Crab Paste 

Crab Paste

Fell shape flopped from fell shape, revealing nothing bar a core. Within the relative safety of the bed, I witnessed the falling away of form from form. Yet, if this were a dream, why was I sitting bolt upright against the bolster, rather than with head held fast in pillowy plumpness? Sleep was a sloppy mode, at the best of times. It had always been my contention that dreams should be faced awake. No flinching, no indulgent pinching of the faecal flesh, no doubting the necessary constrictions of dreams dire dirndl - above all, no false economies of self-identification. I could have been just about anybody. I did not recognise the feel of the bed whence I sat staring outward to the dimness beyond. I knew, however, the unwholesome shape I saw was the devil performing an unholy striptease. The core was the its essence divested of devilish accoutrements, yet imbued with its own sickly light. Each tier of tease had peeled back upon further hierarchies of enticement, pyramids of pecking-orders that even made a simple triangle seem sensuous. I blinked the eyes I saw with. Belief was behindhand. Core cleaved upon core ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam. Eventually, everything was empty. Including the mind I thought with. So empty, one wondered if one wondered at all. The final fleeting flake of flame, the concluding core of cores, hovered over the covers. I raised my knees - or someone did - creating an upward urging union of blanked blackness. The flickering fleck of residual fire bifurcated, spun seethingly towards my knee-kingdom's nadir and teased through the tight-knit texture of tumbled toppings. Whereupon I felled the triangular timbers of flesh-cushioned bone and spread wide the blanket bath of body beautiful to receive the unction of the sizzling scissoring seed. Sleep slipped from sleep. Dreams drifted dreamward. Then, there was something similar to something strange. I broke the surface of someone else's consciousness, flaying back a soul's carapace as I did so. I was now truly me. No doubt about it. I was rich with self. No longer a need for identification parades of possibles or, even, probables. I was simply scissorish slivers of slime. Slick slices of soggy seed-atoms. Satanic sum of all human knowledge. The devil's aids - for prolonging life. As for me and my like, we are merely smidgin smears in the devil's panoply of prevention and cruel cure. Antibody. then, not anybody. As unctuous under-unguents understand the paths of woman - and her itching ills and valleys. Ad nauseam.


(Published 'Ah Pook Is Here' 1995)