BLOOMSDAY

Quince Bitter

Quince bitter
And the yarrow of her tongue

Hard against the shims of my thighs
A lingcod sucking milt

And the fainting spells as always
The fainting and swooning

And indifference to eels tongue
Milt and joss

Copeland et al

Head cove to scapula with iron scrims
Steel charnel bone

Cudgel driven joist to hilt
Xyster chisels manse from glenoid

(and the pain)

A million times worse than cholera
Or whooping

ORGANIZED DERISION

Clod Between the Weal

And her hair black as a murder of crows cutting into the sway of my hips moving inward then out trying to echo the suckle of her mouth coaxing a stiffening in the (Valhalla) the Norse clod

between the weal of my legs gone numb and unresponsive to touch and tongue and crows feathers

In The Barrows of Her Skirt

She mulled apples rotting in the barrows of her skirt where she kept her keepsakes a bird’s shell and a heel of dry hard bread she pilfered from the baker’s when his back (was front) to her

and smoke quailed his eyes with bad thoughts of his wife’s paps hung like dead men his fingers disjointed and garroting the peril of her neck his cock roan and trill abrading the stock of his leg

where rickets and jackdaws fraught skin from hollow and she thought if only she could barter and haggle with him (or his wife or the church) or a merchant with stock in trade and an

abrasion in the scuttle of his trousers hemmed and rosined with haberdasher’s chalk and apple sculls rotting in the hammock of her skirts where blood and thumbprints left they’re mark not a

sparrow but a pharaoh or a pariah or a hack of dry hard bread

Roofer’s Tar

Cheeks roved and blackened like roofer’s tar and vicarage with (tannic) breath and stiff collar gods’ will for (this is not the best of all possible worlds) the one yet to come on the hackle of

buggers and Nauru do wells eyes tallow with specters and devil’s tongues happing ciborium red-wine and there is nothing baroque about scurvy no lime or quinine could possibly forge proper

yet rectors offer up a bitter-lye host to those willing to forego assonance at the expense of a supplicants harrow and lops of hair tonsured round skullcap (Siren’s ears) stoked with paraffin

scriptures squid black with The Word and you crook-kneed and elbow-backed like a calf lolling saltlick and foot

FAUST'S CURSE

Maritornes Shucking

Maritornes shucking the cloister from the manse of my feet rebinding foot-wraps loosened by thumb and fore and del Toboso to whom I owe no small debt of gratitude for jesting and poling

between syntax and phalange where no man in the rights of his mind would wander unwary of devils and windmills and Sancho rubbing the corns and barite from the heels of a knight-ornate

skipping stones like jujubes on the not so flat surface of the Styx where Charon too poles between heathen and hell with an eye on prow and stern and a sophistication for chivalry and

lords dancing in the curse of my thoughts

A Switch to Hide

And she skulks down the lope of my thigh her eyes trained on seams and cuffs and folded up pants bottoms ruffed with grime and battery acid that my father’s car leaked with the rarest

impunity and he without a switch to hide and tan the skin crooked round the caulk of my leg where she’s trained to know the difference between a whimper and a yawl unlike my father

who’s jaded indifference to smarting and welts left when the scamp of his fist lays flat into the hard bone of my ass and the fucking battery acid chinking a hole in the roll of my trousers just

below where the ankle makes purchase with the knee that always seems to be brogue with
grass and mud stained deep into the treacle where my unlaced shoe scuffs gyps of stone and

mason’s dust dusted round the kin of my face like my dear father’s but without the mints and lye bitter taste of last night’s whisky flummoxed in the cope of his hard round mouth then she

bites down hard on the clap of my leg where bone scuttles skin from where the shoe tongue
spites the instep with blisters and crapes of denim happed from the inside out of the leg she’s

trained to cope whimpers and yawls from with the uneven bevel of teeth too small and crooked to chew the fat off the riche of a steak driven through the fist of my heart droned with battery

acid and the flat of my father’s well-trained hand

Chopin’s Fingers

I wrote this poem this morning while listening to Chopin chouse fingers against ivory-white keys
culled from dead elephants and narwhale pike to address the issue of paying homage and no

little respect to the Polish skulls raked and smithereened through ash clips and bone by Stalinist cunts with nothing better to do than reeve ass from jawbone like Black Angus to the slaughter

pins and bolts jack-hammered into unsuspecting skull cups knees buckling into sawdust and miller’s grease left after the slaughterers go home to fuck wives with too small teeth and gin

stale breath and Oprah’s tittering fresh in the mope of their thoughts and bridge hands trumping children’s washing and balanced meals fucking Stepford wives those forty-five

thousand and more ploughed into early graves with jackboots and silly grins and that fucking loud popping issuing from skulls kicked free of neck and collar it seems only too fitting that I

read this well-forgotten mistake in logic in a bar named the Advent and Large or whatever and wherever I am blithering like Oprah or Doctor Phil on meth and speed

Czarist Equestrienne

And I shuck the skin
From the larder of her thighs

Switch with cockles and burrs
And her breathing off cantor

Penetralia block and tackled, baying
From the ceiling shims

Prometheus’ Sorrow

Prometheus doesn’t like crows or clove-oranges or dry biscuits slurry with blood or Van Goth’s ear (shorn from its pulpit) or Picassos’ blue lined sailors shirts or (for that matter) cubists or

rhomboids (no matter how equidistant) or that czarist cunt with a taste for the roan and gallop and a penchant for plum wine and lard and tallow cut from the crook of a sow’s leg where the

hip caps the socket and joist (no he has neither time nor patience) for lollygaggers and cubists and Van Goth’s ear curd-fallow with sunflower oil and Burgee’s medicinal panacea (for hoof and

mouth and trench foot) and all that ails you with the exception of crows’ caw cawing and pecking the sclera from the whites of your eyes

She Was Skilled at Alchemy

She was skilled at alchemy and coaxing money from the lurch of pockets thread-bare with transit-stubs and hard candy wrappers like the bridge mixture my mother bowled for the

cuckolding neighbor’s wives with hive hair and breast-satrap marks weld into freckled shoulders and their children with snotty noses and unkemptness that was unseemly and fucking

sad was the one with thalidomide arms like mitts and chuck round the creel of his mouth where his older brother spooned hacks of gruel and meat byproducts against his better judgment and

their self-proclaimed mothers’ trumping each other and talking about macramé and stitching hems with the same fingers that cached sperm from the ends of their husbands’ tallow pale cocks

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ

Lingering

Lingering
In the warmth
Of your skin

Listening
To the slow rhythm
Of your heart

The morning’s shadows
Playing like children
In you hair

And I wait impatiently
For you to open
Your eyes

Eyes that have given in
To the heaviness
Of sleep

A Beauty So Resplendent

How is it
That someone so majestic

In a beauty so willing
To be captured

Is always defeated
By a sanguine indifference

To encouraging the simple pleasures
Of a beauty so majestic

A resplendence
So willing to be captured

For a moment

In a child’s smile so soon forgotten
An innocence proudly insisting majesty
Never to be stilled

How is it that we in our bitterness
Forgo the pleasures of a child’s majesty

So proudly insisted in a smile
Forever encouraging an innocence
So resplendent

A majesty
So soon forgotten

Flesh Builds up a Resistance

Flesh
Builds up a resistance
To touch

A scorpion’s tail
Or
A whoring cry

Puts
The fear
Of death

Into a heart
Cowering
In fear

These battered souls
Cursed to touch
For being men

For whom a peaceful
Moment
Is but a dream

Waiting
For a soft caress
A whisper

Nothing more

Flesh
Builds up a resistance
To pain

Man preys upon man
Weaker
Than he

Men who curse
And
Pass sentence

On other men

These bones
That charge the night
Hands raised

Cursing
The scorpion’s
Tail

Fearless
But in a dream
Cowering

For flesh
Builds up a resistance
To touch

Putting fear
Into
The hearts

Of battered
Souls
And men

In An Ether

I would like to think
He said
That snow is black

Like a crow’s feathers
Or like rain
He said

Drawing stickmen in the sky
Or perhaps
Like a Moroccan sunset

Blistering the horizon
Skillet-black
Or a corpse

He said

Dredged begrudgingly
From a sea

Blackened with waves

I would like to think
He said
That sand is black

And that snow
Black as crow’s feathers
He said

Wings arching

Skimming a skillet-black sky
Drowning
In an ether blackened

And too heavy

For flight

ICE-formation’s

Ice-forms
Always
Where it is unwanted

In crevasses and on dragon’s
Teeth
On spigots and head’s cresting

Always
Where it is unwelcome

Ice-frames
Silly side-glances
Those moments of thought

Branded
With inanities
When life’s last laugh

Always
Ices-over the unwanted
Memories

You
However
Have no dragon’s-teeth

Nor
Silly side-glances
Inanities

Those unwelcome ice-formation’s
Forming
Unwanted memories

Like heads bullied
Screaming
From the nether-mouth of unreason

High Fashionable

And the scold of her face and an indifference to men and high fashion and being eaten up between the legs and my tongue spiced with onions and rime

And her fashionable face meets my jaw jawing hard and down like a chisel beveling stone thick skin and ointments and salves and balms to leaven the

Dryness where fashion meets the cusp of my tonguing lolling and indifferent to her high fashionable want for pointy shoes and a handbag to match the

Colour of her eyes and she points a hard red nail like a railhead in my high unfashionable face lips biting down hard on Majorca and Minorca in that

Place between her handbag and the colour of her eyes not blue and her indifference to my wishes never to be fulfilled by Freud or high fashion

ULYSSES on the LIFFEY

Stephen’s Penitence

(I sit) on the cuckold
Of Martello tower
Thumbs flailing (madly)

In trouser pockets lurched
(Of money)
And hard candies

And (as always)
The fear of waking
To Stephen’s penitents

Irish notes inked (from)
Pocket to bar-top
With James’ one-eyed smirk

A tenor’s arrogance
Passed over wood and rail
Hard coughing men (and)

A brown frothing of ale
Guineas for Guinness
Black Death and madness

Breathlessness

Bullied head first
From between red blistered thighs

Formed in the solemnity
Of a belly

Where life forms life
In a silence unbearable

Life’s first breath exhumed
From a silence that denies

Life’s first breath

Formed in the solemnity
Of a belly

No sweet succor to nourish
A formless soul

Feeding off the ambient silence
In a belly swollen ripe

Awaiting the silence
That reveals the last breath

Bullied
From between scabbard red thighs

Life’s first breath
Formed in a belly ripe

Feeding off the silence
Bullied headfirst

Into the breathlessness of it all

Inconspicuous

By no means am I recluding, some say deluding
Nor am I conceding, or improperly receding

Perhaps amenable, some say loquacious
All too polemic, too often fallacious

Now in concluding, or is it eluding
By no means saluting, nor refuting

This too often deluding, some say confuting
Inconspicuous recruiting, of dower reusing

Evenings Ugly Shoal

I found myself wandering through time’s fiery hole
Through catacombs and cobblestones
Steps swaying unevenly scorning mornings’ light

Eyes fixed like godly scaffoldings on evening’s ugly shoal
On killable and crumble stalks and all things never sought
Ants bodies brittle crumblings beneath tiny soulless boots

When sleepy eyes go searching through time’s immortal hole
All fieriness and cobble-stoned steps
I’ll eat a plums sweet succor all stickiness and warm treacle

I’ll find myself wandering through catacombs and scaffoldings
Scorning evening’s ugliness that sinful intractable shoal
Through time’s fiery unseededness inglorious wretched hole

