[stet..]
Canto 1
Canto 2
Canto 3
Canto 4
Canto 5
Canto 6
Canto 7
Canto 8
Canto 9
Canto 10
Canto 11
Canto 12
Canto 13
Canto 14
Canto 15
Canto 16
Canto 17
Canto 18
Canto 19
Canto 20
Canto 21
Canto 22
Canto 23
Canto 24
Canto 25
Canto 26
Canto 27
Canto 28
Canto 29
Canto 30
Canto 31
Canto 32
Canto 33
Canto 34
Canto 35
Canto 36
Canto 37
Canto 38
Canto 39
Canto 40
Canto 41
Canto 42
Canto 43
Canto 44
Canto 45
Canto 46
Canto 47
Canto 48
Canto 49
Canto 50
Canto 51
Canto 52
Canto 53
Canto 54
Canto 55
Canto 56
Canto 57
Canto 58
Canto 59
Canto 60
Canto 61
Canto 62
Canto 63
Canto 64
Canto 65
Canto 66
Canto 67
Canto 68
Canto 69
Canto 70
Canto 71
Canto 72
Canto 73
Canto 74
Canto 75
Canto 76
Canto 77
Canto 78
Canto 79
Canto 80
Canto 81
Canto 82
Canto 83
Canto 84
Canto 85
Canto 86
Canto 87
Canto 88
Canto 89
Canto 90
Canto 91
Canto 92
Canto 93
Canto 94
Canto 95
Canto 96
Canto 97
Canto 98
Canto 99
Canto 100
I’ll tell my story to you in this poem,
A metaphysics and a pure narration.
There was a college near my childhood home;
I went there looking for an occupation
And talked to someone about truth and art.
She was a teacher, I said I was Jason.
She said who she was. So we sat apart.
It made me happy to be at her side;
In me she saw the ascetic aesthete.
A job was offered me; my work was good.
I feel a motive when there’s a demand,
And I had loads and loads to write about.
She needed things researched. I took her hand
And promised her my work in seven days.
We two were of one mind when I returned
From having dreams about the other’s ways.
She had, for her part, notions of me then;
She knew my type. Her thoughts in any case
Can be ignored, we’ll see them soon enough.
And she invites me to be better friends,
To be her lover, secretly to meet
And talk, and enjoy time, and be two minds
Within a cold but loyal long embrace.
And as our second interview unwinds
Into a scene of love, the lady says:
‘I have experiences to give to you,
That will make other poems seem mere verse.
Trust me to lift the dress on what is true
And let you see it.’ ‘Will the poem tell
The truth of life?’ She nodded. Reader, know,
That what’s prophetic is what’s beautiful.
These sonnets penetrate and show the law
As science does, and, intellectual,
They talk about our time in metaphor
About a man, like you, for whom God is absent
Man in a web spun by an absent spider.
My old school friends, they’d kept me company
For years since leaving school, Silley and Pru.
Silley and my lady spent a day with me.
We went out to a mountain whose plateau
Had stones on it, placed in a rocky circle,
Laid out a lot of centuries ago.
The lady spoke of England, and I found
My eye was watching Silley in sexual tension;
For Silley gazed at her, her, smooth and kind,
A serpentine cold sweetness. Apprehension
Of those two loving one another drives
My heart toward jealousy, holds my attention.
She talks of ethics in England; my eye moves
Toward the enchanting eyes in her white face.
Time passes, and from woods nearby arrives
The sound of song and a familiar voice.
My other friend from school days, Pru it was.
Since last we met this boy had not changed much,
And being so English this was no surprise.
For Englishmen have no distinctive feature:
His music’s dull, there’s nothing in his eyes.
Pru brought sheet music and brought his guitar,
Came walking upward, smiling, and perhaps
It was not chance that us three sat with her.
Pru played the lyre a bit, pulled out the stops,
Then all four of us talked. I sat in silence
While he described his artworks, and his hopes.
The conversation led to poesies
And this was more congenial, for still
Pru read and wrote verse, very rare these days.
Are poems to be found or read at all?
- And no-one heard the poetry of Jason.
Pru said: ‘The poems of the west are full
Of world renouncing silent meditation,
A deep stream with no outlet here above
Except the Catholic Church, or such. Creation
In Yeats and Eliot told that secret life.’
I stood and paced about: I had no name
In the lineage of Stalin, or of Jove,
Not good or bad, I had no power or fame
In the world of letters yet, and, unrelaxed,
Ambitious in my heart, I wanted them.
This mood came to me often with attacks
Like those that Goethe speaks of in his book
Called Truth and Verse. The demon had me fast.
I was a no-one, yet I wanted luck,
I thought of absolute mind, but soon a force
Was stopping all that peace, dragging me back.
Impersonal force of selfish feelings was
There burning in me, burning me alone,
While Silley gawped at her, and Pru made verse.
It was this blackening urge not to be man
But to be greater that I struggled with.
She sat with us three, there, at evening.
She spoke when I sat with her in our mirth.
She asked me, as the sky grew rosy red,
If we would like to know a great, old truth.
‘You know, these myths and poems you have read?
Wisdom they are supposed to hold, you know?
You know the Eucharist of the dead God,
The one who rises, burning like the sun?
I’ll tell the story and pose no kind of riddle.
While there is God, there’s also more than one.
That is a fact. I do not idly meddle
In minds like yours, the minds of little kids.
Now clear a space, let me stand in the middle.’
‘I will not play, but show the immortal gods
Against which your Church and synagogues advise,
For gods and ghosts do reign over human heads.’
She ceased, and that white skin and those blue eyes
Were thrown aside in shifting of the air
Around the form she wore, and there she was:
An upright snake and tall, a splendid pair
Of reptile wings emerged from either shoulder:
Heroic arms and legs, a knowing stare.
She scared me so I can’t recall, dear reader,
I was ashamed, too, since I felt great lust.
My vision blurred, I fainted. Sometime later,
After I woke, she gained all of our trust
By telling softly how we’re ruled by snakes:
They raise us and they crush us in the dust.
She pointed out to us what utter jokes
The humans are that take the earth for what
It seems to be; men love their own mistakes.
They’re easily controlled because their blood
Is made to be controlled from the beyond
By devils living out of sensual sight.
One day they’ll show themselves. They’ll say: ‘Behold
Your rulers! Parents to an enslaved race
Of docile victims.’ Aliens from of old,
They work in quiet, manipulating those
Who want to learn and be with them on top.
Manipulating, organising vice -
For certain vices please them: and the rape
Of truth from out of men’s dull ears is just
The easiest way. But let us make a stop.
So how should I invite the voice of muses
To teach me words, now knowing all the cost?
Inspired communications come from houses
Beyond our common senses; there, a host
Of unpleasant saurid things watch over us.
And can extravagant verses gain your trust,
You, reader, of an age of total loss
Of true and pure Christian theology?
When Joyce has made his common Ulysses
Should my recidivating poesy
Match up to austere realism’s power?
I doubt myself, and yet let us just see.
This goddess of the Moon, her lizard hour
Come on her for my benefit and hers,
Had showed herself; she showed her alien horror
(And mixed with the erotics of surprise)
To me and Silley and Pru with one intent:
That we’d be free to be her sacrifice.
These beings, they love our idleness and torment
And see no good in random pain and torture,
But only in molesting the innocent.
It was the autumn then, but by the Easter
She and some others planned to give me death
In an old ritual manner: as the daughter
Of Agamemnon gave, with murdered breath,
The Grecian princes wind behind their sails,
Placating gods who love death, says the myth.
In faithless ages, when the Prince of Wales
Attends his mother robed in sacred signs,
In hoary palaces and cathedrals,
In dark times, without God, they do snake things.
They love these rites and oaths and energies
Which gather round those places like ley lines.
I cannot write, I cannot speak, degrees
Of anguish and humiliation bind me
To think of it again. I’ll paraphrase
Her words to us: at Easter (Muse remind me),
A secret session of the gods would gather.
Some aliens dressed as humans would command me
To attend there and to give them what, together,
They need in order to maintain their birth:
A ritual where the rich and those who matter
In life today, retain their link with Earth.
Until that Christmas I’d be recognised
Among the public and would know the truth.
I’d go to town and, universally praised,
Live as a lord, well dressed, accompanied
By servants. I’d have pleasures organised,
And parties, lessons; treated graciously
By all the important people and by gods
Prostrate before me, knowing also why
I held such power over the human herds,
I would be taught the mysteries of god,
Be seated in the chairs where spirit lords
Commune with those still living; and, more mad,
I would sit at the zenith of existence
On thrones atop the social pyramid.
And see the heart of the elite’s persistence
In the exercise of power. And after praying
Toward the sun for joy, into the distance
Of future times, I would return to playing
Intoxicating games which please me most.
They’d take the greatest pains to improve the straying
That I was to enjoy; and interest
Would be aroused in me for the obscure life
Of my familiar serpent race; at last
I would surrender to them without strife.
Thus made to feel the love of elegance,
And knowing how the amoral world works enough,
I’d feel secure among the celebrants
Who trick and play mankind year after year.
By March I would be married to five serpents
And after carnal intercourse, and desire
Of a perverted sort, festivities
To mark the turning of the solar year
Would be begun, in which these atheists
Would lead me to a banquet at St Paul’s.
And at the Strand I would be met by priests
Of royal dragon and lion festivals
To attend me up the steps. Then, deep inside,
Beneath high altars, in some darkened halls,
There I’d find the magic hall, just wide
Enough to seat the Earth’s global elect.
Among man’s aimless leaders I’d be tied
And then be stripped and cursed before a neat
And sharp obsidian blade would be stabbed in,
Pushed deep into my stomach, so my heart
Could be removed and offered to the sun.
Apparently, my willingness to die,
Happy and conscious for them, was the one
And only way of getting potency
From this obscure and secret ritual
In which the disembodied lizardry
Could integrate themselves, both body and soul,
Into the earthy flesh of Homo Sap.
For otherwise their being’s virtual.
The four of us were on the bleak hilltop
At night now, for her information’s thread
Had reeled out and then in. The moon came up.
‘I won’t accept this’, Pru said, ‘I’d be mad
To follow you.’ And yet before he spoke
We knew that it was pointless, what he said.
He made no other noise. The giant broke
Into a wide and enigmatic smile,
Defeating all our hope with word and look:
‘If you conspire to spend your time meanwhile
In telling others of what, with your eyes,
You’ve seen, consider these ways that you’ll fail.
Sweet lullaby and fancy without honour
Is all you find in a modern journalist.
What do they care for you, a common loner?
I’ll have you disappear and not be missed,
Perhaps those closest to you will be hurt,
Or have their money stolen, their home lost.
You’ll have a serious accident one night,
Your heart will fail while doctors see to you,
And then you’ll be dismembered in a rite.
But this is academic, for by now,
You know there is no option. Let us go.’
The moon ascended slowly in the blue
The sun departs revealing the night sky,
And we three - with the thing which changed again
Into the shape of that girl whom I knew
Before this night as something, someone plain -
We went down from the hilltop, going home
Into the isolated life, and down.
But things were different, so in fact we came
Before the hole which leads down into Limbo.
Which is a place between the human realm
And that in which I fear to look. This bardo,
A place for spotless intellect alone
A silent vacuum hid behind a curtain,
The in-between or Waiting Room between
This world and hers: that which lies au-dela.
Without the hope of public reasoning,
Alone with this fantastic poetry
And lacking a transcendent God for Father,
My voice failed, there was nothing to restrain me.
I loved her though she lacked morality:
Having no sense that she was being watched
Or that she would be damned, forgot, or loved.
Down here a sign should be put up to read;
It should enjoin us to believe it’s true
That prayer works, and that there is a God.
It would read: ‘Welcome to the human zoo.
All souls found here are an experiment,
Captive to each other and the few.
All things of land or sea or firmament
Are the possession of an alien nation.
Seek out absolute mind or else lament.’
The self and world are like the dark and light
Flung on a screen by an immobile lamp.
Perhaps our mind and that of God unite?
But prejudiced and weak we crawl or limp
To death as if it were the final state,
And through life, all together, bored and damp
We walk these days. These days I meditate
To attune my mind to the eternal source.
To be that mind and be immaculate.
But in those days the moon goddess took me without force
To her house, as I hoped that she would do;
Without emotion I looked at her face
While driving there. As for the other two,
I saw those dead men in the rear view mirror.
She let them out at home, Silley and Pru.
That night, as those before, I, without horror
Went off to sleep beside her, in a trance
Because, as I suspect, I always saw her
Out of the corner of my eye askance.
Throughout my life I have been watched by eyes,
These Watchers, guardian angels. Not by chance
Is public life a shadow; and private lives
A general waste. Because mild hypnotism
Might be a feature of the universe
To make the real more real. Neuroticism
About being watched, and knowing how it is,
And yet ignoring it: Capitalism
And education could have made things thus.
With technological indoctrination,
And a whole lifetime’s waiting for a kiss
From something real. My new dark situation
Was a release at last. I lived in rapture
Because the obscure had illumination.
I woke next day reflecting on the nature
Of all corporeal things. I was awake
And recognised why time past and time future
And our comportment to them bring bad luck.
The humans I had known had been deluded,
Our minds don’t work because all men are fake.
My mobile phone was ringing and intruded
Into the quiet. Mum and her husband spoke
Of visiting a house that they had brooded
On buying to let out, next to a lake.
