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It is now the ninety-fifth day since I played the terminal game at the behest and observance of the panegyric elf machines of the dome. I was successful, and survived. My final score was fifty-eight. I was therefore ceded 312 x 108 sectional currencies and offered to elect the ardor of one dozen Zenebilganubian heretical love clones, to which, may merciful God forgive me, I acquiesced.
My estate covers some thirty bovates. Within its confines there exist three farms, six cottages, a lodge, pastures, meadows, orchards, paddocks, woodland, streams, pools, a river, antiquities, follies, a shoot and a menage. The main residence is called simply 'Old House'. It has eleven bedrooms and the luxuries and facilities one might anticipate; including an indoor pool, a billiard room, a cinema, a music room, a flower room, a birthing room and a torture chamber, where, God knows, I have been sequestered many times already for the amusement and satisfaction of my Zenebilganubians.
Many of the bedrooms go unused, as the Zenebilganubians demand unconditionally that we all share the familial bed (one whole dhur in area) together at every nightfall, or whenever we find the occasion to repose. There have been moments when I have spent some hours with just one or two of them, but more often we are engaged in a larger group - three, four or five at a time, or, as I say, one whole group of thirteen.
Only God can know, whatever God may be, the magnitude of the passion they have put me under. No subversion seems beyond their love and desire. They seem to break in my arms - I break them up like fresh bread - and they turn into beings of the utmost neutrality and chaos, with but one aim; to join me, and me alone, in amorous, wanton, crushing, transcendent ...bliss. They know nothing other than our conjunction, to such a degree that to date my strongest amazement has been reserved in witnessing them function as rational beings in the company of outsiders. For to see them make sense, to acknowledge the formality of a worldly situation, is to recognise a monumental ruthlessness of deception and characterization. I must admit, so shocking this has been that I quickly became mute in the company of all others but them.
Their love for me knows no bounds, these Zenebilganubians, these mock women. I feel as though I am losing my mind, I fear sometimes that there is nothing left to desire, that I have lost my soul...
More strange voices. Tomorrow, back to the stew. There is time.
Two nights ago I dreamt I was lost, trying to find my way back to Twickenham. So many bridges, seeming Venetian, though shit brown. Where the fuck was I? Some weird place like the back streets of Teddington or Isleworth. My ring finger was severed at the second joint. I had taped it back on, thinking it would mend, thinking that my body was powerful enough to bond a severed digit. The people with me did not care. They were rogues and blaggards and heavy drinkers and they smoked cheap cigarettes and had used more drugs than me.
I should get out more; and I have. Friday night to a private garden party where there were many minutes glancing at the feet on display, many more minutes staring at a lovely rump in white linen slacks, perpendicular and orbicular, like tactile mounds of magnificent beef. I watched it tense, twitch and joggle. She kept moving it back and forth and squeezing it nervously: Why - I don't know. Her legs are superb but rarely seen. One day I saw her in a skirt and patterned stockings on the street and I wanted to follow her. I nearly did, but it was difficult.
She disappeared and so did I: I hunted down the congregation, finding them buttered-up in a pub by the river. One way or another we finished with the assignment. I went to the Kebab joint afterwards. First time in six months or more. The main guy smiled at me and spoke in Turkic or Pashto or Dari or something to a new guy - who seemed confused but understood what I needed. I had said nothing. Then I asked the main guy, to be sure: 'Five pounds?' and he said yes and I counted out the coins, bluffing I was sober - which naturally made me feel more drunk. And we had smoked three joints outside The Anchor.
Silent days, in a way, just me and my Zenebilganubians. They are all there now; I've photos of nearly every one; Just two lacunae: the Glastonbury chick from the place and the big-titted rust-red-dyed matron in the blood clinic during my last visit to the hospital. Yes, they are there ...and I am clear of all malignancies, ready to die at the drop of a hat, in perfect health. They can kill me now if they want. Fuck them.
She rolls round - the Sun (she is a woman too - there are no men left - men don't exist): So summer comes. I am ambivalent. She comes too, in white linen trousers, in shorts and flip-flops, in summer dresses with shades and ripe vines. Hot - under the trees. The ground is dry and if you leave shit on the ground it's a thousand pounds.
So much so. Sir Toby asked for a catch, and he gave a sixpence and said 'let's have a song'. It was winter then, but summer in their hearts; They were foreigners but they were not - they were just like you and me. There's a big smell of apples. Warm cider. Endless small joints. The smell of draw. What are these shadows? Push the boat out: Everyone is stoned: No-one will throw stones. It's all fenced off, which is to say; it's all one.