If I Were a Bog

If I were a bog
I’d be oil and loom

Sod clumps, bones
And peat

As I am not
I sit in wet breaches

Cinched twill, hiked
And taut

Jocosta

Jocasta blinded her son
In a vex of anger

Over his unwillingness
To grabble

Between the scullery
Of her legs

The Dane’s are know well
For incest and ghosts

The cup of a skull
Jibbed in the palm of a hand

Calipers and slides ruling over love
And remorse

A phrenologists rubbings chinking bone
From skin

Clicks of Lice

A bundle of clothes
Happed over shoulder

Feet drawn like stones
Over mud and brick

(caulked with lice)

Souls worn through
With fear and reason

And the clicking
(of lice)

In the bundles
Of clothes

Our Dog

Our dog ate rinds of
Black bread
Stropped in molasses

The rats
Violent with heat

Chuffing the crumbs
From the slaver
Of its mouth

And our dog
Chasing its tail
In an idiot’s circle

Fending of rats
And an indifference
To heat

Morning Gluttonous Morning

Morning is gluttonous
Like sheep cutthroat to the slaughter
Red, arterial, perhaps redder still

As the sky’s hatchet
Beating a drumming, a tympana
On the throat, the skull bones

The lamb’s wool queuing
To the slaughterhouse, mouths
Slavering, upturned, curled like

Stalks of rhubarb, yet perhaps
Tarter, and redder, waiting for
The cutthroat, to put a silence

To the lowing and grass culling

What a black cur, never so much
As a blinking of an eye
As the hatchet, swinging arched

Cuts through tendon, bone, whiter
Than marrow or milk

Levinas’ Face

For Levinas
The other Face
That I face

(not while shaving)

Is the face that faces
The other
That is a reflection

Of the face I face
While facing the face
(shaving in the mirror)

Facing the Other face
(not shaving)
But face to face

Facing the Other
That is the face that
Faces the I that is

The Other face other
Than I which is I
The face that faces

The Other
Face to face
That is I and Other

(than I)

That is I as Other
Face to face
With I the Other

(while shaving)

CHROMATIC DISOBEDIENCE

When A Child Colours

When child colours in a colouring book what he or she is doing is colouring-semantics. It is moot whether or not they stay within the prescribed lines, because when they colour outside the lines, what they are doing, so I suggest, is colouring-semantics; they have established new rules. In this manner semantics is simply ascribing to, and following, the rules of colouring; when those rules are broken, or contravened, as when the child colours outside the lines, they have shifted the rules to accommodate a new semantics of colouring, and in doing so, have extended the possibilities of semantic-colouring altogether. Semantics is a way of doing things, not just with or within words, but with the use of language itself. If we accept Wittgenstein’s notion of language as an infinite set of language games, then its not the words that are important (there prescribed meaning-value in an Augustinian sense of words as having defined meanings, which are then sewn together with other words, also with defined meanings, which when strung together form a sentence within the definable structure of word strings, leaving no room for a shifting meaning-value in word-use as language games) but the use we put them to in an infinite variety of epistemological meaning –laden situations. Its what we want to communicate that’s important here, not some intransigent definition of words bound by some rule-driven semantics. In this sense semantic-use is polymorphous, suggesting that it can be ‘used’ not only within the structure of language per say, but in the language-game of colouring, even outside the prescribed lines of an established colouring-semantics that is always shifting and creating new semantic-usage, an infinite progression of possibilities.
Now the question remains, can we communicate at all without using some form of semantics? If as I am suggesting semantics is not the sole property of word usage, but can also be extended to things like colouring (even outside the lines, breaking one semantic rule while creating another. An infinite progression of semantic possibilities that defies rule-categorization; and, I suppose, doing away with the idea of rules altogether) is it plausible to suggest that semantics is uselessness?
And when I add up a series of numbers and get the wrong answer, I cannot be said to be doing mathematics, but simply playing with numbers. I have broken the rules of mathematics and am therefore doing something completely different. Rules, rules, rules! Who needs them? Answer: politicians and knowledge-makers. Foucault you nasty little philosopher you.

SODOMIES in ELEVEN POINT

Aesth-ethics

Something tastes good; I savor it in my mouth. I read a good book; the words, catches of phrases, characters and narrative entertain me. I see a painting by Caravaggio and I feel drowned it it’s beauty, colours, textures and light. I watch the news on television and see a tall, attractive politician with a full mane of hair and a well-tailored Armani suit; I think, yes, he must be a ‘good’ politician with upstanding moral intentions. I am walking to work and I see a shabby, disheveled man hunched in a doorway, a homeless person begging for spare change and a cigarette; I think, he must be weak, an alcoholic, someone lacking in goodness and moral virtues. An over weight, straggly haired woman approaches me and politely asks for a cigarette; I say no, I have none to spare, and give her a dismissing look. Moments later, an attractive, tall woman with long blond hair dressed in a light summer skirt asks me for a cigarette; I smile, and fumble to offer her not one, but two cigarettes.
What is good is beautiful, pleasing to the eye, to the ear and to the tongue. The good is virtuous and meaningful; it has autonomy and purpose; it is useful and covetous. Good is beautiful; what is beautiful is desirous; what is desired must be good; what is good and beautiful and desirous, is useful and purposeful. All things fat and straggly, those without a home or a clean pair of trousers, those condemned to the ninth canticle of Dante’s Inferno, they are un-desirous, meaningless, lacking in purpose and usefulness; they have no autonomy, no reason. They are valueless; they are lacking in value, in beauty and goodness. If they have no autonomy, if I ascribe to them no meaning, no purpose, no virtue or reason, they are meaningless, ugly, not beautiful, and therefore not good.
Beauty is the absence of ugly; virtue is the absence of not virtue; good is the absence of bad (ness); ugliness is the absence of beauty (full); not virtue is the absence of virtue (ous); badness is the absence of good (ness). What is good is beautiful; what is beautiful and good is desirous; what is desirous and good and beautiful is virtuous. What is none of these, has none of these, is ugly, non-virtuous, bad, not good and un-desirous. I covet only that which I desire; I desire goodness and beauty, not ugliness and badness. If an ugly person, a non-person, a non-person without autonomy, which I either ascribe to him or her, or deny, has something beautiful and good that I covet, something I desire, I shift my ascription of what is good, beautiful and desirous, in order to obtain that which I covet. This shift, or shifting, creates a vacuum where the good and beautiful, and the bad and ugly, are juxtaposition (ed), inverted, in order that I can desire what I covet, and covet what I desire. In this manner a meta, or false good is introduced, one that allows me to ascribe goodness and beauty to something which has neither, but is ugly, bad and lacking in autonomy (which I ascribe or withhold) and therefore un-desirous.
However, in order to obtain what I covet, which is desirous, being good, beautiful and virtuous, I invert or juxtaposition the one for the other, thereby creating a falseness that allows for the obtainment of that which I ascribe with beauty and goodness and virtue. It is an ascription of convenience; meaning, I ascribe, or attribute to that which I see as ugly and bad, without virtue and goodness, goodness and beauty and virtue, in order to obtain that which I desire and covet as beautiful, good and virtuous. This is what I would call a ‘lie of convenience’, the ascription of attributes of virtue, goodness and beauty, to something or person that I have withheld these attributes from, in order to obtain that which I see as beautiful, good and virtuous; a means to an end through a simple juxtaposition, or inverse of attributions. A meta or false attribution of good, beauty and virtue; a lie of convenience in order to obtain that which I see, and have ascribed with, or attributed to, beauty, goodness and, above all, virtue. Beauty and goodness are virtuous, therefore desirous and to be coveted. What is beautiful and good, and therefore virtuous, is not a priori or given, but rather a false or meta ascription of attributes that allow me to obtain that which I deem desirous and to be coveted.
A shabby, disheveled homeless man hunched up in a doorway, has beauty, goodness and, above all, virtue, if he has something that I desire and covet; a cigarette, for example, or something I deem beautiful and good, like a painting by Caravaggio, or, a cigarette. What is beautiful, good and virtuous, is what I desire, not that which I do not. A cigarette is virtuous, beautiful and, above all, good, when I desire or covet it; meaning, when I have none. A fat, scraggly woman who has cigarettes, which I covet and desire, as I have none, is virtuous, good and beautiful as a means to obtaining that which I have not and desire and covet. She remains fat and scraggly, to be dismissed and ignored, when I have a cigarette; meaning, she is what I ascribe to her, out of connivance, in order to obtain that which I lack, or don’t have, that which I desire and covet. The attribution of beauty, good and virtue, are means to ends, means to obtain that which I desire and covet, having not that which I lack. A simple inversion, or juxtaposition, serves me well; it allows me to falsely ascribe, or attribute to that which I deem covetous and desirous, beauty, goodness and, above all, virtue.


The Savant’s Imagination

Something is not right, the savant’s imagination that is forever at odds with the possibility of the other. This philosophical premonition that whatever it is or is not be the case (we have Wittgenstein to thank for that) language will always be the only way in and out of the other. There is no other way, no other passage in or out. This paucity of thought, this wound not yet scabbed over, is the result of too much analysis, word-salad, a wound that makes the victim a victim of language. The wound cauterized by thought then tossed wholesale into the dustbin of uselessness; this trivial moment of thought has no final exit or retreat (we have Sartre to thank for that).
Matters less what you think than the manner in which you think you think (we have Kant to thank for that). Deleuze was inside yet always had a perspective given from the outside. Deleuze was so entrenched and mitigated from the inside that the outside was too painful and repugnant to contain in one man’s thoughts. The dirty little secret that keeps the Oxon. Moralists busy calculating and ritualizing ad nausea, and then some. That which in the end is too belly-swollen to be contained is uncontainable, beyond containment. This perspicuous eye that sees behind the containment (of thought) that never sees anything other than the other that it contains. That, in the end, is what kills a man. A man takes his own life when containment is all that is possible, when there are no multiplicities, only lacuna and moderation.
That which is built upon the scaffolding of thought is all that language allows us to see. Milky eyes always ruminate upon those things and objects and thoughts and patterns of thought that have ways out, they never see the inside from the outside as Deleuze did. There is always apprehension hidden behind the postmortem. The other will never be found other than in language, which we control and subjugate, for selfish needs. I suggest a joyous Nietzschean premortem, a joyous Deleuzian canonical ass-fuck

OF CYNICAL REASON

Dulcinea

Coins trapped in the tallow
Of pew wood

A boast of sins
Yet to be remitted

Or recast
In his image

(Faust’s curse some say)

Cervantes drank wine crushed on the millstones
Of Rozinante’s hooves

Cleaving and remitting
An awful stench

And Dulcinea dancing thorn-footed
In the menace of his thoughts

A fate worse than death
(Some say)

Forget-me-nots

Corn silk whispering forget-me-nots
In the cones and stirrups of my ears

Not hard and bitter as I am wont to believe
But soft and lilting like a mother’s kiss

Her breath sour and milky against the crime
Of my cheek

His heavy breath sour with whisky
Boxing my ears

Forgetting who’s rod
Bullied me into being

Poking around in the sanctum
Of my mother’s ear

Harping Wind

Scalawags advent the coming
Or going

Of spring

I, of course, eat scurvy bits
The impetigo

So it seems

Is back with a fury, biting, harping
Reminding me that God is watching

keeping a check on my meandering

Crappies
Sun-touched, yellow

Wrapped in the sac-cloth
Snarled round my hips

All I have left to eat, God
Are fish

Crappies, slung low round the hoop
Of my neck

Sun-touched, yes
The impetigo is back with a fury, so it seems

The advent of a coming
Or a going

Who knows when
Nor where

In Between the Two

A black moon
Cut from a nick
Of cloth

A razor edged
Inward towards
The centre

Skirting
But never risking
A laugh

Or a nick
On the clove
Of the ear

Or a box
For that matter
In between the two

Such simple displeasure
As these
Are rare in deed

Incautious
And cut from swaths
Of cheap cloth

So as to prevent the fraying of ears
And twits of hair sheared
From the centre out

