darkshimmeringworld-blog

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Wapping (Bollocks)

Pretty poppet, meet me by the chicken cottage. I wants the red head. I wants the red head. Pipe down. Consecrated night of illusions, secret chicken cottage mason lodges. Coven cottage dreams. Breadcrumbs. I had an arguement with my friends. They dish it out but cannot take it. I retreat to an imaginary world. I have pretentious thoughts. I have the Yves Klein Blues. Curling my lips at the moon. Soliciting false hope in the light of long dead stars. I sow language demonically. Reverse word breadcrumbs that lead into a forest. A yard with lunatics. St. George-in-the-East and McDonalds to the south. Gatekeepers of the Highway, Gog and McGog. Old King Ludd. Gunge. A deep fat fryer pariah. Roadkill in chip shops. Battered pigeons, battered hedgehogs, half a battered squirrel, the homeless Heston Blooming-fool, bargin in to boil rats in vats of searing fat. Uncharter’d meats. Pipe down. When was the last time I climbed a wall? I change the tense I write in. I changed the tense I wrote in. I change the tense I write in. I walked along the Highway. Rented out by the French Government. Fleur-de-Leases. Ghost houses. Ancient brasses. The French Disease. Surplus foreground, surplus background, surplus horizon, surplus everything. The entire fucking universe is frivolous. The River Lea is bloody marvellous. Opening ceremony. Bucks fizz, whizz kid, alco-popstar-prick. Staple diet of pork scratchings dipped in Manuka honey. Weaponised almonds. Parrot. You are my foil. My tin man. Parrot. Fake imaginary parrot. Imaginary animatronic parrot. Whatever. We need each other. You need my insane thoughts to exist. And you exist to keep my insane thoughts in check. Come in parrot. Shunned by my pretend talking parrot. Aerosol can man. Smashing a bottle of Captain Morgan over Piers Morgan’s fucking face. Polish man in pub garden telling me about munchkins mix-up. Job interview at the Leftorium. It all went horribly right. Pic-n-mix-up. Pipe down. Sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, sky vaulting, firmament. Pipe down. Breadcrumbs.

One caveat with that cravat, it used to be the Captain’s cat. Token Somalian. Robert Mappelthorpe. Bogmanagers. immobile archaic juts. we call them things headstones. I am universal flotsam. Floating up the River Lea. Kraken! The aberration in the light was not in fact a sea monster. It was Tatlin’s titfuck revenge. An Anish Kapoor play thing. A double clef with a disability. A gigantic demented saxophone fighting itself. A roller coaster delineated by spirograph enthusiast at ayahuasca ceremony. It looked like an ampersand & ampersand one man band & ampersand one man band vomiting steel across what once was hinterland in a jaunty rude solo interlude & I ask the ampersand: Doest thou stand here to fuck time? I wandered the windswept plains. I took refuge in Zaha Hadid’s vagina stadium. I wrote: I am here in the Olympic Park. It looks like a vajazzled Chernobyl. My mind is fertile atomic logic. Objections are simple. Redundant description redundant. Redundant description redundant. Pipe down. 

(Gunge decanting weirdness in the countryside line here) 

