The fact that rhetorically aesthetic criterion from antiquity like Longinus’ can be applied to a religious 17th Century text like the King James Bible, reflects the timeless nature of certain fundamental principles of literary excellence, and also the literary appeal of the KJB to 18th Century aestheticians and writers like Edmund Burke. The tone and didactic confidence of the voice of John, combined with the depth and omnipresence of his subject, makes for strong verse, well within the range of most theories of the sublime:
 
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand . . . Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. (Rev 1:3-8)

The difference between a classical theory of poetic language like Longinus’ and an aesthetic theory like Burke’s is that the latter post-dates the former which as a consequence is relevant to the author’s (John’s) use of literary device. Because it may predate John’s work, Longinus’ theory quite possibly could have been an influence on his method, whether by direct contact or just a temporal culmination of traditional, cultural and contemporary literary practice and theory. Certain aspects of Longinus’ ideas, his regional location and era, and his own treatment of Genesis puts his work in the context of John’s literary and social knowledge. However, Burke’s treatise is applicable in discerning sublimity within the text, from an 18th Century perspective of psychological and aesthetic understanding. The other obvious difference is that one concentrates on linguistic function, whereas the other’s focus is on artistic and physiological effect.
Whether Longinus has any direct bearing on Revelation is purely hypothetical and debatable, yet as far as literary tradition goes, every work (divine or not) is logically influenced by a genealogy of ideas, linguistics and inspirational textual precursors. To ascertain the sublimity of Revelation in a literary context, I will apply select aspects of Longinus and Burke’s individual theories of the sublime, providing two different perspectives of the primary text. The interesting facet of my discussion is that both interpretations, using precepts divided by a millennium and a half of Western literary tradition, have essentially the same conclusion. That is, Revelation is interpretable as a text that uses a concept of the sublime, similar to Longinus’ and Burke’s, as a literary mode.

§

Longinus suggests in his treatise On the Sublime that art is the mediator of the innate ability to perceive, convey, and utilise the sublime. There are five sources of the sublime, the first two being innate, the last three the ’product of art’. They are: “the ability to form grand conceptions . . . stimulus of powerful and inspired passion . . . the proper formation of two types of figure, figures of thought and figures of speech, together with the creation of a noble diction, which in its turn may be resolved into the choice of words, the use of imagery, and the elaboration of the style. The fifth source of grandeur, which embraces all those I have already mentioned, is the total effect resulting from dignity and elevation.” [6] The first two of these precepts is characteristic of Revelation and to most of the other apocalyptic works of the Bible. These two aspects are almost stereotypical character traits of the religious prophet also; John reveals himself to have these ‘innate’ abilities in his writing. This divine aspect of Longinus’ theory connects the sublime via literature to religion, as David Norton points out in A History of the Bible as Literature:

Longinus pushes both these sources towards divinity. Sublimity is not just ‘the echo of a noble mind’ (Ch. 9, p. 109); it ‘carries one up to where one is close to the majestic mind of God’ (Ch. 36, p. 147) . . . Sublimity bespeaks divinity. So too does the Bible. It was [and still is] difficult, following Longinus, not to think of the Bible as sublime, especially as he himself, in a famous passage, had taken one of his examples of sublimity from the Bible. [7]

One passage from Longinus almost describes exactly John’s reaction and mimetic experience, as a noble vessel for Christ’s spirit and the ‘word of God’:

certain emanations are conveyed from the genius of the men of old into the souls of those who emulate them, and, breathing in these influences, even those who show very few signs of inspiration derive some degree of divine enthusiasm from the grandeur of their predecessors. (Ch. 13, p.119)

John’s own inspiration to write, stems from the direct influence of his religious idol Christ, and his sublime experience of the ultimate artistic creator — God:

I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book. (Rev. 1:9-10)

The ability to conceptualise and vocalise the grand thoughts of Christ and God is echoed in this passage from Revelation. According to Longinus, this very act characterizes ‘nobility of the soul’.
John’s descriptions of ‘beasts’ with “seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion”(Rev. 15:1-2); are typical of the imagery he uses to induce a sense of the sublime, in order to convey the severity of God’s judgement and to emphasize the horror of hell and its minions. The ‘inspired passion’ of the narrator is obvious enough. The symbolic imagery, vigour of speech, intensity of vision and hyperbolic emotion, pervades the text. For example: “And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead” (Rev. 1:16-17).
For Longinus, rhetorical figures invoke the sublime when their utility is well hidden; the fact that John’s text is one complete metaphor makes it sublime in its simplicity and in its technical covetousness. The phrasing of the verse is neither too alliterative, unless to impress the sound of the sense, or too plain as to be mediocre. There is an economy of words that enforces the repetition of images and ideas of a profound nature on the mind of the reader. Sections throughout have a bard-like quality to their diction that seems to lull the reader into a trance-like state, with the hypnotic (over) tones of a satanic tempter:

And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. (Rev. 17:7 -8)

As the last book of the KJB, Revelation needed to be special — to be able to impress upon the mind of the reader the severe consequences of faithlessness and the words and miracle of John’s ‘vision’. It serves to heighten the sense of Christian beliefs by describing, in vividly imaginative terms, the antithetical options available to the unrepentant.
Whether written in terms of a-priori aesthetic or doctrinal ideals, Revelation inspires an imaginative interpretation in the literary-minded reader, rather than a spiritual awakening or re-enforcement of belief from a theological perspective. However, even from an aesthetically focused viewpoint, the most ‘disinterested’ objectivity of an art critic sways with the imagination’s subjective metamorphosis of the mystical symbols of the Apocalypse. The power of evocative images, prophetic language of a delusional seer, combined with the wrathful plans of a despotic God, causes the reader to fall back on either their logical beliefs or imagination to make sense of it all. Caught somewhere between these systems of mind, is the nagging doubt that this strangely compelling narrative is too fantastic to be factual, or too profound to be fiction. In other words, it leads us to believe in something or to question the text’s validity as a work of literature.
In terms of Longinus’ ideas of rhetoric and sublimity, Revelation could well have been an example in his treatise if it had been written a few centuries earlier. In order to understand the sublime, if we ever can, we must have some notion of what exists beyond our physical world. Longinus explains that this “beyond” is metaphorical, the sublime—illusion, a human construct designed to extend the imagination and the limits of our world. The sublime is that which defies logical sense and the imagining of what the ethereal sublime actually is. What is God, what is hell? It is that whose infinite presence reduces all else to disillusion, a force that affects the individual’s own system of values and beliefs in relation to their existence. This consideration produces prophets, seers, and artists like John. This thing called the sublime, whether by Longinus or Burke’s definition, is only a name applied to a feeling one gets when encountering something beyond the grasp of our words. Whatever it is can really only be described in literary terms, as Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests:

That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world. [8]

These limits of expression, these experiences of the sublime feeling, are what Burke attempts to harness by literary definition; beginning where Longinus left off and where John had already gone in Revelation.