I did not let them think something was wrong;
I put the phone down, then phoned up the snake.
‘I’m coming back now. Will not be too long.
We’re going to have a talk about the excuse
To give your friends and those you move among.’
And so I’d disappear leaving no clues.
This learned doctor came in through the door
To all appearance normal. She had news.
‘Now think with me, and drink from the Earth Soul’s paps,
That’s why I chose you, and your little friends,
And I will tell you everything perhaps.
There’s little time left now before this ends;
You’ll make a record of what we have done,
There’ll be a conscious record in men’s minds.
That is the point,’ she said. ‘Now see this vision.’
And I: ‘What are these things, these things that come,
A crowd of people who like leaves are blown,
Or like bird congregations during autumn
At evening when light flees the firmament?’
‘Such a group,’ she said, (who at that time
Was like the Moon Goddess for one sweet moment),
‘Who live in heaven and hell, another place,
And do not die; by power and lust so bent
That their pure mental fire, despite decease,
Burns on, to be reborn, to fabricate
Another flesh on earth among your race.
They inspire in you by secret means a hate
And love, and mystic bloody corporal pains,
And then give suck on you, insatiate.’
‘You mean the gods, the undying, and the ones
Who rule are often these, this serpent breed?’
She laughed, ‘Not often: always. So, in chains
The human race has been since it was made.
There has been some resistance in men, though
Unconscious of our enigmatic creed.’
‘Yet these are ghosts and spectres I see through,
They can’t feel pleasure, insubstantially
They move and are’. They moved about her now.
‘This one likes our marriage’, she points and says,
‘Quite interested, this one, Cleopatra
With Paris, Tristan, Ninus, here Achilles.
He who, draped in a horny skin of armour,
Went out to Troy to give the provinces
Of Europe its first epic, and its future.’
‘Achilles!’, ‘Yes! and all the Trojan princes.’
‘And Cleopatra?’ ‘And her various lovers,
Phoenix, and dragon, snake. Through each advances
The evil over which your history hovers,
The being of these is and was an ET,
A pagan intellect pulled the human levers
The human spirit was usurped from its body
They usually don’t know the situation.
But now you do.’ She ended. The confetti
Of ghosts came, with desire and hesitation
To let me see their faces, to be heard
By me. To know that I was their creation
By means of their researches did not hurt,
Not even, yet, the servile end of man.
But that the world historical climate
I’d read and studied, thinking it was mine,
That all the history which filled my head,
Was a duplicitous semi-human song
And never - without joining the deceit,
Could I be part of it - this made me ache,
And horrified me, made me eyes weep blood.
For, anyone who reads the heavy book
Of history, he’ll find a paragraph
And more than one where he will read and speak:
‘I see my own life in this distant stuff.’
‘And can I speak to them and do I dare?’
I said, and she: ‘This reptile philosophe,
A dry half-breed, the Duke of Bedford’s heir,
Whose family began reformist quarrels
And funded new banks with the Opium War.
Speak to him if you want.’ His Nobel laurels
Were on his head (the poet’s crown of hell).
He spoke through shining grey blue eye, as follows:
‘Half-deceived, myself, I was, as well.
In life I gave to sin a pleasant image.
It’s harder for an intellectual
Sometimes, to be freed from the alien message;
And I did more than any of my days
To give the hollow man a human visage:
Releasing his desertifying ways
Upon society. Remember this:
The aliens bred those first who have blue eyes
And whitish skin, mixing their blood with theirs.
And those with this complexion find it harder
To find a path out of these desert wastes.’
‘Cold-blooded reason I proclaimed with ardour,
Unable to perceive my own confusion.
And leaving Bloomsbury I called for murder
And nuclear strikes upon the Soviet Union,
And with a false forked-tongue I argued always
For mankind to be king, each in submission -
A world subdued by the United Nations.
But there is time to find out just how stupid
I was. You can’t escape. See indications
Henceforth that isolation is the fluid
In which we live, and sleep, and have our death.
The mind lives on, idealistic liquid
Turned into ash, and then to burning breath
As I am now. Remember afterwards
When travelling down with her beneath the earth,
You’ll find consideration and kind words
Are few, beneath earth’s mantel, where the crowds
Of heartless people serve the alien lizards.’
He vanished from the garden and the turds
Left by a moon-faced dog near to a shrine;
I saw a shrine set up with frothy curds
Of blood which ghosts drink, Homer says, like wine.
How one may see such incorporeal souls
With ordinary eyes I can’t explain:
We went inside the house. This violation
Made on me by the ghosts and by the maid
Was never an unpleasant aggravation,
Because the truth is sweet and worth the trade
Of life for early death. And I had plans
To know the ends of life and yet evade
The ends she planned. In the exuberance
Of that day I got ready to take risks
And yet remain with her to see the heavens.
She told me that I had a couple of tasks,
To tie up all the knots of my existence,
To make my disappearance real. She asks
How I would hold the Army at a distance,
(I worked for them). I telephoned the Captain
In charge of personnel, to face the questions.
She packed a stove and tins on the back seat;
We got into the car. The motorway
Slouched by as we made progress to the part
Of England that she’d claimed for heritage
At bureaucratic meetings recently.
It was a hillside near to Avebury.
Thus ruminating lands which anciently
Belonged to no-one, rich parts of the earth,
Are conservation areas now, effectively
No longer open as a place or path
For those who live; reserved for exploitation
Or waste for use by those of alien birth.
My luck ran out that day. For information
On what was what, I left the car and trailed
Behind her, knowing her, in expectation
Of revelations: all my luck had failed.
For many years this muse was in my dreams:
A leader, woman, demon lover, called
By me ‘the Muse’, in enigmatic poems
About high intellect. And so at last
After this waiting, finally she comes:
My Beatrice who redefined the past,
The future, and the present. Here’s a tunnel,
A cavern by a grove of trees overcast.
‘You’re going in – without force.’ Here’s a panel
She pushed aside revealing a descent,
And a sort of sewer-like spring beneath the manhole.
That was the end of me. Why were you silent
Throughout the days of youth until a sorrow
Turned into my heart’s regular black garment,
Holy Spirit, O God? And now tomorrow
I won’t be capable of being at home.
She came to me when culture had reached zero.
The rocky pathway took me from the autumn
At the year’s decline, from life where men’s eyes fail.
I’ve counted days and now the Winter’s come.
To what can I hold on, and what is real?
A dream alone is real, I realise,
Even in delight I lived a life most vile.
And now there’s no time left. Now former days
Are gone. My foolish heart and stupid trust
Was always trying to ignore what really was.
Up there’s the field, the rough work of the harvest
I’d do that now, and love the rain and sun,
The mud and grass, now that those days are past.
She said: ‘It’s cold and we have travelled all the day.
There’s frost and ice down here, an icy place;
The fires of misused intellect at play
Are cold and bright in hell. Here is no trace
Of that old unreal kingdom of the day;
The light of our city speaks of weariness.’
‘Our city is down here, as you will see.’
And I: ‘Whose night world is it? And what season
Is it down here?’ ‘The moon and sun hold sway
But by celestial influence and reason
Not by their light, apparent place, or mass.
But understand this by means of this lesson.
I’ll tell you of a life lived fine as moss
Upon those trees you love, of souls like dew
Which studs the grass at morning,
As soft as magic. They move fast and slow
And soft as air vibrate in the moon’s light
In stellar sympathy, heartless to you.
Love’s thin, like grass, for us, ever so slight.
Ours is a ruined mind and light, like the gods
We love just for a day or for a night.
The best of us are insubstantial moods,
Pure intellect compared to your rough clay,
Like smoke from fire, and we are the night breeds!
She ceased and yet the voices of the tree
Above on land were heard, for the human bent
Going through my blood and through the brain in me
Like the season of the animal and plant,
Made me nostalgic for each entity,
Each thing above, each in its element.
I slept and dreamed of her Society
Born on another planet from old time,
Committing crimes against humanity.
I dreamed of praying to Christ and God amongst them
Even while they tried to buy my soul and breath.
I gave up soul and ego in the dream
Without a care, for this is also sooth,
Without Christ minds are also fake.
Awakening next morning I was both
Without care for my ego and awake
To all the danger that the secret city
Would manifest, so I could write this book.
We ate together, then I boiled some tea
Then moved off. Soldiers on reconnaissance
Make hand-signals to sentries as their party
Returns from its patrol back to the fence
Of its own lines, just so my mistress made
An enigmatic signal in response
To a dim form which stood, a silhouette,
Before a darkness visible before us.
It was a man’s form stood before a gate.
And next to him, the symbol of Tammuz
As I would learn, a lion couched prostrate;
This living symbol, of allegories
Was the first one I saw in this estate
Which every way belonged to the master race.
The lion saw me with its share of hate.
‘What is this no-one doing in our place?
You can’t bring that disgusting mortal ape
Within the walls of our paradise,’
The soldier spoke. The lion took a step
Advancing with its mane shifting about.
‘It’s authorised from the lowest level up.
Now present arms, stand to attention, shit!’
She scared him with her voice and pulled me hard
Beyond him, though he swung his rifle butt,
And then presented arms like any guard
(Rules and obedience are a second nature
For lizard breeds, let it be understood).
We must have followed steps into the crust
Of England all the night, about a mile,
Until that gate. With lighted torch we passed
Through some fantastic bolt-upright hall
Cut in the mantel’s heart by engineers
Until a light revealed a vehicle.
For there is transport there, exceeding ours
And not powered by combustion, something else.
We took the train, and sat down in its chairs.
And in time we arrived where some heart pulse
Of a great meeting point encompassed us.
The train slowed at a site of massive halls,
A dome of greater room than all King’s Cross
And just as beautifully dead sedate.
As you looked up you saw a thousand stars
Encrusted in the ceiling intricate.
Some of the stars were brighter in their sheen
As if to show where They originate.
We exited the train. A unicorn
And dragon statant, upright either side,
Pawed at a doorway where we went, within.
Empty and without reference these symbols,
Did they mean something once? These crowned heads,
Sure, once they meant order, but no-one recalls.
A man-shaped thing in black and with black shades
Opened the archway door. A flaming bier
Carved from white marble burns and dim light sheds
Around a room so empty, so austere,
That loneliness and luxury have never
Appeared to me so lovely and so rare.
Above the flame there was a dove hung over
The distant floor below, again from marble.
And finally, beyond it I discover
A circular red rose and a stone table
Around which, facing us two, are six shapes
Who were, my mistress told me, famous people.
My lady said: ‘Now, you will learn the ropes.
You see this is a special place, these symbols
Both bring in mental force and cause collapse
Of consciousness and moods. A sign dissembles
For although people use them, they embody
An esoteric force deep down. Examples
Are seen in the blue emblem of the party
Of Toryism. But don’t be misled:
They’re arcane power centres for the bloody
And fierce giants from whom we were bred.
Men once made word and symbol point to God
That’s over now. Today they are ours instead.
Our colony on earth was made by Nimrod
And his gigantic spouse; they altered man
And taught him things, before they crushed his spirit.’
We walked; our steps were echoing one by one
With each step closer to that distant desk.
‘Who are they? I’m afraid. Please, if you can
Tell me what your name is, can I not ask?
Do you have names? You have not told me yet.’
And she: ‘Ah, later. First complete this task.
These men or half-men here are some of the best
On Earth. You know them. There is one superior
Among them; he is of the highest set,
Even in the ranks of our dragon empire.
But quiet.’ We were right beside the chairs.
My lady bowed herself like an inferior,
And knelt before just one of them who stares
At her, and then her eye sees me and lingers
And pierces me, immobilising as
The evil eye is said to curse with dangers.
This one was of the Windsor heritage
And yet I cannot be precise: my fingers
Will not input the letters on the page
I’m so afraid of feeling its revenge.
The other five were also of our age
But recognisably out of her range
Of status, and incredibly enough,
A grand deception was in this melange.
My lady nodded first to Gorbachev,
The Russian President who set in motion
The ruin of his people, selling off
The country’s wealth, after the fake commotion
Of the Cold War. So Russia became free
For overt Capital and false election.
Next, Mrs Clinton, Foreign Secretary
Of the USA, she who enlarged the slum
Of poverty in every Earthly country,
Manipulating so that the UN
Would take charge of the people as their sister.
Next her a dusky man named bin Laden,
Not nearly so much of the lizard lustre
Was in his rebel actions or his thoughts,
Because he was a servant of a master.
And near the Saudi, at the very heights
Of human serpentine sexual conjunction
Was George Bush Senior, who through cash and courts
Had forced his imbecilic son to function
As handy servant of the obscure agenda
Who ruined the Muslims with such inhuman action
That they accepted wickedness for candour
And thought of amoral empty murders as
The natural way of things for man hereunder.
And finally, as if to make the case
As clear and definite as possible
That what is good is what is meaningless
And that nobody lives by principle,
There sat the ‘dead’ Saddam Hussein to match,
In black beret and general’s epaulette.
This man whom Bush had given his life to catch,
To put on trial, had always been the mere
Foreground incentive to destroy Iraq.
The Clinton rose and put her face quite near,
So near me I could feel her sickening breath,
And she was thriving off my shock and fear.