And the moon black as night
Perhaps blacker

Yet I will risk a laugh
Boxed in between the two
Of my ears

Cloven and sheared from the centre
Out

My fathers’ knuckles
That’s all I remember

Sharpened on the clove of my ears
And sheared white from the centre
Out

Marzipan

Skin like marzipan
Honed smooth

And the crazing
Beyond words

Simple
Yet wordless

An avarice that schemes
And hungers

For a mouthful of skin
Like marzipan

Texture’s like phrases
Yet wordless

Articulating the crazing
So far removed

Yet nearing
Closing in on the nectar of skin

So nurturing
Yet hard and scheming

Like marzipan
Splitting your lips

Crazed
Yet unable to sing

ANGLU-LATVIESU VARDNICA

Then Pisses

A dog yawps then pisses
Down the inseam of its leg

Gods’ horrid cur preying on the sleepless
And wrought of mind

Tines


Brown teeth adjudicating
Tines jimmied into place

In gore holes stained
Tea black (so it seems)

Scabbed-over with food-worms
These things, worms

(so I was told)
That cause the horrid spirants

To form like larva, writhing
In the abattoir of his mouth

The Shrike

The shrike hooks frogs
And small birds

On pike and spit
Flesh gritting from bone

A cruel Carpathian custom
Impaling kin

On thistle and thorn

Of My Eye

Feet
And rain
Out of

The corner
Of my
Eye

Rain
Out of
The sky

Beneath
Feet

The Loam of My Ass

The cunning savant that I am
I have managed to rim the crumb of my ass

With wildflowers and cockleshells and fritters
Pocked with corn

And in between supping on the loam of my ass
I have managed a rejoinder to gods and heathens

And a man in a hat
Pocked with flies and dry biscuits

Of Stones

I hear a bird caching air through the coccyx of its throat
Skiffs and worms and burr-edges like razors stropping ribbons
Of fine mucked hair

My cussing falls on deafened ears
As birds know no difference between a warble and a shirk
All birds to a one

Having only a syrinx, a nebbish brain
And a mouthful of stones

Of Tongue

Tongue clacking cheek clacking tongue
Cheek clacking tongue clacking cheek

And tongue cheek and spit and clack of tongue
Against roof clacking spit tongue and cheek

Tongue of bone and of spit and of chalk

Of the Sea

I neither pull up nor gasp for air
As drowning is more forgiving

When pockets are weighed down with stones
Not gods

Or tomfoolery

Plank, Thwart and Rush

Huck beat his dog for scrabbling his nails
‘Cross the plank of his raft

Built from cotton bales
And warps of dead wood

Rigged and jimmied
With box twine and rush

Fucking mangy cur
Says Huck Finn

Claws leaving scuffs on plank
Thwart and rush

Or Nothingness

Jean-Paul had a notion of how sticks and stones
Breach words or nothingness

Simone cracked the kills from the murder of his feet
Telling Martin in advance

That jackboots and kilns are for the murderous
And ill-kempt of mind

THE PETTY DEMON

Stigmata’s

Christ Himself
Or a Jesuit

Is living behind the plasterboards
Of my kitchen wall

Stigmata’s like paintscabs
Red pomegranate red

A tribute to Michelangelo
Or Bruegel perhaps

Tabla Rasa

I wish your brain were a tabla rasa
A cleanliness so prophylactic

That for a moment (perhaps more)
I could rewrite all your sullied thoughts

And convince you to suck my cock
(perhaps twice) without closing your eyes

The Cremator

The cremator wears gloves to keep the bones and teeth
From working up under the moons of his nails

His wife has a duster made from twills of hair
For scalloping up under the clips of his thumbs

Block and tackling what little remains of man and child and gods and faith

The Alsatians

The Alsace and the Louvre are two places I will not soon visit
Not having a Visa

Nor the wherewithal to convey a motor car
I am stuck sitting in

Pajama Bottoms
Eating jellies and jams spread evenly

On Toast
Sitting thinking About the Alsatians and the Louver

And Counting the Toast
Cut into ribbons like my dear mother used to do when it was cold

And Inhospitable
Outside the window of our house In Alsace or the Louvre

The Flats behind Our House

I rode my bike on the flats
Behind our house

My brother’s hair choused in the clip
Of my spokes

Whites’ (over)

Borges’ (oysters) whites
Skinned over left to

Touch smell bumps
And (mind’s eye)

Rotten Apples

Scarab beetles lay their eggs
Underneath my fingers

Carapaces rotten with apples
Like Kafka’s back

Of The Leg

In the camps it was not uncommon
To incur a phlegmon which had to be incised

From the skink of the leg bone
So deep had it burrowed and infested

That no ferric or compress of either lye or iodine
Could scour free the stink that opened into the tissues and marrow

Of the leg

Monk’s Wool

The skive I keep in the ruff of my trousers is for scuffing the grim
From the knuckle of your face

White and bony from monk’s wool dry biscuits (curled tongues) and blood

Black Earth

I drank strong whisky cupped in the palms of my hands
Sod-spades driven heel to toe cutting clods of wet peat

And men with strong backs and gray cricks of hair
Bent over hoes cutting stokes of black earth

COCKROOSTERS'

And Surplice

The palms of hands

(and)

Blood and biscuits

(and)

Tongues hungering

(and)

The priest’s surplice

(cinched)

Around his collar

Beckett’s Bicycle

Beckett’s bicycle has neither a horn
Nor a brake, but

Hard black tyres fluting gravel
And stone

And a playing card of Joyce
Clacked in the wick of the spokes

Like Molly’s bed drawers cinched tight
Round neck and collar

Evoking an awful clicking
In the cleave and hocks

Of her buttocks
Where Blazes’ tongue loots and scuttles

Clacking gobspit and porter
Blacker than quid or tar

A stench of cabbage and onions boiled (skins on)
And the scab of your tongue lolling

On julep and cracks of mint

Bosch and Paint

Hieronymus sits (atop)
Mount Babel

With ass-bone (and)
A ketch of black paint

One tongue too many
To support the (load)

Of jaws and ass’
(paint and Bosch)

Caught Bees

I caught bees in the bottom
Of a peanut butter jar

Cuckolding honeysuckle
And bread jams

In buzzing glass jails

Warily
Fingers mastering a trick

Know to those few

With thumb and fore
At ease

And to the ready

A rare breed, so they say
For this part of the world

Gogol’s Nose

I’ve seen more dead souls than Gogol’s nose

I am aware of (so it seems) how a strong detergent
Can dirk skin and muck from the scallop of a hand

And how a lye-sulfa poultice burns holes
(not in Gogol’s nose) but in the palms of one’s feet

I know (also) from reading too many books, articles
And a monogram

How a hastily swung stick can cause blindness (in Gogol’s eye)
That only an eye-specialist (with a hook and thread)

Can assuage and put right
One thing (however) I do not know

Is where Gogol’s nose (is)

Hocking and Riving

I once saw a film where two woman
One with a clod scotched

To the brace of her hips

Was hocking and riving murmurs and quips
From the one underneath breached

In the larder of her thighs

Kafka’s Dog

Kafka’s dog ate rinds of black bread
Lolled from between his mother’s legs

From cunt and wile

Clay jars

My father made wine
In the basement

Of our house

The ferment of skin
Stomped purple, burbling

In clay jars

I don’t drink blood
Nor wine

Having scorned my liver
One too many times

Hooves splayed inwards
Like devil’s feet

Stomping purple

Christ’s blood, burbling
In clay jars

Gods’ Devils

Crows are god’s devils
Black-winged mercenaries

Cawing pleasure for sins

Gods’ are crows’ devils
Blood-red soutanes

Hawking sins for pleasure
And crows

Grapnel

Gods’ run shafts
Through shank to collar

A fair and kindly warning
(that) gods live in sticks

And frogs and mice
But never (in the minds)

Of heretics or pigs

THE DRINKER

Her Hair Is Rhubarb

Her hair is rhubarb and so astringent that in my haste for a mouthful
we click our teeth together white as chalk and harder than Tali bone

She kneels on the cups of her knees and swallows the spit from the ball of
my tongue red as chokecherries and afterthoughts and her hair cut blunt

With her mother’s scissors the ones she uses for gutting chickens and hems and stitching nametags to collars and elastic waistbands that chaff hips raw

And she levers the skin from my eye with the skip of her tongue revealing grass-cut green and worm-wood brown and in my haste I swallow an oxen of

Bone where scissors shred the caulk of a jaw into rhubarb and the blackest black jujubes blacker than fish roe and harder than a juke knuckle and teeth

Cut crooked in the dorm of a mouth where her father’s black rage channels hatred and blackness black as worry and harder than Tali bone and colic

And I kiss her hair like rhubarb blunt cut with a mother’s haste to gut hems with scissors and chaff raw hips and chicken’s tongues hard as juke and spite

A grievous Injustice

A silage rat suckered underneath the porch
I caught the rope of it’s tail with the end of a stick

I used for ferreting out the mice and hedgehogs
That dug graves in the dirt behind the garden shed

(and caused my father such grievous injustice)
I spate its neck in like a heel of dry bread

And with the truck of my hands
Dug a grave for it in the dirt beside my father’s car

The car he used for joyriding and rousting the neighbors
(from the worry of their beds)

Chalk

I lie with the dogs
Up under the stoop

Of the house

In one cursed swoop (of)
The old crone’s hand

Skin and spine separate
Revealing bone and joint

Whiter than maggots
(and) chalk

Her Belt Buckle

Her belt
Buckle cut a groove

In the wainscoting of her hips
Where bone and denim

Cheat a hand out of raw
Dulcet skin

Her Dulse Lips

Her lips bled dulse
Like chokecherries

Griped in the palm
Of your hand

Her eyes bled cubeb
Like grapes

Stomped by the ungula
Of devils

Her hair bled yellow saffron
Like wheat chaff

Minced in the cogs
Of a thrasher

Her feet bled mucid wine
Like the Jehovah’s

Nailed to the cross
Of her memories

(not mine)

Her Teeth

She had no teeth to speak of
A no man’s land of fence stumps

And gate stiles

Earthen up after an august storm
Or a hard whack

To the mouth

Lead Pellets

Lead pellets
Cutting swaths of bone

Scud metal

Stitching shrapnel
To the stump of an arm

My Great Uncle

My great uncle stove the cow’s head in with the hammer he used
For knocking nails and shims into tracks of dry wood and posts

Its legs buckled under as the hammer hit bone gristle and skull
A popping sound issuing as the hammer swung quick then away

Its eyes went red then white then its shoulders slackened and fell
Then and one last snort of rye whiskey and Presbyter’s admixture

I closed my eyes as it fell tongue tacked to the chisel of its teeth and my Great uncle spitting whiskey and quid into the grain of the barn wood floor

Measured Steps

Scats and bone gathered
Where foot and clod

(meet the roof of hell)

Cloven and measured
On the ribcage of night

Measured in bone and scat
I feel the brine skinning

The Huns of my feet
Steps measured in clods

Spurs and rills of skin
Scuffing the roof of hell

(like devil’s feet)