§

Given Burke’s criteria for the sublime in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, parts of the Revelation at the end of the New Testament are sublime. It is an example of a text that emphasises the sublimity and grandeur of a supernatural world and an omnipresent God. Burke’s account of the sublime, places importance on the perception of subjects in relation to physiological senses. This notion of Burke’s differs from the concept of the sublime established by Longinus. Burke notes physiological states and sensory experience as a-priori conditions for the sublime, whereas before, the experience lay in the interpretation of the word image.
The primary source of the sublime, for Burke, is ‘power,’ with its main effect being ‘terror’ or ‘astonishment.’ The sublime, according to Burke, is “an idea belonging to self-preservation”(Enquiry, p. 79) that produces terror, fear, pain, and is characterised by obscurity, danger, power, greatness of dimension, vastness of extent, infinity (eternity) and magnificence. Further features of the sublime are loudness (of sound), suddenness (of movement or sound), intermittent light (and sound), darkness, confusion, and dullness in colour. The most important passion caused by the sublime, is that which is described by Burke under the heading of “Terror”:

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too. [9]

The self-realisation of human mortality and frailty, in the face of the immortal and numinous ‘idea’ of a wrathful unseen God, is what instils fear in our hearts, with the result that we experience the sublime sensation of terror or horror. Therefore, anything that is sublime for Burke inspires fear or inflicts pain upon our senses. As pointed out earlier these are what he calls “the passions which concern self-preservation”, (36) and these passions are what Burke considers, “the most powerful of all the passions”. In Revelation, these passions of fear operate in tandem with what Burke terms ‘astonishment’, the state when “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it” (Enquiry, p.53). This passion of fear is caused by the overwhelming vastness of dimension and sublimity in nature, in contrast to human powerlessness and inferiority in the face of its power and majesty. Revelation has twice the sublimity of a response to nature; it is an emotional response to God, nightmarish in its imagery and effect:

And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves . . . And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. (Rev., 11:9—13)

As Burke points out (in the section on vastness), things of “magnitude” are sublime, and so too is the “last extreme of littleness”. He sums up by comparing it to the “still diminishing scale of existence” (Enquiry, II, VII, 66). The obscurity of God’s presence and the clarity of his wrath are enough to render him near entirely sublime, in accordance with Burke’s account, as is his power and ability to inspire in most creatures “the passion of self-preservation”. The figure of God (because of his great power) is the most sublime and all-powerful character of Revelation. Burke states in the Enquiry, “power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime” (II, V, 64). It is this section on ‘Power’, which is the most relevant to this discussion of Revelation as a sublime work:

And indeed, the ideas of pain, and above all of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible to be free from terror. (Enquiry, p.59)

The power of God, over Satan and his legion of sinners, is emphasised by John. The superiority of God’s power is what makes pain and redemption possible for all things inferior to his hierarchical force, i.e. us (humans), apart from the unredeemable Satan of course. As Burke points out, “wheresoever we find strength, and in what light soever we look upon power, we shall all along observe the sublime and the concomitant of terror “ (II, V, 61). The terror in Revelation is in the fear of God’s power. After all, the wielding of redemption by death has to be the most sublime way to enter the ‘temple’ of heaven, which is also a place so sublime it is beyond human imagining:

And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled. (Rev., 15:8)

Given Burke’s account of the criteria for the sublime, Revelation is an example of a sublime work. The representation of power is the most significant characteristic of the work’s sublimity. Similarly, the depiction of terror, fear, power, darkness, depth, vastness, privation, and obscurity, all come together in the text to fulfil the criteria of what Burke considers the sublime.

§

Either the reader who comes to the Book of Revelation is a scholar, a Christian, or just curious as to how it all ends (the Bible and the world, as we know it). The non-Christian reader might look at the Bible because it is a book. Flicking through the lucid and profound chapters of Genesis, maybe appreciating some of the Psalms or the Book of Job, noticing the ‘poetic’ qualities of the text as they proceed. By taking the Aristotelian shortcut of a traditional ‘speed-reading’: perusing the beginning, the middle, and finally the end, the reader is shocked out of a conventional reading by the violent confusion and sublimity of Revelation. It has the effect of making one reflect on what they have read prior, in order to understand its complex and quite surrealistic images and density. It also turns the reader around, driving them back to the other books of the Bible, to cross-reference the highly symbolic words and events.
Of course, such a reading presumes that the Bible is a complete narrative and not an anthology of religious texts from different eras and peoples. If Revelation itself were read separately, it would be no harder or less difficult to read, than say The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. On its own, Revelation is probably more appreciable as a literary work without the detritus balance of the hefty Bible. What is unavailable to the imagination is what makes it such a sublime text according to Longinus and Burke. The variations of interpretation extend its range beyond a factual account of “the word of God”, to the unlimited possibilities of human creativity and existence. Whether this effect is caused by the passionately obscure ‘apocalyptic’ style — the English translation of a Greek text — or the possibility the literary mode of the Longinian sublime was used to provoke aesthetic and/or spiritual reaction, is beyond definition. What is not beyond recognition is the fact that the reader brings to the text, much in the same way as the writer does, influences and contexts from the sphere of their own experience and expectations.

§

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NOTES/WORKS CITED
[1] The Holy Bible, The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769. 12:7-11. From hereon all references to the Authorised King James Version of the Holy Bible will be referenced with the abbreviation KJB.
[2] See Aristotle/Horace/ Longinus, Classical Literary Criticism, translated by T. S. Dorsch (London: Penguin Books, 1965) pp. 97-158.
[3] All historical and factual data given henceforth, regarding biblical characters, authors, events, places and times, is from: William Smith; revised and edited by F.N. and M.A. Peloubet, Smith’s Bible dictionary [computer file], electronic ed., Logos Library System, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson) 1997.
[4] See Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, by D.H. Lawrence, ed. by Mara Kalnins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 66:18-19. An interesting, lively, subjective and comprehensive account of Lawrence’s beliefs and studies about Revelation. Provides an account of commentaries and conjecture regarding aspects covered briefly in this essay, i.e. authorship, literary attributes and attitudes.
[5] Hereon, for the sake of convenience, I shall use ‘Longinus’ as the author’s name of On the Sublime as no other name is forthcoming.
[6] See Aristotle/Hrace/ Longinus, Classical Literary Criticism, translated by T. S. Dorsch (London: Penguin Books, 1965) p. 108.
[7] See A History of the Bible as literature: Volume Two, From 1700 to the Present Day, by David Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.6—7.
[8] See Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd, 1933), p.151.
[9] Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Beautiful and the Sublime, ed. Adam Phillips, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 53. From hereon, the abbreviated title Enquiry, will be used for this edition.

Burnt

*


Lucille sat smoking on the step in the sun. She took a drag and continued to dream through the fresh blue smoke. The sun burning brightly in the summer sky. The blue back porch peeling in the heat – the timber creaking under her young dreams and aspirations. Flipping the cap on her steel lighter, tapping her feet on the top step to a silent beat. The sun good and warm on her young thin skin – white t-shirt loose flapping languidly in the warm afternoon breeze – bare feet breathing, feeling the worn grain of the wooden step – blue jeans beat and holy with worn wounds torn in knees and backside. The flame, as if from her fingers, dancing in the whispering air – white spots pop around the flame.

Lucille tired of her imagination, yawned and tugged her sneakers on. The sun now dying in the distance, floundering behind the dusky silhouette of the suburban horizon. Her black parka and red baseball cap – protection against the coming night. Dogs began to bark in hungry expectation – their master’s cars creeping home up the street. A bus half-lit against the twilight – faces forward, vacant eyes – floating along like leaves on a breeze until home, then caged again. Lucille’s old man wouldn’t be home again – lost somewhere in the desert between then & now. A gecko slithered across the porch and into the black shadows under the chair. Her mother might be home tonight, if she didn’t score – her mother that is. At least she didn’t bring them back anymore – she figured the old bitch had probably realised it was easier to let them do her in the alley behind the bar – less of a walk to get the next drink from a trick.

