Barefoot in the Head (29 page)

‘Don’t jeer at me who’s in the family way by you you’ll go the way of all saviours and they’ll crucify you. They always need another crucifixion. There’s never enough for them!’ Tears bursting now.

He turned his twilight into her pregnant eyes at the disturbulence there transfixtured by her word. ‘Is it another eternal recurrence then? Series of fake christs on series of faked crosses? How’s the multiplicity figure?’

Her head shook the ragged locks of it like dishabitation. ‘Don’t ask me Colin my old dad was a methodist. He used to spout like Christ had a new idea of individual salve instead of massalve so they killed him because my old dad said we weren’t really individual yet — that sort of spiritual crap.’

‘The capitualism of God’s son with his loser takes all and blessed are the earth-grabbing meek. Gogetting what you have you hold like the world’s big dealers but that’s all done now. Wesciv’s chunks fall off. The individual’s chunks fall off.

Nothing holds.’ He looked to the sunken ground in wan contemplay with cheeks shagged to pick at his appearing toe.

She touched him. ‘Even for a faked christ it’s real death’s real isn’t it so? You didn’t want to die — didn’t in Brussels.’

The blackmacked figure dry and inspectral in the mindwind.

He glared swift murder at her like a dowsed headlight.

Standing he found which side of the river he stood and surely never on that neutral shore a trick of light still puzzling his mindfit miracle. Under the sawn plane trees he coldly said to her ‘Go and sprout by stone dam of dross I want to think.’

You pulverise the mere shadow of cerebral shade she cried at him but then less bitterly with an clouded smile not to torture himself or believe she would not wait. Why did she never give her animal feelings full rein? More and more what it was he wanted seemed denied or she herself likewise with no refuge in full psychotomimicry.

The parallel bars still had a whichsidedness and that morning at wurst-time the mix-up again occurred so that captor and captive could not determine their roles except by elaborate reference beyond their bother. They fed well and in the pale pulped meat anyone could spit out the odd punctueating fingermail helped on by pepper seasoning and nature’s whichsideness of eater-eaten question.

On the dull air any bruised noses healed and oiled calm of illusion deadened buttons that otherwise shone spite. The big heavies had hepos inside which slowly rolled to fuzzier beats as they warmed to acid freakuency one polizei sang moonjune songs four hours at a standing.

It was anything time to undergo the elemental rituals of friendship that mystical state where reservations stand their sharp points in the corner and fires blurr in a common grate.

Some of them unbuttoning their tunics revealed amazing feats of tatotemism etched in tomato pink and inkblink blue where one glimpsed disembedded legs pierced hearts tangles of thorns weeping faces famous negroes dripping daggers mercedes battleships obscene inscriptions and butterflutes gothickly growing round breast or gristle so Gloria screamed from underneath ‘Ooh this bloke’s body’s his mindmap!’

All untold the fey atmosfuddle of selforiented libidoting wooze trixfixed the constabulary into poets longhaired boxers instrumentalists vocalists meditationers on a semisyllable card trick-exponents voyeurs of the worlds box word-munchering fellowsophere semi-lovers of course with the greatest pretensions wrackonteurs charmers butchboys frenchmen twotkissing mystics like-feathered nestlings vanvogtian autobiographers laughers chucklers starers stargazers villagers and simple heart-burglars all seeing themselves shining in their hip-packet mirrors.

Often they spoke of Charteris he had their licences. The wind blew from his direction but Ruby and the group had their baffles up. Music took on a shield of all blows.

At the same time a dead leaf whisked through the circle of vision over the step and was gone into the darkness that always surrounded the circle of vision. But none of the watchers any longer cared for the old movements.

To these unguarded guards now came packed and stamped Laundrei with his Hirst Wechsel perched on an epaulette squealing be ‘Heraus heraus’ and Paulette ‘Up you tumbling bitches’ all over the brothel-mongering assheadquarters to sprinkle them across the parryground.

Soon the ribble-rabble were hearing the glad news of stentorian tone glandruffling immensity Charteris was son of god and would groove a hand in the march on Frankfurt and Bonn and Berlin estabellish a new odour and cheers from the unbelieving believers saying on to Moscow what about Moscow assisted of course by his pop those present and the secret weapong Hydrogenous 12 and and new ornamated selfrepelled Supersex mascodistic marchers but whatever the band played each had his own nine.

‘These hyenas no longer have any respect for the state,’ angrily crying Laundrei.

‘Nor the individual either’ — Wechsel turning into a cockatoo and brightly fluttering into the tropical foliage underhead.

Under the sawn-off planes he passed with a certain tread certain tread certain tread patterning their well-drawn branches spick span spick span how long to pass this one memorise its meaning shape how long to pass this one memorise its meaning shape how long to pass or its internal shape the banal is grotesque

these trees automated in their neat dressing

roots ploughing through eternal metal and asphalt cracking

three old figures cryptic

robing me robbing me

the lights of other daze

grotesque is trees with their winter crewcut

into each second the eternal nanoccurrences of isness and these trees is there just one tree I keep perceiving as I permeate more of the metzian webtime or all particles of myself springing from me on random time trajectories

all the words I have said or spoken were minced of my blood my semen my moan-barrow of weeping tissue in disinegation

what is I in truth is in their locality not here

trees ruin me too particular

and the specified woman

anonymous

all anonymous that felty well in the lanquid dark against thighs of unknown speech and every faculty distended to some farther shore like aface with nothing personal in it just the big chemical loot-in of eternal burn-down

in the nerved networks and elastic roadways of me is the traffic passing for thought but this eternal recurrence of trees signals me that no decision is possible that decision is impossible for everything will come again back to the same centre

alternatives must be more multi-valued than that I either go with Kommandant on his hosanno dominotion or speed with Angel south but if one crossed martyranny if the other another series of eitherors with death always the first choice

somewhere find a new word new animal

transgress

in their heads they have only old words insisting that history repeats itself

the stale hydrogénés of a previous combustion rolling in an old river and elder landscape footprinted to the last tree gnarled landscape of I stamped flat by the limbous brain

its their behaviour and its geared experience is lessening and cuts me down to sighs morality nostalgia sentiment closure falsight all I have to drive through their old faded photograph of life

how that crumbling nightdream thunderclouds round my orizons

He looked up hand on the trunk of the last tree before the square opened heavy swaddled and spring held jacksifed in the winds.

