The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sympathetic Magic This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. *** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. *** *** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. *** Title: Sympathetic Magic Author: Paul Cameron Brown Release date: August 22, 2009 [eBook #29761] Most recently updated: April 22, 2010 Language: English *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYMPATHETIC MAGIC *** Produced by Al Haines Cover Page 1 Sympathetic Magic Paul Cameron Brown Copyright (C) 1985 by Paul Cameron Brown ************************************ Cover Page2 "...the language is that of a poet who who knows what he is doing and how he wants to do it The Malahat Review "He moves... at the edge of lyric experience." Quarry Paul Brown has a carborundum eye for the most extreme poetic minutia at a time when most of the younger poets indulge in introspective rhetoric, dulling that faint minority of poem tasters. J. Rosenblatt "...Mr. Brown demonstrates his ability to carry images, word play and fantasy through a poem from beginning to end." Canadian Book Review Annual ISBN 0-919581-25-0 **************************************** nopage1 SYMPATHETIC MAGIC *************************************** nopage4 Sympathetic Magic 1985 Paul Cameron Brown ThirdEye would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for the financial Contribution to this publication. Published by Third Eye Publications Inc. 31 Clark Side Road, London, Ontario, Canada N5W 5W5 Sympathetic Magic Paul Cameron Brown *************************************** nopage5 Dedication "Yours is the earth and everything that's in it ..." Rudyard Kipling *************************************** nopage6 By the same Author POETRY Whispers, Three Trees Press, Toronto, Ont., 1977 Eyeshine, Three Trees Press. 1978 The Long Necked Bottle, Swamp Press, Oneida. New York, 1980 Coming To Grips With White Knuckles, William Wallace International, Toronto, Ont. 1982 PROSE The land of look Behind, Three Trees Press. 1980 CHAPBOOKS Isles & Rivulets, Killaly Press. London, 1978 BROADSHEETS The Rake's Progress, South Western Ontario Poetry. London, Ont. 1980 Acknowledgements Many of these poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Amelia (USA), Writers' News Manitoba. Germination, Repository, Arcane (USA), Jimson Weed (USAJ.lron (U.K.), Muses's Brew Poetry Review (USAJ Northwoods Poetry Journal (USA), Lucky Star (USA), Winewood Journal (USA). *************************************** nopage7 CONTENTS The River Cuts a Channel 9 Primavera 10 Sanguine 11, 12, 13 Hamomlette 14 The East is Red 15, 16, 17 untitled 18 untitled 19 Rocking Horse 20 Rouge and Gray 21 Cubits 22 Buzz Phrase 23 Ambergris City 24 Wincing 25 Toronto 26 Crying Scene 27 Night Sky 28 The World of Tezcatlipoca 29 In the Cenote 30 Belize 31, 32, 33, 34 Picaroon 35, 36, 37 The Cable Car 38 IL Giardino 39 Every Man's Hand 40,41,42 Ending Up 43 Offerings 44,45,46,47 Regalia 48 San Cristobal 49, 50 Guadalquivir 51 Leaves of the Cecropia Tree 52.53 Southwark 54 Kublai Khan 55, 56, 57 Homuncular Forms 58 Antarctica 59, 60 Blue-eyed Grasses 61 Moccasin 62 The Bullfrog 63 Ancestral Memory 64 Entry Point 65 Bloodcount 66 BloodStream 67 Rogue and Privateer 68 The Camera Cage 69 Fence Line 70 Adversaries 71 Bargaining Unit 72 Palais Royale 73 Alcatraz 74 When Labouring to Break 75 This way to the Sixties 76, 77 Pogrom 78 Baggadocio 79, 80, 81 Dress Rehearsal 82.83. 84 *************************************** page9 THE RIVER CUTS A CHANNEL People with money but no fortune or stomach for the life of an albatross, watch him soar on self made wings, fetch the dingy redness of morning's, first catch with a long necked bottle he calls the captain *************************************** page10 PRIMAVERA A poem is perishable and, like it, so much of life is spent in intervals -- the jarring second regaining consciousness, a post-mortem flick of the lank equestrian eyelid that signals, morning's first crepuscular move. . . . a little salad consciousness about the tumescent room with the sentient purr of a Cat, her musky oils a green verdure lapping primordial scent to engross a little readiness as the day progresses to its oedipal stage and arrested development. *************************************** Page 11 SANGUINE "The clock indicates the hour but what does enternity indicate?" Whitman Imagine, being told cubism isn't painting. That Beardsley didn't die at 26, unheralded as a boy genius or Corot didn't come to Paris after all. Imagine, The Louvre without a rooftop, the intelligentsia sitting down to a ragged table surrounded by sawdust intellects, Proust not being able to write his name. Now that's splendour -- that's in-depth "feeling". That's emotion to pull your socks or catch the bus on a brittle day. It's easy. Try to "feel" the event. It's 1896. People are perturbed (or so we are told) because the century's getting old. Time's rushing by. There's an alarm clock set to buzz at eternity's gate, Midnight 1900. In probing the malaise that hit Europe circa 1881, psychologists would have us believe the world grew despondent. Despondent because a whole hundred year cycle was about to elapse; despondent because life itself was running out. Those poor Edwardians! Poor lovers of the elegant, the late Victorians, belle epoquers. A penny for their thoughts when confronting a Picasso without the vantage of hindsight. Page 12 If Europe and its child bride, America, grew uneasy in the declining years of the past century. How then our era? (These same psychologists pinpoint people's spirits rise in the opening years of a new century.) Now we're poised for the "really big one": the cataclysm. What a boon for the absurdists. Peaches and cream -- not just one century dangling but the culmination of ten. There's even a word for it. Millenium, I'll say it again. Better yet, a mere two millenia since Christ's departure, we are poised again on the threshold. Half & half. Like a party twelve pack -- six of one, half dozen of the other. Remember. when contemplating your ennui or malaise (whichever word is currently most fashionable), you can hardly figure for less. Eternity's given to you, my peers, a singular opportunity. And from what we know of the 20th century. it should be a grand slam homer. Already the clean-up batter is staged for action. The bat looms over the plate. There's so much bad news it's enough to make an optimist greedy. After all, with this much horror there is caused only for danse macabre celebrations. 1985. Only 15 years left before the digital watch rolls over. before the cannon with the flower pops out. Those forward looking voyeurs of hundred years back must have felt cheated when mentally reversing their lot with the denizens of the 20th century. Page 13 In 1885, you could only gripe about the aging process of a single tenth of one component. In 1985, you've got that and the Millenia. Trendy things like atmospheric pressure, negetive ions, adverse body rhythms and a welter of other pseudo impressive formula abound to help out in your witchhunt. Surprise. 1066 saw comets, omens. signs coded in stars speeding ecross the sky -- a host of ditlurbing. natural phenomena to boot. The vigilant saw meteors at Caesar's, death. The National Enquirer predicts Australia will break into the sea. Californians will be upstaged. The futurists will all need waterwings. The Club of Rome hints the next years auger more chilling holocausts. Everywhere, survival scenarios proliferate. Pro-lifers will rearrange proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic. Soothsayers will become all the rage as we plot myriad escapes. A year's supply of canned goods, anyone? 