Saturday, April 28, 2007

ADOLESCENT FANTASY AND REALITY, THE BORN AGAIN PRIEST

...........metronomic crashing of the elements, the sea............approximating to the general flow of mental noise.............sterile hospital style atmosphere..............

A revelation of her hand. A hand by the hem of a white cotton dress. White cotton on recently forming breasts, tight over her stomach, virgin, unsoiled.

.............Would, could the dress redden?.............furtive glances for other.............earlier recollections on naivety..............

A smell of ether.............I feel the rusted barbed wire fence, the heavy over painted white institutional door that doesn’t invite thoughts of another side...............I see and feel the cold fluorescent light burning on............burning on cold and all that’s left in my mind is the echo of the word please...............Please..............and, again, something, an idea crosses my mind that becomes more pleasurable than the pain of emotion and it could just be that, to watch her tongue turn blue could become far more pleasurable than the possibility of making love.

...........and then turned a small chromed lever. A whine of electricity. The table stretched, pulling the spread-eagled youth tight in his fetters, lifting his back sharply from the worn and heavily grained wood, his naked body presented to perfection for the application of the tortures to follow...........both taut and flexible elements..............rope replacing the gentle touch so that............no guilt need be felt..............in dream realms of attractive pain.............a victim's revenge..............a delicate armour of brain circuits all too easily fused.............


You should have seen me when I was really down. I had tried, but I had failed and it’s a shame. Affection, tenderness, just another wasted tear.

............seems to be waiting for an answer.............concerning the impossibility of being confronted by the power of the unobtainable, the anguish of never gaining the ideal, even any semblance of that ideal for any length of.............

From the far corner of the room where I had taken refuge, crouched, chin on knees, tearing at the cuticles of my fingers, so that traces of blood can be seen rolling down my right hand and wrist, I look vacantly around. I look at the oddly still girl on the bed, cocooned in white, and at the painfully brilliant light bulb that seems to shoot paralyzing darts of light from every tile.

.............destructive power wielded by the desired, by the idol, only being countered by violence and, in the end, only in the destruction of that idol............

Collecting myself, but still seemingly staring into a void, I stand, step over the electrical cables and move over to the white formica topped table covered in silver tools, sit then bury my head in my arms which frame the pale features of my face.

.............beauty and relief, even joy in the painful death of the desired, the new found freedom from guilt..............

Looking now past spread fingers, my eyes appear to focus on the girl. I lift myself from the seat with a barely audible moan and pace the room, hands to my temples. Eventually reaching the bed I caress the girl’s cheek with the back of the fingers on my damaged hand. I then look at these fingers, then at her body then glance back at my stained, opened hands held only a foot in front of my cold grey eyes. They are definitely not empty.

............the spectre of vengeance, the reason for its living............

The white tiled room contains nothing more except a large, heavily built wooden table on whose surface are a multitude of points for securing my guests and the instruments to destroy their weapons,- their desirability and innocence.

............Sweet pretty girls and beautiful boys, terrorists, I drink to you! You’ll never know the reasons why. Carrion! The Crow won’t alight.............or play some lewd cover...............You all play some lewd cover!...............Sad eyes?...................So, anyway, it’ll all happen again.............and again.

Acting on a supposition, I look to the hall, black robed images of desired beings...........

............the idol creates its own destruction, the ideal creates its own destruction, beauty............the black angels of vengeance stand at my shoulders..............

No guilt............The hand of John Doe traces a route with a razor sharp block of ice through my brain. He is my guide. He speaks to me. A warm curtain. Light and time burn on cold. My eyes, no longer emotional, burn on cold, but they are definitely not empty. Obscene conversations containing more truth than a thousand tracts, burn on cold. My hands, that could once have been offering comfort, are ice cold steel. Silent obsessions burn on, ice steel cold. Silence is a weapon.

..............belief in a set of rules, a certain conduct..............