The Bush stood up as well: ‘This one’s alive
And pure enough to start the rite on now,
Why bother waiting?’ she said, and her mouth
Took on a horrifying toothless hue,
Her hair departed from her head, revealing
Two horny bumps – and yet was that weird glow
No more than an hallucinatory feeling
I had about her? Senior Bush was shifting
Between two sorts of face as well, but reeling
Away from them. I saw the Royal lifting
Her hand to put an end to their impatience.
With blazing eyes they sat. I started drifting
From trauma through to trauma until conscience
Departed me and I departed life.
The horror of this crowd and their deceptions
So undercut my standard sense of stuff
I took no more and passed out into sleep.
‘Saddam, from Babylon, you know enough
About the secret history that we keep
Hidden from men, so you can undertake
To tell what will, no doubt, cause him to weep.’
Thus Clinton, who began when I came back.
My mistress had me sat down with a glass
Of some expensive wine and fags to smoke.
And then the Iraqi leader spoke like this:
‘It’s no doubt strange to talk to a dictator
Considered dead. We always introduce
The victim to the reality of the matter
Of who we really are with such a tactic:
By pulling back the curtain now not later –
Disclosing the deception in dramatic
Manner which cannot be denied. Let’s say:
Not arguing with a gradual dialectic,
But showing the substance clearly; in this way
The victim’s mind is, like a curtain, torn
As if his door were opened with a key.
Of course I did not die, my death was staged.
Like many politic wars, the one begun
To catch me was inaugurated, urged
By an inhuman agency. No man
Will ever in a natural state imagine
A plausible ground, or find the heart within
A reason for that type of strange campaign.
O, they say that the invasion was for oil or money
And this is closer to it. But let’s be plain:
No plan from the head of common man has any
Point or purpose, except that he survive.
Humans do not die, they live, like the uncanny
Survival of those things not fit to live
And so not fit to be damned, or even to die.
And this is something, poet, you can prove.
What’s not alive can’t die, it’s just a zombie;
And humans are just that, unmortalised
When they set sin aside, and grasped divinity.
‘H. Sap., from out of faunal dumbness raised,
Made upright, lingual, spiritualised, erotic,
And seeded, crafted, intellectualised,
Was made to mate and love, with sympathetic
Vibratory feelings and a finite seeing;
His heart yearns and is satisfied, he’s prophetic -
A speaking, halfway opening up of being,
An empty space from which, as from the pouch
Of a flower, a stamen rises, with a pang
Of seeking, feeling, reaching out for touch.
A good benevolence made from the low,
A being made to sin, but also search
To find himself in God the Father’s shadow.
He would be weak and freely learn the truth.
He would give words and time to silent, slow
Stars like the Sun, and planets like the Earth.
That’s what you should be, learning selfless ways
Purifying daily your own heart from birth,
Learning to teach the Empyrean how to blaze.
But that is, obviously, not what you are.
Blame those who interfered in later days.
A group arrived, invading, coming far
Across dimensions, space, and time. Discreet
And cruel, yet few, adventurous and rare,
They interposed themselves in open sight,
Proclaiming themselves gods, and gods as humans,
A technological strength and a cold insight,
Which soon usurped the unsupervised alliance
Of innocent and fertile human kind
With cosmic Order and its ancient plans.’
He did not smile or give gesture, just his mind
Was working as he worked his mind on me,
But I was missing something. ‘Understand,’
I put in, but the Royal instantly
Attacked my mistress with a hail of blows,
Screeching and hissing: ‘Make this shit thing be
God damned quiet! Quiet or who knows
But I will have you skinned!’ My mistress sank
Beneath the battering fists onto her knees.
Remorse and shock, attendant as I think
On deep confusion and yet also pity
Came on me looking at this snake of rank.
For minutes there was silence, the committee
Stared from its several eyes to the eyes of each,
While the Windsor was recomposed. ‘The city
Will show you things when you go on your search.
I cannot read your mind, we cannot read
The mind, although the hierarchy can hatch
Ideas, and thoughts, hallucinations, breed
Thoughts in modern men; they are snakes, all ranks;
Corrupted easily by pride and greed.
And I suppose you want to know some things
Relating to our motives, both for you,
And for the earth in general. Pleasant songs
Shall be composed about us and our coup;
A day will break when the ancient origin
Of reality on earth will shine anew
Told and displayed, openly known again.
But prior to that the high spiritual level
Must be debased, spoiled with our antigen.
For years, each day, subjected to this evil
Emotionally intellectual humans,
Abducted youths, and dumb old men, unravel
And breath their last out listening to our summons.
We first enlighten them before they burn.
We need despair, and fear of pain, we demons.
That opening which you are must be closed down.
This cannot be achieved by simply cutting
The life short, draining breath from dying men.
You see, the spirit endures beyond the rotting
Of an unburied and despoiled corpse
Of mammal bodies. Your soul must attain
To a state of lucid apathy; all hopes
Should be reduced, all goodness finally squashed
And, as it was in Orwell’s gloomy tropes
The human face forever must be crushed
Beneath the foot of the serpent’s righteous foot,
Forever crushed overtly, ever smashed.
Coercing humans, stealing from them, but
There’s hardly a person left now, all are lizards!
And total coverage, control, a world state
Controlled by a world government which must
Insinuate itself. The preparations
Are being made, with an ironic twist.
For example, alien sightings, and abductions
Increase in tempo, media coverage
Is given to these, and soon when space invasions
Are threatened, panic spreads, a UN pledge
To unite the world against them leads all states
To submit to the police, the leading edge
Of which is the alien incumbent which creates
That same UN and Nato for that purpose.
And till then forward pressure never abates.’
The triple shame of being a sacrifice,
To have my life extracted like some essence
Left on a filter paper by a chemist,
The shame and anger at the great pretence,
And finally this ineluctable fate,
Made tears run from my eyes in impotence.
I didn’t care to see my friend be beat
By the Royal thing again, and so demurred.
The regal asp (Diana found that out)
Began to speak: ‘You will be overawed
By such great beauties we have built below.
We’ve mined a town down here like that a lord
Of Trojan lineage built as his New Troy.
They call it London, knowing not its name
With Paris, and with Rome, long time ago,
The town was started by heroes who came
When their first steps in Europe had been made
And that was what Troy was to us, our home.
London itself is more than a façade
Impastoed over a subterranean hell
To which you are going. It is well arrayed
In all the deviant arts and cruel will
Which we inherit and pass on to you.
This city is all technological.’
‘With the scientific biological lie,
Also the lie of money and finance
As well as banking power’s piety,
We made that atheist cockney world-sink whence
The plans for war and raping of the land
Are hatched with perfect docile good conscience.
This, where so many millions grind and grind
Unhappily and strangely, generation
On generation is a glorious land.’
She spoke. Then Bush amended her oration;
With something of the lecher in his tone
The evil of his slackened concentration
Always lacks focus unless smelling gain:
‘You thought that this was your land, didn’t you?
You loved it in your way, and felt at one
With Queen and country, thought indeed your Queen
Was just like you? Superbly traumatised
By school and adolescence you have been.’
Note: the ‘Windsor reptile’, I insist, is not the Queen.
When Bush had finished so the meeting closed;
My lady took my hand gently in hers
Resenting her own kindness I supposed.
‘Then men are reptiles now, or dinosaurs?
Like snakes cast out of Eden in their sin,
And happy in sin, across the universe.
While I, am I yet human, I alone?
And that’s the reason that you keep me close
To finally kill me? If so, carry on.’
‘Yes, very true’, she said, ‘But how many famous
Or powerful, brilliant men can you recall,
Who did not, on the contrary, dismiss
Or make such obscure lives impossible?
Consider the façade of Roosevelt
Engaged in war alongside Winston Churchill;
This couple hailed from families of wealth
Got running drugs; they planned to run the war
To ruin the diversity and health
Of Europe. Do you think there ever were
Ideas of coming to England in the head
Of robot Hitler, black magician, whore
To the demands of our perverting breed?
The war was fought to secularise
The common people,’ smiling, thus she said.
‘Mammalian humans always must disclose
Their evil thoughts to each other or remain
Indifferent to each other. And that is
Just how the plan
Had been devised by the benevolent
Gods that made you when your time began.
Enough, I’m weary of this argument
As weary as a song heard many times.’
She kept hold of my hand now as we went
To keep us moving through the empty rooms.
The rooms and halls we passed were like an aisle
In some great church down which a couple comes
To have their marriage. For mile after mile
It seemed to me. Until, a waking vision
Broke in upon my senses: each gargoyle
And every brick of sandstone on Big Ben,
Each tile and stone, King Richard’s metal cast
Outside, we found refigured with precision;
The Palace of Westminster in a vast
Rough hewn-out cavern. It seemed people worked
In this ersatz creation, for they passed
Into the entrances, and others talked
Behind the windows overflowing with light.
So we approached and through the archway stalked.
No guard inspects us as we pass the gate,
And so we walk together to the crypt.
There was a room. As it was getting late
We ate, prepared two beds, lights out, then slept.
For two whole days I stayed in this romance.
A Gothic palace in soft sleep enrapt:
It is, and was the reptile heart of finance.
Now money is considered the chief matrix
Controlling people. That is ignorance.
For people kill and die for dialectics,
They know their inner essence is idea,
But money has no heroes or fanatics.
The energy vibrating in an area
Can shape what people do, or think is real
But money cannot make an atmosphere.
Its luxury and trickery don’t appeal
Unless we can consent to being tricked.
Therefore, the economic alien rule
Was at the level that I first unlocked.
The deeper villanies were lower down.
My lady sat with me as breakfast cooked,
The cafeteria was empty then:
‘We do not,’ she began, ‘Eat food to exist,
Our proper food is dead despair and pain.
That is the food of insubstantial mist
Which swarms about the London population
Without which, even as spirits, we can’t persist.
Our bodies have a different condition;
Our bodies grow and die and must be nourished;
Originate in standard copulation
Between human and alien. We have flourished
While humans offered us the means to join
The alien spirit with a human carriage.
The link occurs most strongly when the brine
Of female blood or children’s living breaths
Are drunk and sucked in rituals we design.’
‘That last account has made me nauseous,’
I said, ‘You don’t expect me to believe
You use up children’s lives like fuel, like meths
To intoxicate yourselves and to survive?’
‘So what do you think that growing up and aging
In modern England is when God is not alive?’
Enough for now, let’s eat and I will bring
You to the heart where men are made to turn
A blind eye to this commerce with the young.’
‘Where, here, in Westminster?’ I asked, but then
One entered through the door of that café
A spiritual thing, transparent, yet a man.
‘I’ll introduce myself, of the Medici
Lineage, Lorenzo was my name.’
‘A ghost’, I murmured, ‘Power which, for a fee,
I bought with Leonardo at the game
Of playing with the occult Mystery schools.
We kept the knowledge of a secret flame.’
Encouraged by this newest of miracles
I started eating while he carried on:
‘Most royal Isis, here one of the fools,
An un-baptised, uncircumcised one
You bring again, to learn the mysteries
That are withheld from every freemason?
I’ll bet,’ he spoke to me, ‘That the degrees
Of knowledge of the arts of politics
And finance are still new? The families
Of bankers fund and hold the world with tricks
First brought to us from medieval Venice.
The sham’s so old, yet nobody can fix
The evils of it: sure proof that the race
Who hypnotise the humans do so still.
In Venice first, then Amsterdam and since
In London was the central banking hell.
There, elite chosen ones were given licence
By parliaments to give cash loans to all
Who needed money. The elite had pence
Not pounds, and nothing to loan out. By stealth
Therefore, they gave the paper with the pretence
That this cash cheque or paper was real wealth.
The cheque ends up in someone else’s hands
Who gives it to another banker’s vault
No actual money has really done the rounds.
The loan, however, must be paid in full,
And, more importantly, the bank demands
An extra quantity of money while
The full amount has not been given back.
And thus with time the bank gets cash for real
And then the interest: all this from a cheque
Which never was a thing but paper and ink!
Whole towns, whole nations, willingly can take
A loan out from a privately owned bank
Consigning all the people to repay
What was not given to them. What d’you think?
Who benefits from this cupidity?
The profits made in banking go to those
Who from their birth love crime.’ He turned away.
‘Through there you’ll see how like a comatose,
Your politicians turn when they are brought
To London to sit in this royal Palace.’
We ate our English breakfast cooked in fat,
And Isis, as I knew her now, found sausage
Before her as she never did the part
Of her Osiris, through the yearly passage
Out looking for it, weeping anxiously.
We three moved off from the refectory
Along a hallway with electric light,
And murals on the walls and tapestry
Of battles and treaties. A door and slot
Was on the right and Isis stops us all,
Pulls a rope cord linked to a bell inside.
A woman’s face looks at us through the grill;
An ancient woman pulled the door aside.
My guide walked past, proceeding through the hall;
She knew the place well, nimbly she trod
The uneven floor with care. Then there were steps
Up to a courtyard. A small man appeared.
He asked for any news. I see he keeps
A beard and cheeks with rouge and bloodshot eyes
And lipstick, homosexual perhaps.
‘Why is he dressed like that?’ I said; surprise
Had made me smile and disregard the threat;
Perhaps, ahead, there was no worse than this.
But as my eyes responded to the light
I saw it was the choir of some great chapel
With stained oak stalls, an altar at the head.
I stepped back then, a gloom quite horrible
Was lit in smoky alcoves, and a fume
Irritated my eyes with unguent trouble.
My lady led me onward through the room.
