A Dream, Bizarre

Warning: Graphic content involved.

Windfalls when night falls
Caused the elder leaves to shake,
Trembled by their oaken limbs;
Their pitter-pat on window flat
Still haunts my stoic soul.

I
The Clock


Its is dark… it is night. The frightfulness of the thunderstorm outside pales my already bloodless face. It can see every raindrop as they splatter, as they fall, a thousand little lives smashed ‘gainst my windowpane: each one of them a coup de grace to my soul. I know everything will be fine, so long as it rains. It’s the thunderclaps on hazy autumn nights that frighten me. Afraid I may be, but never scared; I could not allow myself the pleasure of the latter—it is one that could only be indulged by one stronger then me.
Another thunderclap is coming, another drain of life from my clammy face. The rain is beating harder now, can you hear it? Perhaps if you opened the window more then you would know. It is so hot outside, even with the rain. This morning little drops of sweat greeted my cheeks. Which is better: sleepless nights of rain, or fogs of sweat in the morning? None, I suppose… but perhaps, a combination of both tonight.
I will not sleep tonight; I don’t think my mind would let me. Long hours I have already sat waiting in my bed sheets, but to no avail. The elusive sprite of sleep has yet again managed to haunt me.

With her long and wispy trails
Held fast in child’s tales.

There is one thing that offers me solstice in nights such as these. The dark-hued, clock that stands parallel to my bed’s foot. Its hands reach out from me towards the glass, its ticking tells of nights that passed, of nights that would soon come again. I stared at it and it stared back at me, its wood sprung hard as the hickory tree. It was a good tree that bore it, a strong Hickory branch that reached high beyond those of its neighbors. Now it stands silently within my room, a captive unto my delight.
Yet still, it reaches for me—reaches for my soul sometimes, I fear. Its hands are harder now then ever before it was a tree: their as metallurgic spheres encased in time. Encased in time, yet ever not—its hands commune hourly with the great father of its machination. Every communing is a bitter laugh thrown fast at my restless soul.

Tick-tock tick tock—
Further into line,
Click clock, nick nock—
With every devilish chime.

Pitter patter,
Splitter splatter,
Now far more than then;
Pitter patter,
Bitter banter,
I shall not sleep again.

II
The Turning of the Hands


The hard metal of your hands
Meshes the flesh of my heart:
Cold syllables ever fresh,
Which undertones awaken.
They shiver me, embitter me
For they hark unto my terror,
Each tick a resounding mocking
Of our lives that end too soon.
Each hand moves in symmetry
With its brother, a mystery:
That each hand wrought its separate path
From its twin—one fast, one slow
Yet both the same in its design.

Oh, that I were a clock, never
Made of a fallow flesh and bone;
That I could dictate reign of men,
As mine watches above me now.
And, as I watch it, it stares back
Its glare a flare unto my face:
Each hollow tick of witchcraft knells,
Heralds of wicked alchemy.
The glass before it separates
As I hear its tick, and it glows;
The crystal swirls, as if surreal
(With force projected, I can feel
Its pattern twisting as it slows.)

Alchemists, lend me your stylus
I’ve seen the magic of us men!
The crystal seas of terror wash
As I commit to pen my gaze,
(The herald of our summer days
Would choke if he saw as I see.)
The hands of steel become as glass,
And glass is made as water flows
So freely amongst riverbeds—
Could there be found a sight more strange?
A liquid held in limpid air,
Suspended by its alchemy—
Yet constant turning, aridly.

What was that—a split-splat upon my bedchamber window? Ah no, it could not be, the rain has ended now. Then where comes the intense veiling above my mind? From the clock, those dreaded hands—spinning, they have warped before me. The night is quiet now, so silent it is nearly thundering; and is lost in a haze as blurry as the sight that is unfolding now. Unfolding, enfolding: the folding of all sights are forgotten one hundred times over compared to this.
As it turns and morphs before me, there is something within that I have never seen outside of a dream. Flashing images of green pastures within the clock, behind the level glass-pane: banana trees and cockatoos that stand beyond these and, afar, the heights of distant mountaintops. Snow covers the peaks and touches the sky with pales of pink, and mist, and tears of wine are spouted forth from the swiftly waning sun.
While I watch, all around the clock has morphed instead. Now the clock is pure and whole, and my bed and chamber that have been made a vaporous smoke. Like gunpowder spewed forth from cannons, so is now my surroundings. All that stands before me now is the clock, its enchanting hands beckoning me forward in a dance of vigorous enticement.
Then comes the gong and, with it, a bang. Falling, my face strikes my pillow and darkness surrounds me. The world is turning black now—so black that I can nearly taste its voids. My consciousness lessens as the clock strikes its hour hand against the twelve.