Advert for the countryside: Get closer to nature (Get closure on nature). Jerusalem is mine. Holy fucking hell. The Pope spits out his tea. The celebrated celibate. Is an ornate monkey. Order of the Capuchin Capuchins. Cappuccino please. Alpha coffee male. Parrot: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” Epic Eccie Epping Forest. Hangman’s Pill. This has been communicated to you in a blindfolded waltz. I am not in control of what I say. It unspools, from my mouth, like a yarn, which is why, we call it, a yarn. Yawn, pipe down. Lawns. Castigated dogs on the horizon of washing lines welping in ylang ylang scented beatings. Over the hills, an Auld Pub. Inside. Old man. He had a whole disorderly repertoire of falling over. Backwash of whiskey spit had cauled over his face. Grave-flirting cunt. Sir Osis of the Gelwaz. A bar-stooling throne. A crackling crown of bloody skull fragments. His Kingdom all crashing down. He dusted off his woes. He warned me of the urinals. Do not go in there. Weird piss cult. The constipated conspiracy theorist: It was an inside job! My dream shop, a list of things it sells: A conspiracy running the entire length of the Greenwich Meridian Line, the Holy Grail made out of a Christian's skin, infinite iconoclasm, magnifying glasses for midgets with ivory handles crafted from pygmy elephant tusks, new imagined noses, transformation parables sewn onto a human heart, rare cough syrup, antique ashtray from Nazi Germany, a Unabomber Schott jacket, rare CD of Jim Jones singing the greatest hits of Tom Jones, a limited edition John Wayne Gacy Island, Thunderbirds toy set, the smell of petrichor and tobacco, a cup that overfloweth with witty barm, balloon canisters sold with park bench (this included free of charge) and nineteen frosted bones. It’s very contrived. It is all set up. There was no let up, to unperceivable things. A man looking like Robert Mappelthorpe, drifted into things. From where I do not recall. He told us of the snapping turtles, and catfish of the Lea. Of dreams of being an artist, and his creosote modernist sculptures that littered the flooded gravel pits of Essex. Of his troubled youth and blazing memories of family feuds. Of running away from it all. Time wasted navel gazing in Lower Nazeing, alone but for the ghosts of Odo from Ranulf, brother of Ilger, two free men and half a fishery. The puissant king of Nazeing. Tethered to a tree. Rooted to a dying tree. He thought he broke free. He had it all once but now he is dead. Pissant. Did you see the frog?Missing posters of Gunge: Last seen kicking a Hari Krishna to death in the head shouting Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti. He fled the scene. He lined his pockets with as many jam doughnuts that would fit and waded onto the railway tracks. He was never seen again. There was no body. Could be jam, could be blood. We will never know. On the scene: A wasp, dead, burrowed into a sausage roll sarcophagus. A mystery. What did the Ninth Legion have for dinner? Mange tout, Brute?

The Cereal Vapist. Leaves a bad taste in Shoreditch.

the paranoid weird dreams i used to have of my friends flat in maryland. why is he called gunge? fatbergs. tube of genius cream cream. apply in topical area. if irritation or burning sensation shout at it tell it to pipe down! Chewing on some mugwort that grows by the velodrome. that there thing that came out of that there bigger thing kill it and that thing that came out of the thing of the bigger thing kill it too

a group of women piercing their hearts with daggers

Parrot: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”

Memory palace Weatherspoons. So many doors.

