Satchel of Volcanoes
A COLLECTIVE POEM
Dreamscape: golden spheres caterpillar-tracked spew fake fire; Monument to foggy river, trapped badger escapes to kiss the Holy Book.
(And back into storyland giants have fled. and the knights are no more and the dragons are dead)
Dream, illusion, or reality? Dreams wash up on the shore of Reality or stay within the depths. The shores of Port Lligat;
Pi-meson to Queen 4. Check.
The sun hanging ever low over the southern horizon at 4 o'clock all day long, its light tinged with an ochre cast. Mortality summarily diagnosed as yellow half-light stained cathedral windows. The heft of organ tunes always just beyond the range of hearing while the angels of dead ancestors, perched among the groin vaults, just beyond the range of seeing, watch our stumblings. This great church of mortality given over to graffiti. Something of the disillusioned newlywed discovering the pee and poo of femininity. It is the great white mare gushing forth urine in the field while kids ride bikes past watching and wondering.
Stop reading,
for you will never be,
what you read
and you can never read
what you are,
and what you are
is what you think.
Stop thinking for you can only think when you are alive
and you are only alive when you are awake till you are asleep
or dead yet you can only die if you stop thinking, start dreaming
The question you should be asking right now is what lies on the rim of a cocktail glass?
No, not the sound of the squealing owl that perforated the foxes left ear drum,
and no not the mustard you had on your jam sandwich yesterday,
but a big bowl of emptiness deserted by its mother at the tender age of one hundred and forty three,
a significant number in the book of what?
"You're wrong, the last time I used the lorry was Wednesday."
Oh the unspoken grey undone, the whistles from the factories and
the girls like birds falling from the trees. Yesterday was a frozen rainbow
and horses untethered grazed on fields of stars that were electric haloes
for the drunken saint reeling in the gutter where the hose pipes growl and
ants crawl puckered flesh for the memory of a teardrop unfallen.
It's all so much wasted and casually summoned allusions, the goat god herding his
charges through milky dawn electric streets, the ghost god following death
to the crossroads where the banjo player is a lament drawn in brushes of
softest charcoal, his eyes pale blue horizons, but the sun is absent, the
sun is absent, so call down the moon and butter the edges of the sky for the
young ones must slide to the end of all possibility, and the old ones must
look eternity in the eye and kiss the snowdrift globe for the memories of
sailors and all the other fabled drowned, because, and not least, I remember
the aeroplanes made of meat, I remember the butterflies feasting at your
mouth, the pins in your hair and the songs in your eyes.
We'll speak of the withered dawn and the lightning hearts of lovers, the naked caress and
swimming pool loneliness, for these and other un railed declarations my heart
and spleen are content, a furrowed brow where seeds are sown and dreams are
birthed and so on for all is delight, customized to the tread of giants who
in seven league boots storm the horizons and render unto Caesar the grey
walls of battlements and the yellow teeth of graveyards.
We shall sing carcass lullabies and skim the bones of unborn children across the lake. In
the shadows of canyons we shall anoint the earth and pale green things will
rise to claim the sky in a mesh of finery and we are reborn, reborn.
And there she sat, alone, and lonely as the cats were
bounding through the trees. Never did she have a habit, but of course for
the rubbing of honey upon her knobby knees. If I were to ask her
what's the matter, she would cry and then grow fatter than she was a moment
before. Ever growing yet without knowing, she has done this a million
times, a million times... right in front of this general store.
Foregoing knowledge, she left that college and traversed the seas and oceans.
She found a woman named Lemon to study, and told her family she was
studying abroad. So now she sits and wonders daily while wandering
through the boats sailing upon the oceans in which she drowned.
Forgiveness - bah, what does that mean in a world like this?
They chanted in unison, like a single male child on a one wheeled velocipede.
The 'cycle of life'... is that a question? It was, and the chanters chanted the answer.
The answer to what is the question? Perhaps that is the answer to the 'Cycle of life'.
'Enough of this tautological nonsense!' exclaimed the viewer in a sanguine fashion.