I need another joint - right now. Blow my brains out. Hit the headphones. Nail the beer. Fuck yourself. I have six windows open and I am lost. It's 20:20 and there is plenty of time. Should I watch a Pro at work, or part my hair behind?
I am calling you. Hold my hand. Illuminate me by a fire, speak to me in your summer dress, fill my field of view over the smell of warm apple cider. Be mine, be my beauty.
"Those
who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this
world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."
- Adolf Hitler
Nothing has happened. Probably 33 days to Glastonbury. I have been dreaming about it. Last night, putting a yellow tabard over my orange one, which is to say be a supervisor rather than a steward. I doubt I will be a supervisor this year. I have not been on the boards either recently - following some kind of spat. Again, I expect the worst. Always expect the worst. It will always be bad. I am a fat ugly moron and I get what I deserve. The sooner I drop dead the better. I hope I have a fatal heart attack soon. It would be easier all round. You are all scum too, but I am much worse than you - trust me. We are living in a sea of shit and there is no escape. When I meet anyone now the first thing I think of doing is staring right at them and putting a loaded gun in my mouth - a magnum. It's an automatic response. I see it in my mind's eye; looking them straight in the face with hate and desperation in my eyes and pulling the trigger without saying a word - to pre-empt the end of the conversation, as it were. The flash from the muzzle backlights my mouth and rotting yellow teeth for one perceptible fraction of a second, then the explosion of red, sucked dark by the grey sky, patinates the field of view and embeds in the memory forever. For some reason I always think of shooting myself in the head outside Marks and Spencer on the main road, for the pavement just outside the store seems to somehow embody and personify the foetid fecal discharge of the putrid puss that has coagulated and festered in the gangrenous and cancerous polyp of shrieking insanity of the soulless death camp of murdering fascists who have their bug-eyed and deformed pigrat memetic prodigy vomit and shit in our mouths while we sleep before they rape us and cripple our minds and souls. Heil Hitler. Let us march on a road of bones.
I tell you truly, on my father's non-existent grave, that a night has not gone by for the last month where I have not found myself in bed fighting the sudden, rampant desire to gouge my own eyes out. It is difficult to convey how gripping the temptation is. I could reach for one of the Swissys by the bed and stab at them, but I always want to start clawing at them immediately with my own fingernails. It terrifies me, this desire, so strong it is. Indeed, let me put out the light. Let me start again. I could live in darkness for the rest of my pathetic life. I am tired of porn anyway, and who would sue a blind man?
I am in the gallery. I thought I just saw a rabbit run behind one of the plinths. Probably a good sign. I'm smoking schwag at the moment. Better than nothing. If I meet an angel at the festival next month I will buy everything I can and take it all as soon as possible. As a corollary I also harbour an ambition to die there - to kill myself with an overdose - and never see this place again. They won't find my carcass in the tent until Tuesday or Wednesday. May Christ and his heavenly rapists grant me this last wish; let me lose it big time one last time. Farewell you cunts. Thanks for all your help. It never got weird enough.
There will be some other time, but I cannot leave you now. Another face looks at me - as I stand at the window smoking. Smoky slit eyes where the fence meets the wall, cylon-style snake-eyed dark patches on the right, as I look at it, like a code. What is this face?
These people come and go in time.
In time.
Summer comes. I am Falstaff. I am the child and the man. Walk down the hill - yes.
"Hope
is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that
part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions."
- Henry Miller
O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
- Orsino
Two minutes ago I came to the machine like a half-wit, caught in this eerie knotted skein of mine; a patois of rolling hours ad libitum in which I undertake to kill myself. Slow progress - step by step. The ground is wet again and I can feel my boots sliding under me. Alack, do not let me fall. Gear changes at the end of the drive. Pull back on the wheel like Ripley. Pull back and slow down and take a breath. Where are we now? Was I not back then just now? Was I not over there just now? Did she not cry out just now? Did my forces not array, words flow, dances and shadows occur? God damn it, am I not fighting here, with this high-pitched whine and unsteady steps? Am not I consanguineous? Is this not my blood? But I say to you, well, sir? Well? I will tell you how well, sir: Sixteen Point Two Billion Pounds, sir, and so many wives I cannot count them on my fingers and toes - nor even, note you, my penis, nose and tongue. Maniacs, sir, down to a woman. Made me taste their chocolate buttons...lick them off! Don't look so shocked. Don't act like a hypocrite! By next year I will sire a dozen. And famous, sir? I am a legend, sir. The greatest auteur of the century! Never give an interview, and never trust a wanker, sir!