Lucille lit another smoke, the light from the flame orange white glowing in her stony gaze. She spat in prophesy into the dead flowers beside the porch – the screen door snapping at her young heels as she went inside, switching on the yellow hall light. The house stank of meat and grease – flies broke away from the walls and dirty dishes in the sink as she entered the small kitchenette. She opened the fridge – last beer left. A white spark then dark, the bulb blew – she fumbled in the empty rank fridge for the beer and left the house, slamming the chain-link gate behind her. She sucked on her beer and headed on into the musky night.

A greasy burger on Main Street, moths beating themselves to death on the popping fluorescent light under the street cover. The burger tasted good, her thin stomach moaning with gratitude, licking fingers. Another smoke. Walking again. Damn, she needed some cash. She’d just spent her last loose change. A plane rumbled overhead – ominous, its undercarriage low and visible, wings blinking red and green, then gone. She lit another smoke with the butt of the last – sixteen years old and full of dreams and the warm city night waiting to swallow her up.

She kept walking, images flashing faster in her brain – her mother, her crabbed face white and wrinkled blood-red lips charcoal dead eyes bleached blond dry hair – soulless posture. A photo of her father, remembered, black and white – long beard shaved head jailhouse tattoos straddled on a clapped out chrome horse. Fire, always fire licking the edges of everything – the houses the moon cars windows trees fences people . . .

People moved inside the white house. A family scene – steaming dinner on the table. All smiles and throwback head laughter. Man cuts the meat. Mother hairbuns blue apron, dishing out the sliced pink roast. Plump blond children squeal, banging table with fisted knives and forks . . .

Lucille stood hypnotized, rooted to the spot. Her face dissected in the reflection of the quarter windowpane. She didn’t know how long she stood there, watching, trembling – mind blank. Hairbuns blue apron appeared in the window, a laugh on her red lips, head turned over shoulder as she drew the curtains across her pert apron encased cashmere breasts. Lucille snapped out of her trance. It was like she woke up, but was outside of herself. Everything – like one of those old black and white James Cagney movies her Ma used to watch on the TV late at night. She watched herself walk around the corner of the west wall and stand before the half open bedroom window, the linen curtain slowly flapping in the breeze against the white window sill. She closed her eyes and dreamed a dream.

Lucille kicked open the gate and walked up the old wooden steps to the dark porch. She wasn’t home. She sat on the top step and looked out across the suburban landscape silhouettes lit with faint ghostly lights. Haunted figures across the way, shambling in and out of sight like voodoo zombies framed in the windows. A cat moaned for sex next door. A car slid its hissing way up the empty street. In the distance, a siren started to peel itself out of the black night. Lucille lit a smoke and took a drag, holding the cigarette up and watching the red ember glow as it took to the thin cigarette paper – her other hand absently brushing up against the growing urge in her torn jeans.

An orange glow had broken out in the distance, about a kilometre south, above the black silhouettes of the houses on the horizon. White smoke flowered from the horizontal half moon of the fire, tapering up, drifting slowly into the black still night. Lucille’s eyes glazed as she flicked the smouldering cigarette butt into the dead flowers next to the porch. Her breath quickening as her hand worked against herself – the siren now multiplied, screaming. Tumbling red lights dancing flippantly towards the fire, now blazing cinders spread like small red stars high into the warm night sky. The smoke now yellow, billowing into the blackness hanging heavy over the suburbs. The scene like a consummated painting framed between the porch banisters. All Lucille heard was her heart beating, blood pumping like a drum in her head. The worn wood grain of the porch, cool through her t-shirt against the bones of her young back. The night now closing in.

Anomalous Perigee

He turned on his black polished heel, raised his well dressed right arm – the light dancing off his polished cuff link – repositioned his curved left arm a little higher on the delicate back of his true love, then slowly waltzed from the centre of the light into the shadows.
Over her shoulder he watched the light, drunk with love & wine, he could not contain the rogue tears that tumbled from his tired eyes. The smell of her perfume engulfed his senses.
The silk touch of her soft skin on his cheek.
The feel & smell of her fine hair against the tip of his nose, as they spun slowly in between the light & the dark.
The empty chairs & tables in the hall resounded with applause; confetti fell like snow upon their twisting slow sonata . . .
The adagio waned – began to fade – the click of a door echoed through the music & the lingering mumble of departing guests – the light flickered, swelled, then was full & bright again as it should be.
The confetti was gone, the guests too – the table & chairs nowhere to be seen – the hall walls had shrunk, chandeliers disappeared, but still the music continued as he took one last semi-pirouette & stopped – his hand raised, fingers together as if holding the smallest of hands – the other hand spread just away from his mid-section as if to protect the daintiest of waists.
He stood under the dim light, the yellow glow casting shadows on his face, his dapper suit now looking quite threadbare – the cuff links long ago disappeared over the grimy counter of a downtown pawn shop – his polished shoes, the seams along the soles split – the buttoned collar around his neck, loose – the mirror rippled darkly around his form transfixed. His hands went to his head, his shoulders collapsed, as he turned his back on his own pitiful image.
He slowly unbuttoned his jacket & hung it carefully over the back of a chair, unbuttoning his collar & stepping from his old worn shoes. He folded back the covers & pulled the cord, which extinguished the light. As he lay in bed, the adagio still tumbling through his mind, his chest tightened, he looked through the gap in the blind.
The moon was low & full & seemed to smile back at him drunkenly. The cold blue light beamed across the room trying to penetrate the black shadows of his austere bedroom. The mellow luminosity of the light filled his mind with a soft blue hue.
He knew there were angels, alive, somewhere. The heaviness in his heart began to subside. He lay on his side, one hand holding the blind open so he could see the moon. He could almost step onto the moon he thought. It’s so low. So blue. So big. His tired eyes closed, the hand falling gently away from the blind onto the mattress & he was with her once again.

Substance Abuse

a piece of news
in platitudes
hybrid hyper media
seconded to
a lesser kind of life
a soft intelligence
far from cut up
rearranged
reconstituted
just opaque
shamelessly profane
this is
a lesser kind of
layer cake
more a multilevel glass box
fixed together with
the filaments of yesterday
& the lifeblood
of tomorrow’s dreams.

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Hey everyone, I just realised I was starting to post a lot more photographs and art than I meant to on this blog which is supposed to be dedicated to my writing. So, I have just put the finishing touches on a new blog devoted to showcasing my artistic works. You can find it here. I hope you enjoy my work and if you like it please subscribe and share the link. Cheers.

Annual Commemoration of the Divine Passion

You eclipse me & I have stained the Sun with black love . . .
death from a bottle cools my ardour
for a while, until I see you again.

The damp distance is bleached
then blackened with shadows
& flocks of shrill birds, screaming for blood

Bound hands grow swollen
body – silently numbed
a bed on fire I laid upon
now reddened with burning life

In these blistered hours of insomnia
objects are like lead
I believe they are other things & less than they are
as if fewer of them would create
a stillness like sleep
— if only to dream of her again

The cushions beckon in the mirror
white & summoning, judicious
the bed reflected in that fantasy land,
that round pool of hope

Why stir dust on a sacred tomb
as I lay down with a prayer for darkness
a snowflake melts on her virgin eyelids
somewhere & now, together again
we drink every breath of poisoned air
she asleep, I awake . . .