Soon enough the interface will subsume us all but until then we must turn away from the cathode
that seeks to melt our minds.
The chanters chanted.
Condemned black suns beneath me
Faceless ones summoning thee
Chanting my name through lust's crack
My soul crumbling...
They want me, the swathed Sorceress!
Writhing on the torture racks, I invoke thy words to you -
Through pain I found my pleasure's nest
How can such a music evoke such memories, never felt with
that heard song?
How can syncopation polyphony such emotion in me?
I have only once been to 'Europe By Train' and this was not my theme
tune, yet it somehow reminds me of these happy moments.
Sinking into the tune, going down to such depths, I am enlightened,
inspired, and no one around me knows or realizes, and will never
understand this feeling reiterated.
Dip your hand into the pie and pull out yesterday's
laundry, which the buffalo grazed on as the two old ladies tore off their
ribbons and whistled for a monkey who watched from the tree growing in the
Nun's garden, while she preformed oral sex on her carrots.
Look, I think you should know that life is like snow, and where are we blowing, where are we blowing?
Many leaves fell to the ground under the press of winter.
Many leaves fell to the ground like so much dead matter,
like people stuck in caves, like leaves on the ground buried alive under a blanket of snow.
The glass?
The eyes spoke, trembling outside the design, staring at the helicopter crashing
the gates down, while all the while the connecting rhythm blanket suggests the opposite...
but they all can run the mile, the boy, the tree, the fingers mumbling their cut out photo films
into memory transition, and now, the source is a Maple and I am a bone collector.
And finally, the austerity of the world comes crashing down
on the little boy with the holes in his shoes and the dirt on his face,
and he sees the world for what it really is.
No longer is it a land of endless opportunities, but a world closed off
by poverty, by pain.
An endless cesspool of grease floating in a bowl of cheap soup from a
middle-of-nowhere cafe, festering with human feces, made from desire and
power-hungriness.
Don't cry little boy, I, The Tree, shall comfort you in your pain. I
shall shade you from the brutal rays of the daytime stars that burn your
flesh and leave you helpless to the hungry scavengers of this lonely
planet.
Follow your instinct, take control, catch the drops of
dew that collect in the morning and stick in
prehistoric sap. Make bullets out of glass that will
explode the innermost of the soul of even the most
ferocious demon that asks for water made of fire, made
of bronze, made of pretty pretty crystal. Swallow your
fears, drink more coffee, drink more alcohol, drink drink
drink... until you open up a special door in your system
that quells the anger you feel inside.
The tree grows and branches out touching everything it sees.
Using every inch to grow , an aurar growing and growing the love for
the earth it has. A lustful love that grows with penetration as the
wind rustles it's hair. It's branches tickling and caressing the sky and
gives birth to me, as the artist paints it's beautiful leaves and so
the lust of being loved grows and finally EXPLODES!
There are various ways people choose to represent
themselves, tribunal chairs must maintain a balance along side the normal fears.
How attractive this prospect must be.
Have I ever told you that I can speak Finnish?" asked the lover.
"No, why do you ask", replied the joker, somewhat puzzled by the
sudden change of topic.
As if following the lover's train of thought
wasn't hard enough already.
The lover continued:
"I was in Finland for
many years, during the war, and that's where I first learned about the
raining steel drops, or teräsrakeet as the locals call them... the
town folk use strong metal nets to catch the drops, and use them for the most
exquisite steel jewelry!"
"Are you pulling my leg?"
And as the joker joked himself under the firey red skies of day his tulips
pursed the cold blue cheeks of a lover who in return told him tales of steel drops that
rained from the earth upwards.
I feel his hand as smooth as brazen grass, though chewed as
often as a bovine chews its cud. I feel an ice, and empty shell - like
nothing has been there before - and I doubt that anything shall be
there again. Nothing but pain left. Nothing but torture. Nothing but my
sweet yet empty song.
They lay there in the trees in heaven alone as ever. They just hang there.