1885 has a lot to teach us. Umbrellas, a gentle ennui like fine mist compounded by traffic in & out of the Moulin Rouge. Perhaps a surfeit of absinthe helps just as its equivalent does today. "Cheer up, there will always be an England" doesn't sound so bad after all. And there's always that one recruiting poster, "What did you do in the Great War, daddy"? *************************************** Page 14 HAMOMLETTE A VICTIM OF INDIGESTION OR PATRICIDE? MAGIC PAN: CASTLE OF ELSINORE CHEF: THE MAD PRINCE OF DENMARK INGREDIENTS: THE TRAGEDY OF THE HUMAN CONDITION, SENSELESS FORCES THAT RAGE AND DESTROY A MAN COOKING INSTRUCTIONS: SIMMER SLOWLY A PERFECT SOUFFLE - ALAS POOR YORICK I KNEW HIM WELL... *************************************** Page 15 THE EAST IS RED We can survive a nuclear War. It's scarcely credible, I know, but listen. The human race has great resilience. We've come back before -- all those plagues, the Black Death, despoliations, scorched earth policies "prove" it. We're proliferate and we love the sex act. It won't be hard; human fecundity is a count-on. There are so many of us, see. People have overestimated the alleged horror. After all, (Khruschev pounding a UN table with his shoes). somebody walked away from firebombing at Dresden. Look at at all the escapees in Hiroshima. Get the drift? A Bomb's a Bomb. Really. The really big one (to take Ed Sullivan'a phrase out of context) is just more of the same. Try to absorb that logic. Ergo, Ignorance must be, in toto strength. Enraged by the impropriety of it all? Anyone who disagrees with this is coarse and vulgar. Of course there would have to be "preparations". (If you have "to prepare" to be a hairdresser, it stands to reason you would have to ready yourself for this.) Confronting, facts you can die only once. After that, the mushroom cloud is anticlimactic. Remember the Magic Mushroom -- the cult that centred its teachings around Christianlty's debt to hallucegenic drugs? Some said preposterous -- Christ a magician doping his followers and using the Cross as a stage prop. Amazing. In this world anything is possible. We have finally created a mutant of people who eccept anything. And God just another man, albeit a tricky devil at that. Imagine fooling everyone for 2,000 years! Next, we'll be told we're actually dead. I know some of you have already suspected this but it will be Page 16 "confirmed". Our leaders will troopse out impressive sounding "flow charts" and backup statistics. There will even be a special chamber to experience what it was like before you knew you were dead with carefully monitored "response signals" to give the audience a "sensasound" aura just like living through an earthquake, only fake. Just remember Monty Python and "possibility". Meanwhile, in ensuing preparations for war, no aspect of the psychological preparedness should be overlooked. We don't have to be told there is no substitute for victory. "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of a King." Hamlet knew. So does The Kremlin. The KGB can "prove" a nuclear scenario is winnable. According to the most painstaking calculations, a conventional war of any duration "swings" into a pre-nuclear stage. That's when the nuclear option becomes "viable". That's when Gorbachev and the boys calculate "target readiness" and plummet the depths of the human spirit. The East is Red and ready. The Chinese have been told by Mao 300 million or their number cremated is a small price for global supremacy. A human dung hill is being set in motion for another generation of poppies. Marx lends credibility to this, but with a different opiate for the masses. The lumpenproletariat can hack it. Such clever playing with facts, now I understand genius. For a young physicist, a 100 megaton blast is the culmination of the creative spirit. Certainly irrefutable evidence, this quintessential "spirit". I read Toronto would be "messy" in the event of a nuclear strike. Half-baked and eviscerated thinking Or just inescaspable? Chin up. We'll survive or at least part of us will. We really are "malleable". It will be a "transitional stage", Page17 a step upwards on the evolutionary ladder. Radioactivity and genetics are at work with one another. When the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic device, the pilot was later to go mad. Maybe this has already happened to the world and there's no one to discern the difference. Maybe a forest of "maybes" has already sprouted and left a forest of dust clouding the collective vision. Maybe it's all too terrifying to be taken seriously and disbelief is the escape hatch. Like the pilot's lapse into comforting drugs for reassurance or the dervishes with their Magic Mushroom. Maybe it's closer to what Harry Truman announced after "deploying" the first "device" or exercising the nuclear option in the jargon of the strategists. They started it. We prepared to end it. No regrets. Turned over on his deathbed and went to sleep *************************************** Page18 happy happy happy happy trigger happy happy happy happy t happy happy happy happy trigger *************************************** Page 19 ENERGYENERGyENERGYENE n Being alive n e wastes e r energy r g g y wastes B wastes y e i n g a l i v e *************************************** Page 20 ROCKING HORSE Fate is a mahout astride a large elephant, impersonal as dark sun with winds raging across a desert. Fate is the old bones of dead Indians being resurrected as ground mist on the edge of a salt marsh. And not knowing what to call personal destiny we resort to the clunker "fate" -- "beggar and king" enjoying, or so it is said, the dust together. I prefer wet leaves breaking canisters of restraint and calling to the earth as little paws digging into the humus of the sky. *************************************** Page 21 ROUGE AND GRAY So much time has passed & time is a hooligan run wild littering the streets, squeezing toothpaste at the wrong end shredding clothes with a razor blade. Time is never called into account -- lives like Peter Pan in a flying abode above it all scot-free, the surly bandit. A perilous acquisition -- tiny pinpricks above the eye-brows crows' feet -- all too visible rending of fleshy corners bulbed to puffiness. Red-handed, I caught time his knife in Youth once more still-water decay, brackish trouble-maker with tint of rouge and gray. This school-yard tough still picking on the corner weakling. braggadocio and upstart spoiling for a fight first elbow up, each foot in a fray. *************************************** Page 22 CUBITS A woman is a trough hardly that -- a river, a pond to sail a small boat thru, rapids to manoeuvre. A woman commandingly tall receptive as water, quicksilver to the light yet mirages all. Two cubits to an arm's length a bridge to span, virgin territory with the compass needle jumping -- a plane dusting crops. A woman once, parchment twice warm treacle to the core -- a marshmellow for a heart. *************************************** Page23 BUZZ PHRASE Down on your luck or, as they say, "financially embarrassed" ... with little in the way of hope, less palaver -- drifting in & out of theme parks not unlike El Paso, Prairie Junction between jobs, causes and wives... letting "it all hang out", in the jumble of the moranese letting despair and the pig iron law of economics have their say -- shouting "moral support" in the face of the rocky "well-wisher". I read all the plots and each ends up as a grave... once in a single afternoon I even gave up on golddiggers who, though just passing through meant dress rehearsal for the bigger jive, "long_term" and since when should "patching up and catching up" make starry-eyed even that slip of a girl, commitment. *************************************** Page 