If a prism, if a forest, do occur, in an image, in your mind, with trees, black and without leaves, it is winter. How do you feel? Stalactites, stalagmites, Ludd-ites. Spiralized styrofoam monsters stylised as tentacled octopi. Redundant description abundant. Synonyms and antonyms mingling in the garbage bins. I have thoughts but no words. I have words but no thoughts. I have vacant images. An industrial swearer. A Henry Ford Production Line of Fuck Lines. An absolute bell-end. Carefully reverse your vehicles over the heads of small minded men. I’m a bum note mate. I’m a dicky heart. I’m an insatiable loss. I’m a fortified wanker. Breadcrumbs. Pipe down. I am Onan the Barbarian. I am the Olympic tosser. Weaponised fucking almonds. Nuts. An EDL man. Dressed as St. George. He says it is all King Vortigern’s fault. He laments Broken Britain. Says imperialism is in, he saw it on his porcelain. I tell him: There are two dragons underground. One is red. One is white. They are fighting each other. This, is why your house is falling down. He tells me to pipe down. Crusade Crusoe! The Man Who Was an Island Mentality Nationalist. The Man Who Was a Complicated Pacifist. Says he likes shitting on Persian rugs. That’s all. I decide to leave. Up chalk streams to the Olympian Palaces of Excess. King Vortigern, leftovers, Brexit mercenaries, athlete villages. The unbecoming of a potentially good thing, now passed, the faint departing music of opportunity denied. A marching band of ideas disappearing forever into an invisible tunnel. The doldrum winds of inertia winding down. Silence, deafening silence, silence, deadening silence. The erection of the pleasure dome, damnation to the libraries, elation at the pleasure dome, death at the grass roots, cessation of the spaceship games and then stagnation of the pleasure dome, a nation full of funeral homes and a country in a come down. The Olympic mirage villages, all lullabies and alibis. Its not a pyramid scheme, its a ziggurat enterprise. My brain is sludgy. Your grotty hands are on the shiny things. Pipe down. Macaroon breadcrumbs. Fennel scented cologne from Damascus. Damaris Page wearing Damask Rose. A glaucous macaw. Chewing on Cicely with whores from Macau. Fighting for gold with gymnasts from Beijing. Born in the trench of fools. Wench for sale, wench for sale! Pieces of silver. Podiums. Ahh, many times laddy, have I sat in the afterglow of a witty remark. Filigree words sopping and charming, unspooling from the mouth in effortlessness. Never diminishing after being spoken, but saturating the past in a gilded ambience that when looked back on radiates like the long dead stars that still twinkle at night in far gone space. A crop of bubbling daisies or whatever those flowers are that pavement sprout. Cockney pagans, kicked out by new religion, that built pristine puritanical palaces atop their old school foundations. For whom the bells toll. Are thoughts real? Waiting for the gold. Waiting for the gold. This reverse solipsism hurts my brain. Phlegmatic Father Thames, spittle banks and morsels of clay. Fuelling mad thoughts, another, again, more, or less, lucid, or unreal, than that hill, that I sit on, than that gold I think up, or the gold, that wanes. Vanishes. Evaporates. That was spunked away. The Road of Excess. A sketch for tomorrow. Drawn yesterday. I was dreaming as a voice, refracted in my pint. It said: Whatever I do, I do not repent, I keep pissing against the moon. Signed, Flea. Niches for imbeciles and alcoves to waste gold. Amusements for Affluenza victims of the 21st century, a quarantine zone, a regeneration scheme, reclaimed land, Chelsea Flower Show doped up like a Russian Olympiad, an East End Genocide, Cockneys blowing bubbles, in the marshy reeds, moved out, moved back in again, a hokey cokey organised by porn barons, the erotomania of starchitect visions, the spaceship landing, soldiers on rooftops, Wind in the Willows, Bobby Moore, a Piper From the Gates of Porn, he is pissed off, Hung Up on a Team. Nine days upside down, from that tree. The cockney dildo draft. In, out, in, out, shake it all about. The Pornographers Phallacy: Iconoclasm in the club shop. Effigies of dry rot. In the board room, they rip flesh off each other, madly. And rip off Dr. Faustus, badly. The shadow of glory. Shadows and floodlit glories. The spectre of Super Sunday. Escape to China with Felix Magath, do not say his name in a stadium, it is considered bad luck, you will get fired. Allusion illusion. Allusion to illusions. Layers upon layers upon layers upon layers up layer upon . . . kaleidoscopic derision. Pipe down. Emulsified shirts, and calcified dirt, and a crucified cat and sewer rats, in a plastic six-pack beer packaging, artificial, multi-straight-jacketed rat king demise, all drowned together, floating amongst the coat hangers, a bicycle, and a myriad of used condoms. God’s bawdy house. Up in the sky, the cloud was full of nihilism. The sun, full of itself. His bad first impression, was his bad last impression. Art is new age alchemy. Transmutation, transmutation. Arthur write this: Handle conspiracy with care. Rheumatoid hands and lizard people. David Icke. Up on the vivisection fable. The garbage vans were hijacked, the LED screen were loaded up with obscene images. Information Jihad in this green and pleasant land of grey.

It looked like a vajazzled Chernobyl.

What a load of pretentious rubbish.

Pipe down.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Purgatory

October 31st, Eternity

“Bill Wyman the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.”

October 31st, Eternity

It was All Hallows Eve, “Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.”

October 31st, Eternity

It was All Saints’ Eve, “Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.”

October 31st, Eternity

A figure in a cape, a detail in infinity. He knocked three times at the door of No. 6. “Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.” In the rutilant light he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

Suburbia unrolled in twilight trampled noddy houses. A figure in a cape, a detail in infinity. He walked past the packs of wolf-men-children and bloody faced tricksters and knocked three times at the door of No. 6. “Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.”

October 31st, Eternity

Suburbia unrolled in twilight trampled noddy houses. The sky was green, and it was pink-orange-red. Then a deep mauve that overtook. A figure in a cape, a detail in infinity. He walked past the packs of wolf-men-children and bloody faced tricksters and knocked three times at the door of No. 6. “Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.” The costume was itchy, and made Bill feel like his body was burning. In the orange glow he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

It was Halloween. Suburbia unrolled in twilight trampled noddy houses. The sky was green, and it was pink-orange-red. Then a deep mauve that overtook. A figure in a cape, a detail in infinity. He walked past the packs of wolf-men-children and bloody faced tricksters and knocked three times at the door of No. 6. There was a discarded burrito down by his feet, cut in half like the Black Dahlia. Perhaps the work of a fox, or boy, dressed as fox. It made Bill both simultaneously hungry and repulsed. His costume itched like a hair shirt.