Growing in the Rhine perspective was fumirealdrapery sly and dry figurative —

the confructation? the momentum of truth? It grew and in the daggered sublight clearly personed the familiar was the merely familiar Crass the once-agent exdrapist pusher scampfollower lost or fled when Brussels blurned showing his teeth now in a smile of grating.

‘The eternal returns’ said Charteris. Up and down the bare bole spring’s first flies crawled across the corse of winter. Over the supplicatory amputree they hastened towards infinite points of intersexion and in the top cropped branches thudded his great blackmacked bird leashing its vulturine feathers claws beaks calling through its raw red wurst of neck.

‘Master forgive me you must have thought my feet were in the eternal flying dust and the impaled rose from my sumpturanean stool.’

‘I don’t want to talk of decay.’

The fustian feathers held a small vibration. Who knows what will talk or decay when all people your paradise of multi-valour. I have kept under my wigspan and my grations led me here to you. Your servant still.’

‘I don’t want to talk Cass so come down from that Judas tree the looming decision of all direction and to make something new devise from under that old moustache while the wescivilians of lost possibilities drawn into deeper dusk where the parallel bars have no in or out.’

So Cass took his arm and said, ‘I know of your systemstrain You’re hung up on a curve. Earlier when the mists were shipping to the tugladen mouth I saw and signalled you across the flux but you had other directions. I am too poorly without potension to flutter up into your tree of notice but you are as rich as a new Christ in populous and you must not park here by the rivenstribe but autocass on to domination and the world your word.’

‘Cass off! Back into the bare branches!’

‘No I tell you winging the way to my master your humble serpent boarded with an old widowed impoverished official who in his long-rowed rooms above the Aizette ravines lodges two coachdrivers and a filling station owner he tells me how the continent fills into small strifes for lack of leadership — ’

‘Cass — ’

‘Speak at the world’s megaphone Master. These small strifes are your larger battlefield or the states your pulpit. Pay the big taxi fare to a Rome address! Talk out the lungs cancer. Rocket right up the lordly astralbahn. Flush the worlds motions into your own bowl and I’ll back you.’

The door of the big square refrigerator burst open as Angeline came in upon her inetatarsals her chicken bones and plum eyes and the whole different meaning of sunlit succour sumpt.

‘Hello Cass I thought we’d lost you doing the suttee act in sparky Brussels.’

Lips bone-infested — ‘You still campfollowing you widowed mite!’

‘Colin the fat commander is letting the boys unlocked in a sort of panjandramonica and what are we going to do?’

Flighting off the carrion cross he took her and half-kissed her murmuring nonnegotiably relishing the bold bare bones in her like branches.

‘Oh Angeline I see you’re among the favoured yet I wish you’d tell the master to unpack his oysterand smash the saviourpart into a real cruscade.’

‘That’s all nonsense. We’re trying to turn into human beings first Cass and don’t need your snow-job for aid.’

Beady he preened among his black scales. ‘Body’s so womanish and nothing beyond. You want him all to yourself don’t you you selfish bitch but times change and he’s got nothing to lose it’s not like I mean the Germany’s not the Holy Land in any sense — ’

But blank. World of total silence. Box off. A last mindbowing dislocation. He had his fix with the elemental and the deep dischian roots under the eternal subsurface where they sleepwalked and the elegant connections between love and death. He saw through. Dropped. Turned human.

To them he grew bearded beaded and feathered. Primal. Behind them the old grey square and fineformed town hall of an earlier dockage rich in history sauce now served in bright plumage as it flowered to his wisdom.

‘Listen the multi-valued answer. All resolved. I had it in my dream turning down the old clothes.’ Then mute in his wonderment so she asked him darling?

‘Whatever you all think you think you all think in the old stale repeating masadistrick Judeo-Christian rhythm because its in your bloodshed. Your heritage taken or rejected dorminant. Be rich as Christ indeed. But Croesus Christ is to me pauperised an old figment and just another capitalist lackey whose had our heads isn’t it? It’s the bistiric recess over and over a western eternal recurrence of hope and word and blood and sword and Croesus vitimises your thinkstreams.’ Continued in this blastheme of Christ Plutocrat schekelgrabbing bled-white christendamn till Cass fluttered.

‘I don’t believe in him either Master you know that.’

‘No difference. History jellied and you can’t drip out. You’re hooked in his circuit and the current circulates.’ Bigger than the first tiny Metz web so it grew in his mind another layer yet of Europlexion and walking along Troitsky Street he saw the old dimensions all shagged out and Christ on the clockwork cross with in his sly brown eyes that frantic glimpse of progress on the astralplane and from our deathbeds that vanvogtian upward surge into heaven’s arms. The cult of the third day the White House open to any mother-loving son. All transdacted in the following lanes to metaphysical materials of the insurance steam shovelling society and the space race.

Heaven is money in the bank. Your cash helps our cathedral. Jesus saves his flesh negotiable anywhere.

‘Colin love the world doesn’t just begin anew my baby will have to have the past to build on and rebuild.’