24 AMBERGRIS CITY Felt no pain against the water, the tea-cup sky was a turquoise colour in its wrath illuminating ambergris city in spot checks below. The sperm whale population was in decline. Little or nothing remained of former commitments. A bitter legacy consumed itself in half-truths against the sound of upturned lies. Winding alleys come as the conscience of well plaid cities. are open zippers revealing the indecent poor. The fire hydrant lives of cellar inhabitants strain these urinals for wretches sniffing out the edge of completed walls. Gray nuisances, the men in asbestos overalls finding their way through the apricot fire of dark, eclipse Park Plazas with the stately elegance of empty dinner dishes or red trash cans against indentured snow. *************************************** Page 25 WINCING You can't go back, to Love, a home. memories of Pearl Bailey even a scatterbrained job curled like a Morning Glory about the ribs of day. Everyone repeats not going back. A sly ripple on the cape of wind, peaking with absentminded glee, into that bulge from within your past, beyond your left arm, called "before". Dismissing angels, refusing to court hardship, not to mention wincing that comes from attaching the mouth too fiercely on privale parts and all flasks with firm memory; wheeling drunkenly on her thought. her sayings, sculling backwaters of your mind with little fingers each repeating sane warnings. *************************************** Page 26 TORONTO In Toronto, trendy bars absolutely must have a theme or at least end in "S". It's an unspoken rule. In-spots (notice the "S" again) recall the Lost Generation: Garbo's, Hector's, Lucille's; though less thematically inclined imbibers can indulge at plain sounding Sammy's/Charlies... The really jaded seek refuge at the Parrot or Madcaps which more than suffice: while those seeking purity in their draught can take consolation at the common Brunswick or Molley's. There's even a Barbary Coast for privateers. While on the subject of Exotica, Magoos or the Kon Tiki infuse that Tahitian feeling. For the medic middle of the road cum professional, it'a basic Malloneys, Eroticism is both underlying and apparently felt in the lush decor of Hemingways or, in the obviously suggestive supple Fingers. Money could be added to Kissinger's aphorism power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, Certainly, the jaded or those otherwise afflicted with ennui and creeping malaise have a whole city as their ripe oyster. And what was that Montrealers say of Toronto? Quennelles. Lady of the Gold Horse wilh Diamond Eyes. A bottle of Napoleon brandy for the Count and two Persian lions carved in wood. Salads Nicoise. Dinners at Pre Catalan in the Bois, a Toronto equivalent. A girl named Chantilly burning charcoal in the forest. I drank a cocktail with the girl of the white polo coat. Or as the cynic said,my pipe is the tent, the tobacco the days of my life. *************************************** Page 27 CRYING SCENE If you're going to drop the gauntlet at least put on the dress of a full warrior -- paint, rouge, lipstick, sheer stockings and enough powder to smother a savage; then form a straight line and chant the litany (wise aboriginals never forgive, you know) and a good poundmaker is so adept at keeping score. *************************************** Page 28 NIGHT SKY I can call a lake a kettle a splendid, ivory comb a snare -- tiny feet cataclysms off a mountain. the night sky my ariel home. Nothing matters with my heart at my ribs a collarbone of doubt inching into my anatomy Everest-wide. surging canals into my throat. I am a pianist plying my trade playing to waves -- the wharf and pier passionate onlookers entranced with joy. sailors wearing blond caps in stout approval their tall ships wavy as decorative pins. smashed bottles accumulated days at sea lapping the dock. *************************************** Page 29 THE WORLD OF TEZCATLIPOCA* "...the fourth state of water in its plasmic state ... elements as plasmic water have programmed goals which they follow like earth encompassing genies. In soft light amid hues of barbaric green. walled edges of the cenote's fortress shine as eyes of the Cyclops, bloodlshot and ringed with nettled stone A break in the clearing -- then ramshackle growth broken with vengeance of uprooted vine confronts the eyes of a jaguar* (axe-breadth apart) between canopies of trees millenial rot, algae and monkeys carved in a jungle setting the shape of an iguana's room * the same *************************************** Page30 IN THE CENOTE Under a candlelit operetta of stars, the vertigo horizon trails to a shudder until, swallows the size of kites handstand in flying motion about pools of water then glide within reach of the cenote,* cisterns deep and flagellant scars in earth that cradle still hands of pale, pumice stone. All the tears of old Mexico refurbish this soil, anxious in blessing a brittle toil in sisal* groves harvesting hennequin* to symbolize pity in flat expanse of Mission stone. * A deep natural well. The term is of Mayan origin. * Hemp. *************************************** Page 31 BELIZE Giving myself permission to write -- points from Ciudad Juarez as well as the compass where taboos complete bayonet-sized memories a tadpole of doubt gleaned from shallow Canadian upbringing sojourning in the South. A stranger came -- his beard the Columbian hillcountry mustachioed, the voice trailed off whisper-thin, steeper than riverine jungles, the Black Mamba or boomslang before brief rictus of pain. I am writing this with an eye on fortune, it's not the cantina is dry just walls above this cot squeeze the soul like a padre's blessing between rosary beads and the day is hot. Extend a cigarette, fumble another Spanish syllable pretend houngans are hombres Hidalgo just another green wine. This utterance is mutilating and paper scrolls are an oath to take their toll pockmarking my thumbprints forcing blood. Page 32 Buenos dias, sênor, only don't say S a s k a t c h e w a n like light over mountains it's of little importance, really, won't, change the cabfare one i o t a. The sea may cough little stars or an emerald coffin sit like a lampshade somethings go on... Begging your pardon, ma'am this train would do well to leave within the hour and the ferry from Topolobampo Out of persistence to form has never arrived early. "Piratas ingles" read the mural now I know seedy tropical ports harbour wayfarers like the Marlboro man adjusting his image, (inspiration may well be poetic but the instrument's blunt) bare feet the colour or lanterns, white ducks pressed too much around lean shanks and a visage to trouble Satan Page 33 Taking a profit, Mozart up in smoke down the tubes water reverses itself, runs counterlockwise impecunious in this juxtaposition of a hemisphere. Poor Mexico -- far from God & so near the United States a snippet of history remembered though the Gadsen Purchase seems irrelevant. How a propos & natty too the moon is a hummingbird & painted porcelain flask for you. Backstreets a la seduction this demimonde, a whole continent as intrigue do twin fists pounding on a door resemble gunfire especially at dawn or is that just the mule so obstinate in you-- the poor creatures pressed into service, litter the landscape bedbugs thrown from cars. Page 34 At the Ponce de Leon adrenalin with white caps comes up bare as language forced into riot, not a humble metaphor in sight. the occasional half-witted vowel staggering under the onslaught pirouetted clamouring about the edge -- no easy familiarity here with the English language. *************************************** Page 35 PICAROON Scouting the sun thin clouds threadbare vests barely to cover the