October 31st, Eternity

“Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man is here, dressed as a highwayman.” 

“Je suis un highwayman”

October 31st, Eternity

A lone figure in a cape. A detail in infinity. He took a pocket knife to his face, removed both of his eyes and stuck them to the house. 

October 31st, Eternity

Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man, was dressed as a highwayman, creeping in the creeping hours. It was All Saints’ Eve, virgins, for all their feathers, were a-cold.

October 31st, Eternity

In the rutilant light he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . he bumped his head on the way in.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . he bumped his head on the way in.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . he bumped his head on the way in.

October 31st, Eternity

Bill Wyman, the Hymen Man, entered No. 6, dressed as a highwayman. He bumped his head on the threshold. Trick, and treat.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Bill was adamant that his costume was based on the glory days of Dick Turpin et al, and not 1980s popular culture.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Bill was a door to door salesman, of bespoke, designer hymens, and he was adamant in his belief that he could stand and deliver in a competitive autumn market.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “Je suis Bill Wyman, highwayman”

“My name is M”

“Are your parents at home darling?”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “Je suis William Wyman, gentleman highwayman”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “Je suis Wyman Wyman, salesman of hymens”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . the young girl looked about 14. She wore a cat-woman costume.

October 31st, Eternity

Wyman Wyman walked up to the door of No. 6. past mutant packs of sugar high children. With one step he appeared to be forgetting something, the next remembering, the next forgetting, then remembering again, though in this act he could never grasp hold to what this thing was. In the rutilant light he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

“My parents must have gone out Mr Hymen Man, but I can let you in.”

“Very good Milady . . . just call me Wyman.”

October 31st, Eternity

M walked Wyman into the living room, and he tripped on his cape comically.

October 31st, Eternity

Wyman took a seat in the corner with all the fake cobwebs, and spoke his trade tongue with magic words which could sour milk. 

October 31st, Eternity

. . . there was the idol of a Phoenician cow on the mantelpiece, and the television was flickering with mischief. News report: “A young boy has died tonight in the Welsh countryside. It is believed he had taken ecstasy at an illegal Halloween rave. The boy who has not been named, was rushed to A+E by local police, after overdosing on circular tablets described as having a black seal symbol”

October 31st, Eternity

Barbie and Ken dolls littered the floor, arranged in overtly sexual poses, and the television flickered with mischief. Wyman itched at his costume, which was not regulation hymen salesman apparel. Wyman just enjoyed dressing up, a flamboyant side he retained from his earlier showbiz years. The burning sensation would wax and wane, and his mind would drift, a-drift, in the strange house of No. 6.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . there was the idol of a Phoenician cow on the mantelpiece, and the television flickered with mischief. Wyman glanced at what was playing: It appeared to be a Roman Polanski movie. But not one he had not seen before. Roman Polanski was also one of the characters. It appeared he had been kidnapped by a group of radical vigilantes, in a dark-lit warehouse structure. There was a massive bovine idol, that loomed over Polanski. Bill intuited the big, evil looking cow was not a good omen. Wyman thought this was not appropriate entertainment for a 14 year old to be watching, but M seemed pretty engrossed. For a second, in that weird room, the television felt less a domestic object and more a portal to a plane of undefinable pain and torment.

October 31st, Eternity

Temporary reality and eternal figmental.

October 31st, Eternity

“Must be the weather, very mild autumn so far” . . . Wyman itched at his collar. “Anyway, down to business”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Wyman pulled a facial expression, that for half a wicked second, revealed the infestations of his mind, that gave the impression of some sort of internal cancellation process or culling of disavowed thoughts.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . M wore a cat-woman costume. Her parents were not at home.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Wyman was losing track of his sales talk. In the doldrums of his mind he had become a-drift. Fiddling with his costume, he looked up at the mantelpiece, then at M, then at the floor. He looked inundated with shit ideas.

October 31st, Eternity

“Here the details change, but it will always be the same”

October 31st, Eternity

“What does M stand for darling?”