Although this was the choir, I saw no nave
And instantly I saw through all the gloom
The Commons Chamber here. More like a grave,
A tomb under the ground, with candle sticks
Which pour out sulphurous light and make you heave.
The goddess points toward a place and picks
Her way between those sitting on the pews.
From where we sat I saw mostly the backs
Of those few hundreds, but I can disclose
I saw John Major, Tony Blair, and Brown
With Margaret Thatcher whispering and close.
Just so this group of contraries were drawn
Together by the coming of the Pope;
Was it being mind-controlled which brought them down
To here? and others too, cream of the crop,
Those educated, all, at Oxbridge schools,
The place in which the brightest put their hope
And there excel because they know the rules,
There educated well in what’s allowed
A man to know; there, they had lost their souls.
They were a quiet antisocial crowd.
A choir boy dressed in red came down the chapel
And lit the candles at the Speaker’s side.
An altar was disclosed and tabernacle
Above which hung a miserable Christ
Whose face had been distorted with a ripple
Of laughter as if torture made him pleased
And an unusual bulge came from his loin.
Another choir boy brings a cup, but first
Lays out a white cloth on the altar, then
Puts down the chalice, bending so his arse
Spills out beneath his robes in a vile moon.
A third choir boy begins to chant a verse,
Then blows upon the embers at the altar
Within a tripod, sending up dark fires
And acrid smoke, which smelt of oily tar,
Which made the congregation yet more tired.
I whispered: ‘Is this like the real Westminster?’
‘It’s no mere replica, but has been reared
With the original stones of the old pile
Which fell conveniently, and, not repaired,
Were brought down here to serve our elite guile.
By sympathetic magic what goes on
In this black place is transferred to the real
And active Palace,’ she fell quiet again.
‘Just let me ask another question, please,’
I asked, as much to make myself feel sane
As learn more of these shameful mysteries:
‘Why do they mock and invert Christian rites,
What good in ridiculing Christian stories?’
‘They’re more than stories! Holy, godly inlets
Of super physical benevolence,
Aetherial interfering and good spirits
Meet humans in Church, and feel no offence.
Here we invert them. You will hate what follows
Within this chamber, but the radiance
Will be familiar to luxurious souls
Like yours, which feed, like ours on black despair.
What’s carried out here guarantees the hells
Of lives snuffed out time after time from year
To great year for those born on Earth.
Let’s meditate on that while we are here.’
A sort of plainsong started from the mouth
Of someone at the altar whose raised face
Was straining tenor notes with heaving breath,
Exhaling an enchanting ode to Venus
While breathing rasping breaths of sulphurus smoke.
‘Who is it that officiates over this house,
Singing the evening hymn?’ My lady spoke:
‘Those are the governors of your national bank,
The Bank of England, named by double-speak,
For it embezzles cash and steals the spunk,
Of English people for a private guild
Set up by traitors, secret men of rank.
The prelate of this place, a certain Rothschild,
Has a superior link with lizard kings
And gives the orders to this brain-dead crowd.’
‘You swear this is the truth about these things?
The national money which our people owns
Was instituted to enlarge the springs
From which a dark elite can draw their loans
And not repay them?’ ‘Quiet now!’ she hissed,
For then, with horrible dislocated groans
The congregation recognised the priest
Was coming in. The smell of scorching oil
Was wafting from an incensor he cast
About him, such a suffocating smell.
‘These are the perfumes Lucifer our master
Finds so agreeable!’ she rasped. I fell
To watching her as she watched this disaster:
Her pale face, tear filled eyes, and open lips,
Her labouring breath and heart beat going faster.
The banking priest comes to the altar, stops
Then many kneel as he raises his head
On which a crown with thornlike copper strips,
A headdress without irony, was sat.
Startling the concentration on his face!
I realised this was not just a parade.
This banker priest was fat but sinuous,
His eyes were dead and inwards, apple seeds
Too close together, slits beside his nose.
He bent across the altar, raised his sights:
The mass began. Below his short chasuble
I saw the wrinkled skin above his tights,
And there was dry blood and a scree of shell,
Weeds and potatoes, vines about his waist,
And a plump manhood drooping like a bell.
He knelt and stood and sang with practiced haste
While choir boys on their knees sang the responses.
Then women from the stalls were brought the mist
From smoking burners spilling incenses.
They breathed and coughed intoxicating spice.
The priest steps from the smoke and then pronounces:
‘Lord of enslavement,’ he said, on his knees,
‘Master of trickery, thievery, and the mad;
Secret provision of all powerful vice
Occlusion of abortions and spilt blood,
Watch over those in need of medicines
For lives which are intolerable to God.
You, comforter of poverty and sins,
Make blind the poor and let them count old scores
And with new plans for vengeance fill their brains.
Incite to boredom, give us joy in tears
Of others and indifference to the truth.
The yearning for the light with online stores
Cover over, so there is no need for faith.
You do not make demand that man feel love
But welcome avarice and angry youth.
You, teacher of reserve and cold reproof
And sterile and hysteric laughter, hear!
We implore you to destroy the Lord above
Remove the trace of any weak desire
To be exalted; let us be consoled
By what is finite. Give us wealth and power,
And, King, bring silence to those not controlled!
We beg this from you on our knees, you Beast.’
He rose, spread out his arms, and spat out loud.
‘And you, God, in the office of a priest,
I call you down from heaven to incarnate here,
You thief of love who put men to the test!
You made them wait, in coward silent fear,
You said you’d come in glory but you’ve slept!
And while you kept your distance everywhere
The banks have triumphed, simoniacs have slipped
Into the hearts of humans with their commerce
And by your negligence the good have stopped
Believing in you, putting up with rumours
And ridiculing of Biblical stories.
Lazy, coward God!’ The whole house murmurs
‘Amen’, and the perverted man replies:
‘Now let the feast begin that resonates
On prison Earth that up above us lies.’
Succeeding this a quiet reverberates
Throughout the chamber. I was stupefied
With the sublime obscenity of these rites.
I saw the women’s nervousness subside,
But then the smoky incense blew about,
And filled their throats, while the London banker turned aside
And gave the blessing with a fearsome shout.
And suddenly the choir boys tapped their bells,
Which like a siren induced some wild fit,
For many of them leapt out of the stalls
To fall down on the bloody dim lit carpet
To kick their legs up, while emitting wails.
In various postures. One is by the pulpit
First on her stomach, then upon her back;
She swells and cries, then dumbstruck, in the pit,
She curls her tongue around her lips, all slack;
Another, livid with dilated eyes
Throws back her head and lets her body jerk
While trying to catch her breath with wheezing sighs.
Another lay extended full and flat
And to reveal her breasts undid her blouse
Streaming enormous dugs of skin and fat
Beneath a terrifying mouth with tongue
Outstretched between her teeth, red with her blood.
Now London, he had formed a busy gang
With other men about the dying Christ
While leaning on the altar, them among.
I sat up watching him, deeply oppressed
At heart to hear him spitting abject meanness
With all his violence, while below his waist
One of the choir boys knelt and licked his penis.
He shivered coldly, and with solemn voice
Said Hoc est corpus meum, then turned upon us
Displaying a haggard face to the choir boys
Who raised his chasuble and wiped his wand
With biscuits of the host until it sprays
Tainting and dirty onto the paved ground.
Staggered, I sensed hysteria in the air,
It filled the great room, all those women round.
They approached the priest with loose and sweaty hair,
And licked and mixed themselves around the bread
While one was barking, perched on the altar.
An old one spun, then held its old grey head
Then spun around again beside a girl
Who leaned against the wall and groaned and spat,
While Rothschild, robed in incense, gave them all
The rotten food which some spread on their tits
And others stuffed into a sickly hole.
A painted choir boy, wrinkled, undressed, mates
With other sodomites, while women, too
Bend over, howl at death, and rend their heads.
Asphyxiating, I was trying to go
To get away. I looked for my mistress
I saw her going through smoke, the couples through.
She seemed to awaken from some inner stress
Which made her brighter, bigger, far more real
Than any normal girl. ‘An air like this
Is more and more the smell on Earth as well.
I want to go,’ she said, ‘Please let us leave,’
I said in turn, ‘Just get me from this hall,
And later tell me how to find real love.
This place makes me so terrified and sick
I’m trembling; I can feel my stomach heave.’
We stepped over the bodies lying thick
Along the carpet floors, purple and brown,
Toward the doorway, followed, moving quick.
I was not learning esoteric thought
And news from other places free of charge,
But because I would be burnt up to give light
To our aliens; I must give the demiurge
All the spirit there is in me as an ‘I’.
I’d be a sacrifice and they would purge
All individuality from me.
Debasing rituals offered to pervert
The dream of power and rationality
Within the British parliament blot out
Identity, and blot me out just like
The utter quiet of heaven can stop my heart.
I stumbled out with Isis following quick;
She wanted, I suspected, to remain.
‘Let’s go to that cathedral in white brick
Across the square, your disgust will make you a saint,
As he is exercised in human beings
Debating, dreaming of him and his pain!’
‘The Abbey…’ I said. O Spring of all things!
Opening up to me in this attack
Made by this alien princess; origins
Of every being! what esoteric track
Would we traverse to the core of history?
We crossed the square, and through a street, then took
A left turn heading for the sacred entry
Of England’s Abbey. There were little snakes
Which stared, and had a common ancestry
With men. Their faces grey, their greyish necks
Came out of shoulders draped with human linen:
‘What are these creatures filling in the cracks
Of this place, dull and subterranean,
Sweeping and guarding these false London streets?’
‘They’re workers who have built the empyrean
So far below the ground for no rewards.
They’re harmless things or cruel by command,
Manipulated easily with sweets.’
So we continued talking. In the end
We came into the entrance of that castle
Of hymns and sermons, conscience sifting, and
Shit; built in derision of the epistle
The gospel, the Bible, gathered by those men
Who near two thousand years ago flexed muscle
To bear witness to the love of God for man,
But the gods of this place ruled men with the mirror
Of death. And few of them are Christian
And flock instead around more recent error.
If the Archbishop was not chosen from
The elite and secret circle of true terror,
He might as well have been. Within his home
Upon the black and white tiles of the aisle
My lady pointed to a crowd of them
Who at the crossing sat slumped on a stall
While something lectured them, a ten foot creature
A dragon face, with gargoyle wings and tail.
Instinctively I tried to stop this venture
Which Isis had involved me in, I turned
To get away, but at this point of juncture
Let these words rather speak of what I learned
And not describe the feelings that I had,
(My fear of being tortured, knifed, or burned).
As we came in the speaker smiled and stood
As if with breeding; they had seemed to be
Awaiting me and in a moment’s thought
I worried that this was the day I’d die.
Was this place, this church, where they’d steal my soul?
‘Why are they looking?’ I heard myself say.
I turned to Isis. ‘Don’t be such a fool,’
She told me, ‘Get yourself some wine, then listen’.
‘The people know the saintly man is real,
They know it in their gut. But how they fasten
To the ‘survival of the fittest’ theme!
That humanistic perfection as a notion.
And so the beings which ascend above them
Are thought of as ‘the fittest’ – richer, selfish,
And, at the limit, dreamed of, gods, supreme.
With thoughts and wants like this, swimming like fish
Inside their heads, a need to be at the source -
They’ll do for you whatever you could wish.
Delinked from what they are, they’ll fight your wars
Against each other, they’ll argue forever.
Humans, they’re so proud, it is their curse.
You must keep on top of them if the whole idea
If us and them are going to rule this planet.
The time is near.
It’s very near, so near that you can smell it.
The UN as an entity has grown,
And forecast long before it saw the light.
Since then it has not faltered or come down
In status. Nothing shows its suspect side.
The Nazi revolution and that clown,
That Hitler, made the senseless justified
For ever.’ These words floated through the air;
The argument had more than satisfied
The little group, among whom Kissenger,
An old man now, the clearest proof of all
That what this alien said is true and truer.
For that man’s kingdom was the temporal,
Yet close to president and president,
Intent on bringing on the human fall.
We’re always at the edge of the event
When the deceivers will unveil the plan.
The meeting ended and the humans meant
To speak to me, they knew I was the one.
But all they did was offer me some food
Then disappeared. In me depression.
I wandered through the alcoves, to the rood
And, making sure I found the lights for each,
I passed from room to room, strangely afraid.
In the underground a sort of mystic switch
Had to be pressed to evaporate my fear.
Isis had left me to this plangent search.
And finally, I found the Archbishop’s lair,
Or its black magic cruel duplicate.
Now let me tell you what I found in there.
Without a body, faceless, inchoate
The opened door revealed a watching eye
Such that, as it was opened, so the lid
Of that great eyeball opened up on me.
Just such a watcher on the pyramid
Of Egypt and in Mexico could be
Imagined as the capstone. Silent lid
Shifts on the fluid surface of the iris.
Its alien body lived with the living dead
In other worlds, obscure to this, yet porus.
Now as I looked at it it stole my gaze.
Just such a presence is the source of terrors
To me even now, and when I tried to close
The door it spoke to me, yet with a voice
Which poured into my brain and not my ears.
I leant against the doorway, thinking twice
And for a long time, tempted to go in,
And so I did, with nothing left to lose.
In consequence I learnt the master plan
From this, the object of the cult and prayer
Of our people, and the alien.
It spoke: ‘You always knew that I was here;
Surveillance, the all seeing, the discreet,
Indifferent to you, you, one of the poor.