horizon. the heat or the day, canine, a hot tongue's intensily splashing yr face. The docks are quiet, prawn trawlers unloading gear gar fish at the surface of the water echoing little fins like tiny waves green into the shallows. Bubbles anchor the lagoon -- changing rivulets into sand stone walls numbered in shards of glass trade universal currency but, beware, the proprietor cobblestones up to his door, a candle in the window-stoop, a creeking gate opened as an afterthought. Come the picaroon. Spanish adventurer lesser known rogue, thief a smile like piano keys huevos sent back. Page 36 I've seen the parfumerie the snake pit, mongoose burrowing into the hills after serpentine fer-de-lance, want bigger things waves can't splash away, scrawled slogans to turn the human tide. A bottle sits menacingly on the table -- a universe on its own, imagine her little water droplets the key to unerstanding a woman firm to the grasp bare-shouldered, lips to the moon in twilight. A coin stepped on in the street perhaps a sou, a centime, centavo a petty return for rusting bells wedding the pavement, a centotaph alluding to sacrifice or toil in the fields to gain one circular disc. Bring a case of wine those Puerto Rican girls are dying to meet you, the tune belts out and I see a yacht riding emerald waves, think of swimming out to greet her, my skin opening the water like a lizard's tongue, Page 37 a sheaf of leaves pressed back, a rock pitched to dislodge a noisy cat. Who tempers desire in the tropics when the air is to eat, sand golden griddles a harvest of warm wealth piled as a miser's hoard, green & more green skirting the city, experience my sacred vessel of purity. Think or cliff vines mucous, little curtains then pathways up to the final alley psychologically taut. *************************************** Page 38 THE CABLE CAR The Haitian effect of stars grinds the blue firmament like a cable car by night. transfixing energy. One hears myriad tokens falling into a collection box, then the twitter of bells before the trolley steps round winds near Russian Hill The night sky is a reservoir, a cistern stored with disturbing elements prickling the unknown in a man. To watch as life forms, more intricate than lavender curls, so hushed their tones produce melodies like "Castor and Pollux", "Leo", "the Three Sisters", seizes any boarding pass along the remaining train of thought. *************************************** Page 39 IL GIARDINO Cloves on the table. (jardin parfumel are like ladyslippers with the jargon of their sweetmeats preserved in aromatic slabs about a garden wall. Spanish ivy is the pastrami of this terrace -- thick, white walls, Hispanic style, unite with prim elasticity to quicken Picasso's sunshine like a ukulele strumming the grave. *************************************** Page 40 EVERY MAN'S HAND raised against them hussars, cossacks, zouaves the renegade janizaries and corsairs in for an indeterminale stretch assorted soldiers of furtune, never-do-wells or just low brows duelling crusts of bread scarce precious little else when for pennies more, (Wellington's phrase) the scum of the earth enlists for drink. Too harsh, I think, of imagining the Foreign Legion, kepis of scarlet the near requisite haggard looks moving in waves across the desert pitting date palms with bayonets. the occasional fellow ravaged by French pox. Then dunes where water should be -- storms granulating blown particles twice the perimeter of a camel train from whence decent men become driven (as the desert fox) to crouch beside themselves with poor material, loose flintlocks and cartridge belts rotting to the touch, Page 41 The pitched camp (I see brackish oasis glare) stars big as pebbles in potato white Napoleon before Cairo his soldiery and ragged tents flapping like tongues of pillaging Arabs (or later battlefield carrion wolves) on the run from Allah and sweet date wine, their torpid hooves sound against rock matching wits grown sluggish in still more drifting sand. Noon and blood purring like a two minute egg over and over the spitting, curses mandatory flies and sweat trickling on sandbags from manured lives little to eat-- C rations a century away, the good populace begrudging meals to vagabonds and trash anyway. See the last desperation in classic terms betrayed by finite trength Page 42 brisk elements raise the odds a measly temperature climb, a few more driving winds to stir the pot animal suffering dancing like stretched canvas on thin frames. The leading roustabout unflinching, waves a stony mutineer's salute. And somehow it always manages dawn and the heat of the day wicked, oblong in an empty stretch forever, it seems, before bullets open graveyards mow the brigand down, take the corpse for its own mummifying with precious hands about the contours of her desert body, and firm cleavage oscillating between curvatures of desiccation, blanket heat. *************************************** Page 43 ENDING UP reads like living down -- a coconut arriving with the tide, bottles perched in sand the blue glass colour or imprisoned dreams genie of a bottle cap. Ending up. the brow or a gondola overturned sees memories squared away -- the window of the envelope an all too foggy membrane. Turning out like ending up no check-out time or non-existant room service in a flea-bag motel. *************************************** Page 44 OFFERINGS (A Movement in four Parts) The night is folly without the moon, trees blank space against a frontal sky where lattice work from a bled fish reveals skeletal markings will not administer the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea. Most fickle, the ways of a cockroach (I don't recommend them) to offerings of white linen, cold squares atop a stone diamonded floor. Palaver shacks drone in ghostly light communicating some message about eel runs up the black river, the equivalent brush of tombstones against dark nightsoil. Tiny bars open as cubicles. proverbial flashes of the coming evening, haciendas to count every blessing. The road to such places snarls a dusty pleasure and will heat thin blood to boil in the daylight hours. Page 45 II Sweat corrodes the cork's emplacement about green bottlenecks, its azure breath tossing back pools of sparse liquid. I picture ships placed within such bottles as bannisters along corrugated highways, seawater rusting from within the steamfitters's tonsorial edge. Haze thickens as sails blur to an artist's brush, then squiggles in the oilpaint of memory -- her sides fashioning red wounds as pigment surfacing from robotical crustaceans lancing the bottom of a deeper crevice. III My steps clank to the gaoler's key to become, within, handmaidens to thorned plants acting as fuselage along the building's exterior. Afar, a white seagull sits as a bespectacled tourist gracing a buoy like a madras shirt. Early stars in an afternoon sky are expansive in Chateau Lafitte finery, the Rothschilds of the universe playing a cosmic baccarat. Page 46 A girl in a brandy snifter of a dress -- dark, sensual, runs through tomes of my mind. It's a hall of mirrors there; the radiating glass of the sea, twilight splendour in tall grass, the hands of thick mahogany chairs grimacing against perspiring walls. I sponge water like a good midshipman off the brow of a leaking vessel. Nowhere are there signs of more than partial seepage though smoke in the back corridors exists from the fiery aguandine. IV Green palms unfurl as flags to the accordian of my eyes, blinking back the strong belt of sunlight that precisely floods the room. Sailors jostle this crowd of memories, some surly lipped with broad tattoes. A naked mermaid presses her thighs 'gainst memory door, then winks as the stellar crust of oblivion takes