Cloven and brined
Gathered in the clods

Of false prophets

Of A Face

My body has degenerated
To the point
Where self-recognition

Once a mirror image
Of a face
Is now a crude sketch

Another face within a face
A mouth within a mouth
Eyes that avoid eyes

That avoid the sketch
Of a face
Within a face

The crudeness of a face
Once a mirror image of youth
Of eyes and chin and nose

Now someone else’s
Some crude recognition
Of a face

APALEENA8

Ive thout uv kelling har on newmerus okashuns, eech one mure strenge and horriffec than tha one praceeding it. If its luv that ewe went, thas aint tha plece ta fend it: thair isnt anethang here mure than a fowlmowth an a sere aresbuttum; nuthang thatll meke ewe strengar or gave ewe a sense uv purpuss. Notatall uv aneuvit. Notaone. Uvitall. Ewe unnarstend? Bullocks: ewell nevar unnarstend. It mekes toodamnmuch sense ta be that eese; too much feckingsenseof it all. God luv us: God Luv us. Scrabbing fer tha momint: lest in tha cunt uvitall. Nonota one knos watts heppaning; nevarnotaoneatall. Sha sayd ta me that sha thout eye wuz deffarent than tha uthars, that eye hed sumthing speshall innasede uv me. Sha sayd that eye’d kno wen eyed fend it, becawse it wood meke mi heertsing an mi braens hert likehell. Sha did, at that. That’s watt sha sayd, that tyme, ta me. An I thout uv Sera an that bestard Hambert stecking his fecking ceck inna har mowth an tha fecking nonsense an inhewmanite uv itall. I jest figurd that sha’d kell harself with an ovardose or a derteneedall; that sha’d suckum ta tha deeth uv itall, an fine harself lest in a werld uv hate an angar. I thout abowt kellin har with mi hends an leeve har in a sak sumwairs in a creckhowse or a sheetinggallare. I thout how eye cud dispose uv tha botte an gettawey with itall: jest make a cleen gettawey an be dune with it. True: I luvd har, but this wuz defferant; I culdnt stend wetching har slowle kell harself, it wuz too paynfell ta wetch. I felt that if eye culd jest speedup tha prosess, sha culd die with sum dignate; atleest, so I thout. Thas moretall coyull: untell deeth do we pert. Sallashuss: fecking sallashuss sinovabetch. That fecking Humbert an hes fillthe mine; like a fecking derte preechar telling unto tha flock that this an that shall be dune, adinfinitum, untell deeth do we pert. Sonuvabetch. An whores fer them all, evare lest oneuv ‘em. Up innatween tha legs an mind ewe dunt puncture tha fecking orgin; grinding out tha musik that Wagner wood heve likd; I supposs. Felltha bestard; cecksukar, ewe r: a fecking cunt with tha best uv ‘em. Dunt look at me that wey, Ill kell ewe, ewe bastard, Ill pet an end ta yer fecking life. An a moocow cam dune tha rooad; a moo moo cew cum dune tha rune. Littall bebe tuktuk, seckling on hes muthar’s teat: milk sweetar than treecal an whitar than snew. Mulli gain an Murphy; an tha lottathem: too stepid tha get tha joke, too nervus an feckedup ta unnarstend tha mootpoynt uvutall. Catcha speedo an junk has needull. Too much of itall: tha happanstence an tha wey tha corawtik nerve an tha fecking nek stend agenst tha junctuer uv whatitscalld. Tha fecking horrir uvitall.
I thinc I mite be otistick; I inhabit two divergant realitees that cennot cum inta contect with oneanuthar. If thay did, tha results wood be catastrofic; ta say tha leest. I once thout thet mi Lolita mite hav been envolvd with a lothario that I sepposd I mite hav known sumyeers ago. Sha wuz in a jam with tha brownstuff that usdta cumbiwey uv tha harbore next ta tha tellbilldeng wair I drank cawfee an smowk hendtaylord cigareets with I guy namd Deacon who alweys wore a yello jecket an a blue scarf. Crakcocane wuznt aroound yet an watt thair wuz uv steff wuz herd an defficult ta digest wen tha smowk sterts ta bernyor eyes an scald yer chin an meke yor rms go pallseed an lemp. Wuznt wen I reele wuz in a goodframe uv mend miself beck wen allthat shit happind an sha fell threw tha cracks in tha sisstum.
Is that whut I meent? I dunno fer sure; that’s it; not fer sirtin. Tha fecking sisstum eats ewe aliv, than spets ewe out lik somuch: xpecktorates ewe: rids itsalf uv tha inconveniece uv itall, uv haven ewe in its Jonasbelle. Cacksecker. Reedeng Goethe an listeneng ta Joey Ramone; cant get anebettar. Sera entars tha sisstum, an gets swallowd bi that feckHambert; littal known fect that hill get his cumuptance, soonar or latar. God werks in misstearius weys. An anuthar cuntblaknite in tha melkewey.
Humbert slidawey frum that well an sat on tha wikar chare next ta tha shavenmirror wair Mulli gain hed left a usd razor on tha ledge bi tha fawsit. Tha sink wuz milke with wetar an shavencreem an lettal skins uv hair flowteng on tha sirfass lik drownengmen. Apaleena wuz buse rearrengeng tha seem uv har dress an makeng a suckeng sownds with har tongue agenst tha roof uv har mowth. Murphy set qwietle in hes chair an fiddald arownd with a teer in tha leg uv his trowsars that hed started ta unreval an lookd mure like an Arib rug than a pare uv pents alltogethar. An unyun peel ley curldup on tha makintoshfloorbooards sumwair in tha vacinite uv Mulli gain’s gratebooted foot that he wuz tappeng nervusle agenst tha woodseemd an joynd floor that wuz in need uv a goodscrubeng anmure. Humbert spoke: "Never mind what you think I said, try and concentrate on what I actually said and perhaps then we can get on with what it is we are suppose to be doing here." Humbert cleerd his throwt an pushd his thum agenst the bredge uv his nowse an sneezd with such greetvelocite that his eyes snappd shut frum tha pressyour builtup in his sinusesholes.
Im net xactle sure wethar Kaspar wuz bern in a howse or a librare. Tha plane mattar uv tha fect is that he musthave been bern sumwair, the reesun beeing becawse aneone hast ta cum frem sumwair, that’s a fect; I seppose. Humbert hadnt tha slitest noshun wair he wuz frum, an net nowing mayde it defficult fer him ta cumminicate with persuns uv a defferent geografe. Hadnt tha noshun; he dident. Kaspar wood hav nown wair he wuz bern frum if he hadnt lust hes berthsirtifficate. He, Kaspar, hed ta leern how ta welk all ovar agen aftar hed spent fifteen yeers neeleng down bent ovar in a mudfloor besment sumwair in tha outlayen areas here anabowt. Hes beck wuz bowd an tha tenduns in hes nek wair notted an bunchdup inta a goyterus mass that sat on tha bones uv hes showldars lik a xtra hede. Tha dae them fownd him, aftar hes parints hed movd awey sumwair defferent, his eyes wair glasse an thair wuz woodburls an shavens in tha tangld nest uv hair. So it goes, that ferst theng he sayd, apon beeing descovard wuz, "Tha horror, the horror. Kaspar livd in a chantecottege down arownd tha heethar an dale behend Mulli gain an Murphy’s properte wair a bullcow wuz once ridden bi a man with blak wiskars an a strawhat met hes deeth frum beeing tooclose ta tha wreng end uv tha bell an that bullcew, not noweng ane bettar, rend off inta tha pesture wair it it wuz killd bi two fellars with shutguns an butchard on tha spot that has ferevar sence been calld tha bullcewsbloodeedmess. Mure abowt Kaspar lateare
Humbert, haveng cleerd hes throwt an rubbd tha swet frum his brew with a redselk handkercheef, spoke in a lowmonatone voyce that seemd ta cum outta tha middal uv hes chest sumwair. "Not ever again—I say! This is the one good opportunity we have to leave a mark on this world. And by God, I mean to do it, come hell or high water." Murphy flenchd an sayd, "Theres no high water in hell, I suppose." "That’s a fucking metaphor," retortd Humberts. "A what?" askd Apaleena. "A metaphor: something that isn’t the same as something but like it by virtue that it gives another definition of it with another word." Apaleena flickd an ant off tha ball uv har nee and smyled teethsumle. "Is a kite a metaphor for a bird?" she sayd, har eyes glettereng with pryde. "Maybe." Sayd Murphy. "Could very well be, I suppose." At that Humbert clappt hes hendstagethar a poynted a clawd fengar at Murphy. "You don’t know a God damn thing about anything," He sayd. "I suppose," sayd Murphy. "You suppose?" sayd Humbert. "You suppose what?" Murphy sheffled hes feet acrisscross tha floorboards an smyld. "I suppose that in hell, real hell, where the devil lives, that there can’t possibly be any water, or, for that fact, high water—what ever that may be—because I read somewhere that hell is actually frozen over and cold as hell." Mulli gain lookd owt tha wendo an sayd, "Goran must have got lost—you’d think he’d be here by now." Apaleena drew a hend acress har forehed, lik a femfatale, an breethd owt deeple. "Maybe," sha sayd. "I suppose," sayd Murphy, sneekeng a look ovar at Humbert who was buse shakeng an ant off tha toe uv hes boot.
I same enabled ta meke mech sence uv it all, as it is, presantle. Tha wey thengs r, at tha momint, thair seems ta be sumkinduv obstrucshun that keeps me frum moveng in one derecshun fer mure than a minate at a teme. Beyond that, I dunt reele kno: at all, at leest that’s hew thengs appeer ta be in tha habet uv ocureng now in tha greetar scowpe uv thengs. Atleest, ta tha best uv mi nallage. Ewe ken xpect, hewevar, that tha wey thengs r goeng ritenow, thengs wunt gat mech bettar befour thay get werse. Atleest that’s tha wey I see it happeng; fer tha tyme beeing; atleest. All that uthar shet ewe’ve been subjactad ta reed, so fer, is reele nuthang mure than an palltree xcuse fer haveng nuthang impertant ta say: at all. I kant seem ta muve in aneuthar derecshun than tha one Im presintle moven in: that’s tha wey thengs stend, rite new. Mi feckeng hede is tite and werm, almust lik a fyre is berneng in thair—or, fer that mettar, a fackeng Dantean enfurno, atleest that’s hew it feels. Presintle; uvall thengs. God rest mi weere sowl.
Allamentarecannel: whatevarelse mabe! Step, ewe bestard;step. Awey frum thas mess we mest fli—lik a duve in tha merneng brite. Adenfanightum blessd God. Bebe tuktuk; bebe tuktuk: milke werm an pleessureng. Rejoyce: Stephen’s Deadatlast. Suffar foowls lightle: seffer, bestard:seffar. Atlest fer a momint new—jest leng enuffta let tha graymettar spell outa yer hede. Is all I went—fer new. Thetsall. Fer tha tymebeeing.
Bebetuktuk: a leng anwendeng rowd; throo tha hithar an thon: Fer tha luv uv God, get onwithit. Goran eets tha prickles between hes wives tows. He sups on tha barnacles that hav fermd on tha cerns uv har feet. Lik a lettal cheld, he suks tha honee frum tha marroo uv tha bone. Inmomint, allwell be dune: on eerth: as it es in heevan: allmen. Goran’s waif mestikates on tha spoyld unyonfat tha sirrownds har splettenglips. Sha kesses Goran’s mowth an swallews tha spet frum has tonge; then drenks uv tha nektar that mends tha evelsmell uv: bacunrind an boyld cabbege with errowroot biscuts an mermallade compote that slendars tha fet rite outa uv ya. Allatonce.
Humbert lookd derectle at Apaleena an frewnd, tha cornars uv hes mowth slack an bittar, raized brouwn wiar tha turtalfat an tabaco jewce staind tha flash arund has chin; teethyello an strukunevan in tha dorm uv hes mowth. Ewe culd see tha postyour in has beck; tha wey it bowd evarso carefelle fetting ta tha mowld uv tha chare he set in. Murphy: God luv Murphy. Murphy was busee tryeng ta cunvence tha dug ta cum out frum behend tha stove wair it hed been hideng: notheng uv littal emport wuz suggestd as the dog wuz tempramental an prown ta fets uv indigestshun. Humbert’s nowse cut the plane uv hes face lik a whayle surfaceng in celd watar.

