The Visitor (40)
(xx)
The Second Dream
By Des Lewis
(In which s.s. believes himself to be The One-Balled)
Lorg Dagg the epic poet and renowned but renounced mountaineer, strode into the hall, fixed attention on himself by waving his hand at the blushing princess who was trailing yards and yards of organdy and fur.
Hunched heads whisper and gesticulate excitement. The froth and fury, colours hinting at colours, of a Strauss waltz climaxed expectedly to allow Greek God and Fairy Queen to bow, kiss and tender courtesy.
…Fixed attention on himself, but his knee suddenly buckled and he collapsed, an inglorious heap on the stretched floor. Unnoticed, but soon to be so, Lorg’s dagger had accidentally, in the treacherous fall, pierced his right shoulder. (Or was it his left testicle?)
*
Latimer turned from the window and the sight that had presented itself to his dull eyes. He turned and saw that the record had ground ingloriously to a tuneless slowth and to an even more tuneless halt. Blood was gushing from its speaker and splattering over Rosemary’s putrid corpse.
The clock tack irreproachably.
He cannot quite remember when he first heard the distant baying of champing policedogs but they suddenly pounced into the sedate room and snarled menacingly around his blushing face. Three truncheoned policemen followed and arrested him for harbouring an unsanctified corpse. They bustled him off across the steps, to the war where he would end his days continually dying for his country.
Lorg did not see the bowed head of Latimer escorted from the leaning tower across the steppery by the police-dogs and -men … for he was asleep and dreaming.
(xxi)
The Third Dream
By Charles Dipp
(In which s.s. believes himself to be St Lorg Dagg)
I dreamt of a strange, chaotic sea that was white as the land was black.
I dreamt of a teller whose elephantine muffles blurred the telling.
I dreamt of a comer, a sexual spirt of white pus.
I dreamt of a black war where the dead were black before they were red.
I dreamt of a visitor who came at precisely moon.
I dreamt of the telling of several stories woven into a crown of thorns.
I dreamt of one who did not tell his story and was eel-like or octopoid.
I dreamt of a sign and a wriggly swastika.
I dreamt of a huge bird who leaned over my corpse and pecked.
I dreamt of a saint and he made me saint, too.
I dreamt that I followed him through several fictional mazes.
I dreamt that he led me kindly by the hand and set me down.
I dreamt that he told me to write and this I did, to tell that which must be told.
I dreamt that I was back on that cliffedgy, chiaroscuro land but the wave were steps.
*
Latimer did not die in the First World War. He continued to die in the Second.
The Germans captured him at this very beginning and such was his treachery, he became Adolf Hitler’s batman and had his ear. In fact such was his influence, the true Fuhrer was he. He fed the brain of the Chaplinesque figure with the crosses and intertwinements of progressive despotism.
He, the Victorian (DFL 2006 comment: Visitorian?) Englishman that is, stood astride the gas chambers and watched corpses accumulate. And, on his brow, beside the MGM device, twitched a new device, a new tune, a wriggler, a comma, a hiatus, a symbol of a new fiction, viz:-
(DFL 2006 comment: there follows a crudely biro-drawn image of another huge ‘plank’ cross, this time in the shape of a swastika revolving (denoted by arrows) in a clockwise direction) as if using its ‘feet’ to travel across a level surface (or steps?). Nailed by head and limbs to it is a man’s body, with moonface and beard, but no glasses or mole.) At the end of each ‘foot’ of this swastika cross are numbers, 12 at the top, 3 to the right, 6 at the bottom and 9 to the left).
INLOGUE IV
Three Poems from ‘The Egnisomicon’ (DFL 2006 comment: written 1967)
(i)
Unnamed
Charred skeletons frozen in prayer of the sky
On plains of Ka and Toons
Infinity upon infinity
Of sky-stroking bones
Laughing crying and wailing
The cacophonous tittering
Rides the gusts of gore and gangrene
Chanted in praise of Etepsed*Egnis
Scream overlaps scream in the cacosong of pain
Surging and seething in time to the pulp-pulp of the mud
And indefinable bog-beasts slither
And splash as they frolic in the sickly soup
Ugeemen and pogeemen scratch each other
Caking their claws with yellow crusted blood
A swirl of light splits the sky in two
Illuminating the waving bones in a lurid hue
And sending a thrill of ecstasy
Into the spongy fibres of the bog-beasts
What a demonic blast of unholy effulgence!