Fitfully, I fall asleep.


III
The First Enchantment


Waterfalls of sound surrounded
My body, as I fitfully saw
The being of my soul entwined
By time—this was my doleful dream.

Then all was silent in my sleep,
The haunt of it a crypt to keep.

There is fresh air everywhere, hot and muggy; the swell of it nearly fills my lungs with liquid at every breath I take. There is no sound though: save for the beating of my heart, the rise and fall of my chest as I heave deeply of the air. I can nearly taste it: little beads of dew forming upon my tongue and brow. It is sweat. I can taste it. The salt is so thick I can nearly chew the grits. I do not open my eyes though; if the air itself seems like this I do not know what I would perceive of all that surrounds me.
There are smells too: smells of fresh rain. Yet the ground is drier then a log in winter before it is thrown into the flames. There are the smells of passion fruit, and orchids, and one thousand different Epiphytes, all with their own rich and earthy fragrance.
There are sounds that hedge round about me: euphony and cacophony each mingle with each other to form an entirely new class within themselves. I feel as if I were to reach out towards them, I might catch some of these wispy notes within my hands. Would I be able to feel the gloom of them, I wonder? There would be no way to tell.
And yet I can feel them as they swell, as they dance around me within this humid air, amongst the dewy seas of foliage: a rustle in the grass, a slither between the holes of the canopies, like snakes that sway within the marshland brush. The sounds of these things should be music in itself, I’m certain that they are, within some culture that bores itself caverns within my mind. Would this culture bear the same resemblance to this place that I feel myself within now? I cannot tell for, as of yet, I dare still to not open my eyes. If I were to, I fear that that enchanting spell it holds over me would be broken beyond all usefulness.
But does one need sight to place himself within a true reality? By all means, does not the blind beggar see just as well as we do, though without the same sensations of color and expression? Yes, I say he does. For though unable to peer within these dimensions he lays claim to the throne of the realms of sound, which govern even over that which we see. Is not the eye easily deceived?
Oh, but deceive me no more, dream! The fathoms of chasms hid beneath your oceans are unknown to even one such as me. The azure fogs of your riptides flow more bountifully then the sounds that bear witness upon my soul. What dire needs we have of thee that, standing often before us in our slumbers, resist our memories when the time comes for us to wake. Oh! That I were given the wings of Hermes, that I may fly after thee and capture your bounties before I awake, to lay them before the sights of men. Then…then!—then I would have no need to keep my observations to but sight and smell but would behold you in naked splendor. Then would awake the dawn of the newness of mankind, the scaling of unimaginable heights of depth, and all would then be able to perceive your trickeries.

And worship thee, and worship thee
Beneath the luscious apple tree;
As your sister, Amphitrite,
Debauched my mind with each delight.

And so, I will open my eyes, to see what I must see.


IV
The Second Enchantment


I have watched the flickering fire-falls of my ancestors. Each flame that has reached high into the starlit domes of the northern skies have likewise lit their candles upon my soul. I have feasted upon the carcass of my fallen enemies as the darkness has lingered into day; I have quaffed the mead from the many skulls of my victories.
I am the pagan that sits upon the silent edge of the world. Oh yes, it is silent. I have been there. I have sat upon it. I have dangled my limbs out into the lustrous morn. There is naught there that speak; naught there that even breathe. To do so would be the defiling of purity. To do so would destroy what beauty there has been left to us within the world.
I have sat within the world but, still of yet, have hated it. The hate boils up within my very marrow and consumes my bones within me. I have hated all that look upon me as I dance naked with the starlight. I have hated those that dare to search inside the maggot burrows of my soul…