Apaleena7

Har neme is Sera. She livd with har adoptive parants fer fourteen yeers before she left home far good an went on har wey inta tha bigwide werld. She is a virjan: she wuz raped at twelve bi a femli friend who culdnt finish off watt he hed sterted because he was wreng in tha hede an an impodent fool. Har fathar cut tha man’s throoat with a scyth an watchd as he bled ta deeth in a pool uv his own exremant an blood. Tell gress grew in tha feeld ahind tha cottage whair she ust ta pley with a mange old dug with fleabitten fer an crisscrossed blak eyes that alweys seemd ta be watere with yello pus. She wood chase tha dog aroound tha feelds an pull at its tell an grab it bi its tern an flappe ears an smyle an seng an do things that yung gerls do on werm summar deys.
Sera has nobede; she had cum ta tha cottagere uv tha Village uv Duntsmure with nuthang mure than a leathar sachal fell uv cloths and a cloth beg whair she keept all har pikteurs an books. Sera wuz a virashuss readar; shed read Plato an Dickens, an Schopenhauer an Beckett; she hed streggled har wey throo Joyce an Woolf, an fownd cumfert in tha werds uv Pope an Eliot. She had read tha Koran an tha Bible, an tha Tibetan Book uv tha dede in which she descovared har muse an tha meening uv tha lifeaftar. Sera had a notebook whair she jotted down har thots an har feelings abowt life in general; whair she coded har memores an scribbald little poems ta harself. Sera wuz fer tha most part selfedukated: she hed leernd how ta read frum har fostarmuthar an how ta write frum har fostarfathar; she hed qwickle pikedup tha basiks uv geomatre an had read a histere uv Irelend one coldnite in tha meddle uv Februare wen shed cum down with a cold an culdnt go outside fer feer uv catching pnemonia. Sera beleeved that tha werld fer tha mustpart wuz good, an that thair wair no mesteries or ungivans an that a good deed nevar deserved a pat in tha bak an that if ewe lookd herdenuff, youd fell in luv an hav a famile an raise cheldran an liv a heppe uncomplikated life. Humbert wood chenge all that; he wood reedukate Sera, an teetch har how ta teke holduv tha werld an sqweeze outuv it watt evar ewe sodesired. He wood shew har how ta cheet men outuv thair lifesavings an how ta humiliate anuthar weman with a semple wink uv har eye. Sera wood becum fer Humbert tha cumpanyun that hed alweys desired. She wood warship him an tend ta his evare need; she wood wersh his cleths an prepare his meels; she wood lowar herself ta his leval evare nite an suck his leethare ceck until he ejackulated inta tha soft werm pulp uv har mowth as teers ran down tha ruff topografe uv har face an she fell asleep with tha offal taste uv him at tha beck uv har throat.
Murphy fownd a horsis hede in the bruwn rivar that ran across tha beck of thair properte whair a juneiparberre hedge clung ta lif amidst tha rock an dirt an a stend uv poplars cutcrucked an ran paralell ta tha rivar. Tha frunthede wuz crushd in at tha temoral lobe an a tangle uv seeweed crept out frum between a fizzure in tha gray skullbone that met up with tha eyesockets. Thair wair a nest uv eels crevassed in tha nostrilholes an a green gelatinus lump in tha vallt uv tha mowth. Whair tha teeth met with tha jaw a whileenamel bonespur connectd with tha hinge undar tha ear pessages whair anuthar eel had fownd a purchase. Murphy had heerd that fisharmen oftin used horsis hedes to cetch eels in tha wetar sirounding tha opinfeelds. He had alsew seen a man with a longthin nife cut throo tha muscle an tenduns uv a horsis leg an hobbled it on tha spot. Tha horse wuz than broken ta tha grownd an lay thair in a puddal uv its own blood. He had heerd that tha horse wuz too old ta do ane farmwerk an wuz put down as a conseqwence uv that; an that wen a horse wuz put down, tha fermar alweys cut its hede off an sold it ta a fisharman that livd in a cettage neer tha brownrivar.
In as muchas I kno, I kno vary littal. I kno what dey it is, what hower it is, rite this minate; I kno that wen mi fingars step tutching tha keyboord tha werds will intern step: thay will becum as of nothing evar wuz thair befor or aftar. Them. Nothing wattsoevar: now I know watt is tha sistum an wattis net tha sistum: nothing is reel, evarthing is conjecteur; evarything is makebeleeve; that wich we thout wuz in realite, is, in actual thout, thout ta be a reprasentashun uv sumthing else, sumthing outsede tha cercal; it is this than that: it is tha begeening an tha ending, uv it all; uv whatevar it is, it is certainle not this. Atall.
Murphy an Mulli gain; Humbert an Apaleena; Goran an his fecking sellfish wife; Fintan an Sera: All in all abowt ta becum, in thair ownweys, sumthing greetar than thair perts: thay will, we mey suppose, transubstant entill thay all uv them all mographi inta sumthing othar than thay r: sumthing far deepar an fer widescoped than we culd evar imagine. It is tha sumuv tha perts uv tha whole, that reele becums tha thinginitself; tha thinginitself, initself, is tha onething that exists independantle uv thair beeing a sistum uv things atall inthemselves. Adinfinitum. God welling. Amen. Amatrampoline: nuthan bettar than a littal bituv tha amatrampoline; now an agen. Wattsoevar mey that be, in advance uv itall, ewe mite nevar fendout. It well evade ewe; keep ewe on tha qt; nuthang agen aftar poor Werther’s sewicide will seem tha seme; evre thing will be chenged, fer tha bettar, we hope. Goethe nevar reele knew watt he wuz getting himself inta when he created poor Werther: gunup agenst tha sideuv tha hede; one, two, three: its ovar, fer tha bettar, fer tha bettar uv poorpoor Werther. Nota one ta luv; nota theng ta feel luv abowt; all a lone withyer thouts, a lendscape gowged frum tha eerth with tha expectashun that whateverso mey happen, itall happen ta sumone else, God welling. Not asmuch ta remembar wen yer hedes been shorn off. No one uv a lot uv thengs ewe ken do wen tha bottum fells out an ewe’re browt beck ta tha semplisite uv tha theng: tha uttar genious uv itall. In tha end, thair alweys must be a beggineng: sumthang frumwich ta gage whair ewe’re going an whair ewe’ve been; a signpost, uv serts, that shews ewe tha wey out an tha wey inta tha wholemess uv it all, not withstending poor Werther: hedeless an chilld frum tha cold. Goethe wuz a bestard wen he wented ta be; gave poor Schopenhauer a herd tyme uv it; mede ‘em fell lik thair wuz a miscuncepshun uv his talents an that he wuz, in actuwel fect, a fone. A fecking thum intha eye fer tha bestard, a fecking thumta tha eye, fer tha luv uv God. Not sowell versed in tha pequlearities uv tha whole theng; not much in tyme with tha beet uv tha greetar heert, tha one theng that keeps us all going an sold ta tha momint, uv itall. Absense mekes tha heert gro fondar. Inbetween itall, thairs a plan; a plen ta meke itall mureuv it all than we at ferst thout pessible. Nonsince: hyparboil; pedagogue; wattsoevar wattmay cum uv itall. In tha end, agen: in tha end, agen. In tha end uv itall thair will surle be a new begenning uv itall. Sotospeakuvitall. I’m terd uv meking xqueses fer ewe: its tyme ewe stoodup an took it lik a reel parson, not sum outuvtha centure frawd with a penchant fer dollops an tripe. Not nonevar agen. We cant go aneferthar with this noshun, this idea: we’ve got ta get on boord, we’ve got ta fend ower wey outa this fuckeng mess.
Wen ewe thinc aboout it, using a horsis hede, a decapitated hede, shorn frum its pulpit an strung up in a toolshed whair it ripens and ages immaterialle, ewe’d thinc thair wuz sumthing unfitting aboout it all: all this trawma; all this behedeing an decapitashun. An tha fisharmen with his streng and tyine; harnassing up tha horsis hede inordar to throw in inta tha brown streem an sniggle fer eels. It all sownds prette horrable an grewsum. An watt aboout Sera an har delugashuns: tha milke spurm and whey an har tine littal lips crackt and bleeding. Watt aboout har? Humbert’s bucklegged drawl an tha pikture uv his muthar in tha pokit uv his flaxin trowsars an the wey she treeted him fer things dune rong an him alweys getting tha strep, tha leethar strep, smaked herd agenst his beck. Who reele cares aboout Humbert? No one: nevaraoneortha othar. Murphy and Mulli gain kno a defferent Humber, one shrowded in misstere an intreege; a parson with majical hends an clubbowed feet. An his briarstik an reume eyes, an tha wey he looks ewe striat in tha face wen hes addressing ewe; that wey aboout ham that steys with ewe like an aftarimage or a cartwheel.
Goran’s get ta getawey frum that ugle cur uv hes: shas nuthing but a liabillite; a fine xample uv a woman with outane redeeming qwualitees atall. Nonwattsoevar. Goran deserves a bettar line uv woman, one that dusent stik flora uphar cunt; one that has a parsonalite an knos hew ta treet a man propar. Apaleena. Sha wood be a good match fer Goran tha onle prublem beeing sha stiks plums in har vagina an has a fondness fer frewts an berries. Maybe not such a good match; cum ta thincuvit. Not a geed match atall. Tha fishmongar’s wife put nettals in har hair. Tha feshmongar’s wefe pet nettalls in har hair an wrept dulce aroound har nek an sang lowd an skreetchengle inta tha still merning ski while har husbend, tha fishmongar, mongard fesh an smoked brown cigars that he lit frum a sprigoffa lental bush that thrived in that particular climate. Goran knew that fishmongar becawse he oftin came inta his bookshop an purchased volumes on marinelife an plents. He wuz evan known ta leef throo pikture books an caladars frum yeers past an wipe tha bell uv his nowse with a chekard hendkarcheef that he kept hidden awey in a poket in has trowserpants fer just such purposes. Goran likd tha oldfishmongar an wood help hem chowse books uv intrest that Goran thout tha fishmongar wood enjoy an lent him magazeens an postcards that had been sent ta Goran frum places neer an far. Tha feshmongar fanceed himself sunwatt uv a geografer, an wood pour ovar oldmaps an nawtical charts that Goran kept xspecialle fer such geografers an those with inclinashuns ta be one sum dey. Goran’s wife nevar met tha fishmongar or his wife becawse she wuz buse shuveng things inta har woma’splece an eeting chowkolate an strewbarries that made har scarlat an pale. An wen she fownd har husbend trying ta teke a littal nap or enjoy an a momint ta himself, she wood accuse him uv beeing a nogood lazebastard an stemp har feet in contempt. Goran had learnd with tyme that he culdnt xpect ta cheng his wife’s demeanor an culd onle hope fer momints uv peece an solatude inbetween tha beckering an cumplaning that his wife wuz prone to adjure. Apaleena wood cirtanle have been a good match fer Goran if onle sha culd put a stop ta tha plums an maybe sumtymes warsh har hair an fix har face. In a werld such as owars, we cannot hope fer much more.
Humbert cleerd his throoat an opined, "If we can all get together on this and stand tall and strong as a army should in times such as these, we can defend what’s rightfully ours and live a long and pleasant life." Apaleena lookd askew at Humbert an smyled. "But we’re not an army," she sayd. "How can we be an army" askd Murphy, "if we don’t have any guns?" Humbert closed his eyes an tuk in a deep pull uv air. "We don’t necessarily need guns, we can use our noggins and beat them at their own game." "Whats a noggin?" askd Apaleena. "That’s what’s in your head," sayd Murphy. "Its what makes you think and understand things." "Isn’t that the brain?" sayd Mulli gain. "Well the brain is part of the noggin I suppose," answerd Murphy. "That and the hypothalamus," sayd Apaleena. Humbert lookd directle at Apaleena an let his jaw fell ta his chest. "How in the hell do you know what a hypothalamus is?" Apaleena knit har hends tagethar inta a persian rug an sayd,"I guess I learned about it in school." Mulli gian, buse rearrenging tha feld in his trowsers, lit up a cigarend an spet on tha floor infrunt uv him next ta tha dug who acted lik nuthing outuv tha ordinare had occurd. "I know what it is we should do," sayd Murphy. "We should kill all their cattle and burn down all their barns." "What cattle?" askd Mulli gain. "They don’t have any cattle, for God’s sake, their carnival people, not cattle ranchers." "Supposing they do have barns, where they keep the hay that they feed to that cattle, we can burn them down to the ground and be done with it." sayd Murphy, peshing out hes chest in defiance uv Mulli gain. "You are absolutely screwed up," sayd Apaleena. "They don’t keep cattle at carnivals, they keep horses and tigers and those tiny ponies with the long yello manes, and…" Humbert cut har off an tried ta teke cuntrowl uv tha coversashun. "Enough," he bellowd. "That’s enough of this crazy talk." "Yea, fuck the cattle anyhow," sayd Mulli gain. "We can go and burn something else down instead."