No one speaks a word, but a man rows by them in the trees of heaven, or is it hell?.
No one knows... but she holds the secret, the girl with the crystal ball.
She emerges with the secret, but no one speaks a word, no one notices a thing,
everyone is alone, everyone just waits.
He lied down inside his heart and the band played cancer.
Wrapped around him a melody, like the cut off tips of condoms melted together to form a line.
The green flame upside down bird sung the song solo when he passed.
(May the darkness of the past cloud your mind until you can think no more.
Only then can you hope to evolve five middle fingers on your hand to use against society,
to free the world and banish the hatred and lies, to live a life as you see fit.)
Doused with water from a cast iron teapot
an ambulatory wishbone builds a great pyramid
out of broken egg shells as a monument to lost love,
while high above it all a daring young aerialist
swings from his own intestines.
A ping! sound, a snap from the silver lighter, its blue flame does nothing for my cold trembling fingers
as I tear tear tear and continue tearing a perfectly proportioned strip off of this hollow tubing.
The grating scratching sounds are multiplied by the millions, especially when esconced in such a dull
dim quiet room. Or is this because my ears refuse to listen to anything else?
Finally done, poised above the torn strip, blue flame lighter doin' the dance underneath,
I inhale and I suck while looking at my eye's reflected on the shiny metallic surface, not once missing a
beat as I chase the dragon to its perfection... where there is no finish line in site...
Smoke trails past the stereo, singular trails and slowly, an image archetypal.
Put it off, adjudicate, investigate the charges of naked opportunism swept aside,
outside. With breakneck speed, bright spells are lettership garbles.
The finger lay suspended in the water of the fish tank,
every once in a while it dodged the two goldfish.
Slowly, the tip of the finger turned to point at me.
I knew then... I was guilty.
Somewhere in the darkness of a rat-hole, lives an old man,
Beware! He knows the innermost secrets, beyond any person can.
The candle holder, not intended for lighting only, alights what all
began...
Blow the thousand whistles with all your might.
Sounds like myriad colours explode from this cacophony of images.
The lizards also celebrate this feast of mirrors that refuse to reflect
anything but the putrid sweaters worn by moths, all hanging in a row
as would properly be seen in the immaculate cottage of a Swiss Tax
Collector.
As deep as a pizza, Cats have been running wild for how ever long cats have been running wild.
Until a kitten can sex a gerbil I bid you farewell.
I wish for you a satchel of volcanoes, a slip cover of wolves, a basket of torn fingers pointed upwards,
an exhaust of noses at mid snot, a lemon stalled in the breech of a tree top,
a tragic longing for the lash that lies on the rim of a cocktail glass.
And so on an angular column the sticks sing songs of wisdom and falsehood.
The spectator sucks the next mans cheek in unbridled lust of being in the realm of his own kind.
The blackbird whispers of the joys of antelopes and their round bones whilst succumbing to the music that witches play above the mountains on the verge of collapse.
The sticks can hold them no more and so the singing stops.
Silence crawls on both knees towards them and slides his smooth hands in wave motions. Rippling softly towards them, creeping genteelly until all is left is a slight ringing. The ringing of fleas telephones. Blood sucking fangs sharpened on battery acid. Jump, fly, land, bite. Enjoy the opportunity of the golden sheep, the fleece belongs to the queen of spirits, but she minds no more than they do.
To contribute to this poem;
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Contributions by:
Bob Watt, Thomas J. Knight, Rea Reabachnerova, Ammar Iqbal, James Garrison, T Anderson, Rob Sear, Nicola Ingram, Pablo L'enfant terrible, Tirval Scott, Twix, Raymond Betancourt, KL120924, Ryan Eliason, Kelly Faye, Bruce Poulton, P Maughan, Hanna Siren, John Blackburn, Amanda CYCC, Ingrid Cruz, Deborah Miller, Passive Void, Diane Thomson, Indira, Meow Beep, Mark Brencher, Philip Stranger, Baz Skilton, Niall Howard, Rebecca Kevill...