I have hated men most of all…

Yes, men—nasty blood-ridden men. Men that dare to assume that they have the rights to sovereignty over me, men that presume that they alone are the masters of the soul. To dominate the individual is to put to death what remains of humanity—dominate yourself if you will, I shall escape from you. Up…far into the mountain holes I will climb. Dare you to try and catch me? My stalwart spear shall gut your bellies!
Ignorant—ignorant all of you! Ignorant of what makes a man feel, of what defines humanity. You believe that you hold sway over me? Ha-ha-ha! I laugh at you and will dance all the more wildly because of your impudence. Watch my phallus slap against my thighs, till it is sore with rubbing. My teeth shall break beneath the bones of your ancestors; my eyes will drip with the blood that you have once denied me. Yes, watch me in my debauchery—I will drink of the dreaded Absinthe and still will not be touched accordingly. Watch all you men of society—poor, useless, ignorant society. Watch you kings and rulers, watch you men of science and theology, watch you makers of all moral divinations and social calamities.
Bastards! Bastards and Whores the lot of you! For a mess of pottage you would sell your soul to that which you most fear—and for what: for the filling of your belly. A knife to your belly and watch your dancing gut fall before your feet. Dance, dance, dance—fuck, fuck, fuck. Lift your cups high and I shall fill them with fire and morphine. Lift your voices up into the air and weep, for the pagan will not be satisfied.
I have not been satisfied by the burning brightness of the moon. I have run with the devil-wolves of my ancestors and have filled my bellies with the flesh of both beast and virgin. I have not found solace in the cold water that fills my face, or in the hot liquors that consume my body.
To religion may go the Devil, the wise goat himself, and still man would not be satisfied. Whether I be pagan alone, or a upstanding man of virtue, why should I be none the different? Society hates what it cannot understand and mankind loathes what it cannot contain. I cease to understand myself, and yet, I despise what I have become. What makes a man “upstanding” rather then little more then beast—a mere curvature of the spinal column? Have I not slept the same sleep as they, have I not dreamed? I have wandered to and fro amongst the earth, there are few upon the continent that cannot say they know me. I have eaten food as they—though it is of stranger flesh—but does that matter? To me the social man is evil to eat the flesh of beasts, just as I to them to eat of other meats.
Fight, fight, fight—die, bleed, drown. Life has found no meaning to me and so I have thrown myself at the mercy of the bayonet. Stab me once, stab me till your arm cleaves off—it does not matter to me. I have drowned in my own bile since the day I have been born—oh sick and disparaging man. I have loathed you and your children as they have loathed me and I have forgiven naught, for I follow not your vile ways. Love and virtue, freedom and mercy: that which you say you uphold you have murdered in your ignorant stupidity. So cleave me again, vile nigger-man! In death I will drink my own blood in defiance of your savage barbaric state.


V
The Third Enchantment


I have seen heroes gone before
Through woes and perils past,
To etch their face in history lore
And hope that it would last.

I’ve seen men walking bravely through
Myriads of flood and flame,
Only to find that naught was new
And do it once again.

And the heavens have drunk sulfur
And bled with leprous eyes
While tears form drops of water
Men drink, and thus, despise.


Oh for yet another enchantment! Now all has been lost from me. The clock has now begun to tick at last, and all that I have heard or seen is now lost from me. I sit now within a cave—dear travelers! No cavern dug by the brutish hands of the great Cyclops himself could compare to this. Endless spires cleave straight to the cranium of it: mammoth proportions of earthen delights. The spires are all the teeth of a beast, I fear. A giant beast, a monstrous beast; a beast that, from the dawn of time, has slumbered within the stasis pool of the blood of humanity.
What monstrous spires, what heinous sires! Crows have hidden in the secret cavities, their entrance ways hidden behind a sea of bats. There is no sound, there is not even a single breath. Ah me, not a breath—my mouth bleeds moist droplets of quicksilver that drip down around my toes. A forest could be contained in here—one or one hundred and it would matter not—the great vastness of it all would swallow these and still not be slightly filled unto the smallest mouthful.
Were the moon here she would shirk in shame, the clouds would gather their skirts in shame. The drops that fall forth from those stalactites seem that they could contain the South China Sea. Hot blasts of air heat my face. My mind is trapped in a whirl of stillness, of silence, the flesh of stone swirls round and round about me.

Solid and solemn,
Sad yet astute,
The mistress of silence plays
Upon a lute.
And spirits rise afore my eyes
Far too vast to count,
Their wispy hails of bodies quail,
Shirking round about.

