Part Three
sympathetic magic
America, forgive this apostrophe, I'm channeling Whitman— he says his atoms are rushing into the veins of the new revolution, he's assimilating into phosphor dots, trying to form a sincere face, he's easing through our labyrinth with a new heart, pulsing in the cursors in a remote chatbox on the eve of the apocalypse— the future is pixellating into his beard, he is singing:
a million Trojan horses are circling the skies— beware the dark dreams spinning above you
St. Catherine's head
the church is my reliquary, a temenos of bronze and glass— the old men preserved me, separated my head from my body then suspended it in the wall— they don their vestments in the old sacristy and sing in the great hall, bearing the heart of Our Lord as they pass by my window
of all the secrets I hold most dear: the martyrs were perfect only in death— each passing was unique, contrived by their executioners and made palatable by the faithful— even now my fellow saints peer out from their canvases and tapestries with a passivity that belies their pain
chant
the acolytes stooped over the smooth ornamental carafes on the low table
a succoring child blessed my lips, poured the choice wine and chanted, sotto voce:
hair of the dog, hair of the dog, hosanna
epiphany
five toilet paper rolls on the plunger handle, a primitive stupa, a lingam and yoni, the ithyphallic Siva sits cross-legged like me, reading a magazine, looking at five toilet paper rolls on the plunger handle
the first coming
Laocon is still looking up sadly before his own devouring, wondering if this immense snake fell from an emasculated god.
Before antiquity, gods shook the columns of their temples, the marble cracking through the clouds like thunder, a dress rehearsal before the buggering of Ganymede.
With indolent grins they allowed the snake to writhe in a leafy copse, a tendril rising with the moon licking at its canopy until the first woman could be born.
ipsissima verba
the rough beast does not slouch, he walks erect while speaking at small rotary club luncheons or on late-night public access channels, expounding on man's dominion over man
he's pudgy and unassuming, hardly a feral child brimming with preternatural powers— yet he's been cultivating his charm since the advent of sin, he moves incognito, a grass roots antichrist, the man behind the man who never reads Yeats
the world won't end with a whimper, but with a conference call— he'll pull over at a rest stop outside Albuquerque with his wireless remote to organize the endgame from a bathroom stall
Camille Paglia edits on the beach
first draft—Tuesday, 3:00 p.m., New Smyrna:
The mermaids are swinging their butt-thonged bottoms beach to beach, (do I dare to eat a peach? Ha!) they can't sense the horror of the water, the sun, the leering boys with hard-ons (jejune…. Òleering priapistic boysÓ sounds more poetic) who swagger like strangers with guns, blasting music into the sun, (Camus reference may be too oblique) striking poses worthy of Polyclitus. (remember to look at Praxiteles, just for comparison's sake)
A group of well-oiled girls (yes!) toss a ball over the net, a network of tan limbs and plump suburban insouciance (connect this somehow to the Marquis de Sade) thoroughly unaware of the forces bubbling quietly under my umbrella. (Òchthonian forcesÓ may be more to the point)
O felix culpa
She will arrive when the last building collapses
and the corporeal fires flicker into the evening,
when the wind collects bits of ash
and makes the tips of the blackened fields glow.
She will arrive intemperate and invisible,
ready to inter her breath in the broken houses of men.
She has been here since words were realized
and gods were employed to enforce them,
holding the course of temples and water,
steadying the trees as they gripped the earth
with their knotted hands,
sleeping in the white sails of man's first conquest.
commentary:
Something waits to take control of buildings, bodies:
Trishna no longer disguised, nature red in tooth and claw.
Now we know the reason for metaphysics: the holy trophy wrapped between the sheets was a virgin.