Not believing in resurrection —
I stroll through cemeteries
looking for her name, not wanting to see it
the damp brown earth reminds me
every hour we breathe is our last;
victims don’t want blind skies
their toil & consistency as mortals
are truer religions than faith itself,
so welcome me as one of them — into your house.

The last star’s neon spark
will be dissolved painlessly.
Morning will knock on the window, still —
like a grey wet wind
slow day will begin to stir.
Livestock shiver in the cold dawn,
some kind of slaughterhouse morn
the blood drained dreams
dissipate, replaced by
perpetual sameness . . .

Awakened from a long dark dream,
I thought I saw her somewhere in there
the awesome force of sleep’s return
shut me down like wild song
like black amphibious wine
a hollow ghost —
peering senselessly through the cold
window of every lost night

This morning once again
on motionless ground,
& along with it
drinking cold mountain air outside;
refined air, once, our air . . .

Across the crisp cool valley — white snow
blue mountains of decrepit glass & dream
dissolve, in this fresh green brocade

Hope sparkles in the diamond dew
that mirrors the sun
for a minute
while across the way, beyond this place
despair draws its dark curtain of cloud
over the broken road;
another day annexed,
closer to you again, I come.



This poem was written as a bit of a homage to Osip Mandelstam. If you haven't read any of his poetry then I recommend you do - far superior to most of the dross being produced these days!!!

Around Town: Wellington Zoo for real



Went to the Wellington Zoo the other day (true story this time) with bubz and another newage dad and his two offspring. A beautiful day kicked off with a Velluto coffee from the cafƩ of the same name. The Zoo was busy as usual with ominous groups of school children lurking at the side entrance, set to invade. Pushing on (we had prams) we picked up the pace for a quick walk to the top - the kids seemed to like the Ostrich, any kind of monkey, the sun bears and the Giraffe. I was surprised by the proximity of the new Giraffe enclosure as you can basically touch the creatures when they poke their inquisitive heads up to the manuka fence for a nosy. Hopefully this does not prove an issue re. human/animal contact issues later on. Anyway, managed to snap some pics as you can see - unfortunately none of the lion but some reasonable shots of the lioness. Maybe next week will bring some fresh pics and some more good weather.

Around Town: Wellington Zoo



Recreation of Actual Events on a smaller scale somewhere else!


Wellington Zoo. For the last few years there have been continuing issues with people climbing over the Zoo fence after hours. The local council and Zoo officials have remedied the problem by installing a 7000-volt electrical fence around the perimeter. Despite the new measures, resounding screams have been heard late at night as frugal zoo patrons still try to access the Zoo’s attractions nocturnally. Local residents have reported the screams that usually occur between the hours of midnight and 2am Friday thru Sunday. The human screams usually precede a raucous cacophony of baboon, chimpanzee and various angry animal noises.

Accident and Emergency Staff at the nearby Hospital have treated ten patients so far this year for electrical burns. Charge Nurse, Gina Jaja said that many of the injurious were superficial although they have had a few that were quite serious. One in particular, where a drunken teenage male managed to straddle the top of the fence before suffering bad electrical burns to his testicles. Apparently he had only been wearing a pair of nylon swimming trunks and had brushed his private parts on the top of the fence as he was attempting to launch himself into the man-made lake around the gibbon enclosure.

Zoo officials have made no apologies for the fence and since news reports publicized the injuries were quite confident that the intruder rate had dropped to nil. Police officials and nearby residents however have noticed a disturbing trend of drunk teenagers attempting to “climb the wall.” Like lemmings, the drunks take turns seeing who can outdo each other withstanding electrical shocks. “I have seen more than one of these idiots actually knock themselves out by licking the livewire whilst standing on their equally idiotic friend’s shoulders. It would be quite comical if it wasn’t so pathetic,” said Harold Dimwingle from the nearby Newtown Apartments. “We can nearly set our clocks by these retards. Me and a few mates from the RSA come down here at midnight on a Saturday and have a few brandies while waiting for these clowns and their ridiculous antics!”

Around Town: local in-depth news straight to you



One of the 'Little Bastards'




The Newtown Council Apartments Building, Block B



Wellington, Newtown. Possums that climb drainpipes at the council flats in Newtown have long been a problem for the residents and more importantly the landlords. Now a possible solution has been found by one of the tenants who live on the thirteenth floor of Apartment block B. Noticing that the drainpipe was made from a conductive material, Arnold B Wingthrop, a retired electrical contractor, unscrewed a lamp from its electrical cord and attached the flex with duct-tape to the drainpipe fixture outside his window. Within days a pile of scorched possums lay stacked at the base of the drainpipe. Local stray dogs have been disposing of the barbequed rodents but there have been a few incidents where some animals have touched the downpipe and fried as a result. Mr Wingthrop stated, “the little bastards got what they deserved. They’ve been shimmying up that bloody drainpipe and pinching things out of my apartment for months now!” Neighbouring residents have complained that the apartment block now ‘looks like a friggin’ radio tower at night’ because the electrified drainpipe glows in the dark. The day after we interviewed Mr Wingthrop, the first of the Autumn rains fell, which upon contact with the electrified down-pipe, resulted in a massive electrical fault that blew out half of the suburb’s power supply, including the local hospital’s. Police are interrogating Mr Wingthrop about the incident.


breakdown of the suburban mind

Watched David Lynch's 'Inland Empire' last night. Blew my mind with its brilliance. Very subjective viewing but amazingly surreal - like a broken dream, a barbituate stumbling night out not knowing where you're going or where you've been. Least of all - thought provoking. Highly recommended. Check out this site for more details.

David Lynch: Genius Par Excellence?


For those of you who like David Lynch films, and especially those of you who don't, have a look at his art and this very cool website [takes a tiny moment to load as high-res images etc].

Aspects of Infinity

I


I remember how it all began, as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was a fine morning, crisp & cold, but full of sun. I woke up to the sound of angels playing music in my ears. I can’t be sure of their instruments, although they made the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard. I couldn’t see, my bedroom was filled with a blinding white light, the only sense I had was one of sound. I lay motionless in my bed, the waves of crystal light & symphony pervading my every pore. I was a blank canvas as the sounds began to shape the very fabric of my being. Through the lucid choir of nothingness came a word & with it followed another:
‘Rise’, it whispered, as if a breeze.
‘Rise up & face the day for your life has ceased. Your new life is just beginning . . .’
I awoke again, yet unsure of if I had ever been asleep.


It is cold tonight. The streets are quiet for once, that ‘feeling’ is not there, for the moment. Everything is so still & pristine. My breath fogs in front of me, a backdrop of black night. Cold O cold, yes warmth – that is what I need. Three coats over rough layers of cloth. I feel like a freakish character in a Brueghel painting.
Another memory stabs my eyes – a feeling comes running at me, then disappears with my steaming breath into the night. Ice has covered everything; shards & sheets of crystal light illuminate the dark.
The cracks are more visible tonight; under stark streetlight, gaping splits filled with phosphorescent light that weep & spew forth into the black shadows.
There is nowhere to hide.
If there is nowhere to go where it is warm, then there is always the cemetery. Earth always offers sanctuary, so softer & more welcoming than the hard bed of concrete. A manhole cover beckons from behind a tomb; we scurry like diseased rats in burrowed warrens beneath the poisoned city, deep within its gut, beneath the rivers & the broken factories. The steaming creeks & rivers above, lap the earth from their banks. Pulling the blistered blanket of glass up, as its wake rocks & stirs our consciousness from mournful sleep & ritualistic instinct. We realise that if we were to be dead --- we would be, yet, we are all drowned . . .
White begins to stain the night as we sleep.