“It’s an old name. But I’m thinking of changing it anyway. I like the sound of Madame Rutabaga instead. We are the Rutabagas, me, my father and my mother, née Neep. They aren’t here tonight. Do you like words Wyman Wyman? Have you looked up the etymology of grub?”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “We have top of the range hymens, bespoke, tailored, luxury things . . . we provide a modern service that I am sure your parents would approve. Perhaps I could show you some models, M, even try some on for size . . . whilst it was an issue with earlier models, we have reduced the effects of the Uncanny Fanny”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . in the rutilant light he a-waited. A teenager walked past dressed as a vampire. They had a visible love-bite on their neck, that looked like it could have come from a lamprey. Wyman could not recall, what he was doing on the doorstep.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . he bumped his head on the way in.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . he bumped his head on the way in.

October 31st, Eternity

Wyman walked up to the door of No. 6 . . . trick or treaters were a-frightening. Wyman felt he could walk this street a thousand times, and not be bored with it’s particulars. He also felt that the warm, itchy feeling, which caused him such discomfort, could be itched a thousand times, and he would still get no satisfaction.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Wyman dipped his hand in the bowl of candy corns. He distantly chewed, his thoughts were of an errant, fleeing nature, like a fool galloping on a mule.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . M wore a Joker costume. She offered Wyman a Soul Cake.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Wyman Wyman, sat in the comfy chair, hand in the sugar bowl.

“M . . where . . . what is . . .”

M smiled at Wyman.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “But it’s like the thing with the bloody monkeys isn’t it? You give four or five apes, guitars, bass, drums, and all of eternity, they ain’t gonna come up with Sticky Fingers are they?”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . “Are you of the knowledge that if you leave a raisin out in the sun, eventually it dissolves completely?” 

“Christ . . now you mention it” 

“Look on the window sill” 

“I see five! One still there and four that have completely vanished!”

“Yes, now you see”

“Erm, that door there . . hmm . . . why are we here again?”

October 31st, Eternity

. . . M was dressed as a cow. An evil looking cow. She had an arrangement of pockets on the front, that looked like little doors that opened. She stood by the fire that glowed beneath the mantelpiece. In the rutilant light she a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . the evil looking cow, offered Wyman a drink of Halloween punch. He itched at the warm, highwayman costume and glugged down the potion. It had quite the kick. Soon it will be Bonfire Night, the burning of an effigy. Good old fashioned fun, thought Wyman.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . the evil looking cow, stood by the mantelpiece, and watched the effigy of an old man burn hydrochloric flames out of his pallid eye sockets.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . the evil looking cow, stood by the mantelpiece, and watched green sparks fizzle out of the highwayman’s head.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . the evil looking cow, stood by the mantelpiece, and watched the hunched figure of Wyman Wyman, shoot to the ceiling like a cartoon. Spurting hot, burning brain matter, like a micro aurora, noxious fissures escaped from his skull and clouded the room in strange raptures of green.

October 31st, Eternity

The evil looking cow offered Wyman a drink.

October 31st, Eternity

“Come back tomorrow, Bill?”

October 31st, Eternity

“Come back tomorrow, William?”

October 31st, Eternity

“Come back tomorrow, Mr Wyman?”

October 31st, Eternity

A little girl stood outside No. 6 . . . she pointed at a rock. 

“Rock!” she said. Wyman was confused. The little girl ran away.

October 31st, Eternity

. . . Wyman itched, and his head hurt. He left the house of No. 6. He surveyed the street in it’s gaudy haze. If there were birds, for here there were none, they would not be tweeting, but the absence of song would be the same, or perhaps differently silent. Sometimes an absence is felt greater, by the presence of something that is only half there, Wyman half-thought. He had never quite noticed till this very moment, that the ends of the street seemed incomplete. 

At the edges of his vision everything seemed rubbed out. Examining the houses closer gave him a shiver of unfamiliarity. They were built with exactitude to the blueprint of uncertainty. Underfoot, the crunch of the leaves seemed pre-recorded. What was this? Where was he? As he itched at his garment, threads came back to him . . . of a strange, vivid other place . . . Braintree, Essex.

He had been out with his metal detector, digging around in the dirt for Roman broaches. In the cold autumn morning, which he remembered as if a dream, the crunch of the leaves had more vitality and realness. He had felt a surge of pain, and dropped the metal detector. It was as if his body was on fire. The field beget a figure from another time. This shape approached Wyman. It was an odd peasant looking man, who introduced himself as Thurkhill.