They’re not aware, being random, mass produced,
And without purpose in the greater scheme,
But humans are an opening held fast
To what is deeply running like a stream
Flowing up into phenomena and life;
A site for freedom, suffering, and time.
It’s consciousness and intellect they have.
But their fire’s obscured by base technology.
And the notion that they move forwards and move.
The guard and prison warder of mankind
Is everyone of them watching the other
And here’s the law which governs:
‘Please yourself and do whatever you want
And try to live without harming each other.
There is no need for Kissenger or Bush
To shepherd this cattle, it motivates itself.’
That evil eye sees how stupid we have been.
Now I was roused by Isis while I lay;
She pulled me up and fed me: ‘Stupid man,
You have to hear the rest about this nation,
For which the earth is longing through those men
Who bow their heads before manipulation.
Now stand, and hear, I know that you can learn.’
She urged me, and then came the information.
The door was opened, the great eye began:
‘Ah, in the presence of our pagan god
Which I will bring you now, you will not run;
But, if by chance a glimpse of what is dead
Can slide between the curtains of you mind
You will appreciate and savour it.
While bringing world enslavement to their kind,
The Globe’s elite are also engineering
The means to introduce the endless friend,
The total other: alien, dead, appearing
To no-one yet, except the greediest ones,
The most malicious, or those like you, nearing
Their own death without recourse or a chance
Of living on to give a sweet narration.
Let me pull down your keen mental resistance,
And insert in your dull imagination
This being from another time and place
Beyond the shutters of your third dimension.’
‘From distances across infinite space
Which your technology accounts too great,
A billion, billion years ago, a race
Defeated time, and overcame the state
In which life differs from what’s after life.
As Buddhists in Tibet have learned of late,
It’s not impossible to recall stuff
Which happened prior to birth and to recall
What will await you when you’ve had enough
And buy your ticket off this watery ball.
Coincident with your brief history
And the ten billion years of cosmic jail
In which you find yourselves, inventory
Of other universes runs amok
All governed by some grand apriori
Who takes no notice of most of his stock.
These aliens, like this one with you, don’t die.
Not naturally or by a body’s wreck.
They resurrect, ascend into the sky,
Their souls undying and born of a virgin.
To you they’re gods, and their biography
Would be the story of a type emerging
To higher consciousness; and yet such brains
Which, like the entire cosmos, are enlarging,
Lose all respect for feeling which restrains:
Continuously tampering with doom,
Imperial and cynical by turns,
And insolent and cruel all the time,
While innocently so, they just destroy
World after world when that world’s time has come.’
‘Because degeneration is their joy.
Your race and earth are the plaything of such,
Whether they came by chance or by the ploy
Of some magician working overmuch
At alchemy and conjuring with blood;
Whether some madman begged them to approach
While working with a butcher’s knife for God.
Just as, when all is done, the love between
A man and woman’s greatest in the mood
Of carnal intercourse, with clothes for screen
Torn off to lie together day or night
Together mixed like an eclipse of the sun,
Just so these creatures, lizard like and bright,
Find highest purpose exercising force
Learnt from the universe’s wasteful might.
How could this little band of visitors
Not seek to claim a royal throne over humans?
And, with plenty of time, watch men rehearse
A total world obedience immense,
And lasting till at last they intervene?’
Now my attendant leader closed this trance;
She shut the door. ‘Why can’t I, or some men,
Enter these other worlds, and so not die?
The road is open to this alien.
There must be some way for us to be free,
Avoid this fate?’ I said with opened eyes.
My lady smiled and pointed out to me
That she herself had come from distant skies;
And men like me played our part in the world
As finite brains outside great destinies.
‘We are already here; brutal and cold,
Far more illusive, more superior
Than you can grasp,’ she said and then she smiled.
‘I’ve no reserve in telling you some more.
We ETs have our faults and envy you:
We long ago lost touch with Being’s law,
The eternal God you humans channel through:
Those silent moods of wonder, intuition,
Attunement to time, seriousness, the true
Sense of our fault, love, the eternal mission.
We cannot have this. With a mild dementia
We barely can recall there was a fission
Between us and existence. Our adventure
Is real and there is plenteous evidence
You’ll see such evidence of how we’ll tear
And burn up human sympathy to smoke.
We have whole factories of testing sites
Where human babes are hatched so that the snake
Can rule them effortlessly; we have rites
Which feed into the minds of men a song
Which drives them mad until their simple wits
Turn to us, begging to be freed from being.
We eugenetically enhance their frame
To form a man who right from wrong
Cannot distinguish, dead and mindless, tame.’
‘Oh, lady,’ I began, ‘End this prelude
I’ll see the actuality in time.
But let me know if in your mind you brood
On these phenomena as something bad
Even though we are not of a common blood?’
I asked, but let this line end the ballad.
I tell you have I met a higher light;
It was a god with legs and arms like one
Born on a Christmas day. Now it was night
Dreams have come to me since my life began,
They drop upon my mind raising night terrors;
I wake to plead for daylight and the sun.
Just so I woke then, peeling back the covers
Of an accustomed bed suffused with heat.
The electric light is on, dispels the errors
Of the accustomed horrible dream state.
How real the dream had been, and such relief
To have escaped it. I was going to write.
I took a pen and wrote it out in brief:
The whole adventure on some paper scraps.
Outside the window hung that silvery wife
Of every poet, fake and dead, perhaps:
The moon with borrowed light and frozen face.
The night was quiet; I took easy steps
Toward the window, but, beyond the glass,
I saw with something far, far worse than dread
Check black and white tiles all around the house.
The house was ersatz, oozing the absurd.
Had I been dreaming, or was this the dream?
I looked with horror at the quiet bed
Where I had lain, and at the walls which seem
To be so real. And all the while the moon
Burns on and paces through the insomniac gloom.
An unreal thing, designed for this same scene.
Now, as I looked from out the window sill
I saw one coming over that check stone.
The ground she walked on like that of a hall
Made for a chapel hall, all black and white
Alternating. She looked at me the while
From down below, to where I was, and yet
Kept walking to my solitary house.
Now at the door she pauses for a bit.
You know how when a man or woman cries
And tears spill down the cheeks, their body shakes,
So I was trembling then; my frame just froze
While all my muscles spasmed. Silence speaks
From out of void to bring forth such a being,
For inside void are hiding such harsh freaks:
It was my guide down there. She smells the tang
Of fear which drips from me in sweat; her mouth -
A lizard beak more like - reveals a tongue
Which moves across the lip: the end of drought
She tastes when she has made me fear like this.
She smiles and turns the door knob while we both
Looked from our eyes into the eyes which close
Upon another world, a new dimension.
Now through my door she mounts the direct stairs.
‘Why so afraid? Did I forget to mention
That we have means of shaping a whole world?
It is a way of managing perception.
We toyed with brains, pulled them, tortured, unfurled
The whole mechanics.’ That is how she spoke.
‘This isn’t real?’ I said, ‘How have I ruled
Over the earth unless I made a fake
And unreal entire world in which you live?’
She paused, and looked upon the scattered book
Of leaves I had been working on: ‘That’s brave!
To make a record of our recent journey.
Already starting, Platonist, you love
The idle, secret studies. It is funny
You never did break through to the beyond.
The other side lay there in the uncanny,
The hints of yet another greater land
Which wanted an explorer and a pen
To write it out.’ ‘I cannot understand,’
I said, ‘How I could never speak to men
Of my intent, an endless liberty
I had in mind. It was the superman
Or some such thing. I had no sympathy
And kept it to myself – a fault I know
And it was evil, for the deep egoity
Was always working for the devil, for you.’
She smiled to see the scales fall from my eyes.
You might appreciate how I was feeling
By how excessive and daring I became,
For in a tight spot we heed any calling
That might avert our suffering or shame.
But my desire to tell you might not work
Because my narrative might never seem
To be a true account. Still let this fork
Of road turned from life of the standard kind
Light up your soul for liberation’s sake.
‘This room we stand in is fed to your mind
By radio waves and other frequencies
Which build what you perceive like some dark hand
Which massages your brain. For centuries
We have continued to obstruct the race
Of people by eugenics, illnesses,
And foods which ruin human consciousness,’
My lady thus. In artificial light
Reflected from the moon, her alien face
Was bright again, reformed into the sight
You see when looking at a lovely visage.
A human frame encased in mellow blood
And lovely nervous skin. She smiled her message:
‘I would not scare you so much by revealing
The deep, O, deep conspiracy. Such rage
Would rise in you, and, overcome by feeling,
You’d lose your mind, perhaps. We must endure
Until the climax of which I’ve been telling.’
‘What do you mean that reality is not pure?
Do you mean that it is stimulated by
Some sort of laser beamed into the core
Of human minds like mine?’ I, in reply,
Addressed these words to her. ‘Yes, as I said,
And we cut up your brain, cut out the eye
Which could have seen us coming, worked us out,
And easily evaded this enslavement.
So few on earth can see beyond all that
Which is on offer with a shape or scent.’
She said, then moved, and said: ‘I am on offer,’
And put her arms out, arms like armament
Of a mind-splitting assault of desire,
And need of comfort, enjoining both together
And urged on me. So, meekly from a fear
Of never knowing what an alien other
Can feel like, and because I wanted love,
I kissed this fake and high celestial mother.
And I confess that holding this white dove
Was sweet, and crossed the boundaries of right;
It pushed me into evil. As above,
However, this impossible delight
In sexual contracts with a starry being
With an inscrutable and cruel spite
Against our race in general was a thing
I did submit to, rushed into, from fear.
The mouth was warm, the breast was hard, the tang
Of some weird perfume was inside the hair
Which made me hold her, but more than all this
I knew that it was wrong. That was the allure.
So all reserves and guilt were in that kiss;
I kissed her and my hands wandered around
With eyes closed in a dark black free cold bliss.
She entered into that great empty ground,
Or void of the impossible and endless,
As I did then, I know it. Understand –
That enemy or lover, all of them regardless
Spring from the same obscure and mighty hole.
She savoured it and in the urgent mindless
World renunciation which is full
Of sexual longing where I went with her
I saw her change her shape. I cannot tell
But try to do so, just how, without care
It made no difference to me. Did I dream?
Such acts consume the memory with their fire.
I lay awake inside a bed, welcome,
Thereafter thinking of this awful wrong.
This primal joining had cracked like a seam
In rock, letting some light in. ‘In a song
You’ll tell of this adventure, won’t you, Jason?’
She said, and I, ‘When I am back among
The normal things of life, this little lesson
You taught me will be written down, for sure.’
My promise was absurd for who would listen
Or read my texts? I wrote for my own pleasure
And sought only the infinite and the unreal.
Yet, I could set that truth out in a measure;
Whether it would be put in shops as well
I wasn’t sure. By the darkness of the room
We lay together in the pit of hell.
Two things which loved obscenely in a tomb
Beneath an Earth forged to make fun of us,
A subterranean place of human time.
‘Where am I?’ I enquired ‘What is this place?’
‘It is that place we came to yesterday,
The Abbey underground. Couldn’t you guess
Or else remember? Listen when I say
That when you thought that you were at your house
It was a mere illusion. Believe me.
But we’ll be leaving soon, the two of us.
And you can see why, ever and anon,
You failed to find Jehovah’s universe,
The superlunary beyond the moon.
The ideal is high and requires intellect;
But man is low and he will never learn’
We two left that grim place, and even then
It was still being built, a whole new wing.
I saw a thousand working. ‘Who’re those men,
And what’s their point in coming here to hang
White brick on brick?’ I pointed to the edge
Where things that looked like people sweat to bring
Huge stones to the cathedral wall. In charge
Of them were several half caste gods whose rags
Of finery gleamed over insubstantial flesh.
‘They’re people, mostly engineered from eggs.
We feed them, make them eat, and then they work.
They need not, but it does as well as drugs
To enslave them. We designed a race way back
In time, to merely be, to just exist,
Only to fear, to obey, to fear attack.
That fear is glorious, satisfying, just;
Even you can feel it near them? and it goes
Straight through the earth’s crust, too, like some great mast
Broadcasting electric and magnetic rays
Around the atmosphere; their pains and griefs
Inseminate the brains and conscious flows
Of free men who then turn into true slaves.’
She led me on, so that we could just plummet
Down further, from the centre of these caves.
There was a massive pyramid whose summit
Could just be seen, but miles beyond the rubble.
And everywhere these people, at the limit
Of being people. The heat was terrible,
And as we walked I saw them sweat and stink,
And so they drank, but it was horrible
To see their gentle masters give them drink:
A toxic fluid of salt, virus and metals
Which take away, she said, the power to think,
Inhibiting love. And for their victuals
A meat from animals without nutrition
Of any kind, so that for any battles
The eater was not ready. In my passion
I stopped my lady, pulling on the hand
Which was in hers, and called out without caution
To one of these enslaved things lacking mind:
‘Are you aware that there’s a higher fate
Above this one? why don’t you make a stand
And fight them, or refuse to work? This state
Is not worth living in. Have you a mind?’
The man I spoke to looked at me with hate
Because I stopped his working; like the wind
A giant thing with tail and wings flew down
And pushed him down and then on me it turned.
‘What is this vermin doing here, you, clown,
I’ll tear his heart out!’ ‘Higher plans
Have brought him here, he is not a concern
Of yours,’ my lady told him. Then, by signs
The man who had been floored told me his tale
For looking down I saw him feel dim pains
Within his wrists and in his head as well,
As if some signal there had been input.