II


We stopped for a while; the others went to forage for maps & food. I rested on a huge marble step that stretched its cold form out for a mile. The building, hovering over me above, would’ve welcomed Alexander’s drunken torch. Persia never looked so grand & diseased at the same time as this mortuary – huge space cobbled with grey stone. The other surrounding buildings scrawled like feverish charcoal monoliths, deep shadows frame the cold snow of their architecture.
I sit alone on these steps.
I watch the cold clouds reiterate above the grey skyline.
There is no blank canvas. Tabula Rasa.
Everything is a colour.
Everything is a word.
I cannot help but interpret & participate in this infinite moment. This morning froze me; snapped me from a dream of thirteen faces — none of which were mine. What is neutral in this God-forsaken world?
I have a new found faith in sleep that serves me well for everything. Shuts my eyes as light as a thief’s, yet still lets me live when I wake. This I find quite amusing. & here we now stand, on the edge of the hill above the dirty little town where I was born. Looking across the black abyss to the thrashing, heaving, mass-molecules of space & time, bursting & splashing the city lights.
O where do we go from here?
What will the skies bring us tonight?

We thirteen seekers of the truth, who were once slaves of sin, now stand with countenance & fortitude amongst the teeming hordes of brutish defilers. We think of nothing but the goal that never lets us know its name & in that coveted mystery, we find assurance & spiritual strength. Like Lazarus, we have risen from pools of blood & death to walk amongst the living dead, to have some purpose totally foreign from that of this world. We sight our ships to sea just to have them crushed by quick waves. Others abort the vessel falling fallen while we fall, we set our sights to land & catapult an anchor plated with the fear of missing the mark. We know however, that where it scalps a patch of earth, we may as well dig a place & in it lay our skeletal frames – watching the moon spin off, far away, to an inconceivable distance as steaming black sod frames then blocks the final vision.

In a damp cavern beneath the border, we seek & find temporary sanctuary. Food is shared & words are said; you step from the shadows into the fold of the family. Warm light dances off the sloping dust caked walls. An orange aura fills the chamber & shadows play out their grotesque pantomimes of murder on the walls, but your silhouette is beautiful yet transparent. The reflection of the flame burns brightly in your eyes tonight & I see a hunger there so deep. I feel your skin so warm your touch like silk lips so you who hypnotise like a home welcome me into your arms once again & again & for a brief instant, I am human again. I pledge my undying love to you & everyone as we twirl like dervish dancers begging for alms of love in worlds of pure white neutrality untainted by freedom as we melt sun with the sky to burn bloom buy our place with what & all we’ve got, which is not much.
My hands do not feel your memory.
My eyes see you in everything . . .
In various sorrows, blizzards begin above the ground. Grinding sand & shingle down the dark corridor toward our empty shelter. To blow the bells & ring the chimes of you, burning pyre-like in my flaming chest, I must climb the highest mountain.
I must record the journey & events of the hours & days to come.
I must record your beauty & your twisted ugliness as detailed & as infinitely as I can, with the last drop of blood as my ink. My heart houses the flint you struck; to live is to die tonight & every lost night from now.
I must record your dying history – your progress, your decay, your thwarted attempts to claim new worlds . . .
everything.


Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major - Andante


III


A new day & we brush the ash & dust from our eyes & hair. Our black overcoats increasingly stiffen from the shed skin follicles of her Malthusian moulting, which stick like mortician’s wax with every warm breeze of her dying breath. The sun is purple & fills the tangerine hued sky. Its burning eminence pockets the loose change of oxygen, its twisting smile creases, dazzling. We lower our welding masks & shuffle dust clouds off through the churning ghost dance of the early morning day. From half awake to suddenly wide awake, almost – a lucid kind-of light licks our flesh. It is hard not to forget the ancient promise of real rain --- crystal clear water that is sweet & liquid wet.
O to taste the diamond drops of moisture!
What a bastard of a shadow of a dream!
This is the time when a mind eraser could be put to good use.
We all wish that we could die.

Last night I had a nightmare, my memory recorded my thoughts. It started with a noise & then language became apparent. Words crawl like pulsing worms from my mouth. Naked.
All naked we are nude & nice now in the slow fetid time of a clock no longer tick tock tick tock . . . Rain falling, like dead sparrows on the roof. So loud & thudding, the water-drops as big as bombs. If you had a weak thin neck, it would snap with their pummelling weight. Old trees cracking twigs arthritic limbs frozen air freezing flays flesh off bare cheeks. Wind whipping strop’s slap acid sand grates. Breathless. Diseases abound to burrow faster, yet still we stand & breathe the foul air.
All around – beautiful vampires.
Red lips platinum hair ghost skin yellow tongues lick black teeth.
Everything surrounds & squeezes back – large machines enlarging . . .
Everything is a word, but I can’t shake the fact that words are so meaningless, in the face of such events.
I want to wake up.

We have ploughed our fields with streets, planted them with ugly tombs of concrete instead of fruit trees. The separation is evident; the direction misunderstood. We the unwilling are urged to remain seated ‘til the show is over. Is there any one with just cause why this marriage should be over, speak up now or forever hold your peace in check? Throw twenty different objects together & try to stack them up; a triangular structure is the only form withstanding. Who is at the top? How soon before the objects beneath collapse or eject from the equation? Who ploughs the field does the sowing, yet who is it that reaps & rapes the rewards of our toil?
The separation is evident.

On my way through the smashed suburbs, I saw a clothesline swaying in the cold warm wind, a single tall stick, a rake that strongly held the weight of the world above its rigid head. The pole pushes piles of christened ragged clothes into the wind. It flaps the wet wrinkles of the clothes dry, impregnates their nature to rub against skin. The pole sways privately. Ticking off the time, a pendulous metronome, & supporting it all a blue line & the breeze. The rigid rake has kept its place actively alive by its still & unwavering disposition. By its silence.

It feels like autumn now, but the seasons are all mad & messed up.
Burning bark smells like cinnamon sometimes, right now it smells like burning bark. The tree’s on fire – the last of them, on this dying street clogged with floating embers & curling balloons of smoke. All the ghosts stand in the mist smoke in silent chastity & broken innocence, shivering at the sight of the steel scythe blade of the reaper. Some peel in fright like snakes, others shed leaves like scales & skin – matt-finished minnows fall – sardines litter the ochre smoky floor; quite hot, then cold blue haze blankets everything & we drift off toward our destination.
Towards redemption, or just another aspect of infinity?


IV


A three storied building offers sanctuary from the searing elements for a while, affording us a vantage point from which to spy all other travellers & assassins. Cold hard concrete swells & sweats its broken crumbling walls under the midday sun. We take turns on watch. I meditate in a quiet corner in the dark – waiting for a sign, a map, a pineapple, a hole in the clouds . . . sleep. The others try to sleep; stirring occasionally, humming, reciting lost songs & poetry, drawing crude figures & signs on the scarred walls. After seven hours, I rise refreshed & wary of the indigo night that is now upon us. I climb the outside window fire-escape ladder, hanging out over the litter-strewn footpath below. The simmering night fluctuates in temperature. All is silent save for a warm breeze brushing between my ear & the wall of the building. The yellow moon is huge & seems to be gaining ground with every revolution, its eerie light casting a sickly glow of gold over the jagged geometry of lower downtown Knotterdam.