“Are you lost?”

“Are you?” replied the peasant.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No . . .”

“I’ve sent many stone rollers on their course . . . up there . . . follow the track when it bends, may St. Julian be your guide.”

“You what?”

“Today is October 27th, you will pass through many chambers, when you are ready your wandering will end, but that is up to you sir.”

“I go up there?”

“You are dead, aren’t you?”

Wyman appeared shocked. He muttered something about Keith Richards under his breath. The peasant continued:

“There will be a spirit realm. A place where souls are bartered. You will stay in this realm till you are claimed by one of them. This is the journey for many a penitent thief. Whatever you bring with you, will manifest up there. When they are finished with you, may your soul find salvation.”

“How long will that take exactly?” questioned Wyman with unease.

“Well . . . All Souls Day is November 2nd, but you will experience time differently . . . you need to break the surface good Sir . . . superficial digging does not find the treasure”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Wyman started scratching at his neck in discomfort.

“I’m just a peasant mate!” said Thurkhill with a look ‘ere mate shrug.

Wyman shrugged. The peasant shrugged. Wyman felt a chill. Wyman felt an itch. The peasant disappeared.

October 31st, Eternity

In the rutilant light he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

In the rutilant light he a-waited.

October 31st, Eternity

In the rutilant light he a-waited . . . he bumped his head on the way in.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

In Dark Trees

You walk alone, at night. It is the fertile hour. It is the intoxicated, again, enticed. The artifice of an open field. The betrayal of horizons. The undiscriminating dead. The fugitives of the sun, and those that hide in ditches. That quiver for the moonlight. That deliver their own enigma. That steal from every second. That strangle in the dark and make ecstasy in erasure. Drawing up mad images and delineated false boundaries, fleeting in the mind and then gone again. In the kingdom of shadow intuitions. In the sleep realm of fallow thoughts. The substance of reality, revealed as just a cobweb. Perfect roots and discreet playgrounds of the ants. Burrows of bludgeoned time, stomped on bulbs and worm matter. The secrets of sod. Broken bastions of tree shapes looming all around. Ancient footsteps tracking future prey. Animal bones in efflorescence, jutting calcium from silt graves. Summons on your neck, as hairs tune into night. The investigations of the wind upon opaque trembling branches. Everything on top of you. Then a change. Prickly briars hemming the lane that leads down to a clearing. Wide open space. The magic of an unlocked land. Nobody watches over this terra. Now there is no time.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Poundshop Rentboy

What Ho! Oreo’s! Listen!

A part-time superfluous man Splayed in obscurity Butcherin’ Angleterre In his wordsmith abattoir:

Imbroglio in a Poundshop Perfidious Albion pecunia Get your appendix out! What do those words mean?

Two pound fifty punch up Stick ‘em in the meat wagon!

Enter: The Great Meat-Hall Under attack from Grendel Obscenity in a Gregg’s “Ban that sausage roll!”

Headline in the Metro No that was a typo It was the Daily Mail All day Brexit gristle

It’s fucking offal Stick ‘em in the meat grinder!

Advert on page thirty-three: “Amateur Pendants Society” I have something I’d like to point out!

I write my angry letter Bemoaning errant language Adverts are bad adverts for adverts, these days I am a mad, mad man

Meeting at DM HQ: “That lazy sub-editor . . . His work has gone askew We will not renew . . .”

“We will send him  To a concentration camp . . .” “That last sentence Was misconstrued”

Pedantry corner punch up Stick ‘em in the meat wagon! 

To Scotland Yarbles Feed ‘em Scotch eggs! They cost two pound fifty each From the local Coop

Britain’s first Pret-a-Manger English Heritage, Grade II Listed This here blue plaque: “Glenn Campbell bought overpriced sandwich”

He pays a visit to the Old Boys Network With some updates for tradition God Save the BLT And hands off the BBC

But the shrewd old men Shewed no intention Of giving up their . . . Archaic words, and their customs.