me. *************************************** Page 47 In sleep, waterfront toughs are transformed to storeowners that smile, exchange pleasantries in Saba. (French gendarmes embrace on the other side clustering like starfish on the twin breasts of a beach.) I devour cups not of riverwater in this cell but the best pink champagne at the captain's reception. With hatfuls of intermittent rest, blurred outlines recede into mists thin as General Winter's treasured April snows. The bony M of a hatpin, the passkey to better redress of fortune -- the turnstills, concealed within lavabeds of bladegrass. beckon upon the return voyage home. *************************************** Page 48 REGALIA If the rich are different they show it with the clarity of their table as Scolt FitzGerald decreed, the breathless hush of their regalias, the manner in which wedgewood & crystal are cleaned to a polished exactness -- the shimmer of expensive china no less repetitive than the hulking boys waiting in window stops; monsoon rain pelting the upper Punjab plains. *************************************** Page 49 SAN CRISTOBAL A gypsy sits in a taverna joking with a sailor who has left bridges and maidens along islets connecting many a storied sea. Ducats tumble from a cloth bag the way the gypsy remembers caravans and the remembrance of gold steeled against warm flesh in moonlight of his native Umbria. Lavender is the coat of dreams along navy blue hemmings the colour of the gypsy's eyes, the blood's colour progeny whose men of wealth both are related to. Page 50 The gypsy stares at the taverna wall and the ducats gleaming to outside rain. Men joke at rail depots where in a like fashion water splashes mud into little arches up a riverbank. Neither has the shallows of minnows at his command. Bunched up stubble in the wind cannot fathom lies or gender hope -- it is lhe province of the mind, the coinage of perhaps a Spaniard on discovering San Cristobal, one's own sieglo oro in fortune squandered in sunlight with only the sweating Appolosa still straining on this, the last taverna ride. *************************************** Page 51 GUADALQUIVIR In a pleasureless world, pure pleasure exists. Particles of sunlight, exquisite with nightdrops & leaves stringent with dew, persuade tributaries with inset eyes to depart down foible breast, sticky fingers up delightful steps. And taking pleasure with an earthen spoon -- sipped long and hard down tubes and winding entrails; soft relief canyons swollen blood vessels. For your brow shines like olive branches, Guadalquivir's river or nectar drawn from golden wells and, as such, unfolds loveliest eyes out from fond embrace not hedging lies. My darling, amongst flowering cherub trees a moment shared with you is pretty mirth accounts all Arcadia's treasures, the angelic breath off passing wings. *************************************** Page 52 LEAVES OF THE CECROPIA TREE And what of privileged things mur & frankinscense or sandlewood -- yes, teak, ambergris or skies of indigo blue -- I cite these gifts, caravans offered as treasure Christopher Wren putting the domes of St. Paul in place like worn spectacles over a cherubic face. The last gargoyle pops in sight near Notre Dame such cathedrals are whitened sepulchre stones in "stately pleasure domes decreed". I see the Taj Mahal where Mahatma Gandhi might have trod. The utterance of a tulip in every parable Christ talked; rosebuds gleaming milk on the breath of lilacs their shields of lilies shone where Solomon walked. Page 53 Song of Songs is none other than the poet's heart, water across stones. a warm sun working double shifts as a pitchfork stacking memories on a summer's day shooing aside leaves of the Cecropia tree; old Walt resting on a bench mumbling his prayers. *************************************** Page 54 SOUTHWARK I noticed a bust of Shakespeare, an effigy in stone with latticing to mirror the ages. In the same cathedral a notation commented John Harvard was baptized here. Outside, rain fell on tombstones scarcely readable, their letters frail imitations of what each man considered important in life. The church itself breathed renewal. We learn John Gower, epic poet to the court of Richard II, worshipped here. I thought of translucence, then muir and gems the wise men brought the Infant Christ. Prayer candles glowed and fell into a lap of pyre. The crypt held Edmund, brother to the Bard. A handsome altar betrayed sentiments Gray used in his elegy to another courtyard. My thoughts continued onto nearby Tower Bridge, steel and energy dynamos before steps of the multitude released at five. A sign read no alcohol was to be consumed on church grounds. The very name of the place visited was poetic, half twist of muscle, more pull of silent breath. *************************************** Page 55 KUBLAI KHAN The Japanese are coming! Now there's a fresh twist and just when Pearl Harbor seemed poised to become another Asiamerindian household word amid electronics, megavision and technological hoopla. Surprise. They're outslugging us. We're cannon fodder amidst cunning economic wiles. The "sneaky" Yellow Peril (updated and given a newer "slant" from that 19th century prejudicial posturing) has gone awry. No death march at Bataan. No G.I. blues. Old Cornpipes General MacArthur at ease; Inchon still years away. Where is Emperor Tojo when we need him? Who remembers the Aryans of the East? A Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Is SEATO still intact? If Korea, Formosa, Singapore and Hong Kong are "little Japans" does that mean we're to become, by default, the new coolies? Tha land of the Rising Sun is broader than a battleship listing in heavy seas -- it's the New world Order. Is North America being prepared as hewers of grain and drawers of petroleum? Alas, co-existence brings dilemmas: the Toyota outwits even a "K" car. And them outpacing our GNP at 6% per annum. It's enough to rethink the whole scheme of things. They're obviously in the forefront of the New Economic Policy. More than just "Nippon" -- that's simply a bad press release from the dark days of a misunderstood, but euphemistically labelled "second global conflict". Page 56 Rubber and fibre sanctions will do it every lime. The Arizona and Oklahoma will testify to that. Feudal Japan would never have tolerated it, either. Who's to say the Samurai are caught up in splilting hairs? Admiral Perry should have stayed out of Tokyo Bay. The Earthquake of 1923 just made things worse. Land's End means more than Manchuria and resources. Industry and wily opportunism have broader vistas. The Kuril Islands are a No Man's Land hut so are the Ainus, a primordial white race of Asia. What's red and white and comes in with the tide? America. Compared to the Japanese miracle, it's all washed up. It's hard to contemplate N.Y.C. as a suburb of Osaka, but try. The Japanese believe in communal bathing, so will North Americans when the recession hits full stride. Remember, shower with a friend. Japan is a land of aura. Of mystery. Genghis Khan never got there in one piece but sent his legions anyway. Flotsam and jetsam. A bully vanquished. 