From out behind a dead store scurries one of the first mutants we see on our odyssey. He scuttles along on his gammy leg. He looks like he is trying to leg-over a short fence, dragging his idle leg then kind of flipping it to limp along on.
From out behind shadows & shapes, emerge the blackened faces of children.
Screaming with insane mirth & laughter like small dancing skeletons, the children surround their prey like rodents around a corpse. He occupies their ebbing worlds as a target for stones & short relief from their surroundings. His hunched body burns with words, rocks, & perverted piercing stares. Looking up bent over, his face twisted in shadow, he shudders & flops faster to outrun gregarious gazes & the pelting assault of creatures more mindless than he. It gets too much sometimes, in fact all the time, the throwing about of his cumbersome cage. The frustration of a life not knowing why, but most of all it gets too much, because of them. They hate him, they always have, & they follow him wherever he goes. Crying now & limping as fast as he cannot go, he falls down, curls up, in the black dismissal of the world.
I can hear his pathetic moans from the rooftop.
He is sobbing & calling “Esmeralda? Esmeralda? I hang my head with the weight of shame just as the weight of your natural & cumbersome form hung you. Come back to me my love. Come back, to me . . .”

A piece of brick flies from the dark, knocking a splash of blood from his swollen forehead. He lies back & stares at the moon glistening in his weeping eyes, his arm raised, fingers moving in silent appeal. In the pain of difference & of hurt, & of being very much alone, he succumbs to the world around him. The ground flattens & swallows his twisted form, the black asphalt pulsing like a heartbeat – each swell inhaling, gulping.
A bony arm remains, elbow high above the ground. In the sick light, it looks like a withered fire hydrant. The fingers still writhe & click, their lumpy knuckles turn & crack, the torn shirtsleeve slides down the twitching forearm.
From the dark realms of a narrow alley, the squeak of pedals, chain, spokes & bell resounds. In slow moving motion, a child on a bike floats across the stage of the street. The child’s head is a balloon – a balloon with huge wide staring black pupils for eyes, button nose upturned, all framed in an ivory countenance as polished as a marble basin. His small arm swinging in timeless motion, it seems to swell & elongate like sharpened bone. I watch his small arm swinging as he pedals, the other hand steering his mechanical vessel. In his toy hand, his hand, he holds a thin shiny curved blade – a scythe glistening like a diamond in the shadows, a razor sharp scythe tinkling off the road, small red sparks dancing behind the black tyres of his bike.
The hand & muscle of the exposed arm is lined up by the boy’s front bike tyre. The arm suddenly stands still & tall like a heron on alert, as if aware of its approaching foe, trapped in a quagmire trying to free its tethered form. The boy peddles pedals pedals faster faster, breath puffing in small red clouds of dust from his sneering wee mouth. The white bony arm wriggling above the asphalt, fingers clenching unclenching as if trying to scream. The boy’s strange arm upraised now, blade in hand sharp, arm – a swinging arc down & . . . SCHLOCKKK . . .
The moon silhouettes the spinning arm clutching at arm & then disappearing past the window of the light of the moon. The boy tilts his huge head back, laughs, swallows & then blows perfect dust-red smoke rings at the night’s weird sky. I look down at the scene, all actors disappear now, as the swirling paper & dust in the gutters of the street stop their discontented stirring. The breeze dissipates, comets stop their blazing trails across the sky, & everything is so quite. I lean back on the wall of the balcony of the roof & slowly let my knees give out under my weight – goodnight sick moon.
Good night.


Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major, Op. 107 – Moderato.


V


We walk past a flickering transmitter, still crackling with stored power. Static burns the brain cells, buzzing constantly like electric fur brushed up the wrong way. The strange sensation of a foreign body invading every pore & cell. Its life force scratches neon graffiti on never-ending night while all around satellites spin above . . .
A message – another mountain to conquer.
How many days left?
Looking all the time for something that has always seen us, which we will never see, through this burgeoning haze of red dead solidity. O but now I’m letting my emotion override my sensibilities in my search for truth! But what is truth?
Of the heart?
The mind?
The soul?
& what are these names for these things, if such things even exist anyway . . .?
My heart is low, my mind weary, my spirit has wandered on ahead to scout safe passage for our advance, but it is not searching for mystery or treasure. Yet, I pray that it might find some, just something small. A glimmer of shining illusion that we may believe in, to get us through another day & night . . .

A common theme along our journey, that I find quite disturbing, is the pervading impressions of silence that pepper the day & night. It is a dripping tap – even the most subtle of words repeated enough, eventually drives to the point of distraction & attentions the prey. As a tiny twig, broken from a tree, that falls upon water makes ripples that echo its form. However, when such water is not calm, still a bigger branch with more substance is needed to create visible & audible impression. In these moments of absolute peace & lucidity, the shadow of death breathes its name in an epiphany of silence.

This morning, everything moves in slow motion. I awoke to see women beating slow tracks in beauty with leaves swirling at their heels touching sweet white feet. A moist caress glides in their perfumed surrealism. The summer sings optical promises; maybe everything will be all right?
Another vision of Mary – standing on the edge of the Black Forest on the fringe of the camp. An army of ghostly figures behind her, writhing in the mist & the damp leaves, waving slowly, translucently.
Her last good-byes seem forever cast in cold calculus, a flickering hologram.


Fantasien, Op. 116 – No. 7 Capriccio. Allegro agitato




VI


We found an old run-down cabin, just before dusk gave in to night, deep in the foothills of the mountain ranges. Windows doors grey walls torn. A fox skitters ‘round the room, sniffing trash, oblivious to our presence. Eye to eye rats in rafters, on mantle, windowsills, within walls – scratching, scratching, scratching through holes; standing still for slash of time, then off again. Seen sniffed snorted disappeared forgotten, room now empty save for moonlight.
The fireplace flickers, then explodes.
The whole broken brown-grey interior illumined, in all its decayed woody brilliance. The flame licked the cobwebs in the grate, blossoms crushing cellophane, sounds that burn sun-burst bright, engulfing envelopes stuffed with wads of cash & unforgettable memories, crackles to ash.
Then back-to-back black.
The visions are becoming stronger while our quest becomes more inconsequential. Nature is casting its archaic spell over our experience of things. We have all experienced a heightening of the senses; the smells of the deep woods & tumbling streams, the clarity of sight & hearing - a leaf so finely cut, a dry twig cracking under the hoof of one of the green deer sniffing the air ten miles downwind in the heart of the forest.
I remember a story that once captured my imagination – a poet at the end of his tether, frustrated with society & (ultimately) himself, walks into the foothills of a vast mountain range in the Americas with a loaded firearm.
No one ever sees him again, no body is ever found.
All he leaves behind are memories & a huge body of verse for the world to do with what it will. The forest has swallowed him; nature has enveloped his very being, distributed his atoms throughout the flora & fauna like so much mulch, & that’s all we are . . .