All this hath used to beest Woolworths. What a load of yarbles.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Rainbow Denier

The life and times of Henry Harold Waits is an intriguing case. Despite there being no recorded evidence of him having any formal education, the Camden local is a colourful prophet of insane theories and menace to the gatekeepers of reason. Publisher of a miscellany of niche theories (including the belief that ginger children are impervious to pain and the invention of the macrocosm-microcosm (macro-macrocosm micro-microcosm macro-macro-macrocosm micro-micro-microcosm macro-macro-macro-macrocosm micro-micro-micro-microcosm etc) hierarchy system) it is his infamy as a rainbow denier that he will be most remembered.

It is said that he ruminated for many hours on reflection, refraction and dispersion and concluded that it was all an illusion of an illusion (The Double Prism Theory) and that what people think they see as an optical trick is actually the second of a first optical trick in which there is nothing there at all and that the rainbow that we imagine we are seeing is actually conjured absolute nothingness. 

This occurs through a highly dense but undetectable “Mother-Prism”. Contrary to the fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, he believes that one day through a combination of scientific method and shamanism the “Mother-Prism” will finally reveal all of her obscuring secrets to him and he will find “Nothing”.

Detractors claim his theory is unscientific and absurd, and disparagingly remark that it basically amounts to “prism-nihilism”. At the September 2017 Meteorological Conference, Hamburg, Dr. Arnold Schmidt criticised the Double Prism Theory and it’s creator: “This nihilism of the prism debases all of us, he is a demagogue and a fool.”

Further criticism came flooding in from experts in the field, Irene Whittaker, Representative for the George Biddell Airy Institute of Defraction Analytics: “I don’t need to get into the dynamics of Snell’s Law to tell you . . . the man is an ass” and one Fred West-Cunningham: “The man is insane . . . he brings meteorology into disrepute.”

The final word going to the smug and punning, Blaise Crusoe Pimienta-Dahl, Head Researcher at the Equatorial Rainbow Society, who off the record at an event after party, withered with glee:  “That he (Mr. Waits) is clearly on some sort of spectrum.”

Mr. Waits will be heading off next month to kick start his mad pursuit of the “Mother Prism”. It has been 27 years, according to one biographer, since he left the safety of Camden Borough (see Wait’s Perimeter Theory for further background on that peculiarity). On his journey he hopes to test the mysterious design for his patented “Chiaroscopter”, an airborne vehicle of unfathomable invention, which casts all within it’s radius into oscillations of shadow and light. 

It is currently in a shed in Wapping, where an assembled team of Scandinavian students are rumoured to work well into the night under strict secrecy. Critics once again argue, that the “Chiaroscopter”, is merely a normal helicopter, which through the process of obfuscating description, has been deceptively re-imagined into a new invention (via shifting the onus of the craft’s function from flight, to light and shade production).

Perhaps the greatest puzzler of all is how on Earth the enigmatic but ever so destitute Mr. Waits is funding his recondite scheme, and how indeed he has tricked a team of Scandinavian students into joining his thicket of fog. The “Chiaroscopter” sets sail/drops anchor/takes off/launches/jettisons away/taxis the runway/catapults/flies into the unknown next month, where assembled media and Waits-spotters will await on baited breath outside a small shed in Wapping, for the signs of “Something”, in the pursuit, of “Nothing”.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Limerence

Inert object decried for lack of substance! Animated discussion about the fascination of inanimate objects!

Mundanity and the banal, the spectre of a Bacchus jug, That is brimming with what you fill it.

Limerent wandering mind, creating two overlapping worlds. One which is material, The other an unfolded weakness, For fragile hopes and longing, Drafted thin and stretching, Apophenia in ritual mountains.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

A Haunting In Ealing

West London suburbia is a strange place to find the embassy of North Korea. But that is where it is. Though, if you consider the costs for nuclear domination on the one hand, and London property prices on the other, something has to give in between.

The previous tenant, one Mrs Fletcher, watered her hydrangeas and drank Earl Grey, till the ripe age of eighty-two. Then passed without fanfare, buried next to her husband, in a simple, modest, little plot.

What happened next is not well documented, though events had net curtains twitching. If the North Koreans had no idea of the occult in the suburbs of the West, they soon were to be all too familiar. Mrs Fletcher remained in that semi-detatched, semi-attached to this mortal plane.

The obliterated obligations of the material world, like a thin tissue paper, blown away, her new lease of non-living proved very uplifting, and she carried out mischief with joie de vivre.