1066 in reverse. Britain was the workshop of the Victorian world. Japan is the Britain of the universe. The whole cosmos is borrowing her tricks. No one does things so efficiently. No one has developed cooperation to such a fine "T". Nowhere is individualism shepherded to the goal of the "greater good". Page 57 Pierre Trudeau would be pleased. "To each his own according to his worth." Sounds impressive. Does that mean Jaffa oranges are safe to eat -- mercury and cyanide poisoning notwithstanding. Will the Levant acknowledge the supremacy of the Orient? What's new about mulberry leaves? Are silk worms interlopers, too? Shogun is too realistic for the narrow orchestration of facts. The difference? They play to win. Hands down, Kirin makes a wonderful beer. Sushi bars are all the rage. Leyte Gulf was more than a tempura explosion, Corning Ware or "Made in Japan" labels produced in bulk. Coral Gardens is a real and legitimate extension of the Rice Factory idea. Cipangu. As you like, what you will. No race has undergone a swifter transformation in the world's eye. They deserve more than groping admiration. They deserve our admirals, too. Who else outfoxed military victory reversing it from the insides cadaver out? The peter principle enshrined. The victors don't enjoy the spoils. The Lion's Share is as it should. *************************************** Page 58 HOMUNCULAR FORMS Cape aux Morts. Cape Diable, Points of Massacre Rocks and Island a plethora of Wreck Bays. But on Funk Island, nothing matters. Brahmsian rhetoric could describe the island Prokofievian, the sound of Mars homuncular forms; an imperative monotone. Murrelings fell from cliffs into the sea, rose and floated in foam, screaming. Olivaceous puddles. Murres and gannets, kittiwakes, sun splashed white & pitiless light on rock -- argon, radon, krypton seasons of millennia suffocating in the original gases of earth: xenon, neon. Granite intestines with its outer edge lost in the darkness between the stars. *************************************** Page 59 ANTARCTICA Perhaps it is needed to balance the planet: to provide employment for penguins, or that ice in the form of crystals calls forth tiny sleighs. That the orange hibiscus be associated only with deepest tropics ...plankton learn to feed Baleen whales And iron hulks, off ships. submit to greater Masters. the elements. SECOND THEORIES Another supposition projects... snowy wastes are but vapour trails of jets and tatter sails. Sleet comes only from cannonized rain, galvanized by inclement ironmongers. Yet a third hypothesizes frozen energy is stored in the form of ice caps and that the lost amongst departed souls are reborn with every powdery breath. Ptolemy knew of a southern polar continent. Cook and Shackelton attempted separate conquests. Ships voyaged as early twentieth century probes amid frozen stellar space nudging Earth's feet. Footprints the size of muskets where left as evidence. So were a few red flags. No oxygen bottles trailed the ascent like those that packed Everest. Amundsen as to Hillary across the South Sea face, yet this Matterhorn has a logic and bedevilment all her own. Page 60 Norway and Russia claim exploration of her frigid body. The British in the first virginal thrust christened Queen Maud Land after a brilliant courtship. Shades of Spencer and his Faery Queen; the Kron Prins Olaf Coast, anyone? Ice. South of the Antipodes. The floor of the world. Magnificant pack to the drunken global jaw, growlers or submerged ice packs. A cold porterhouse steak to ward off the combattive edge, the chronic boxer's inflamed orifice and eye -- the nosebleed's staunchest friend. Terra Australis Incognita, the supposed southern continent; hoof of the Cenotaur stringing men like a bow across nipples like raw wounds. clotted hair and blood on a precipice for a chest. *************************************** Page 61 BLUE*EYED GRASSES Rocky shale, pale voile, sun lighting the clearness of the bay; come Moccasin Flower or Grass Pink unto Painted Cup -- big with primula eye, these septs off wild and inland seas. The delights of success and heartbreaks of failure among the people in the land below Tobermory; the rocks on the cold hill, the lilacs by the doors... And it was at their expense that this land came to be supplied with vitriol, camomile and liquorice, yea some camphor and jallop, oft'times basil, lemon or rhubarb --- all sent from Glasgow in wooden boxes stout as pioneer hearts. *************************************** Page 62 MOCCASIN Backwoods cabin, opera house from the pines awash with stars, skullduggery in place over spruce hills dredged to open revolt against invading plough -- where greenest leaves in a miser's hand part rotting gold bags all nugget strewn, step to step, with water speaking magic over the sound of countless woodland ducks. Hocus-pacus, the flies are sleeves over the world, black granite pull-overs slung thru the air a twinkling of the eye invokes funeral trees, deerskin in colour, the rabbit in the hat behind rich birchbark racing thru the dark. *************************************** Page 63 THE BULLFROG He sat with no more compunction than an eel fish big-faced, bloated, the complexion of a beehive -- a dragnet of emotions crammed into a tumbler upended in water. His eyelids wore the effort of horseblinders, a spongy leather masquerading as torpedoes and I saw him lonely at the crossroads matted grass, a strip of wire, cold current chasing flecks about his person, then lunging green exploded into rapacity -- caressed the awaiting fly strewn stick with emerald mouth & coffers of appetite. *************************************** Page 64 ANCESTRAL MEMORY Patrician to my plebian, aristocratic leaning versus unbridled backwoods feeling -- distinct Old World breeding countering rudest colonial lean-to; his carcass lay, roadworthy, blinking back cold starlight with all the forest as silent voyeur stretching for a look, black fur & quills in disarray like Crazy Horse's warpaint after the Big Horn, this roughneck Canadian porcupine shot clean with bumper & chrome. Then little hedge-pig quaint as porcelain china cup half a world away greeting pints of milk in an English doorway half his scalp torn thru dirty, British lorry choking fumes the petrol in its tank loose. *************************************** Page 65 ENTRY POINT Ants colonized it -- huge abodes littered with the dead (leaves, sticks, the occasional granulated insect piled high, totemic-fashion) reaping a fortune in scenery, though probably not food Ojibways were next -- their tell-tale encampment by pocket-sized waterfall, inlets off a winding cataract & moss, loam-thick with black soil a future arboreal dream inching over rock, darling crevice for northern orchid, then kiss of red death the hybrid trillium & more sinister cousin, jack-in-the-pulpit for Indian foragers. Animistic limestone shone hands, poked thru the forest with stealth, petroglyphic lava beds -- a cougar pouncing -- runic carvings the cold in the Giant's stone nostrils billowing off the lake like a presence. *************************************** Page 66 BLOODCOUNT My mind had almost died. It had refused a game of tag on a common with surly children and they steadfastly took revenge. My fate like Blondin's walk across Niagara saw cataracts looming large, hiss & foam, then visions of serpents, farawy monsters & inner tension of rocks opening. The churned, brown water opened like a basket before me. Maurading bubbles took on elephantine shapes, my barrel creeked. Faraway, the edge & drop yawned in indifferent harmony. The brown walls of my fortress barrel became like palates & sutures of my skull imprisoning the brain; the trickle of invading water ever a reminder. The close of the story? Nothing. What is there to record after a river passes? What remains of things unseen, of antelopes in flight? The shroud of Monte Cristo tossed carelessly into sea did not fall open to the touch but was knifed with rifle force. *************************************** Page 67 BLOODSTREAM Camping out, a miraculous thing happened. The kaleidoscope of vision was focused on a precipice, caught endangered water about to fall under microscopic attention. Moisture was shortlived; so, too, congealed lava sheets & bedrock over which the water flowed. The cabin in the distance seemed prisoner to mist while a