VII


The new day vivisects the dawn, another telegram from hell. Pressures of belief make for sacrifice of sleep --- relief, so hard to shake the madness of life from one’s head, without losing dreams . . . grown nurtured there, like lice they hunger, live upon ghosts, teasing & teeming rife with maddening proposals. Wet dam breaks, floods the soul, quenching fires of the fragile heart; blood ferries vessels of shrouded prayer, laps sides of narrow passage, ridges perched precarious --- shelter in the shadows, breeds clinging moss of time --- the dawn buries the dreams in thought, in matter, under the new day.
O thank god for the new day, today!
These small mercies are no mean feat, yet there is still a huge nagging doubt in my nature as to the effectiveness of petitioning the lord with prayer.

Another painful message came today; the great communicator speaks with no words so familiar. I placed the impulse with words so much softer than your cutting spiel of want. I would not hesitate to use you as such, mere words of my own writing, but you would let all of my blood become dust, leaving me dry with tears of loss like water.
A small stream seems to follow us just to remind me – where there was just flat baked dust & soil, a fissure appears & splits, widening as it fills with crystal water, tripping past my shambling leaded feet. It is quite all right to drink; in fact we are on agreement that it is perhaps the best water that we have ever tasted.

The sky parts its grey beard for a minute, yawning in bright disinterest & makes the dull colours glow, as they should, for the same amount of time. Flitting birds play & sing all that’s natural, the stream babbles wetly, tumbling quietly past us, leading us on into the unknown while the sun shines warmly --- paints everything still, so still & quiet for a minute.

I turn back in the grey, toward the valley below, to check the burning fires glowing as far as the horizon. Suddenly, a waddling duck jets its slick form out from the front of the burrowing stream; I grab its wet neck & wring the painful life from it.
We all have to remind ourselves every now & then that we are only human.
That we are still alive.

The river frogs choke the highway, croaking to the night.
& the rain it hammers down across the barren blue hue, in its shimmering sweeping black dress. Smoke-like clouds draped above the great flood of blood. Dawn cloud ingrained in this almighty time with blindness. It rained forever in the sweet south & sweet north & sweet east & bittersweet west. Sweat pearls run down my face. An almighty fine wine of the weeping sky falls down on old slumbering earth, snoring with the promise of the BIG sleep in Messianic night. Till that almighty river’s shining dawn & passage down stream turned big muddy, where the desert had been --- & Noah might’ve rowed on out from the banks of old earth . . .
If it hadn’t been another dream.

Near the camp, ripples on the surface of a nearby dam signalled the coming tide upstream as Salmon swam down-stream, furtively kissing the small insects from the mirrored surface of the sky.
We have to close our minds – we have learnt the laws of the forest – and we have to disintegrate our bodies in order to become part of the force of the storm. Resistance is futile & dangerous. The sun glows pale red through the silhouettes of the trees, as we trace its fall, cold sinks its blade a little deeper in the bone, shadows merge.
We build a small fire on the embers of yesterday’s.
The pine-needles pop & smoke, the twigs ignite & consume themselves, as the flame’s glow casts masks & dancing shadows across our pensive faces. We sip Rosemary tea from warm receptacles; steam curling from our breath, the forest is deathly quiet again save for a stirring breeze swaying the treetops. The chill air defies the approaching storm, the silver clouds above now iridescent in the blue moonlight; they accelerate across the grey plains of the night sky. As their speed becomes lost in the filling of the sky, the trees creak & drop branches & pine-cones from their thrashing limbs. Our fire is scattered, tumbling sparks flicker through the tumultuous bracken & undergrowth, as the wind’s momentous fury systematically attacks our camp.


Allegro con moto


VIII


I know now the third trouble has earnestly begun its unstoppable stoppage. From the wrong mountain that I had wasted three days & nights upon, answering question after question of my silent companions. To be skin-blackened in the blazing light until refuge in a crag brought my skull bloody pecks from all manner of winged creatures. I decided to descend, as I was told that this was not the very tall terrain that I should be on.

Coming down the mountain, I met a virgin who had children; her entourage were all weeping for their lives. I met a blind man who had vision, but no other sense at all. I met a poor man who had given all his wealth away & had nothing else to give anyone – no words, no hate, no nothing at all. The travel down was so much harder than the voyage up the mountain, despite the heavy load upon my weary shoulders. My twelve companions, light as they were; all grasping, clinging, like a thick ball of twitching twine coiled up across my creaking spine.

Coming down the mountain, I met a muse that could not play, sing, or impart gifts of inspiration. I met a clown that never laughed, but who had always been laughed at. I met a married man who had lost his ring deliberately amongst the stony slopes. Now on another mountain, we had ascended, amongst the ranges of the world. Up high on mountain peak, three days & three nights did curse me with its silence, yet the voices they were loud. A cold cave in crags of granite precipice did afford we with sublime providence & writing space in the dark. All about me ravens black & buzzards grey, haunted me with beady hungry stares, while forcing me into friendship with threats of violence & despair. I do not know, nor will I ever, the nature of those creatures that caricaturise the deformity of men.

Coming down the mountain, I was blinded by the brilliance; everything was crystal clear & held a lucid gold resilience. To my dismay, my vision could not offer me sanctuary of allegiance. Thrown from one apparition to spirit deed entrusted --- the golden glow endowed within, soon poisoned all, & ruptured shaking ground. Serenity of peace & mind madness breached the shrunk horizon.
I made retreat in haste & fear of all that I had witnessed.
A martyr's life, of seer & shaman, harnessed by the reins of Sodom.
To lead like the blind scout in disarray. To plot the paths through minefields olden laid, without map or guide to show the way for who has gone before, has gone without, to bleed for wounded souls their pain. To dance scarred by the acid rain's great rocks. To house the children evil shamed. To see the blind-man’s tortured fate, in beggar’s rags dressed with itching pestilence. To walk the paths with famine as my food, with death as my guide . . . I wove my bleeding heaving wretchedness, once again up the incline.

Were we ever going to find the answers for the great one – we were beginning to seriously doubt the validity of his requests?




IX


In my sleep, I had another dream.
Beneath the old sash window, someone had placed a mirror; it reached from the floor to the frame. Standing naked, head-less – it did not look like me, but then I’d only ever seen myself in reflection, so I presumed that it was. Outside, dry ochre fields – flat as sea – stretch away through & beyond defiant nets of fences. A black bull – horns, big polished lump of charcoal stares at me, snorting breath paints the window. He thinks that I have fresh blades of grass for his consumption, he is wrong. Its huge head adheres to my form, the cadence clear:

I rise to fall – the morning sun stains bronze, the birds song sounds of pipe & tambourine, minus my hands that now burn with the sun in this labyrinth of dawn. Seven figures shimmering with energy, atoms spinning in a spinning mass of form, one stood apart – more material & menacing than the others who had a certain kind of innocence in their immateriality.

Given eyes to see a world, we did & so we died. Hunger in the new night’s yawn we ate ferociously, like wolf cubs at mother’s milk, gorged pregnant with concrete fear.
It was all we could do to stay awake.
Now we are the infected.
Slippery tongues of crass old lands injected in our virgin veins, we have not even begun to begin to see the mud we stand in, to smell it as it is, to disregard its funerary qualities. Buried we have not begun to contemplate this place we are in, this rock we stand on. We see the ocean as a moat, as an eternity, between the setting sun & us. We do not feel the touch of waves all we see is all we are. The transcendence of time, irrelevant in its ticking hue, buoyant on its mocking grin -- grasped by none, aspired by some. It chatters – a bone wind-chime, cracking & tolling each short but endless passing of day. Impeccable revenge: in evanescence two pits dwell -- infinite charcoal voyeurs, watching, always waiting for you. For me . . .

