One day, he says, I will hold all -nesses in my hands
Bright white whiteness
All wildernesses
They form, in spectacle-circus-ring cant, coils
we can no longer decipher each other
The lion faces in his mouth the possibility
of a head, likely hatted
in all likeliness
and go
Clusters of neurones pass each other monoamines
in order to say, this time it’s different
One day, he says, I will hold you in my hands
Through seventy pushups with Dougie on his back
he wheezes I will hold you
A crosslegged yogi is the closest thing in this cell to a redeemer
Dougie says, will you bend your body in prayer?
They’ve taken his pictures off the wall
Bodies bend and build
Dougie calls and Pavlovian methods answer — can’t you hear it?
The chiming of bells
Dougie yogi on his back,
crosslegged chewing — i am a savoir bind my eyes — a tattooed finger
jailbird jerky
First-homeowner’s rebate in seven instalments
Dougie says, the body is a temple in another temple
and that temple in another
A myriads myriad of palaces in which to store your mind, upon whose walls are inked
the names of those who own you
bind my eyes i do not need to see the name Dougie glisten with sweat
Seventy more
Seventy more
He has drawn in the place of the photos what the photos depict
One day, he says, I will crumble before you
Such a fine temple does not lie
about its own destruction
Dougie allows him one cigarette a week on her back
while Dougie does two hundred pushups
He must learn to cross his legs like maharishi mahesh yogi and not slip off on sweat
Agility is the prima ballerina assoluta, Dougie says
A voice that sounds like bells rings out in his dreams, the circus-ring draws closer,
a kindness to his skin
thank him thank him
In this cell hide suggestions to be inked for those who cannot read without glasses
He will know enough is enough when his cell
calls to be crumbled
upon whose flag will I lay down my life?
The lion’s head answers for Saint George, his teeth are ciphers
shaped by the bones of dragons
don’t you see will you never see?
We can only be read through our great sadnesses
They are the marks on all the walls of all our temples, the only marks
One day, he leans against her forehead,
I will hold all -nesses in my hands
It is for blindness that Milton wrote and Homer sang out to be sung to
What is limp and wretched in my wake will give you
the answer
See, you will not find signs of weakness looking at my strengths
Dougie never slips but is the first to admit slipperiness as possibility
and therefore as friend
In the second before death with Dougie on his back
He understands the possibility of sightedness in blindness
The muse feeding Milton drops of milk from her coffee-coloured breast
and him reciting milk-pearls to his scribe
Will you promise to see truth in the many-coloured glass?
We come through the door in seven ways if it is open
and three if it is locked, Dougie says
He is given the art of facelessness and the gift of monoamines
when inside the lion’s maw
I will reimburse no-one
nothing
One hundred days of potters potting will not suffice for what is to come
The jury has reached its decision
Unanimously, we will amend the law of the dead
and so it is done
Fires lay waste to impeached bodies
Ashes scatter through olive trees while the living drink wine from funeral urns
He is still inside the circus-ring cat as his own exequies turn traitor
obsequious to the authority of those who own him
It is not the lion’s body — tauthaunched plinth-bottomed overriding sand —
that knows Dasein but its teeth, sharpened on the myths of dragons
and the grinding-bones of sacked mutton
his being-toward-death is not his own but another’s
says Dougie as the first and last cigarette of the week is smoked on his back
In the wild he would attack hessian sacks lumpy with victuals and brawn
— or with sand, slumped over
aluminum frames, signalling construction —
never having known, caged-creature, the slow-eyed wet-roiling peace
that occurs after a kill
Dougie does not partake in tobacco
Je ne mange pas de ce pain là, he says
The lion does not know the myths under whose sole aegis he acts
says Dougie and his cross-legged almost-but-not-yet maharishi mahesh yogi,
who slips not in the condition of sweat,
acts under the star of Dougie
He covers vast and holy ground each millisecond spent
interfacing feline teeth,
dialoguing in a household à trois
Only vastness and holiness can achieve a two-way conversation between three
Who is carrying who? Am I carrying you, god?
His priest does not dare recognise the humanity of his femme de ménage
Her dermis welted red-black-blue signals a reimbursement
by needles and condomless congress for hundreds of bad daddy cheques
He ministers her sacraments from afar
touch-shy
shy of everything
he who has known no love since childhood, smile
Our muse will come from among the downtrodden
There is no other way to inside out the vision of the world
whose veil is café au lait and stock prices soothsaying
I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; no mortal can lift what is not there
See in your orange juice sein und zeit, says Dougie
A vast interest network — electron-filigree in permanent
lowest-price exchange — in exchange for an ordinary glass of OJ
You must break your breakfast apart in contempt of comfort
And fait attention that sympathy with the degraded
does not become love for what degrades them
Dougie chews jailbird jerky
to remind him of frailness
It is Dougie now holds all -nesses
— as sweat to the warrior, as sight to the seer —
it is love without need that leads us there,
fury that returns us snapping awake
as the lion unlocks his jaw
_______________________________________________________
The Eight of Swords and the Nameless Arcanum (Tarot de Marseilles) from Derek Jarman's In the Shadow of the Sun (1981); music by Throbbing Gristle.
Eight of Swords: Critical position, censure, crisis, chagrin, examination, research, control, condemnation, judgment, sickness, calumny. Reversed: Difficulty, obstacle, accident, treachery, fatality, adventure.
Nameless Arcanum: Death certainly is only relative and the death of the form may mean the commencement of life on another plane. Birth down here may be seen as a sort of death of a higher existence. "The veil and mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher . . ." (Waite) Higher to lower as well.