Where am I now? My bathyscaphe? Goddess and God, I've cleaned up this day. I walk and dwindle - focusing on the dark matter behind me directly, kicking in the sauce, hoovering, cleaning, ordering new headphones, buying batteries and more. I've done my part. I clean my teeth every day. Gulp water. Sparkling water like fresh from a fountain or mountain stream. I order the Wonton soup and steamed rice with the beef. More like Remo now... and it happens that I thought of the venerable and ruthless Chiun earlier - he was the precursor of the old Chinese man in the tower my mind made one day to be a succour. But I had him say "there is nothing here" right then and moved away from it. Within five years I was building white castles in my mind, and after the fall there was me as a lone shadow on a bridge facing the army of evil wild with hate and confidence; but I was so powerful I would defeat them all.
Now I want the ghosts to come.
And take me to another world. Or perhaps the real world; which would be close to a world of madness, so it's said, and so I can imagine, as that region cloud has blown over me, whatever...
Silent darkness. Give me 20 minutes. Let me feel something. Depart me now; move on. Let me sit here silently.
Empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Good; like a feather stroke. I have been pissing volumes. Pissing out that spring water, cooling down, wandering the town with a week off. Where to take luncheon? Should I stop for a drink? Should I buy something? Get the orders in. Stock up. My Imodium is two years out-of-date. And I can take Nurofen now: Besides that Co-Dydramol; no analgesics in two years. I feel my will rising.
Sushi in the fridge, and everything I need. That's it. I am right here.
I take a piss and it ruffles my balls pleasantly. Another half a litre. I reach for the cafetière and pour out the dregs of African fairtrade organic gold medal winning coffee I brewed a day or two ago, thick with sediment, into a wine glass. Still good.
I take a smoke at the window.
Rain. Blessed rain. Music plays.
Just for this moment I may imagine the silent cool night has called me down. I can push the envelope now.
Where to? Hopefully out West in about two months. Auroras low perhaps, all over the sky, right inside my head. Good food to serve here. Good life.
A good life here too, and I am grateful.
Write a letter then, to the British Psychoanalytic Council, tell them that you are ready to leave this world. Explain to them how you seek an epic life. Dragon-sleep. Cast nets of moonlight into the pasts and futures.
These are silent times, just me and the matter. There is a predictability and inevitability. I paced around the town today, looking in shop windows, visiting the barbers, taking mushroom soup and pita in the organic cafe. Now I sit here and I think of putting my arms out like Christ to grasp some thing in my life that I can digest and present to you. There is absolutely nothing.
So to sleep then, and dream into the days.
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Great
business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon
Defiling time now, it seems, in a grand dream, a great bright invisible pleroma of disjunction. An adventure continues apace in the dark at night: One table lamp and two TFTs. The edge of the laser mouse a drop of radioactive blood - or a cherry on a black gâteau, or the sight of the crown, a tumescent labia in the style of... Lights out and I am flying over a river. A man hovers over the ground before me. See how you can lift your arms and then your legs. A wobble and let the sky take you up. Grazed grass is easier to navigate in dreams: No cow pits. The field's community, a grandiose fête; an old memory, in three times; back then, and just now, and very soon, with touches of pitches and dead land dirt bombs with blow and scramblers and for that matter vandalistic fires. The conclusion? One day we will fly. And religion is the evolution of the lies we made for our children. All those old flint mines and exposed rock. How did the fish get inside the rock? And wherefore the stars, and wherefore thou and I live when we must die? Let's make our own world. Why cope with the one we have...
Just one walk, last week, down to Richmond Lock and back. On the turn I see him, by the lock as usual; in his wheelchair. He is with two wankers, and I know I will be stopping.
"Excuse me! Excuse me!"
He grips my hand tightly. He is wearing white cotton gloves. I raised my voice
an octave...
"Hello. You know, I've spoken to you before - about six or seven months
ago." He looks bewildered.
"My friend Terry has just died."
One of the wankers says something which I don't hear.
"Oh no, I'm ever so sorry."
"What football team do you support?"
"I would say...Brentford."
He looks dumfounded. I see half of his teeth are missing.
The loquacious wanker pipes up - a croaky old bastard...
"At least that's a real team, not like fucking..."
"I support QPR!"
"Oh." He is still holding my hand.
"I've only got two weeks to live!"
"No! That can't be right!"
"Yeah."
"Well, I've got to be getting on. I've got to be somewhere."
"Are you coming back?"
"Yes, I'm working my way round. You take care." I lean down and shake
the hand, pulling away, looking right through him: "I'll see you again."
A time out of place. Bowstrings wet. You have me in the palm of your hand. Even a dead dog has teeth whiter than snow. I feel like part of the lie. And nothing, nothing at all, has happened. A broken egg.