The horizon bristled by the sky-stretched bones
Is laced in crushed varicolours
And inexplicable rainbows stream from sky to earth
A black twisted tree like a hand sexing the sky
Twists and groans in pain
As it burns in a crackle of fire till a black scab on jelly
From the ash-heap of decay
Leaps a swollen bird flapping its useless wings
And it falls to the mud as its feathers are spat out by the fire
Ka and Toons
The plains of evil and singe
Pulse eternally like a human heart freshly plucked from a body
Ka and Toons
Fevered abysses the playpen of our great EE
Here we might see the condemned cormorants
Being licked from the sky with his fiery tongue
Look! See them squirming on his palate!
Look! See him gnawing on sensual thrill!
Look! See him swimming in his blood-bath
Filled from the veins of twelve million goats!
Look! See him romp through the plains
Trying to crush as man skeletons as he can!
Not sights for you or me
But remember when you die
Yes when you die
You will be one of those skeletons
Scratching the belly of the sky for mercy and warmth
You will eternally be one on the plains of Ka and Toons
That is until you are crumbled to dust by a playful romp.
(ii)
The Fall of the Kings of Harchwee
The oceans are in turmoil
Bubbling and seething over the lands
Once ice
Now molten lead
They drown and scorch all in their path
In one fell swoop
They swallow humanity from the earth’s face
Till all that remains is a maelstrom
Eddy upon eddy
Whirldrag upon whirldrag
The titanic swirl sucking at nothing
Pulling at the abysses of the thousand skies
Spilling over into chaos
*
“Look at it sputter and seethe”
Remarked Kakir to Pelade who was having a hot bath
With his socks on
“Look at it indeed”
Returned Pelade fondling Lived’s toenail
And wishing that he was alone
Natas there too suggested
“The work of our master Etepnis?”
“Doubtlessly” muttered Yog Sothoth with a terrifying grimace
Here on holiday from the moon
“I’m getting mighty fed up with him”
Stammered Skruk in his typical muddy voice
“Aren’t we all” said the rest of the gods in unison
“Aren’t we all” they repeated
Or maybe it was an echo – we shall never know
Or perhaps we will – rather unlikely though
“Don’t you think it is time for a revolution”
Said Saduj cringing under the weight of a five-ton foot
A resonant “yes” thundered through the abyss
“He is tyrant beyond all tyrants”
“Without telling us he floods Htrae”
“Isn’t it called Earth?”
“You pagan! Take your blasphemy elsewhere”
“Htrae is ours to tend and taunt not his”
“We shall rebel” cried Skruk the obvious leader
Let it be known that not all the gods were present
And let it also be known that these will not succeed
And let it also be known, dear reader of the hundred skies,
That this is (obviously) a satire on the biblical story
Where Satan & Co. rebel against God
And fall to a Hell where they singe and turn to serpents
That is a myth – this is true
Let’s name these naughty gods so that you can boo whenever mentioned
Skruk forever to be called from now on – Kurks
Pelade Lived Kakir Saduj Natas Yog Sothoth & Lionel Blair
*
The oceans are in turmoil
See it turn and writhe
Filled with snakes and toads
See it squirm and swirl
*
Meanwhile Etepnis an abbreviation of our leader
Watched and grinned
He watched and he grinned
He grinned and he watched
He laughed
He laughed to see the futility of their wrangling
“They think I do not know their mellow plans”
We all know that Etepsed-Egnis is the greatest
And the only way to pierce his unpierceable armour
Is to use the forces of mellow
There is no singe greater than E*E
There is no mellow greater than Dog
Therefore it is pointless for Kurks and Co. to wrangle further
But we shall oversee their futile plans
*
The oceans are in turmoil
See it turn and writhe
Filled with snakes and toads
See it squirm and swirl
*
Mellowed beyond recognition
Natas wallows in cool blood
Stroking the anus of Kakir
Dog seeing a chance to one up on our EE
Visits the plotting crowd and says
“My friends
Lend me your ears
I come to bury EE not to praise him
At last you have seen the mellow light
Take your high spears
Your black trees of pain
Take your lofty mountains
And squash to a pulp the tyranny of EE”
All roared in assent
And Kurks answered choking on a jelly baby
“Thank you Dog for these words of wisdom
How do you overcome the might of this neo-Hitler”
“It is simple
As bombing a Vietnamese village with napalm
Mellow his singe
Melt it so it drips like the mud of a swollen river
Be good follow Dog and his singe will be overshadowed”
Therefore:-
Natas Kurks and Pelade
Transmogrified into three old men decrepit as the oldest hills of Babylon
And they took gifts
To a puling baby in Bethlehem who was to be the essence of mellow
Lived took on several names and wrote a book
They call it the Bible today
But in the nameless circles it is still Elbib
What mellow they did perform!