Apaleena6

No bifurkashun or menora, jest a straitline ta tha hart uv tha metter. Nonevaragen will we allow that ta heppan; notachence in hell uv that cuming up in a conversashun. Nevaragen. If Mulli gain and Murphy deside ta finish wat thay’ve sterted, than let ‘em at it: thairs no stopping them now. If Humbert sterts ta fish fer copparpennes in tha well upbehind tha low gate, than all tha best ta him. Bravo. Mores tha powar ta ya. In tha end thair will be notheng left but werds. Werds uv contradikshun. (contrishun).
Humbert pawsed an collektd his thouts, a roound brews stretching tha skin aroound his left eye and tuking inta tha cornar uv his nose like a curd uv bloocheese."I think its time to get on with it," he sayd. "On with what?" askd Murphy. "On with what it is we’re all here for; why I’ve come hundreds of miles to sit in the rich stench of this house." Mulli gain cleerd his throat an set in tha briarleggd chair next ta tha pigbellied stove. Apaleena brushd an ant frum tha ball uv her knee and twistd her fingars inta a Persianknot. "I don’t want to loose the opportunity we have before us," sayd Humbert. "We may never find ourselves in this position ever again. We may, as a matter of fact, never see another winter if we don’t act now—if we don’t get to that heart of the matter before our window of opportunity ceases to exist." Mulli gain smyled an tapped a fingarnail agenst tha yellocorn that wair his teeth. "What window is that your talking about?" He askd. Humbert, vizable upset an on tha brink uv exhawstshun, poynted a gnarl an crooket fingar at Mulli gain and snapped, "The fucking window of opportunity." "Ya, but what the hell is that?" askd Murphy. "Its not a real fucking window," snarld Humbert; "it’s a simple metaphor for a chance that may never come again in a lifetime."
"In our lifetime?" askd Mulli gain. "Of course in our fucking lifetime." "Then why not in another lifetime?" askd Murphy. "Because we are in this lifetime, not some other one." "I see," sayd Apaleena, brushing a dred uv hair awey frum her face. "In this lifetime—this one right now—we can expect a window to open up, right?" Sayd Mulli gain. "That is correct," answerd Humbert. "In our lifetime." "Was there an open window before in someone else’s lifetime?" askd Murphy. "Well of course there must have been," answerd Humbert. "Of course," sayd Apaleena. "Oh I see,"sayd Mulli gain. " Theres got to be a number of windows…" "A whole fucking world-full of windows," interuptd Murphy." "so many windows that it would be impossible to count them or even conceive of them." continewed Mulli gain. "I suppose," sayd Apaleena. Humbert closd his eyes an took in a deep breeth. "There is only one window of opportunity," he sayd. "And if we don’t get things started, there will never be another one in our lifetime." "What does this window do?" askd Murphy. "It shows us the way," answerd Humbert. "It simply shows us the way out of the fly bottle." "You mean theres a window in a fly bottle?" sayd Murphy. "No, you idiot—theres no window in the fly bottle; that’s just another metaphor, nothing more." "By the way," Mulli gian, askd, "what brings you to our quaint little cottage?" "Don’t you remember?" askd Humbert. "I’m afraid I don’t," sayd Mulli gain. "I’m here because you requested my expertise in helping you with a little problem," Mulli gain ran his fengars throo a crest uv irongrey hair, and smyld. "Can’t say as I remember," he sayd. "You most certainly will," sayd Humbert, "after I explain my solution to your little problem, you most certainly will." "Do you remember calling Humbert and asking him to come down here?" Mulli gain askd Murphy. "I’m not completely sure," sayd Murphy. "Maybe it has something to do with long pieces of wood," offerd Apaleena. "No not at all to do with wood—that wouldn’t be it," Murphy sayd. "What about the dog?" asks Mulli gain. "Now there’s a real fucking problem." Murphy raized his hede a stard herd at Mulli gain. "Now you leave the poor dog out of this," he sayd. "He hasn’t done a thing—not a goddamn thing." "Who’s dog is it anyhow?" askd Apaleena. "Its his," sayd Mulli gain. "I don’t want a fucking thing to do with it—never did, from the start." "Well its here and here’s where it’ll stay," sayd Murphy defiantle. "On your side of the room," sayd Mulli gain. "Keep the fucking thing on your side of the room, that’s all I ask." Murphy clenchd his graitjaw an ran his tunge across tha beck uv his dentyours. "It’s settled," sayd Murphy. "For now," sayd Mulli gain.
Humbert opind an closed his eyes, rubbing tha grit an dert frum behind his eyelashes, which causd him ta sqwint. "Today will be the day," he sayd gruffle. "Today is the day that we prepare for the worst. We will prepare ourselves for whatever may come—be that war or some transaction between indifferent but equally superior foes." "You mean we’re in some kind of trouble?" askd Mulli gain. "Sure, we must be if he’s here," sayd Murphy poynting at Humbert. "Why are you here?" Murphy askd, a look uv concentrashun crenolating his brow. "To stop them from taking over the entire valley and turning it into an amusement park," sayd Humbert. "Now I remember," Mulli gain sayd cawshusle. "An amusement park?" sayd Murphy. "That’s right," Humbert added. "A fucking amusement park."
Tha sum uv all things iszero. Tha sumuv all things is notzero. Watt is mey nevr be agen. Watt meynevr be agen is tha sum uv all things. Watt meynevr be agen is not tha sum uv all things. Adinfinitum. Arastawtal is mortel. All mortels r Arastawtal. Arastawtal is all mortels. In enaround a lake, mowtains cum outtatha ski. Thundar splitsopin an rends asundar tha merning ski. Clowds crash inta tha horizon an fell like angels frum onhigh. Orion cuts tha maw uv nite like a hornet’s stang ona febral brow. Mulli gain dences on fliteuvfoot whyal Murphy pleys tha comic fool. Nothing mettars anemoor. Rayvanblak an distence far, on amoonlite nite that paraids acress tha mourning ski like somuch angar on a bloodeed fist. Blessed be thi name. Thi Kingdum cum. Allwill be dune. On eerth as it is in heevan. Pleese don’t ferget me whain tha tyme will cum. I will be waiting as allgood men mey stand in tha brilleyeance uv yor blessedness. Its notcerainle wat ewe think it is, its sumthing far more intaresting; semthing that’l meke yer bloodboyal. I cuwd do a hamstend an bitemi lips an grind mi teeth an spitspittle allovar an abuv tha yellomud uv tha merning ski. I cowd pley with tha milke clowds an cast aspersians on tha thorne scab uv nite: blessd be thine name, for evar an evar. Aman. Onesolatare man with a shooshine grin an a penchant fer allthings chalkolate an creem. Malli gen an Marphy, two peas in a ped. Apalenna an Hombert, two faces in a crewd. Volataire, tha cunt. Descartes, tha fillthe bestard. Plato, tha unmenshunable old quween. Cunts tha lot uv ‘em. Brewsd plums. Palliate tha custerd sowl. Too yung ta suk on a milkplump teet. Muthar’s werning ta us all that we best be carefell wair we stik ower scabbe red cecks. Best be nothing ta ewe than ta screw tha cockhen with tha fireered ceckcomb. Goran poor bestard. Wife stiks gerds an pumkins an yello twoburs up between har scabberd legs an inta tha tightnest uv har woman’s plece. Too much moysture in tha thikuvit. A rite oldcunt with a twothless smile an a thankless heert. Its at tymes like this that a currantred blistar on akillee’s heel wood be a fer bit bettar than legs made uv timbar an feet sculled lik appalpeels. Man needsta welk ta keep tha sirculashun going. Humbert’s get thorns an whistles on tha bettum uv his feet; fer scrappen tha cowshite an sharpgress frum between his towes.
I’ve been having sum diffecultees with mi teeth lately. Thay hav begen to chenge color an hav been felling outta mi jawbone whair they hav been stuk fer tha lest fourte yeers without rhym or reeson. Mi predatore mastekaters wair tha ferst ta go: thay simple chenged thair posishun in mi moowth, bentdouble ovar inta tha penk skin uv mi gums, an subsequentle loosend an xtrected themselves frum mi jaw bones without mi knowing it. Thay fell out. Thay just retted an fell outa uv mi skull. Its tha ones left ovar that r now cawsing me tha mest truble. Thay seem ta bleed an milk an cutsharp inta tha soft tissu uv my mowth whair thay peel layars uv skin frum tha innerside uv mi cheeks lik old paynt. Its tha horrable thought that thay mite all fell out an leeve me with a mowthful a nuthing; a mowthful uv blud an puss—an than whatevr thair may be left uv tha hardchipt bone, thay’ll drell holes inta mi jawbones an screw in sum dentyours that’ll surely be mede frum tha seme stuff thay meke toylets outta. God hav marce on mi few remaning teeth. I thinc thay mite callit pieorea or sumthing lik that. Bleeding gums, that’s it: fucking bleeding gums, for the love uv God. Mi fucking gums r bleeding an tha smell cant be too wenderful itself; it must smell lik sumthing retting or an old peece uv meet that’s been layen arund too leng in tha beck uv tha refrigerator whair tha box uv bakensodas seppose ta be. I don’t even remembar if I had ane milkteeth. Keck in tha hede’ll do it jest fine. Knok whatevarsleft uv tha buggars otta mi mowth an be dune with it. Sille cunts get bettar teeth than I evar had. Beg white ones with even spaces an pink gums that seem ta jemp out at ya whenevar she smyles. Fucking sonuvabitch ken eat whatevar tha fuck she wents. An me; tha soare bestard that I am, not knowing what ta eat that’ll not endup blistaring mi fucking jawbone and gum skin an giving me a cankar or an absess. Fucking shitte situashun I’m in, not knowing whethar I’ll loose anuthar molar or a eyetooth whain I’m sleeping. Feck tha little ceckheded rewstar up between tha eyes with tha bigfat ceck uv yers. Mothar sayd, in deed she ded, that nuthing’ll evar go wreng with yer little peckar if ewe keep it in yer fucking pents. Forevar dencing aroound lik a crazeman thincing aboout given tha old heeveho ta a fucking rewstar or a checken fer Christ sake. This life jest doesn’t get ane bettar than that. Fucking cecksuking white teeth; jest her luck. An me with mi porcalin fucking dentyours that thay meke toylets otta stuk ta tha fucking roof uv mi mowth lik thertetwo angre men.