‘They have a small computer in that ball
Which also has a brain in it,’ she said,
And took me from the little crowd which formed.
‘It’s not cognition which has been taken out
But the gentle, higher faculties which charmed
Man out of darkness to the higher life.
I’ve told you, humans are a gift. Unharmed
They’ve direct access to the higher love,
And talk with Christ is easy. But damaged now
And ruined, chemically cut in half
They’re just as conscious as a child of two.
And up above we cut out the potential
Of children when they’re born, to make them slow,
And meek, and dull for living. With the financial
We can control the older ones, because
We had them from their birth. So influential
Is school in making slaves for our cause.’
I could not hold my tears back. It’s a shame
To tell you, reader, to think that my years
Were spent hunched over benches for the acclaim
I wanted amongst teachers; but much more
I’d really thought that how things are at home -
The schools, the government, army, and the law
Were all legitimate, when every day
In fact debased me with a fatal flaw.
We went. I don’t know where. And in this way
Accepting of the state of things, the evil,
I had just acquiesced. When we betray
Our fellows, we’re confused, bad, and feel evil,
Become indifferent, seek integrity.
We harden, hate, fall to a lower level.
Alone and in the night without excuses,
I recognised that other people are,
And that I cared for them. How had the masses
Become so pointless? I knew a liar,
An evil despot ruled the common day.
His name was Brown, Obama, Bush, or Blair
And I was just like him. Now the motorway
Took us past simple buildings. Needing sleep
I saw the pyramid quite near us now, it lay
Upon the skyline and upon its slope
I seemed to see those Grecian gods reclining
Around the summit, capless at its top;
Indecent sexual forms which keep us whining
About the shortness of our mortal day,
They’re real: fires fuelled by stupid heads, still burning.
And all the while the word ‘Eternity’
Is in my ears. ‘Is this life? We have sunk
So desperately low, because we say
To one another that the normal junk
Of our little lives and stunted expectation
Was what we came to earth to be and think.
Is that right?’ I to her; and with hesitation
She paused and then replied to solve my puzzle:
‘Pray to God, and find your way be meditation.’
She ended as we came toward the steps
Of the great pyramid, and to the entrance
To the lower level, where this part stops.
‘This great triangle with its basal square
Is in the lowest floor the replica
Of concentration camps we’ve built back there
Where you are from; soon people in the wire
Will be confined for speaking of God and Christ.’
She said, and there in glass, a colossal door
Into the deeper hell, as I attest.
In anger I threw back at her this question:
‘But what’s the point of this? Why can’t we just
Be mindful of each other. What suggestion
Was there that humans would not welcome you?’
‘This problem shows your faulty estimation
Of what is going on here. You were once
A people with a Father. My own tribe
Are small in number, renegades by chance
Alighted here on earth with all the scope
And patience to make this our paradise.
It’s all about control. Control to shape
Your own existence to our true heart’s choice.
In some world far from here angel feels love
And would enjoy it rescuing your race.
But not us. Finally, and as if from above
We have been so successful turning people
Into psychotics. Who would want to save
A race which out of cowardice can topple
Itself to a hell on earth, gladly give up
Its freedoms and ideals?’ Eating the apple,
As written in the Bible, tells of the drop
Into a world of conflict with the gods;
And those gods, walking, lawful gods, will stop
At nothing to reclaim men as their goods.
‘I won’t give in,’ I said, ‘I’d rather die.’
‘Tell me about this freedom, how it hurts
To know the trick that has been played on you.’
She asked me this with curiosity.
‘Okay, since it can’t hurt to let you know.’
‘My freedom means that there’s a secrecy
Within my heart which not one word can show.
Since we have walked, the word ‘eternity’
Has been inside my ear,’ I said as, now
We mounted up the steps which led inside
‘I intimate the eternal here below.
Perhaps you want to scare me? If I died
In this state you would have a victory
Because I’m weak, and shocked, and terrified?
But there is something like an ecstasy
Always there, within, outside the universe.
I look inside, from the illusory
Which lies down here. I give up on the curse
Of wrong I’ve done, or I’m yet to perpetrate.
I beg my Father for forgiveness.
Inside I’m just a glass, a hollow state
Of freedom. I hear His voice. There’s nothing there!
It’s freedom! From inside the void
Springs all that is,’ I said. So she laid bare
Her own suspicions, ‘Reading books that tell
Methods of meditation? I’m aware
Of such a spurious freedom.’ ‘I don’t fall
For that denial. I’m a machine, a thing
Created by you gods: you’ve told me all.
But the heart of me and consciousness can spring
From nothing and it opens onto Being.
Heidegger taught me that.’ I cease.
She laughs, ‘I cannot cure a mad disease.’
But this exchange was cut short when the hall
We entered came unto a modest rise
Within the marble tiling, then a fall
Into a gentle walkway going under
Now going down. We left that glassy mall
Walking, accompanied by a peal of thunder.
When I type up what I witnessed down there,
‘Burn all your books!’ my conscience says to me.
Before the turning of the bottom stair
The pair of us had made our weary way
To face a door formed by a flaming sword
Which looks all ways, prohibiting entry
Upwards or downwards. And so, let my word
Come under guidance of the sacred muses,
Moon goddess, triple snake witch, ninefold crowd.
Those writers of the past, they too knew Isis,
Now Keats would sell his soul for her assistance
And Graves was her self-conscious Dionysus.
How I, who hitherto hated existence,
Or feared it so that I could not write poems,
Why should I see close up what from a distance
They saw myopically in their dreams?
You know the tale about how I got in
Down at the well spring of the Pierian streams,
But now let all be clear and nothing hidden.
Moving alone that time through ice and fire
My ego self was fragmentary, fading,
Just as the white moon fades in blue sky’s hour.
I saw what followed with sensual perception
As taking place somewhere near the earth’s core.
But also knew it was the intersection
Which plugs into the deepest soul of us.
My lady took us into the reception
Of what I knew to be a giant, glorious
And soon dispiriting hospital complex.
Down there you follow endless corridors
Flooded with neon light. At first, by reflex
After the sliding doors had closed behind
I peered incautiously behind the Perspex
Which right and left showed nurses of a kind.
They minded paperwork, and pharmacies,
Preparing food, and patients: ‘In the end
You bring me here’, I said, ‘And I suppose
Those working in the higher circles have
Some rest, some reparation for their loss?
I fear to ask, but here at least, is love
And care for human nature?’ First she smiled
And then began my muse: ‘While we two move
Toward the secrets usually unveiled
To those not born yet, or whose life’s complete,
Walk slowly and see how the wards are filled.’
A map she pointed to hung like a sheet
And showed that we were in Maternity.
A whole wing with its thousand rooms dead bright.
‘Here see the depth of human vanity:
While we grow things, make women birth such things
As you could not dream in eternity.’
Please see the extreme limits in these rings
Of research labs succeeded by more labs.’
I could be driven mad singing these songs
But I continue. So we led our steps
Into a cubicle where, like a bird,
A feathered woman was, sans mouth or lips,
But with a beak which grew out, cold and hard
Where mouth and nose are for the sake of breathing.
Apparently quite conscious how absurd
A human eye and mind is in such clothing,
This dove-shaped female of a giant size
Looked on her own self, screeching out with loathing.
There was an egg beneath the avian legs
But more than this, more horrible than this,
My lady told me: ‘See that human face
It knows that it is here to serve for us,
Breeding such progeny as hatches out.
She also knows, this dove of the abyss,
What animal enjoyed her. Don’t forget,
My own race seeks to join our DNA
With that of yours. Now this unhappy bird
Was, as by winds, inseminated by
A human lizard similarly spoiled.
In ancient Greece they said this sexual tie
Had made the Earth from Chaos.’ So she told
A riddling tale which soon I understood.
‘How could you?’ I enquired of my mistress;
And she: ‘By many centuries of action
Upon the human faith, we make this mess,
A thing with human mind, power of reflection,
And yet with all the DNA tuned in
To bird vibrations. See the next concoction
In this room, next to it: arachnid children
Climb up the walls with spider deficit
Attention syndrome…’ But I butted in:
‘I don’t mean how you did this horrid shit!
O no!’ I whispered, mostly to myself.
‘We’ve got some humans who have forms of cat
With tails, like snakes, and wings, and, like an elf
The faces of a woman. And long since
These things were on the earth, and offered half
Their consciousness to the angelic heavens
And half to blind technology of men.
The chimera straddles the prison fence.’
But I forbade her so to carry on,
Either to tell me, or to show the rooms
Where these unspeakable histories of man
Were more than myths. But many sickly dreams
Are realised in corridors down there.
I saw an observation hall where teams
Of dead men are who rot, yet are aware
Because revived by some technical music
Played out of speakers. Then, door after door,
Rooms full of men bred to be so aphasic
They had been born without a human head,
But carried in their hands prosthetic masks
And, locked into themselves saw the infinite.
Most of these entities were chained or herded
By human seeming nurses: ‘These don’t hurt
The subjects,’ said my leader: ‘They’re persuaded
That they are doing good here. But my kind
Can’t shepherd these vile things; they can be murdered
Too easily and often. Have a mind
To speak to them, see how they justify
Their Hippocratic office.’ So I turned
To one nurse spooning medicine nearby.
‘What are you doing here?’ I touched her arm,
She wore a nurse’s dress: ‘Officially
I’m not here. This is kept a secret from
The media and all that; my husband thinks
I’m overseas in Africa.’ ‘How come?’
I said, and tried, with subtle signs and winks
To elicit from her some complicity:
‘Your work is secret? Don’t you know it stinks?’
She looked appalled: ‘It’s highest charity
To help these people who are born this way
It’s not their fault!’ ‘And don’t you think,’ said I,
That this is not quite right, I mean to say,
That people here are ruined, bred for torment..’
‘We don’t believe there’s a conspiracy,’
She said, suspicious of me for a moment,
Then smiled and went back to her occupation.
My lady looked at me and made no comment.
The nurse could not decipher, had no notion
Of who my lady was. I shook my head
To think of it. With childhood vaccination,
With poison slipped in subtly with the good,
Programmes for infant internets, Dbases
Containing all the private personhood
Of living people, made to wreck the faces
Of living humans with an alien warfare -
Such willing doctors have contained the masses.
We moved on further, to inspect the welfare
Of mental patients. Miles and miles of them
These caged and crippled beings you could never
Look at yourself and not fear to become.
I met men who can see the endless chain
Of worlds, drenched in the most horrific foam
Of visions which men’s minds should not contain;
They rave and rave, speak tongues, beg and in time
(A concept foreign to them) start again.
And more corpses within a living tomb
But these psychotics, born lobotomised,
They see and feel just a material loam.
Then mad evasive personalities
Who hate existence, torturing themselves
With hopes of lotteries, lives idealised.
We know their suffering daily. ‘What absolves
You from the guilt of these bleak devagations?
What reason do you have to be such wolves?’
‘These things are science, just investigations,
Developed from mere curiosity.
I don’t need reasons, no deep explanations.’
‘You’re tired, and we will rest,’ she said to me.
Meekly, I nodded, ‘These rooms here are called
The bloody rooms, for here is puberty
Brought on in girls of five and six years old.
This has an application in the world,
For we are stealing childhood from the child
Transmissions from the lunar satellite -
Increased suggestions from the pale full moon -
Age bodies quickly. This room here is what
Could be called Proteus’ lab, for here a man
Has been infused with his egoity
Into a bath of water. There’s no plan:
It’s just research! This cage here that you see
Contains a man whose eyes are facing round,
Right in towards his cranial cavity.
We do not kill these people; they redound
In lovely fear, delicious dread, dementia
Of sweet sadistic uncorrected mind.
The vapour of despair is our ambrosia,
It is the lovely fluid blood of life.
Like intestinal worms causing displeasure
We scrape your arse, you scratch, and we survive.’
And so, now lost for words, I stumbled on.
‘Let’s sleep now,’ so she said, my alien wife.
‘The masterpiece’
‘Inside my heart you’ll find the mystic rose
The petals come apart there if you tear;
You throw them on the floor, tearing them loose.
Just try it, lady, cut me to the core.
And then, I know it, I will know a man
Where I was born who still remains secure
After the ruin,’ I whispered. From my chin
I wiped the spittle, then I wiped my eyes.
The lady kept on walking on and down
A corridor whose standard masonries
Grew slowly darker, more covered in grime
Like a London tube station. The Mysteries
Might have been held in that cave where we came.
The walls were rock but smooth as if with hands
They had been touched. At times we had to climb
Downwards. ‘I heard your sweet and cruel demands,’
She said when taking up a torch for light,
And holding it on high to see the lands
Before us, low, descending, turning, tight,
So narrow, dark, and lacking anything.
‘I want to know what humans are,’ I said,
‘And if we are alone.’ The echoing
Words were left there, so I added, disturbed:
‘Do you know why we’re here? That sort of thing
So that, before I am destroyed and robbed
Of all existence, I might know,’ I said.
She kept on while the torch blazed, unperturbed,
Her white sidereal body went ahead.
To keep on going we were forced to stoop
And finally the cavern was so bad
She laid the torch down and we had to stop.
‘You want to know what? Our master plan?’
‘Yes, all of that, but tell it from the top.’
‘I mean, tell me the origins of men
I want to know the answer to this riddle.’