Rain falls – ashen snow of sorts, trying hard to clean it only dissolves & steams. Evaporation leaves a hollow where there once was life. Time keeps ticking off itself, so do we too bring intonation to ourselves.
As we have done, so shall be done to no one, but unto ourselves . . .

What is this place on which I stand?
What is this place in which I dwell?
Is this thought naught but a smell, of what has always been that is not seen? Consummation has stamped its seal on everything, long dead & buried – who wields the stamp with such intent?
Who creased the seal on our bent backs?
Who gave us these dead eyes?


Adagio – Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 10



X


Inside the enclosure, they gave us a street to play with. Everything was ok until we began to think we could not see them.
They were there though.
We worked hard while some fell down; they were not picked up.
We became one, so they said.
Our liberty monopolised, streamlined, they said.
Then came the virus. No fence could keep it out. They contained it well, the chosen few were made to survive, you see, they needed someone to repair the machines that built the machines that mined the metals that made the machines that control our existence. Herein lay the redemption inside the enclosure. Suicide – the only sin-filled option.

The wicked city sleeps for a second as the sun comes up sleuths with blind obedience & subtle reward the day blinks & is gone – swallowed by itself we float like zombies bittersweet voodoo magnet – implants its claws in our broken backs toward the neon grin great endless inanity of night pulls to begin in earnest the spade breaks the earth’s skin our quest for delight knows no bounds for fools streetlight sings & slaps the cruising cars like bleeding sunshine shards through weeping tree-lined avenues the cumbersome concrete breaks another face upon goose-steps – goose-steps, across & over while the black mirrored glass of her evening bodice entices the swirling mutants who stumble & ripple with vanity & the tease of undress winding – winding in & out through cavities like a cancer as the darkness covets the flight of our souls & soon, as ghosts, we echo & return with another tattoo from the city’s sin emporium.

Journey we go, into a place where lost buildings of time stack against each other in a delicate city of memories. Walking these barren streets, searching for hidden clues, we get lost in the quest of looking for answers to the future, in the gloomy & poisonous back streets of the past. Black galloping pillows of cloud; hasten like advancing sentries of night against the grey sky, proclaiming: the ferocious almighty thunderheads, glory, blossom, & stab the tender side of the West. The East’s long sabre draws out & twists, spilling gushing blankets of deep, deep maroon over mortal Earth.
Casting great floods to the West.
Decaying plagues shall ravage the North; moreover, famine bleeds dry the South’s cold haven as the East, connotes slow suicide in its prophetic insane seclusion. Green stems from the grey & all the glass age redeems itself back to the crimson beaches, whence it came.
Always hunting, without knowing, for the three properties of motion: the beginning, the middle, & the end.
Life, death, fire, water, earth & ocean.
Bringing in the space of the old: the new.
The idea, the propulsion, the result is seen in all things.
Cause, effect, & result of the action, is a troublesome discourse, when the end is ultimately commotion, destruction . . .



XI


What is acquired at birth falls back to more pure & honest beginnings.
This burgeoning & ever-present death is not really our creation, but more like God’s . . . or something else. Nature does not concern itself with our presence, or the way we practice genocide, murder, rape, cannibalism, & sacrilege. For a while, we lived inside an enclosure in which they gave us a street to play with.
We saw everything, as did the third eye.

There was an uneasy calm about the place. No one spoke. Outside the walls, disease marched across the west desert scratching its long black fingernails along the high tin fence. The fossils that controlled the place stood around nervously; clad in leather jump-suits, their white faces glowing like light-bulbs in blackened sockets, obese ink-pot bodies swelling & twitching at the sounds of the scratching screams, the bloody baseball bats twirling anxiously in their podgy dough claws. Everything was ok until we began to think we could not see them.
They were always there – our imprisoners.

We worked hard as did the other broken bodies. Some fell down, they were not picked up, we saw it all & still the statues rise to meet the falling sky. We became one at that stage so they said; that point between death & beyond or something like that? Our liberty monopolised, ‘streamlined,’ so they said. Then came the virus, no fence could keep it out but the ones that stood tall around the cities contained it well.
Soon the chosen few were made to survive.

They needed someone to repair the machines that built the machines that mined the metals that made the machines that control our existence. . . & that was then, this is now. It all collapsed beneath the onslaught of the natural night. We tried to forget that place, but for some inexplicable reason it was photographically tattooed on our internal vision.
We could not shake it.
Herein lay the redemption inside the enclosure – acceptance, honesty, awareness, and encompassment.
Aspects of infinity.



Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor – Rondo-Finale. Allegro

Message for any readers out there (if any!)

Hi

I realise that 'Blogging' is as much self-serving as it is for public entertainment. In light of this truth I have to ask the question: "Is anybody reading this blog?" So that is my question, is there anyone reading this blog and if so would you like me to continue posting items of interest?

Obviously, this stuff takes time to produce, edit, post etc. The growing realisation that blogging (in my own opinion) is a probable waste of time has led me to ask this question to find out if it's worth carrying on. Anyway, there you have it - should I stay or should I go? Also, feedback on the blog etc would be appreciated.

Best wishes


Will

God is not an American - (Read & find out why!)





david bowie said:

      “god is an american”


nietzsche said

      “god is dead”

madame blavatsky said

      “there is no religion,
        higher than truth”

i say:

      “truth & religion
        are non-compatible”

by the way,
this is not a political poem
or a religious poem

my views (contd.):
 

      a poem is an expression of interest
      potentially, entertaining

      possibly, thought provoking
      usually, annoying
      seldom enjoyable
      always didactic

      drivel – essentially

but this poem
is not meant to tell you
what a poem is or isn’t
or what you should think
 

this is just 
some words on a page
possibly, not even a poem

vers libre or not libre
that is not the question

finally,
just to set a few things straight:

      god is not an american
      god is not even alive so how can he/she/it be dead
      truth & religion 

      should never be mentioned
      in the same sentence
      ever
 

& poetry . . .

      don’t even breathe that word.








Perfume

i love
the smell of the city
the hustle-bustle brilliance
of life effective in every moment

sweet ambrosia of death
sits lurking
in the shadows of rancid alleyways
signposted with ciphers
symbols of strange forests
hieroglyphics of night’s construction

breathe in
the humanity
breathe out
the horror

the horror of concrete & steel
a flailing colossus
the smell of victory
over death
not too unlike
“the smell of napalm
in the morning”

lingering
like perfume in the back of your throat


A Certain Kind of Countenance

Her face, like a flower
In a closed fist
Wrinkled against time, adversity
A patronising counterpart
Settled in for a long lag

& the drugs don’t work, all the time
cigarettes, booze, pills, smoke . . .
you name it, it’s viable
as long as it’s a substitute
for reality, three dimensions

a quiet cup of tea
& dogs are barking
cars growling down the thin streets
sirens screaming,
intermittently
a broken tap drips
drips
drips
across the room, nestled amongst
dirty plates piled high
flies buzzing amongst the scraps
on the kitchen bench

a few ragged photos litter the walls
& the money’s all gone
two cigarettes ‘til hell
no substitutes immediately avail themselves
as each thing becomes a part of her
like broken crockery strewn across the floor

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