Culd hav Goran he wood hav left his wife an moved down inta tha vallee; tha ferthar awey frum har tha bettar. She wuz an angre cur with a fowlmowth and an attitude that shaimed Goran ta admet why wuz it that nevar had he evar marreed har in that furst place. An tha plentlife up har bum an tha twested fingars that wair constentle atplay at har breests and cunt witch wuz purpel an bloo like sumthing hung in a iceclosit. In tha greetar scope uv things it mighthav been a bettar thing that he hav har comitted an putawey in sum drefte clapboorded howse whair nersis an attendants took care uv har micturashuns an foodhabats an made cirtan that she breshed har teeth and comed har hair down tha shallow rivar uv har back. Now sumone he mite hav been a good match fer Apaleena with har cheere smyle an russettred cheeks whair she pleyd with tha cheldrin an swam in tha runningrivar bi tha clocksmith’s stabale an livare. A man is judgd bi tha manner in which he judges othars. A man is no judge if he hav not tha curage ta judge himself. Goran wuz one uv such men ta whom tha formar appleyes. He nevar once raized his voyce ta his wefe an wuz unaccustum ta lowd argumints that festard inta tha wee howars uv tha merning. He wuz a calm man; a man uv integrite an cumpashun.
A ligamint stewd in a curre sawce with musterd seed an unyon. A caf’s livar, freshle exsized, coated in semolina an braized on a hot grell untell tha jewse an blood coat tha buttom uv tha skillet like blakstrapmolassuss; a mixteur uv intestinell liqwid an allspice dressed with applesculls an parsalee. A puree uv it all not ta tha metter what tha fuck yer upta whain ewe wair a childrin with a smyle like tha devell an bluntcut hair that touchd tha nob uv bone on that tep ov yer showlder whair tha sun yewsd ta bern mahogane inta tha heet uv yer skin. I am a gourmond; a tastar uv poltre; a rarebit uv tooasted breed with bacunfat and selt. Fer God sakes man, cum beck ta yer senses! Nonevar evar agen. Fucking Goran’s wife with har drigrass hair an a look uv absolute contentmint on har pigsnout. That fucking dug with tha ungodful reek an creel uv spoyld fish and capars in tha foam uv it’s mowth. Mulli gain: fucked. Murphy: fucked. Apaleena: on tha wey ta beeing fucked. Humbert: toofucking shert ta be fucked. Goran; fucked if he knows. Fintan: yet ta be fucked. Hes cuming soon; trest me.
Fintan wuz a enigma: he wuz seventy-four yeers-old, an as tall as a tree. He could bend a steelspike in haf, an eat a mowthfell uv beas like a handfell uv yellocern. He had a scarifacashun on his forehed stretching down ovar th curve uv his eyebrow and aleng his cheek thain acress ta his lip whair it fermed sumthing closele resembling a cleftpalate. He had his name branded on his showlder, an a tatoo uv a Philipino whore on tha greetmass uv his forearm. He wuz a man ta be reckond with; net sumone ewe’d want ta pissoff or get on his bad side. He could be a naste sonuvabitch whain he wanted ta. Fintan wuz origenalle frum up nerth beyond tha treeline and inta tha rockescree uv tha glacier whair silvarchar an salmon swamfrozin in tha quik currant uv tha rivars that gentle brewsed tha landscape. He used ta tell peeple that thair wair no trees left up on tha mowntain becawse he had cut them alldown yeers ago, before ye wair evar reele bern. Fintan, thay all knew, wuz due beck down tha mowtain sumtime soon; perhaps befor tha next snow fell which usualle keept him bivowacked up in the shert brush neer tha mowth uv a cave whair at one time, so he wuz teld, lay an old Indian berrial site. He dug up what evar he could uv thair remains—frectured skulls an misshappin legbones and broken teeth that just seemd ta cutcrooked in that hardbone uv tha jaw. He dug evare lest one uv them up, an bureed them sumwhair else, fer religeous reesons he hadnt that payshens or whairwithall ta remembar or reele caremuch aboout.
An he had ubsessive thouts that plagued his evareday life. He wood cownt tha nembar uv twigs on a specific tree brench ovar an ovar agen untell he felt rite with himself, untell the dark thouts of death an humiliashun had temporarile abandond him; and he wood tri ta memorize mathethical preblems an ta remembar dates and touch invisable peeces uv dert an tha dert floor, uv all things, until tha scabs on his hands and fingars bled an he lest his fingarprents that wair wornthin due to xcessive, compulsuve touching and retouching ovar an ovar agen and he wood cri and wail inta tha blakcunt uv nite and prey ta tha God uv his understending ta take awey tha torment an payn.
That he an Humbert had onle met once, when Mulli gain and Murphy had tha big gettogethar on thair properte tha summar past when Humber ate tha whitecoils uv tha cews tail an then pessed out in tha cerncrib, wuz a mystare in itself; one wood hav thout that thay wood hav crossd peths at leest once befor in thair live’s, but sech wuz not tha case. Both men livd soletare lives; one abuve tha treeline, tha uthar in tha derk woods that sirownded tha halfwey up poynt uv tha mowtain whair tha snowsfell ten foot deep an tha brunches uv tha trees wair heeve with ice an strung tight as a bow, tha tenshun pelling tha roots rite outuv tha ground in some pleces, an in uthatrs, bending an striating tha forest floor with needles an cones.
Fintan wuz knowen ta eat greet roounds uv colleflowar an stawks uv sellre an pellgreen brusellsprouwts that wair steemdin pernod an unyon skins. He culd eat mure than tha avrage man an oftin wood wen he had tha noshun to on those okashuns wen tha ski wuz blowted with yelloclowds an tha merning sun wuz like a bell on fire an his stumak wuz grembling an tha soles uv his feet wair callusd an red frum nocternal remblings that sent him deeper inta tha closure uv nite. Watt closure uv nite? Watt awedacite. Watt an impertinent fool. God luv’em, cawse no one else curtainle will. An Fintan: a men uv seventee sum with roughbark hends an an appetite that wood frighten tha most xtrordinare culinare abilite. An at seventee sum he culd run his hend thro an iceceld streem an leeve it thair for all must an hower without one bit uv payn rigamortising his fingars an nukles. Tha man wuz a men amung men: an fine example uv brewtstrength an longjevite.
Har hends wair scallopt an raw frum pluking at tha hem uv har dress an rubbing tha tips uv har fingars agenst tha bark uv a tree that she had okashun ta sit undar on het deys. She war softsoled shoos with thin laces an rubbar balls aroound tha ankal. She hed a flowar tuked in tha cleft uv har ear an a longred scar that ran frum tha middal uv har forehede aleng har cheekbone an acress tha softtissu uv har lips an ended in a cerl at tha bottum uv har chin. She didn’t know Apaleena or Mulli gain or Murphy or Humbert or Goran or Fintan. Thay wair yet ta ferm images in har hede. She hed runawey frum a fostar home in tha cite and wuz werking harself acress cuntre ta wiar she hed heerd thair wuz steade werk at a flowarmill that hiard yunggerls lik harself. Watts in tha breed uv tha bone? Watt happans wen watts breed in tha bone becums breed in tha sistum? Poor littal gerl with no plece ta go and noone ta teke care uv har. Noone ta telk ta an noone ta breeth besede in a fethar bed with an ermjoynt fer a pillo. Culd it be tha sistum itself, or culd it be watt remens uv tha sistum? This filosofical sistum that nevar seems ta muve beyund tha present. It’s a pedagogue, or sew I’ve heerd. Thair is no end ta tha sistum; onle a begening an middal an a helfwey throotha middal, an sewferth. Per littal gerl with tha sinamun hair an those greeneyes uv hars tha seem ta see rite throoya an beyond inta tha fewture. She needs a neme. Watt shell we call har? Whom shell she be? Watt shell she be? Watt shell she represent? Whi is she here? Whi net sumwair else? But hare; at this momint? That lowse basterd: how dare he seppose ta represent tha sistum. Hes a cowherd; a fecking cowherd if Ive evarseenone. No merals. No unnerstending; he thinks tha sistum is outsede tha sistum. He dusent seem ta realize that tha sistum, in itself, is nevar pert uv tha sistum: it exests indepedant uv thair beeing a sistum at all. Thair is no filosofe; onle a sistum that pretends ta be a filosophe uv life. Adinfinitum. An tha God uv mi understending will wipe awey tha teers frum mi eys an kess me gentale on tha top uv tha hede. God luv us: evare lest one uv us. Remembar: thair r no answers, onle qwestyuns. Feck it!