‘A masterpiece it would be, written down,
Such wisdom. In the winter, in the middle
Of night a frost begins to bite the ground
And takes on the aggression of a battle
To dig itself in; morning comes around
And melts it, so my words will sink within
And cut you, but will not incite your hand
To write; will make brief imprint on your brain.
The universe, the cosmos, has more tiers
And deep full old dimensions than a man
Can understand. A billion years
Is just the time it takes to blink an eye
To the almighty Truth. As volunteers
The souls of human beings came to see
The light. The earth was made for them to live
As humans: to find truth, pure love and beauty;
God, so excellent He exceeds belief,
Asked human minds to be and become flesh,
To struggle, to forget themselves, yet prove
That in the end through yearning, through the ash
Of lives surviving in the fire of time,
They could at length return to love afresh.
But the fire of mind, in spite of God, seeks crime.
People forget, they can’t remember why
They’re here on earth, and that is why we come:
To take and use that fire.’ ‘I’m tired now,’
I said, and lay, eyes closed, and feeling cold:
‘Is this the place that you will make me die?
I’m really tired. I wanted to be told
This story to remind remembrance
So clear now, it makes sense.’ So in the hold
Of an hallucinatory dead trance,
I seemed to see her smiling while she lay
Across from me in that dark decadence
Of tunnel which had ended up this way.
In memory of the truth, and without future.
I could not sleep since little threads of silk
Dropped down from overhead; a spurt of urine
Has such a fluid moving formless arc.
The sound of buzzing, tinnitus or whirring
Affects my ears, and now the thread of light
Grows more intense and full. I take my bearing
From where I lie and see it shoot upright
Going through the tunnel roof for miles and miles.
‘My lady, does my mind hallucinate,
Or does a sort of laser break the walls
And stroke my head?’ ‘So sick and cold as this,
So hungry, thirsty, emptied of the pills
That people must ingest all day these days,
Your psyche is reverting to old cast:
You’re seeing like a beast sees. Frequencies
Are tuning in to you as to a mast.
Love, which you’re here for, ancient winding fate,
Is really needed now,’ she said and passed
A hand across my cheek, affectionate.
‘Throughout what passes now, don’t be afraid;
Try not to fear, my love.’ ‘Don’t call me that,’
I said, ‘You do not understand that word.’
‘You’ll either die down here and fail in life,
Or put your hand out and climb up that thread.’
A daring lack of seriousness is enough
To make men jump or climb into the deep;
A world, in which a beam of heavenly stuff,
A ladder shooting from a sailing ship
Crewed by an alien race, can pierce the cave
Which had become my grave, is without hope.
You have no joy or hope, nor want to save
Your personality, your ‘I’, or body
When all that’s left is to choose how to leave.
But there was worse to come. But do not pity
This person who narrates: I laid aside
All sense of being someone, anybody.
‘Let’s go then’, I said, and just like a shade
I let the light thread draw me through the rock;
My flesh was insubstantial, and my blood
Flooding through stone by some arcane magic.
We climbed hand over hand, yet all at once
The beam had rendered useless any work
Since it had swallowed me, and started thence,
To drag my dim awareness through the strata
Of rock, which I had travelled through days since.
My mind was panicking and full of chatter;
I couldn’t see my legs or arms or head,
But obviously they, being made of matter,
Had been transformed, or they had fallen aside.
I cogitate bizarrely in this rapture:
Of living on: what chance that I am dead?
Once those things happened to me in the future
Which would occur to me. What were they though?
All I could think of clearly was a torture
Inflicted on my mind shot through and through
With madness, thoughts which were like fierce invasions.
What if they turned me into something new
By processes of surgery and visions
So terrible they split my mind in bits?
Perhaps my fears and those sharp apparitions
Were worse than what came next. From out the midst
Of earth the light evacuated us.
It was a dark air, sky of winter nights
And there was frost upon the brittle grass;
But still we headed up. ‘I see no lights
Nor any habitation. Where is this?’
I said as, far below, the Earth departs
Assuming spherical shape within the night.
As we ascended, the United States
Revealed itself entire from our height.
I should have passed out, but, O greatest fear,
My consciousness was lucid, so alright,
That what would come thereafter would be clear
And placed in memory. Through zone on zone
Of clouds of gas our little bodies were
Being dragged, and on then, to the circling moon,
And always tunnelling within that shaft.
Sometimes in front and sometimes further on
My sole friend came as well. You would have laughed
To see, beyond the dead, chalk satellite
An orbiting and circular space craft,
To which my path was wending, true and straight.
The ship grows bigger as we near, the door
Of which is opened, so we go inside.
Outside, the ship was small and circular;
Inside was large, and complex. Straight away
Three elf things lay me down upon the floor.
Large heads, small chins, big hands, the colour grey,
With eyes which narrowed at the upturned corner;
They spoke to me, but telepathically.
I struggled, fought, and wept, but in a manner
That nothing moved. Completely paralysed.
Now I was put upon a surgeon’s gurney.
You know a fair ground, how it has some rides
Which spin around upright and in the air,
The sort of things children have fantasised;
And flashing coloured lights are everywhere
On such attractions: horse rides, ferris wheels?
You know, as well, the circus kind of Fair
Where clowns in makeup fall, take to their heels
To chase each other in fantastic shapes,
And fast or slow, beneath perpetual smiles,
They do outlandish things and then take steps
To communicate with you but wordlessly.
Just so this place was, or just seemed, perhaps.
For there were beings there who noticed me,
But then ignored me. Their community
Of alien scholarly beings, obviously
Was far beyond what I knew. Charity
Cannot bring me to allow them any sort
Of stable mind or personality.
The way they treated me was without art
Their fascinations were sublimely pure:
Could they learn from me, make me die or hurt
Or could they teach me? I felt good and sure
That such a race did not feel certain things
Like friendship, loyalty, forgiveness, care,
But had they chosen that? My mistress rings
A signal bell which runs throughout the ship,
A melody vibrating through me brings
Another different sort of alien up,
A surgeon and an officer enmixed,
For all the clowns would follow him like sheep.
I well remember all that happened next.
The thing was robed in fire from head to foot
And yet was white under the fire. He fixed
A crocodile’s small eye upon me that
Peered from the elongated reptile face
Of one half-man and half-reptile to boot.
I cannot write or type, or draw or trace
The details for you, reader, my hands shake
But let these indications, please, suffice.
By using various needles, pliers, and the like
My heart was pierced and shut down, then removed;
My head was opened and my brain was took
And shown to me, and cut up, rudely knifed.
The surgeon put it next to me; the while
He stuffed in something else, and then he shoved
The real thing back in, damaged, with a smile.
‘This will improve you,’ he was saying then.
Now I was still awake, and conscious still.
‘I’ll get through this, I’ll get through,’ over again,
And again I said, and ‘God, and the good,’ and ‘Love’
And he: ‘Love? Way out here, what can this mean?
Does such a concept mean much here above?’
‘Yes’, I said ‘Love, intellectually.’
You see, I had to have it, to believe.
They started up my heart electrically.
But while this happened, while thus mutilated,
And faced with the indifference of scorn
From beings who know much more how we are fated
To be betrayed by life once being born,
I was assured by something infinite;
I had a confidence about the turn
That it is right make to face toward God;
That every thing, even in this misery
Makes intellectual love the guide of fate.
And I would be redeemed. Derisory
Acts of forces so superior
Which even rewired my brain’s neuronery
Still left my soul intact and absolute, for
My trust in Him prevailed; and even then
An easy and impossible good law
Would only make me stronger. And I mean
I felt a love for those who made the mistake
Of hurting me, which ran and still outran
Their random guilt. I felt the doctor shake
With sympathy to feel the joy within.
And furthermore, and above all, I look
And see that this today, and then, this thin
Veil over a nothing, our life in time
Is all illusion, absolute, all one.
It is too hard to tell, but just assume
That you would have to sit and study well
Upon a school boy’s seat; then you will come
To see the truth if, studying this hell.
And also study in your heart’s own book
And read the words there, deep and masterful.
I sat, awake; the therianthrope spoke:
‘It’s not that man is cattle that we eat.
Nor is it pleasing just to make him work
For entities like us who do not sweat
And don’t reward him. It is less substantial.
For, being aetherial, we must cultivate
Aetherial meats beyond what is essential.
I savour cruel pointless practices,
Perverse sex acts which crush all your potential.
The tears of children used in ritual sex,
The dreams of cocaine users in fatigue,
And just as good, the blood of a princess.
The pain of worthy people is my drug.
Her death is made to happen the moment
When many hold their breath and, all in league,
Can witness all the blood, hear the lament
Of multitudes when she’s thrown in the abyss.
We catch that soul.’ I wanted to comment
But found speech hard; I threw my glance across
To see my friend (I felt she was my friend);
I knew that he was speaking of the loss
Of that chaotic Princess who had met her end
In Paris, when without past or faith she was undone.
The Lizard said, ‘You theorist of the absurd;
You gave up your ideas that she was slain
By secret services and Royalty;
You gave up, and correctly, since the truth is plain.
That, her end beneath the flame of liberty,
In Paris, meant that atheist rites were held
Around the world to catch and watch her die.
The stars and fates conspired to have her killed.
O, there were human beings who made the plan,
But they just helped. The powerful strings were pulled
By faery knights and by the Faery Queene
Who, as of old and as ever anew
Remove the restraint, the virtue and confession
From Christian hearts. Leaving behind
The animal emotions which were seen
In the princess, the newspapers, and the people
And all the rest of it which flocked around
The Torch of Liberty over that tunnel.
In that high atmosphere
Above the earth, while my muse dreamed at leisure,
I started hearing voices high and clear.
They sang and overwhelmed me with their measure.
The words were these: ‘Venite pur avanti’
From Mozart’s invitation to the pleasure
Of food and love and all risk-taking’s plenty.
I heard the singing, then I saw them sing
And then those singers really upped the ante.
Three woman things came to me in a ring.
‘Doomed man, insane and sorrowful condemned,
Up here at night supported by a wing
And by a prayer, now you are truly damned.’
They were three witches, or three types of maid
An old crone, a young woman, and a kind
Of mother. And yet when I turned my head
Toward my guide who had been lying near
I could not find her. Anxious, full of dread
I tried to fight these women of the air.
I reached my hand out to their rustling dresses
And felt their arms, some eggs, some pubic hair.
The three of them, these triple goddesses
Enjoyed reminding me that I would die.
Just die, doglike, to entertain the masses.
‘You think you’ve fled the death we promised you?
Back at the start of this?’ They said, ‘But wait,
My lady said that. She is not here now.
It was not you three.’ ‘Now he looks for God
And thinks he cannot perish,’ said the horror,
The oldest one; she pushed me to my seat.
Then looking calmly at me as a mirror
Image looks back at you: ‘You’ll buy your ticket
Out of this world for good this time tomorrow.
I was so terrified. I could not take it
Without my friend nearby. I was alone
I thought they’d kill me there, I would not make it
Faced with these women and that foul old crone.
But then I saw my mistress: one in three,
And that the three-fold was my Lizard queen.
The bed and lab dissolved transparently
As soon as the white lady’s face bent down
Across my face; and she burnt lambently.
The colours, shapes and lines of things remain,
But they responded to my mental pleasure;
Suggestions of a stone became a stone,
And then assumed new forms of architecture;
From liquid spirals in a Celtic torque
Snake eyes peer out in pretty, sensual rapture.
‘Where am I?’ I said, hearing the opaque
Sound of my voice re-echo in the void,
And resonate in time and come straight back.
As memory before they became word
I heard her voice console me: ‘It’s the plane
From which my race emerges. Since your head
Was emptied or refigured you have been
Ecstatically raised up out of the flesh.’
Emerging from the darkness she came on:
I see her only, hear a buzz and crash
As horns appear around her dim forehead,
And crackling fire burns in a yellow torch
She carries. Unafraid, meanwhile, I said:
‘Have I experienced alien abduction,
And is this how they can communicate?’
‘They usually abduct for copulation;
They take some milk or seed for royal ones.
The pure souls of my sort need an oblation
Of human stuff to nurture in us bones
And other human trappings. But the half-breed -
Half human and half alien - these are sons
Of royal parents with a human bride.’
‘So from this place, this nowhere out of matter
The reptiles grow a body?’ ‘Then they slide
Into the sockets of the scum and litter
Of Earth existence; thus they procreate,
And grow their children on the bread and butter
Of normal Earth lives: ministers of state,
Industrialists, financiers, generals,
Celebrities and artists spring from out
Of these half human bloodlines. Criminals
For the most part. And now look at that ball.’
Below us or above while the earth spirals
Its way through space, both empty and most full,
From where I was I saw all of its time
In such a way that time was space until
All time was present in a spatial frame.
Just as lives happen in biographies,
And all the person’s life is at one time
Within the pages; or, when we make movies
And play them back or forth, now fast now slow,
Just so, time past and present are in phase
When from this other plane you see time flow.
I saw it with my eyes how years, decades,
Expand and flourish in the ideal Now.
‘Because we see existence from these shades
Beyond the world of your sight, you are ours.
But note this well: no matter that as gods
My royal line can dominate, coerce,
And generally rule in power and glory.
If there is not a further base commerce,
Then me and mine must leave Earth in a hurry.
You see, this is not home, this empty space.