Somewhere, somehow, there is a vast white tiled warehouse situated in the deepest depths of cold. The waiting room. The theatre. The cinema. Everywhere, as far as the eye or the mind can see, are evenly spaced steel posts. Very tall. Each post has a chain of a carefully considered length attached, at the end of which is a steel spiked collar, the spikes pointing inwards. All shiny clean stainless steel. Blue electricity buzzes. In these collars, just unable to reach each other, for contact might mean human warmth, or to sit, as sitting might mean rest, are perfect specimens, beautiful, intelligent boys and girls, naked victims, ultimate carrion. Fierce light is all pervading yet seems to have no obvious source, indeed, it seems to be frozen in.

...............emotion hauls away and waits just beyond grasping............

With a barbed hook and evident relish, I often clear away the carcasses of beauties whose eyes had suddenly registered understanding and could wait no longer, who had understood my motives and, the instant after, run to the end of the chain to drive the spikes deep into their throats.


............with John Doe hissing constantly in my ear............all art, all beauty put to the torch.............

More often than not, I select a guest but wait and gloat while they tear themselves apart or run in a blind panic into the spikes, because what I enjoy most is escorting them to my special room, my studio, where I invite them to participate in my ceremonies and everyone of them knows what happens there because they have to watch, or, if they screw their eyes closed, hear the recordings hour after hour, day after day until their own personal invitation arrives.

...............how those who profess to be in the know don’t all choke on all those adolescent fairy stories about mother and father, I shall just never understand...............so many are prepared to swallow just any old scrap to avoid understanding the truth...............

Replacements are forever available and are brought in, eyes glazed, hands bound behind their backs, feet tied tight together and I feel warmed as I fasten closed the collars around their necks and untie their numb hands and feet, my gratification sought and fulfilled in the destruction of beauty.

.............and I thank you all so very much indeed............my overcoat...............hat...............umbrella, oh yes...............got a bus to catch...............

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

A CHILDHOOD MEMORY, THE BORN AGAIN PRIEST

Mother would attempt to talk to Father and, to stop the torrent of words he had little or no answer for, he would punch and kick her into a stony silence. If his anger had not totally blinded him to anything other than the bleeding image of Mother, who staunchly refused either to blink or cry, no matter what, then I would get my fair share of abusive language and my fair share of real violence too, and I did, all too often.

So I would shut myself into the cupboard under the stairs at the first sign of conflict, wedged into the far corner from the door where the downward fall of the stairs met the floor, behind the cardboard boxes of Dash washing powder, old abandoned and broken dolls, cleaning products and rags, behind the upright cream coloured Hoover vacuum cleaner that stood guard over me with its blood coloured dust bag and electrical cable wound round hooks on the handle as if it were the weapon of some futuristic robot soldier. There, I would wet myself and be comforted by the warmth and smell and release of urine soaking my clothes and soaking into the bare, wooden floorboards. Damp cotton, damp unvarnished wood and sweet Dash soap powder, me, myself, I.


There was light in this refuge and a brown bakelite switch close at hand, so I could choose light or darkness. More often than not I would choose light and feel comforted fingering the silver heads of the nails that fixed the boards to the timbers beneath, and I travelled beneath. I used to melt between the gaps in the floorboards, down into the dry, cool dust and earth, way down under the timbers below until the floorboards were my sky and the earth became the cooling mattress that soothed my boiling head. Nobody could get at me and the bruises and pains would seem to have been left in the cupboard way up there in a puddle of yellow urine.

Father could do the same too. He could turn himself into wallpaper. He often melted into the walls and woodwork around the house and, once or twice, I actually glimpsed him disappear into the sheets and the yellow foam mattress of his bed too, to escape from the fierce beauty and eloquence of Mother, because she really was both beautiful and eloquent. I knew she was eloquent because I could never understand a word she said and that hurt. I knew she was beautiful because she looked like the pictures of saintly martyrs Father collected.

I hated Mother and her powers. I loathed it that the more she bled the more power she wielded. The more beauty she possessed. The more power she wielded the more Father would get self destructive and remorseful and lose his dignity at every turn. The more ugly he would become.

As my head would cool in the healing dust in my world under the floorboards, my thoughts would inevitably turn to revenge.

The revenge of the victim, cold and calculated, and there would be a lot of death in my head like the death pictures in my father’s magazines hidden at the back of the top shelf of the tall larder in the kitchen. Under two old biscuit tins full of screws and nails and the like.

A lot of death and, at least I was not suffering and that made me feel good because I, me, myself, I was not in pain.