Apaleena5

She had an imposseble long nek with a string uv tendone an nukle uv mussel that knotted tight inta tha hinge uv her jaw underneeth tha conch uv her ears. Wenevr she ate sumthing tha mussells and sinews closed an opind like a fist; tha fingrs twisted an worn inta an opake hardness that soften tha cut uv her face like spring water on a smooth stoone. As a metter uv fact it wuz tha wey she chewed an mastacated wattevr she ate that made her jawbones an mussell reele cum ta life; tha foodstuffs an tha like, like whips uv lickorish an combs uv hone an roounds uv sawsage that wair dripping with fat an anamell meet an flesh an cornonthacob with butter an sweets uv alkinds. If it wernt fur tha tic-tacs on her rms, shed be qwhite a catch; yes in deed, qwhite a catch. An that’s without saying that she wuz a fine an gentle woman when she had tha heert ta be. It wuz tha dregs an tha nedulls that scard tha jeezus out uv me; it waird me out trying ta convince her that she didn’t need them, that she cood do it on her ownself. That wuz thain: things have chenged since those deys; lots uv things, too mane ta remember at tha momint uv things.
An Mulli gain, he’s not xactle one uv yer happe fuckers. Didn’t have much uv a cheldhood, he didn’t; alweys finding himself in treble fer things he had nonevr hand in; alweys being held responsible fer the things his elder bruther did on tha lam an inbetween serving his tyme in tha justiss sisstum. One unheppe sunuvabitch. Poor basterd-Mulli gain; alweys finding himself cott in tha inbetween; alweys finding his aresbottum sorepaddled an raw. His parints wair nevrmuch at home: they spent most uv thair tyme in places like Urup or tha Derk Contenent; an sumuv tha tyme thaid traville ta places with no names, wair tha jungle wuz buzzing with insecs an tha trees higher than a men could see ta tha tup uv. Grait canopeas uv leeves an twisted brunches that seemd ta tear holes in tha blooazure ski. Wair sters an planits could be seen by tha naked eye, an oftin ewe could pikture tha moon itself hanging low an fat in tha derk nite ski like a spernd luver. An tha sorre basterd Mulli gain without a toy ta play with or a barcycle ta tinker aboout with. Left ta his lonesum ta figyour out wair he fitted inta tha sum uv things in this werld. Without anuther ta shew him tha wey or teech him a thing ortwo ta prepare him fer his jurne throo life. Its nowunder tha man cant seem ta keep a civil tongue in his mouth. Unlike Apaleena, who wuz an reelactual orfin, Mulli gain wuz whats to be calld a much neglekted cheld without a muthar or tha fathar aroound ta teech him a thing or two or rock him softle in his small little credle. Its nowunder he fell victum ta tha trubles uv tha weald.
Sad basterd, he wuz: Mulli gain stew; Mulli gain tyre; Mulli gain all on his lonesum. It wuz onle aftr he came inta aquaintance with Murphy that he reele knew he had a friend, that he wuznt alune in tha werld and that he had things he needed ta do. Murphy helpd Mulli gain ta grow; and wen he felt he had grewn enuff, he decided that it wuz aboout tyme he tuk his life inta his own hends an becum sumthing uv a man himself. It wuz his angr that kept him frum acheeving tha things he wented ta acheeve; he had ta leern how ta curb it an do things in a mannerle wey. Murphy, it can safle be sayd, shewed Mulli gain tha wey aroound an beyund his angr an feers. Mulli gain wuz rede: he had nuthing ta lose, an evrething ta gain.
Tha dug had cum frum tha littar uv a blak labridoor an an Irish settlar, with a muthar like a fucking cur an a fawthar that had been a hunting dug up untill it fell off tha scent an ran hedefirst inta a cedar, smashing its brains ita tha bak uv its skull like somuch grey porrige. Tha little basterd didn’t have a chence uv becuming anething uthar than an assrubbing lap dug with fir tha coler uv taffe an a hede like a treestump. No wundar it ran its aresbottum acriss tha floor leeving a trail uv blood an shit that Murphy allwez seemd ta be cleening up with a pale an a broom with a handle like a sawsage that he held like a wand infrunt uv himself wenevr Mulli gain ejackulated an got angre aboout tha mess. Poor sonuvabitch; not a thing he could do ta chenge tha cercumstances he found himself in; not nevr a chence ta be a showdug or just a plain old ferm dog with a yunglad for a mastar an a dughowse with a blankit an a litebulb ta keep him werm in tha winter. Thairs sumthing aboout it all that smells like its been cooking for sumtyme now; like maybe it wuz reele Mulli gain that luvd tha little dug an just couldn’t cum ta an unerstanding with himself that he could like tha little fucker without having ta let everebode know that he wuz in cherge an thair wuz ta be no fucking aroound with him; no nevr: on tha okashun that tha little fucker came an sat by his feet, he’d rub tha top uv his hede an whisper nonsense inta its flappeears like he wuz happe ta have tha friendship uv a little dug with a treestump snout curld up like a bairn with a pink tunge lapping at its leeshure.
How thain an agen can we atall xpect ta unerstand these caractars wen thay all seem ta be so disfuncshunal an fucked up? Tha anser is: we cannet. Thay take on a life uv thair own that runs its coourse without us beeing a pert uv it. All we ken do is sit bak an wetch them traduce thair wey throo life’s miserees and disassters. We cannot, howevr, guide them in ane wey wattso evr: its up ta eech one uv tham ta find thair wey throo tha werld alone with fate as thair Virgil.
Caramellyello curn with applejelle scowns an a mouthful uv melk streight frum tha teet uv she that ate tha gress down ta tha mud an dust. Twofowlds uv pastre with sugarbutter an blooberriees that seem ta stain tha grund beneeth yer feet with purpull bood. Uv tha fruit. Tha wombfruit. (God bless Mr. Joyce). A derk sillendar uv rich tabacco that stings tha bak uv yer throoat an makes yer singing voyce all fer tha bettr. She wood have been a good lovar if it warn’t fer tha needulls an smash. Eye ken remember whain she wuz a prinsuss an how her corntassle hair used ta catch tha merning lite an fell tha ruem with wermth and cumfert. Tha tic-tac and scritch-scratch; tha punktyours an leng blak an bloo tracks that scatterd her rms an left smudges on tha bones uv her cheeks that made her look sad an wern out. Tha needulls an tha oringe tipcaps that lay thrown on tha fleer unerneeth tha sofa an tha luvseet an tha fucking coughfee table.
With an indefferance ta payn she culerd her werld with blak cuttonwale an yellomarang. Thair wuz alsew tha hempshire bruwns an tha willowbeach wheals an tha culer uv ivore an platinum an russetred scales which wair smooth ta tha tutch an soft on tha palate. A cuntfell uv plums an a mowthfell uv ransore. A bitter remindr that one in the rm is werth a hunnerd in tha hede; that a hunnerd or mure in tha hede’ll put ewe in hell without a pattle ta navigate yer wey throo tha poundstile uv tha rivermerld whair tha wicked are prayzed an tha riteshuss rebuked. Allmighte God in whos absents we prey for fergiveness an louve. In this an that inbetween a feersum feer uv wat mey cum an wat mey not: cataracs that milkd his eyes; a long frey uv hare that catches tha roll uv his nose an cuts deep inta tha arcetecture uv his face; a perpull scold colluding with tha creese an funcshun uv his boneecheeks. God Almighty, we ask for yer forgiveness and ley duwn in charactar an in peece an in turmoil. Blessd r those who carre tha werd, for thay will cleense tha werld uv all its curcumstence an warsh it duwn inta inta tha sewer whair tha cheldrin pley with thair own shit an pissawey tha aftarnoon dey.
Goran ran a bookshop in tha tinee villege tha ley nomure than hafamile frum Murphy and Mulli gain’s cottege. He collectd litrature an histories, an books on art an he had an entyre secshun devoted ta Iresh shertstories an Scottash hymns an derges an oftin ewe could find old Inglash poetre or tha yello tern pages uv a book on astrolage with piktures dating bak ta tha tern uv tha centure. Goran was born in tha nerth cuntre whair his fathare wuz employd as a desill mechanic for a logging cumpane. Goran’s muthar wuz mentalle unsteble an prone ta attacks uv jelluse; wenever she felt that her husbend wuz not showing her enuff attenshun, she wood cause an awefell fuss an sterm aboout tha house like a furie. Thair wair no uthar cheldrin but thay did have a dug with taffeecolerd fur an blak rings arund it’s eyes an and a rope coild tail that seemd ta get in evreone’s wey an they had to take note uv him being in tha coreadore between tha bedreums whair he sumtymes ley in tha derk with tha stench uv dedmeet in tha slavar uv his mowth.
Tha dug died one Novembar dey wen it wuz hit by a car going at hellnek speed duwn tha counte road an thay dug a grave in tha bakyard beneeth tha cedars an bureed him whair Goran used ta fish for chub an fishstew wen he wuz a boy uv ten noless.
Mulli gain an Murphy knew Goran frum wen thay wair both yunglads with leng shagge haircuts an tern trowsers with patches an greengress stains that seemd ta run deep inta tha flesh uv thair legs an hobble them like cattle at markit. An thair wair tymes wen tha ski wuz azurebloo an tha three uv them wood ley in tha tallgress in tha feelds neer tha rivar an stare like cheldrin inta tha shallows uv tha clouds. A tight creese ta her pants; a clowvature uv tha nee just beloo tha patella an alongside tha sharp cut uv her shinbone that seemd ta run parallell ta her ankle an tha scull uv her foot. Mi Lolita. Cettle hoof tha stench uv routing carrion uv those that war tha last ta is slotted. Enemas: ha blood arterial an stick; ha greases undarneeth yer feet scabbed and oile with it. I think uv such things wen I remember mi Lolita; I must, in tern, dismiss frum mi thots ha deepfeer that creeps up mi bakspine wen I rememberatall ha hungar uv that obseshun.
Ha appellyard an ha miste sweetness uv ha frewt. Ha nectar an treecal that enfolds in ha ripe orbs that hang like dedmen in ha scalderon uv ha merning sun. Ha unknowan rememberance that this culd, at best, be a fracshun uv ha frewt that each tree will bringforth an bare as a condishun uv thair vere beeing. Mi Lolita; mi berning luv. Mi thots r curreed with ha spice uv yer breath an ha dawnfreshness uv yer skin so simple an smooth. It wuz ha uthar one; ha one with ha smash an ha nedulls an ha freesystem an ha artform she like ta call a pert uv a higherplane uv conshussness. I need ta think uv ewe, mi Lolita, wen this mind uv mine fells prey ta ha refuse that takes me bak ta ha helluv it all agen. No nevr agen; no nevr. I remembar appell an ruebard crumble an werm creem an a dusting uv brewnsugar an ha wey ha creem puddled in ha bottum uv ha bowl an ha wey ha brewsugar crusted ha spoon so hande an round. I remembar ha look on mi mothar’s face wen I stoodup an announced that I was nevrnotevr cuming bak here fer anuthar yeer an thairabouts. That wuz anuthar tyme, anuthar place an anuthar werld awey.
I need ta purge miself filosophically. Thairs anuthar bloodstain on ha stairs leeding up ta Murphy and Mulli gain’s apartment; it is a smeer, uv serts, kindhave like a blush or ha trail left behind bi a sik animel. Ha little dug, as fer as I know, seems ta be oka; he’s still atit with ha bits and shreds uv food thay feed him with a panfull uv wetar an ha odd assertment uv biscuts an bacun rashuns, an ha like. He may, as a fect, not be quite as healthe as he cud perheps be, but at ha bottumleest he is alive and kicking and up ta wattevr it is that he duz on his lonesum wen Murphy and Mulli gain r out an aboout collecting sizes uv wood an cheking ta see if thair is ane mune ta be made frum cardboord an applepeels as an admixture tagethar or on thair own. Thank heevans fer God—as He shews us ha wey throo ha muk an mire uv this one werld an inta ha werm credal an ha cumforting blankits ha a muthar shrowds her luvones in wen its celd an bittar an ha ski is alittar uv greycluds an ye cannet see beyund ha fixdend uv yer nose. Not a foot or mure. Deerest God, in heevan abuv: blestd be thine neme. Admen. God blessd; ta ha hithar an thone an beck agin. Nevr beck too leng not ta ferget what it is we need ta fermint ha blessd frewt uv ha vine; nevrnomettar that sweet suger is God’s geft ta us all. Mudeed an wet; frum ha credle ta ha greve; frum ha womb inta ha bleck frost uv nite; febrail an week; between Duntsmure an Evansville; ha tinee hamlat whair Murphy an Mulli gain’s quaint cottagre traces ha woodsmoke frum a chimine or a cooksfire an those uthars sloughtared an fed inta ha blak maw uv ha furnass nevrmure ta be seen in this life nor ha next.
"I wonder where Groan is?" askd Murphy. "He was suppose to be here over an hour ago." "Might have got beaten and robbed," sayd Mulli gain. "We live in very precarious times." "I’ve brought some apples for him," sayd Apaleena. "There down in the bootroom in the back porch." Humbert rayzed his hede from his chest and grumbled, "Wheres fucking dinner?" Mulli gain ran a splittoothd com throo his hair and shook tha contents onta tha wermwooded floor below his feet. Murphy smyled an sayd, "I suggest we wait until we hear from Goran before we settle down to dinner." "We can’t wait all fucking night," Mulli gain sayd. "He could be lost." "He’s certainly not lost," sayd Murphy. "He knows the country around here like the back of his hand." "I’ll show you the back of my hand if you don’t shut up," Mulli gain challengd, a knot tha size uv a goiter appeering on his nek just below his ademsapple. "I’ll go get the apples," sayd Apaleena. "I won’t be but a minute." "Fuck the apples," rumbld Humbert. "We need real food; like ducks or chicken or a roast of pork." "Apples go good with pork," sayd Apaleena. "I’ll make a sauce," she sayd, "a nice thick applesauce." "I like it soupy," Murphy sayd. "What?" sayd Mulli gain. "The applesauce—I prefer it a little on the soupy side." "Fuck off," intond Mulli gain, "or you won’t get any dinner at all." "Supper, isn’t it?" askd Apaleena. "Dinner is in the evening, and supper is in the afternoon." Humbert clenchd his teeth an breethd out throo his nose; a werm uv spittle an snought collecting in the perenium between his nostrells an upparlip contributing to an alreede feral an unkempt appeerance that lent Humbert an air uv hostilite an uneeseness that crimsond his face like a caffstongue on a saltlik.