Is it a mist I have seen, is it a fog? Never could it be. It feels not wet but sickly warm and moist upon my limbs as it passes by me. I have seen the vast hordes of armies felled, whence I soldiered far into the continent—yet nothing before like this. There are millions there—ah no—that be far too stringy of an estimate. Can a man number the vastness of the sea, or tell of the creatures upon the earth? What they could be in number one could never tell.
They smell of fire and of melancholy: the souls of the endless dead, but dead by what, I cannot discern. I have read of Hades. I have read of Hell. If the accounts of the travelers be true, then this could not be that which all fear to enter whilst they lie upon their beds of passing. I have seen yet through a glass darkly, and yet now face to face! How I wish now that blindness could once again return to me. How I understand and tremble at the light.
Ah me—ah they! What sad, useless sufferings. They are not the dead I see but the spirits of those that are yet alive. They should be dead through, for reason of sufferings. They have not suffered; they have been—in their manner—the suferee. Vile personage you are, oh spirits of commerce and wisdom. What lectures of pain you have visited upon all of humanity. You have slit the throats of Purity, slit the throats of Art. And for what purpose have you done these things—the purpose of your censorship, for the purpose of your money?
Oh insufferable, vile men; that I had done away with you long ago, when thou were still unborn within thy mothers womb. I would have done the world a better end for it, and upon hearing my deeds men would have raised a theatre in my honor. They would have rejoiced then and called me the conqueror of sorrows, the banishment of all needless sufferings. For what is suffering except that a man would wish to overdo his fellows. What greater purpose, therefore, then to place a censor upon the individual, to deny him the right to speak as equally as me or they?
In fear you have done this, oh useless, pitiless souls. Yes, I visit no pity upon you—only hate. Hatred for all that you have done to destroy the mind that has by far exceeded your own; in fear of the bizarre, in fear of the unknown. You have hunted us down and set fire to our faces. You have ripped our children from the womb and have used their blood to oil the hinges of your spectacles. Why do you persecute us, why do you flee? Do you not see that we had loved you once before, that we had tried to set you free?

And a tomato for you
And a tomato for me,
We captured the curb
Of Caribbean Sea.
And we hid in coves that you
Would dare not to find;
Art in man—as lovers two—
Trapped within our mind.


VI
Impressions of Beauty


There have been Colors trapped in here
Before the dawn of time,
Before the spirits last were here,
Before the scheme of rhyme.

I’ve seen the creeping ponds of Blue
That mingle on the floor
With creamy wings of swans that knew
Each signal gone before.

The Yellow frost in fields of corn
Have melt to stones of Green,
That gaze with passion, gaze with scorn
Upon the view, obscene.

And little spoons of childhood
Recall the blooming rose
That spins her Red in soil good,
Her scents invade the nose.

Orange sits on the windowsill
And Orange soon may rot.
For while he sat, so ever still,
A dismal cold he caught.

The muggy bogs are filled with Brown—
A muddy, messy sort—
That taints even a pagans crown
While oft disguised as sport.

And White be bold, and White be pure,
Hear now your lavish bells;
The little girl that carts manure
Lives only ‘cause it sells.

Black is bitter in revival
And terminates the day,
With sounds of dusks sweet survival
A song of nonny-neigh.

And round about the fireplace
Does Violet sing of woe,
Her lilting songs of commonplace
Rise over common throe.

Aqua pillars and Marine glass,
Yet this song too must soon be passed.


VII
Enter the Bizarre


Ferrets carting figs passed by me once, they gave me an odd, angry look then passed straight on by. They gave me a look—not because I looked at them, but because it was that they beheld themselves in me. I shuddered once then to think about it, yet in recollection, it does not seem to dreadful a thing.
The cave has stopped growing, the spirits have abated their movement; now only silence and water flow before me. What is movement—to move ones form from one place to another, a series of well-controlled falls? How much easier it were then that I traveled, not in body, but in mind. Ah, ye!—I see that you have done so too, traveler! Though, I assure, I have trotted around the globe far more often then you. I have seen the banks of the Thames before water had entered their beds. I have seen the monuments of France erected. I have tasted every spice and followed the Sultans of the east on their merry chase of the gold-inlaid gazelle.

I have seen water
Spilling in salty splashes
From the Herons beak.