rainbow gathered its wits for the next performance. Nowhere did leaves intrude though a fly made headway up a glass pane embedded in wood like antidiluvian plants have been known to seek amber. In their chorus, other flies droned then ran up & down the ledge. In the iate sunshine of the day, a bastardized vision of dirt farmers, pioneers imprisoned in similar toil. *************************************** Page 68 ROGUE AND PRIVATEER The Squirrel, a corsair, rides the wind black arm of a pressing sea, Tribal hostilities finished, she slinks into port. Traveling lightly across open ground, a squirrel upends a brigand sapling. Grappling the ragged ends of a thicket with riggings shredded by heavy wind and storm, the arboreal sloop ascends to the highest mast; a bush re-taken, the Crow's, Nest reconnointered. *************************************** Page 69 THE CAMERA CAGE As a child, all common sense decreed pirates wore dear teeth -- enamel white, with tusks to rout an elephant (the result from eating carrot sticks, I was told) -- not a solitary doubt clutched my mind ivory mingled naturally with black cord and sash in the brain's Bluebearded eye. Then, it was so matter of fact like taking sausage to bed, saying a proper good night for the wisdom of the mother-provider was similar to a pirate chief. The let-down came in advanced picture book form, childhood crisis accelerated on seeing Kidd brain a member of his lusty crew but the upstart taking the beating was toothless and sore no arcanely romantic rake at all, more like a strange woman in the park with whom no one dared to speak. *************************************** Page 70 FENCE LINE That Captain Kidd scribbling of rock in the fields yellowed bristle of pages back of a farm where piratical breaking of land knocks clean holes in the soil, gypsy dancers vernal growth before a spy-glass hour moon. And black print smudged on a thumb, a child's glossary of tales thick with terror before the faceless wretch crawls for grog, his peg-leg in step with one part of my brain Old Phew hardly any Smee from Peter Pan but the holocaust -- the raven in the tree eyeing the baby Treasure Island, that fledgling reason butchering both nostrils at the skunk cabbage whose nectar is the prize of cemeteries & wild reunion of the bees. *************************************** Page 71 ADVERSARIES He held his hands like plastic -- his vestments the finer calling of his trade, vocation as modern strummer of Nature's laws Engineer in brief -- wine glass in hand bestowing the more salient points of mawkish disbelief with cigarette to numb the spine. The Reverend looked down on fire, caught papryus smoke in the bellows of his chest, made laundry of the Plumber's intellect -- tore savage parchment from the soft cheesecutter's contemporary breath. *************************************** Page 72 BARGAINING UNIT The man about to become a sparrow is shouting his head off wearing green trousers with red eyes framing mustier tweed, he lambasts the lad for not conducting his person properly in showing up for work in a white shirt. The fact the future labour requires only lifting boxes to a shed is a fine point about as important as the man himself who has transformed himself into that sparrow where several would not span the breadth of a bigger man's hand or four could be had in the Biblical sense for less than a penny. *************************************** Page 73 PALAIS ROYALE The night cold as nuggets, dark as acorn, against your chest; snow falling like abandoned echoes releasing energy into the spyglass, umbrella moon. A solitary figure trapping hapless sparrows not in a net but with his footprints doubling as dungeons against the sun -- here & there rusting eavestroughs ballooning into avenging shadows their harpsichord voices spun on dreams Dick Whittington once used to buy a cat. And once Tom Thumb Upstaged Peter Pan by appearing under a petunia but this is not likely to happen soon. The dawn, forlorn & grey, is a court muffin's handkerchief waved at a sailor far out at sea. *************************************** Page 74 ALCATRAZ White ibis/blue crane, the arch of wings in full sail over leafy barques a wise stork scanning water like the Disney character, conductor on his train with eye-glasses & stop watch. Sift of wind, unseen hand exploring the pond the stork ungainly on a single leg the bird-man Jolly Roger a pirate burrowing in the muck add skull and cross bones upending frightened fingerlings the snout of the bandit a rifle shot away creasing the shallows. *************************************** Page 75 WHEN LABOURING TO BREAK Perhaps one is in prison -- fidgeting as time draws to a close -- a scrap of house tunic between the fingers or when labouring to break cuticles on swollen fingers pressing both hands against ears that refuse to hear the stop sound of rushing blood. Then again, in the last hour before end time, before dawn's arrival and floodlit sky finds you -- knuckles clasping bars, pitiless bayonet-like with eyes swishing truncheons at all the getaway air your lungs will never take; wheezing in growing fear to the sound of footsteps, clank of keys and gallow's humour as they prepare to Skuttle your short life, wall up clouds of their own pestilence nakedly mask each firing squad gathering for its fighting chance. page 76 THIS WAY TO THE SIXTIES: JOHN LENNON'S DEATH FIVE YEARS AFTER It was a red letter day and all within a decade, the sixties. Psychadelic and all because the Electric Circus opened up Walking Yonge Street in the December cold, aging "hippies", the word itself a joke, reminisced: National Guardsmen, for one, doing post-mortems on their rifle butts, record covers carrying the first life- sized zippers and mashed up rubber dolls; Cher Bono getting up nerve and a career to name her child Chastity but walking off with a card. By the end of the decade they were asking questions. We had landed on the moon per schedule but who would have believed in the efficacy of Rock or the efficency of napham before Vietnam? Frosted hair. Body paint. The sixties produced a lot of it. With one bullet, the Beatles, the secular saviours, were breaking up. Before they had finished reuniting the world. Before the history of music could be written. Before John Lennon, did we dare trust ourselves, World leaders, gurus? That was the meaning of the assassination. Page 77 History won't budge an inch for neophytes, The Clockwork Orange was instructive but didn't go far enough. Frodo wouldn't live in Yorkville today if given a chance. Now for the most poignant mental lapse of the Candle carriers, mourners and mock biers with frozen flowers. Simply the reminder half the population didn't share his vision. Veterans grumbled. The press paid more attention to this solitary event than Armistice Day. Schoolchildren tittered. What was that? The so-called generation gap seemed poised on that comment. Then John's comment the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ Donovan didn't survive tunes like Epistle to Dippy. Lennon won't survive the Elvis Beatle syndrome. The lights are going out on the sixties, The eighties are austere. Cherry cokes are the memory of a laugh. The Purple Onion only causes perplexion like Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin. Forget about words like "catalyst". Lennon was the conflageration. Graffiti after him has renewed licence. *************************************** Page 78 POGROM There is an unhurried resemblance to pain, here, this Fiddler on the Roof commodity, potables, fine oaken chest for one and furs; but wait, the Czarist police are busting up the place -- a program is having its desired effect on our emotions, the wine cellar smashed as tears are falling like bloody