The current exhibition is 'evolving'. Children are encouraged to make plasticine figures for an animation. Last week two small girls appeared by my side. The first one held up dramatically her effort - a complex little cat with spindly legs, a skirt - right down to ears and eyes and black dots for the pupils. "Oh that's wonderful! How clever!" I said, enjoying the momentary relief.
I turned to her sister - a tiny girl of about four - she swept into my view as though on a conveyer. Her hand thrust forward, her stance proud, her fingers holding nothing but a tiny stick, the size of a rollie.
I flipped out and laughed - the demented laugh of a slimy failure with cracked yellow teeth like a bedraggled old picket fence. It was a Michael Caine special.
"It's a worm," the tiny little girl said. Her mother laughed and said 'it's a worm' too.
"Oh that's brilliant!" For some reason I was so excited I was almost out of breath. I assumed a stance and took them both in: "Well...I really don't know which one I prefer..." Which was true.
A time out of place.
All good days in their way. Warmer days and thicker blood. A stronger heart and a good, firm bed. You say you pull on the anchor in your chest that keeps you in the below. Jerk and tug on it: Thrash around to break free. Can you imagine any more that you have a soul? Can you imagine dark forces at work - forces of the night, that is - mythical, benthic, of the imagination? What rises up besides this 300 channels of bullshit - the petty vendettas - the little gold stars?
Time to go crazy. Retire from public life, as it were. Nothing but name, rank and serial number. These thoughts are stepping stones, with each one another pretend life. One minute you are a billionaire, in another you are a cloud of Raptors, an improved destroyer, the new Kubrick, a lucky find, a willing victim, a man of note. None of this necessary for the madman who breaks natural law.
I am dead under water bitch, drowned in this world of men. Remember you put me there. I dreamt I was a squirrel in a tree sealed off from everything. I see the world through crystalised tree blood. I see your red eye in the sky, watching over every atom. You look for me everywhere, as does every living thing, but you dare not kill the trees. You ached to kill me, and I dreamt into eternity in a shaft of light from your unseeing stars.
"Frankincense
and other spices were indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed
part of the religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that
of a sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable
the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands of
other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and nobles suffered
from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and required an antidote to evil
smells to make them endurable."[1]
Red means nothing, white means nothing, blue means nothing, organized religion means nothing, private property means nothing, wealth means nothing, monogamy means nothing, status means nothing, "me" means nothing, "you" means nothing. The fear which separates us means nothing. Or rather they all do mean something: more labels. Whereas as soon as I drop the labels, wow, the sky's the limit. I'm free.[2]
A time out of place. Back to the body, the interior. No charge for the white screen. No chance. No change possible - other than to hold a hand grenade to your chest, which is to say to resort to the tin and the home grown from The Forest of Dean, where The Bad live strange lives.
I imagine all sorts of things. Just now; the computer exploding. Voices outside.
That was earlier. Depression now; I don't know how deep. Some kind of flu. Off work again. Have piled on weight. My eye is jaded: Words come like drops of watery jism from a low-life serial masturbator cracking one off for the fuck of it - friggin' in the rigging - in a crack-brained, half-arsed, half-cocked and desperate fatidical Jerk-off.
Usual round of influences. Every night I dream of Glastonbury...in some way.
The other night I came round in bed. I wasn't sure if my arm was broken again. It felt wrong. Then; who was I? Where was I? Had I awoken from a dream? It seemed like a dream, this past few months. The room was bathed in a soft light. This thing on me - what is it? How could I get so lost - drift so far?
I felt the callous. A slight rawness, a bump in my fingers the size of a young girl's tit, or half a walnut, wrapped in sinew.
Do not look to the past, Brownstein says, you keep things alive past their time.
Kids outside, youngsters. Shouting. Swearing. Night has long since fallen. The wind is changing - to blow from the east - bringing snow and high winds.
A snowstorm.
No, this is London. The BBC say light snow showers. Minus seven is now minus one. I'm not to care. I have two radiators in the room and one is on permanently. I'm sweating all the time. It's good for the lungs.
No looking at the past, he says, but The Twelfth this year is the twentieth since that night in Hollywood, where we drank champagne and smoked dope and I broke down, stayed up with Nigel all night, and in the morning we visited a waterfall nearby and I wore his tweed jacket and smelled of his aftershave.
I wore many of his clothes over the next few weeks.
His partner, Dorothy, was an Irish Catholic. It amused her to celebrate The Boyne. It was psychodrama, perhaps.
Perhaps something else.