I have walked the tightrope between the stirrup and the anvil of the Elephants ear. Suffice to say it was small—I have traveled Africa too. I have danced the Congo beats of the savage tribes and waved my imagination as wildly as they do their spear. I have killed each one of their boy-chiefs—every single one of them. With poison and with divination I have burned them and have sucked the marrow from their bones so that I might best understand my enemy. I have thrown clocks at nose of the Sphinx and have broken it. Mummified in a barge, I have watched as my dummy soul has drifted down the Nile.
The vastness of the Amazon could not contain me. I have traveled down every tributary and have seen the villages there. I have drunk the serpent-mead of the natives and have followed them as they hunt the panther. My feet have felt of mud and insect, and scarce have I found a piece of my ankle that has not been a leech. Nesting with the hooting baboon I watched the stars at night while they spoke to me of many things. Things that would dare not even to enter a child’s fantasy.
I have lifted my phallus to the sun and dared its heat to bake me! It has not and, therefore, I have conquered it too. Mars is dead. Saturn has lost her virtue. I have drunk rum and lemonade in May, beneath the shade of a bridge that crosses over the gentle rippling of the brook. Could a place be more wonderful then this, the lovely village where I have grown up, where I shall die? Nay, nothing could, yet in itself—in its tiny succulence—it contains a thousand universal scenes.

Round about the garter
Without a single care;
Carry to the larder—
We’ll finish her from there.

Round about the anus
Of Mother Nature fair,
Child dances blameless—
A blaze of Teddy Bear.

Silverfish have swum in the puddles of my mind since the dawn of time. They run here. They run there. And always they have crept all across and throughout the insides of imagination. What is imagination, but the brilliant gastro of the intellect, a churning lake, wherein ideas are formed?
My mind has burned with fire, with fire and with gossamer since I’ve dreamt. Oh yes, I have dreamt, and my dreams have always fallen to the baser levels of humanity. I have trod the filth of mankind within my hand. I have both ruled over them and wept with the blood of their infirmities. I have seen the naked child weep beside her mother whom, enchanted by narcotics, has become a puddle of vomit. I have kissed the lips of a hunchback and made love to the circus treats.
Men whom, since the dawn of time have been an oddity, I have adored. Let the ordinary be ordinary and die by way of their stuffed fallacies. I shall sleep with the heathen and perform the rites of the infidel. I shall break my bread with Egypt and drink with the followers of Agamemnon. I shall rip the liver from Hector and drink the bile thereof so I may understand what makes man believe that he can defeat gods.

Shall fire condemn me
Shall fear consume?
I sleep in ponds of poison,
Surrounded by stone nectarines.

Light shall pour in all around me. Yes, around me—I can even feel it now; bright lights from the snow-mountains from the north and, with it, the comforting smell of pine. I have tasted honey-wines from the farthest reaches of Persia, I have discovered the delicacies of the unknown islands of the Orient. Thyme and cinnamon lay siege to my senses, I have become intoxicated with passion for living.
The pebble-beaches of Normandy, covered with November fog, do jar my memory. I can hear the sounds of rolling waves slowly beat a drum…gently…gently.
Rock me to sleep, oh boundless eternity, life could never be more desirable then seen beneath of the shade of your beauties. A walrus, with tusks of silver, swims to the shoreline to great me. His wise face bearing the boundless tales of one thousand centuries.
I have sensed the primordial cells within my blood, beckoning to the call of the fire-dance of my ancestors. I know not how, I know not when, yet still the dance does well deep within me. Alas, if all men could feel as I! Ah then would not the world—would not life—be far less wretched then in its existing state. Ah contrast! Ah farce! Life was meant to be enjoyed, not to be wept over. To weep is to live, alas. Let me never again see melancholy. Instead, let me imagine. I give myself over to the sights and smells of insanity. To be sane is but to understand oneself. Therefore, it is the world through the rites of ordinance that are given over to insanity.
Oh, let me sleep—let me live again. I shall be as the child and therefore, make new wisdom. I shall drink the soul of mother earth and become satisfied. I shall embrace the understanding of beauty and, therefore, shall become beauty in itself. Yes, beauty—beauty through the rejection of ordinance, beauty through the rejection of boundary. Only the boundless are notified, it is those that reject the Philistine that are free. Ah, let me release myself into the floodgates of a single thought and I shall exceed immortality. Time and purpose shall have no meaning for me, I shall surpass humanity. And so I shall, I will shut my eyes. Alas!

Let me dream.