heaps in the red snow, cuttersleds carting off the sundry feelings we've invested in, a relationship already staledated two years old. *************************************** Page 79 BRAGGADOCIO Chess playing Death -- no, the reverse Death sitting decked out and self-satisfied in black no mandatory top hat but a shroud shouldering a cowl. There stereotypes end -- appearances have to be kept up tho' hardly any cinematic gnarled fingers of Baron Samedi fame rather pudgy digitals reflecting gentile prosperity (after all, Winners do take all his fellow satanists bank on it). Of course, such things are fictitious. Death plays no favourites (and waits for no man when rivalling Time). Still, parlour games are one indulgence. Hardly comforting to know human beings function at one purpose when this Hallow of Hallows puts on the smirk. Dalliance with the victim is the upshot -- the chess motif again. Sift thru the chicken bones a mite -- let the chump stir the rubble of his dreams. Something of gallow's humour or gangster largesse. Page 80 Offer a stiff drink (brandy will do), one last cigarette. Then, too, for beaten gladiators toiling bravely the apparent rewards accelerate. Truckloads of flowers at the funeral, for instance. Preferential treatment for the guise or mercy must be kept up. All lies in appearances. Prepare the feast. Sit the guest of honour on a splendid cushion, then serve up dish after sumptious dish. Dining splendidly on one's own children unbeknownst is a favourite -- maddens the victim no end. Brief success turning to bitter sawdust is the supreme moment of ecstasy. Serves precisely as metaphoric extension of all earthly reward as illusionary. (A delicious ruse borrowed shamelessly from fellow representatives on Earth --the Sicilian Mafia.) Further spin-offs centre about the Absurd But spare us juvenile intrigue with petty omens like a bird loose in the house. Rather, a swift check-mate served up in the best Grandmaster tradition is more a propos. Therein lies the jest. Workaholics and their polar opposites, the dead lazy. effortlessly come around. When realization hits home all distinctions blur. No difference. Sharp laughter unceremoniously greets even the self-composed. Page 81 Especially intriguing are the ambitious. Endless quirks really. Concerted mockery recreates further patterns of futility. Basic strategy remains unchanged, though. Disguise is paramount. Dress her in robes of tarter gray, implant a slight smile, then beckon from around each corner. Create a maze, but attractive-like with flower pots. Faint knockings behind every door. A cooling breeze overhead. Genuine affability like an open air Swiss cottage in a summer meadow. The greater the false hope, the greater the final squirming. Funny stuff, for even Death at one remote corner of his being partakes in occasional mirth (why not, with his monopoly intact on everything else). *************************************** Page 82 DRESS REHEARSAL "The universe is expanding". There's cause for reflection and bound to do wonders for "who am I" queries. At this late moment on the Celestial Clock, man isn't sure if he's stumbled into a Black Hole or just the debris from the Big Bang Theory. Many of the earth's residents desperately want to be E.T.'s -- travellers with carte blanche passports welcomed in any galaxy. Therein lies the ultimate twist to "getting away". Alas, what if we're alone? What if the universe expands so much it forgets there's an inhabited world and obscures the planet from our collective vision? Sobering stuff. Meanwhile, on a spaceship earth preparations are underway. Preparation to abandon the planet. Preparations to forget life is a serious matter. Preparations to drown protracted speculations about existence's intensity. E.T. mania is carrying the day. People adorn stuffed, life-sized dolls of imagined creatures on the dashboards of their cars. Children queque up for hours to get gingerbread designed from scary, monster dough. Everywhere, the question on everyone's lips is "how many of'em are there"? When will contact be made? Will they want to throw in their lot with mankind or "take over"? After all, it's our Arc. No one seriously wants reminders of Von Daniken's chariots riding again or the genetic mumble about intergalactic breeding. Going to bed with E.T. is too much. It's the Outer Limits. Propriety still has some hold even if Marian Engel did slip up and get it on with a bear. At least Page 83 that was recognizable earth life. Darth is too much of a transition even if it's only a One Night Stand. E.T. is just like Bambi. He wants to go home. And alone. He's not interested in sex. Too many other myriad problems are floating in his adorable, gelatin head. Surely earth women can relate to that. Surely, if the universe is expanding, then it's because of intrigue in high places. Because cosmic particles are hammering out new definitions. Anyone of a thousand theories. Star Wars can stuff it. We want "peaceful" contact and on our terms. Ask Orson Welles. Or H.G.Wells. Time machines are old hat and another invasion in Newark is too much to absorb. With NYC across the river, they've already got all the action they can handle. We like our extraterrestial life tailormade and preferably in our own image. We're prepared to accept them if they conform to stiff criteria. They have to be like us and prepared to cooperate. Seeing eye dogs help the blind, horses were good draft animals for centuries. We might even want to decorate it like the Hindoos do elephants; make it into a "religious" procession such as a Roman Triumph. It would be the same for outer space visitors. No mutants or Roving Intelligences allowed. Earth is "off limits" to marauding predators -- we'll fight at the suggestion they're here on "reconnoitering missions" as a prelude to Conquest or the Bermuda Triangle is one of their many "staging areas" or dress rehearsal sites. Earth for humankind carries more immediacy than "Canada for the Canadians". If they are "out there", they'd better behave. Page 84 Hollywood's got it all figured out. There's no shortage or scenarios. Life support systems will be rushed wherever there is a sighting with artillery back-up. The Pentagon is in control. The Moonies have asked to be informed. Crackpots the world over await deliverance. The Earth has big plans for the visitation. Contact would displace Ihe Copernician revolution as "a first" in blockbuster events: edge out Columbus' hat trick, even erase Caesar's Gaelic campaigns. Such things are no longer "relatable". Every school kid can fathom "aliens" even if he can't decline a Latin noun or understand the causes of the Renaissance. Unveiling the first spaceship would cap the evolutionary quest for Enlightenment or realization of a greater Oneness. The universal thirst for knowledge would be satisfied. Still, our trek to the stars would turn in on itself if they got here first. Something like the Seminoles arriving in Paris in the 13th century overland from Nice or finding an orangutan piloted the Viking ship, Sutton Hoo, into Vineland. It's barely credible and has to be remade into "tangible" dialogue. No sapient, red puddles or Dryads need apply. Fuel up the Crematoria. Break out the electric cattle prods. They may be common as blades of grass in a meadow but it's our show. Orange Pekoe intellects will naturally be suspect. Benign intelligence better be the order of the day. Earth is a "closed shop". Everything Koltur. Everything above board. No renegade "interpretations". When will the Juggernaut be? Human nature is nothing to toy with. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYMPATHETIC MAGIC *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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