EE did cringe and shudder
His singed up body began to melt
Gobs of amber grease tore away and fluttered through the cosmos
EE was in trouble
*
The oceans are quiet
Gentle ripples flop around stone piers
And humanity praises its ugly mellow head
*
EE was not however defeated
He lit a gigantic fire licking the very sky
And he let it play around his body
Till once again he was a mass of limbs and flame
A continual singe of flesh
He glided through countless abysses
A boeing aeroplane spinning ever onward singeing the air
An awesome sight
Kurks and Co. stammered a prayer to Dog
But he was fled with his truculent scissors
They saw the right of their ways
And were sorry
They prayed for mercy to EE
“O Great One of the seven deeps
We were misled
We recognize your omnipotence
Wrap us in your wings of fire
And singe us to cinders”
“No” thundered the voices of our master
“No” thundered Edas by his side
“No” thundered Dnomsed
“No” thundered Retep
“No” thundered all the singed up beings of all time
EE took the mellow gods
And gave them the greatest punishment thinkable
He threw then into the hall of mellow
Heaven!
Where amidst sirens and harps
They turned into angels
Dog kissed them all
A fitting punishment
We must never mention these shocking creatures again
Condemned with eternal bliss
Kurks
Natas
Lived
Kakir
Pelade
Saduj
What a holy bunch!
Once singeful now forgotten
EE reigned in turmoil once more
But he forgot the oceans the cause of all the trouble
*
The oceans lap
Humans play
The oceans rest
For the time being
(3)
The Egnis Egress
Repulsive beasts of a sadder night,
Scarecrows of an earlier dawn,
Ill-shaped grotesques of a graceless noon
Peer around the corners of our doors
To see us in our material nudity,
To sex us with their hulky eyes,
And all we do is blink and blotch
In watery embarrassment for our shame.
Both the aunt and uncle of our life
Plop into an insignificant bucket
Splashing, only slightly, our well-rubbed boots
With worthless water and watery blood.
Suddenly grabbing our ego with both hands
We try to shoo the blotty shapes away
From the corners of our widening doors
And from the space that sits in our souls.
However, the asymmetry of the day
Is darker at the play of our so-called will,
As more and more grim-visaged forms amass
At our tiring feet and blotted boots.
The defacement of our considered pose
Is purely pitiful to watch, but watch we must
As it is that should be pitied, it is us
Who beckon the shapes to go and go.
Then, to surpass the harridans that are here,
Arrives the top toad of them all,
Creepy and gargoyle-gorilla tall:
The Egnis, the haggard blot of a darker night
And even darker space, withers on to our stage
And scowls and almost seems to age
As we watch, as watch we truly must.
Orderless botch that he is,
One can see he was carefully created
When he was young and fresh from fertility,
But now he is a going thing,
A trend dooming towards a slouching end,
A wrinkled piece of rotting eel,
Scar, splotch, smut, wen, wart:
Words race and die inwards.
Inbred, he dies inside out, with all the tubes
Hanging out, dribbling on our floor
Recently carpeted by the Wilton man,
And we are so annoyed we forget
Our shame, our blame, in fact,
And deposit the few and fewer remains
In a handy matchbox on the mantelpiece.
The forms have done their act
And now they fumble off, hyacinth quiet,
To the garden from where they came –
Garden O of circularity fame
Where the fence is round and dirty brown.
Sit still, sit quiet, friends around,
You cannot hear, now we are alone,
The baying as of some gigantic hound.
(written 1974)
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