Where you and I are now is temporary:
It is an intermediate secret place
Between two worlds, your one on the one hand,
And ours somewhere beyond. This interspace
Is only home to us, you understand,
Because there is a special food we take
And eat, which gives to us a solid ground.
If ever people ceased to kill and fuck,
If they could stop the secular and the rape
Of innocents, we’re finished.’ Thus she spoke.
Apparently, when aliens first came up
From their own level, they were drawn to earth
And held outside it, hovering and deep.
They sucked in breaths of outrage, while calm faith
And right thinking made their bodies go wrong.
‘This zone is not your plane of being - the Fourth?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘You’ll hear it from my tongue
Where and what my true home is further on.
But first the iron blood, the bitter tang
Of what most pleases us in mortal man;
This thing you first must see. Let us go home
To Wales and England; you’ll see what I mean’.
But now our path had led
Toward the old house where the two of us
Had spent our first days. Inside was the bed.
‘We came because we hate the human race;
Because a catastrophic ending looms
That I’ll enjoy when with a crystal blade
We cut your heart out. And the ending comes
For all men, one way or another way.’
The bedroom was suffused with rich perfumes
Above it was a white, low canopy,
And white clean sheets were draped across the whole.
There was a couch beside it and a spray
Of flowers, and beside it on a stool
Some fragrant ointments and a stringed guitar.
And there we did all night the ritual
Of marriage. It was a site of bitter war
Of race and sex, beyond what’s good and evil;
And after it I could no longer care
If what she planned for me was wrong or moral.
From henceforth I was her conspirator.
She said, then, smiling: ‘We are going to travel
The labyrinth when we step through the door
Into the world around us. Humankind
Is threatened by a kind of Minotaur.’
‘And trapped inside that maze of paths that wind
Interminably out and inside them.
A path of reasons, and evasions, and
A path of life ways people share, become
A certain lonely life experience
That has them trapped and which they call their home.
It penetrates them, and it is a fence
Restraining from without, and ruled by me.
You know this now, know what omnipotence
Rules humankind. You know they cannot see
And don’t believe this alien animal
Although deep deep inside the memory
Of horror is aroused by a certain smell
And certain sights, which bring to mind their plight:
The smell of uric acid, beds paternal,
Of bad tobacco, unaired rooms, and shite;
These types of things offend their sense of ease,
The fetid, dying, the empty space inside
Which drives them onward, through the tangled maze.
If men could see the walls at either side,
The turns which lead and make them lost always,
They’d dream of massacring the bull of Crete
And getting out, retracing every step.
But few men ever knew before they died.’
‘But you, you poet, you will see, perhaps
You’ll dream of Christianity’s Theseus,
Helped by that Ariadne who took ship
To Athens. They are not too conscious,
These people, how the Lab’s imagination -
How their whole world and mind is purely specious,
A great communal dream alienation,’
She stopped, and nodded once toward the door,
As if the rest of her dark sad narration
Could be explained by going out through there.
‘My lady,’ I said, ‘Can it be the case,
If I am right that two and two is four,
That ETs, like you are, were with us always,
And that our fate is to live in a cage,
Then really, you are Satan?’ And she: ‘Yes!’
‘But then,’ I said, ‘If you think that my age
Deserves to know the truth then this implies
That there is something better, some knowledge,
That would make us free, divinities
Who wait for me to know them, better gods,
And something good you see with direct eyes?’
‘There is a better God,’ she said, ‘At odds
With me, but how to know him, there’s the rub.
And thereto is perhaps where our path leads.
We’ll see how Earth is ruled by men whose job
It is to utterly avoid the truth of Earth
Women and men who if they owned a pub
Would not know how to get you drunk.’ We both
Stepped from my lady’s house in north west England.
She drove her car at speed into the north,
Along the ugly roads. On either hand
The ugly cars, and more cars, speeding full
Through rain and dreary fields and with the sound
Of propaganda radio. The pitiful
Is made or born here really. We turn off
Toward the airport and the Terminal
For European flights, and then, enough
We came eventually to Italy.
‘I love to be with you, I love this stuff.’
‘To trust you, as my guide, I love to be
With you, and travel, move, see, be, exist,
Regardless of what exists around me.
God is somewhere above us in some mist
Of history, and has abandoned us.
God is no doubt somewhere but he is lost.
You, on the other hand, a different case:
You hold me, speak to me, and draw my heart,
I burn for you, your words, your form, your eyes.
How I would have enjoyed playing the part
Of Moses whom you led from ancient Egypt
Into the Sinai, giving Aaron his rod.
If that was you back then I would have crept
Into the sanctuary and enjoyed
Your nearness while the Israelites worshipped
Their golden calf. You are our Lord.’
I tried to tell her how my loneliness
Was cured by her. She said only this word.
‘It is no wonder mankind is a mess.
They love their captors.’ Her superior look
Was lovely to me, but I will digress
To tell how she appeared in the next book.
For now, know that I recomposed my mind
And she apologized, said she mistook
My love for folly. Then beyond all bound
I begged her to have pity on my head,
And love me in return, and not to end
My life in murder on a pyramid
As it was going to be in future times
As from the start it had been planned, she said.
‘Weeping and shameful man, what awful crimes
Has love of me and sex already brought?
You know this and yet out of your mouth comes
This servile love of an infernal god.
What else is sin that this, the human breast.
For you to love me is like masturbation
It is self love, it is more like incest.
You’ll see the high Ideal and the true Light.
I see it will take time, will be a test,
For me and you.’ She said, and now in sight,
I saw the dome and the expansive frame
Of Rome’s St Peter’s, spread against the night.
It was the time of day when it’s bed time,
A man turns off his telly, and his spouse
Goes locking doors and goes from room to room,
Ensuring she’ll be safe locked in her house.
Some priests led us inside the Vatican.
They led us to a bed and our own space.
The world is actually run by thieves
And predators and gods. Now, dressed in grey
The Pope was in his chamber. His white gloves
Caressed a walking stick held in a way
One holds a sword. He wore a black cravat
And stamped his foot while, looking from on high
Fortissimo pitched words came dancing out:
‘The world is run by gods who recognize
Each other. They determine human fate.
The human herd is just a sacrifice.
You, Jason Powell, you love this, and by now
You want to further Earthly paradise;
Where each man finds his own fun and own law.
Since Constantine the keys to life eternal
Have been in hands God-guided, men who knew…’
But she said: ‘His church is the gate, the key
Using the which we enter a freer air.’
I saw the man put on his robes and mitre;
He walked to chapel and assumed his chair.
‘The Church’s divine message, sweet and bitter,
Of other worlds, God’s love, and painful duty,
Schooled and created all that will endure in Western culture.
The world as it is, as a global city,
Was founded on the hill of Mount Cassino
Where Bernard lit the lamp of divine beauty
Which never will go out. But as you know
That light of God is just enough for men
And fishing for the moon in water, they see no
Real things, the real is subterranean,
And hidden from them. God of sacrifice,
God of self-sacrifice, a human one,
Who died and gave to us love without price:
Him and his codes of conduct of the brain
And of the body, that has been God’s face.
Meanwhile the Truth, and also the alien reign,
Were not disclosed.’ She spoke and led me out
Toward the center of the Vatican.
Now it was late and through the quiet street
She marched me to a chapel that she had
Where Michaelangelo drew Christ and God.
Considering the things that she had said
About both aliens and about the Truth
I asked her things which rolled around my head:
‘Beside extra-terrestrials who beneath
The ground and over us have all command,
And beside humans, is there, on the Earth
Some other thing which we don’t understand,
Some power obscured from view, through history
Obscured and hidden, some original ground?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘And if you follow me
You’ll learn about it all from other lips.
For in the shelter and the cruelty
Men have fought wildly to escape our traps
Men dead now, or still living in your time
Creating lights in a time of eclipse.
A power so great and good that, when you come
To it I can’t be with you. Influence
It has not over me. This is my home.’
She stopped and I could see, beyond a fence
A grand high altar. There we went inside.
Supper was served, and sparing no expense
We ate well and were drunk. ‘If I decide,’
Now she began, ‘To tell you all the tale,
Myself, you would not understand a word.
It must be demonstrated. Scale from scale
Will drop away and then your eyes will see.
By Christian doctrine, what you see is real
And God created it. Eternity,
He also made that, but it can’t exist
For mortals. The world is your prison, see?
Your self’s your prison, too, the self that Christ
Embodies and has proven to be perfect.
All are in prison each an egoist.
Everything about the human subject
Was crafted and enframed through centuries
Of Christian history, sublime and abject.
The imprisoned subject and its mortal worries
Gives to the next man his degraded ego,
Arouses it in him, and so he carries
An absolute absence of any sorrow.
The most atrocious tortures of a friend,
Cannot undo the selfhood in his marrow.
Some men are selfish torturers, some kind,
It’s all one; positive or negative.
The Church, the Earth, it is all of one mind:
An unconditional rampage to survive.
A relict of their animal prehistory,
An alien input, either/or. This drive
Was called by Freud the Death Drive in his theory;
It is the one immortal thing on Earth:
The soul’s drive to live on. A mystery.’
And for the Church, and to assert his worth,
One will do anything, evil incredible,
They’ll kill, they’ll die, they’ll forgo any mirth
They love the ideal, the unconditional.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘Even love can make us bad.
My feelings for you make an animal
Of me, so I betray my race instead
Of fighting you. You give me an erection
When you should make me sick. And yet, you said
There was this other force, other direction,
Beyond the death drive, beyond what Shelley named
The Triumph of Life.’ ‘I used that simple diction
About that force but it is pre-condemned
As meaningless.’ ‘So why don’t we make haste?
Please take me now to these, the saints, the damned,
Whoever they are who know, alive or ghost,
I want to meet them and experience.’
O Muse of poetry, now be my bride.
The life of dead men, the Mysteries of life,
Sing Muse, how I broke to the other side.
O you on Helicon who kidnap tender wife,
And take her as a bride fit for a groom,
Now wreath my temples with the laurel leaf
And bring your flame hued veil, so, hither come
On snow white foot, and then with ringing voice
Join in the chorus, dance out beat and rhyme.
For I will need your help and your advice
As I tell how I once again was bound
Unto the goddess, cruel, full of vice
Who also told the truth, and round and round
Wrapped me with love, as ivy entwines the tree,
Roving here and there. Or else I’m blind
And groping without sight for poetry.
You who helped Milton to be milked of song,
Invest me with words for my imagery.
‘Sit here, my master will soon be along,’
My mistress said, and pointed to a chair,
So I sat down. As she left, footsteps rang
Upon the wood stained panels of the floor
And echoed in the silence of the night.
And, as I, fearful, wait, the corridor
Reechoed once again to approaching feet.
The thing which came in had two pairs of wings
And was naked saving a crown upon its head.
As it came near it cast light on the things
Around it, burning with a darkening light.
It was an angel from the angelic ranks,
But something so intensely passionate,
Like something loaded with significance,
Which easily could crack and make me mad.
‘I’ve come to seal the bargain. That deep trance,
That concentration that you learned with her,
I want you to assume it.’ The entrance
And exit to this room was much too far
For me to reach; I really had to go.
This creature made me scared, but I stayed there,
Sat down, said nothing, neither: ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’.
‘To learn more, you must sign away your life.
There are no stages of the road to do.’
He touched my forehead softly, soft enough
To leave a number marked there. ‘Sign away…?’
‘You’re to be murdered. An obsidian knife
Will cut your heart out later on today,
Remember that?’ And I recalled my guide
Had told me I’d be treated royally
For months before death on the pyramid.
She told the truth. ‘Now concentrate your mind
And slip into the meditative state.’
And so I did. My thoughts tried to contend
With inner quiet, but they faded soon.
I sat just breathing softly hours on end.
But I was elsewhere, too, dancing a tune
Played by some god creating a new world.
For in the quiet absence ghosts moan,
And voices, shapes arose, moving about
And seeking my warmth. One picked up a knife;
I felt their hands take me and lay me flat,
And then with practiced gestures take my life.
At which, I saw move backwards all my events
They passed my vision, step by step, enough
That I came at last to rest, in the Parish church
With the images of saints and Christ before me
And at last, I let myself hear my Father’s voice
And I accepted that he spoke, and listened to him.
What is this dance that you and I alone
Have danced so curiously, in such a measure
That I’ve seen some of hell, and been undone
So many times and seen the greatest pleasure
Suffused with dreadful sights, all worse and worse?
What has it meant?’ And she spoke at her leisure:
‘The jewelled heaven, the infinite palace
Has ruined you and taken you away;
This is the moon tree’s fruit. It’s what it is.’
She took a sharp breath and resumed the lay:
Where does the soul go when it flees this life?
Well, let me tell you this, when it is on its way
It finds itself in a terrific strife
With those invisibles who swarmed about it
While it was living. Yes, they come to have
What they believe is theirs. There is no wait.
They grip you and will steal you for their own:
Great crocodile men laughing at your fate.
And things accustomed to being there throw down
The dead man to spit on him, naked now.
Unless, that is, he has learned how to frown
On evil and to love. The one who so
Has schooled himself to live without his will
During his time in life is left to go.
But where he goes I did not see so well
Because it was not my time. I was breathing
Again. The goddess broke the spirit’s spell
And dragged me from the floor. My head was seething
And blood was all around me near my hands,
So much, and heavy, but her touch was soothing.
She took the phone and called an ambulance.
Within an hour I was hooked to a drip
And being medicated. There this ends.
Design Jason Powell.