Within a month I walked ball-swollen down the hill under the light of the moon and Nigel turned me away at the door. I went to the chapel at Founders. It was late. I hesitated. As I touched the door I saw a fly careen and wheel in my field of vision and land on my hand - as if in reverse motion. It was not real, but very convincing.
I entered and walked down the aisle. Nothing. At every pew was a copy of the Oxford Psalter. I picked one up and opened it.
Away from me, all ye that work vanity...
And I took it away with me.
I can't find it now. I think I may have thrown it away recently. It was ripped in half at that page, and the covers were torn off. It meant nothing, and I worked that out twenty years ago.
Silent cold night call me down. Call the moon down and drown me at her breast. Call up fields of green under a golden late sun. Pour through me, around that essential thing, and give me life again.
tired
wingsYou tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
Lethe's cloudy waters mirk these days. Forgetfulness. Here I am again. With a hundred night-time dream thoughts. Clever lines. Too clever. In the realm of a loud fart. I did my best old chap; At the time it seemed like a wizard prang.
From a tactical point of view you could see how it could happen: Everything is stacked up; the fridge, the box file for the pills, the delights and accoutrements of the bedside cabinet. I am a man of leisure. Money flows through me. I am an expert on the town's takeaways. I always tip generously.
What is more, people owe me money - and in some cases they will have to pay. In every instance, though all of them disparate, someone is breaking the law, occasionally me.
I think about the first poetry, when language was still young, and there were few words. Did those first words - alliterative, metered, rhyming, figurative, become a kind of prayer, evocation or spell? Was religion born then, at that very moment? Or pure song? Then I think of Jonathan Aiken...and I think he went to Broadmoor because a pissed guy got up on stage at a Zappa gig way back in the UK and said that word: Broadmoor, and Aiken went to gaol because he was a lying, mendacious cunt - and a greedy bastard to boot. And that's unusual for a politician I say; and I laugh out loud.
I'm on a roll. And, as I say, I'm in a strong defensive position.
Riverman plays. I walked over the river earlier, saw it flow, and crossed the bridge to Beneath The Below A River. It was white and grey, the broad stream. I watched it with a coffee and avoided the eyes of a young and pretty red-nosed blonde sitting at one of three tables on a huge terrace as she leaned in towards the man with her, and of course I wondered at why no lover had ever moved toward me.
Then through the streets of East Twickenham - the Richmond Road to be precise. I cannot now abide the river way. The ones alone worry me, and where there is more than one my mind casts their togetherness against my loneliness. I cannot remember off-hand walking the river with someone...in 15 years.
So the streets then, mostly brown. Brown everywhere it seems. Warm, it seems. Everywhere a welcome. When I stopped at the Shanghai for Dim Sum and Jasmine Tea no one bothered me. The seats were soft leather, a deep red, the small cup brown again, the tea a dark grey-green. Autumnal colours. And I rolled a cigarette before the first course and waved it at the waitress on my way to the door. And she smiled back and nodded.
A man came up after the main course and asked me what I thought and, more specifically, whether it was enough. The answer was no; the meal was generally poor - but I didn't want to be critical. I suggested he had stiff competition in the form of the vegetarian curry house on the other side of the road. They offered good deals for lunch. I recommended he try it...and wished him luck.
No bother, you see, idling around like this. When I'm home there's always the bar, and the bar. The fridge is stacked with everything - including organic wine, real lemonade, sparkling water, jiggers, chocolate truffles and Moretti beer.
And nothing that I can see on those brown streets.
And the river flows right through this place, white and grey, with gulls and geese and mussel shells and a promise of the sea. Masts, cabins and what is left of rigging run lines and forms on the scene. Flags and pennants don't register. A gull will patter with its feet underwater near the shoreline and ripples will radiate out. As it glides and jitters the low slung sun will catch the water and light will glitter around the white and grey brush strokes of the bird bobbing on a microcosmic scale on this mirror-grey plate of universal life-blood.
Green and brown. All heating up. The days grow longer now, despite the cold.
So I pay in cash at the Shanghai...tip ten per cent...and never go back.
And I wonder what right I have to the river which runs through each one of us. On borrowed money, borrowed time, my fathers cut up the world and broke rice bowls to build this. Easy money in Fat City. Just check the copy and resize and you can have all the drugs you need. We'll even cook for you. We'll serve you ale and wine. We'll pick up the pieces after. Then your time will have come to pass, and you'll only be confused and unknowing.
No, and who was the first one to cry? What bio-chemical function does that serve?
Closed up streets and a full belly. I'm big now, ready for the new year.
Don't give in.
...
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Commons License.
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