The Dear Leader’s portrait that hung on the landing, fell unceremoniously onto the floor. The Dear Leader’s portrait above the seventies toilet, cracked mysteriously. The Dear Leader triptych in the living room melted, in strange alignment with an unknown heat source.

The kitchen one shattered, the bedroom one flew, Dear Leader’s likeness in the extension disappeared to perplexion! The desktop backgrounds, on the DPRK Commu-Com network (5 monitors total, linked in the house) all once depicted Dear Leader’s heavenly glory. But God was erased in the dead of the night, and something else rose in his place!

A ghost in the machine, with comic intentions, felt the wallpaper had grown stale. And when the Ambassador logged on, first thing in the morning, sipping his black cup of coffee. The sight of a skiffle band in front of a Sainsbury’s, made him spit it all over the screen.

“Do not worship false idols” a voice was heard in the wind . . .

 “The door looked better green.”

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Intoxicated

You walk drunk through trees at night, and you feel the entirety of stars above. Like they have been poured into your skull, overflowing your tiny vessel. You trip on a substance. It isn't a rock. It is waxy and grey. In the perfumed night it is hard to define. The mind is a foraging fool. Too far inland to be ambergris.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

The Story Of The Fall Of A Dictator, By The Dildo Assassin At The Farmers Market, By The Author Addicted To Too Many Words

A dictator's administration, a detractors demonstration, a dick detonator, a deflated tater, a defibrillated traitor, a dented tractor, a demented trauma, the despotic author, an autodidacts diction, a demonised addiction, a fiction of damnation, an affliction of depiction, a dictionary definition, of discursive description.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Dreams

She's finishing her smoke and staring out of the window. She thinks she sees a bat, but then it becomes apparent, it is actually a spider, right in front of her face, skying across the night canvas on invisible web. Oh the tender exaltations one feels, when alone with the secrets of the night. The communion of dark thoughts, in the trembling moonlight. The time for emergence and disappearance. The dark shimmering world that opens all doorways.

Inside the still house, which is surely empty, he watches from what might be an alcove, but could also be the beginning of some extended tunnel system, that riddles into deep, beyond places. 

Once I had a dream, she says to him straight, I was walking down the street, and this small, bald man, missing both the two legs, making quick in a wheel chair, rolls up and past me. He goes, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, and as he passes, I whisper, Happy Cunt, in the derogatory style, and he hears and the wheels tip, and he's lying there spokes whirling, like a broken record, going, Happy Cunt, Happy Cunt, Happy Cunt . . . What's that about?

One interpretation would be that the man in the wheel chair is you, or represents your happiness, a happiness you feel you aren't entitled to, and so you sabotage it. 

Ha, she rubs her nose. But what about that insect, did you see it? 

Underneath the house? 

Recording everything we say, writing down it's manuscript. 

But that was in my mum's house. 

We are in your mum's house. 

Fuck. We are.

8.15 alarm. Strange dream. Dreamt of her again. And the recurring insect motif. What was he watching last night? Why always bugs? The Dreamer rubs his eyes reluctantly. Coffee time. Commute. Work. Dreams. He works at Dreams. The bed store. Mattresses, pillows, headboards, sofa beds, free delivery, 40 night guarantee, “because your sleep matters”. The Dreamer enters the building, and chooses the outside path, the route which best avoids Martin’s substation, over by the Superkings. 

Martin, is an unfortunate man. Unfortunate like the man, who can only sustain an erection, by clinging to the swinging udders of a cow, in mad, desperate embrace, whilst being dragged through a field of mud, and then similarly, can only lose said erection, by clinging to the same bemused creature, whilst being dragged in the reverse direction, across the same rotten field. Who traipses hedgerows, up and down the land, looking for negligent farmers, slow moving cows and sympathetic women. A trifecta of which, is very rare indeed.

Watching the Dreamer from behind a Double, Martin makes an excited inhalation of breath, and leaps to intercept. He is young in the face but clearly in his mid 30s, a perpetual potential person, who will find himself too late. His mum drops him off, and picks him up. On his lunch break he sits alone, eating Pickled Onion Monster Munch, reading Emil Cioran. One time the Dreamer caught him alternating the Monster Munch, with a rolling replenishment of mint chewing gums, whilst flicking through pages of On The Heights of Despair. He delivers everything he says, with an intimation of dormant, violent tendencies, and is drawn to the Dreamer, like a slug attracted to a rainy night.

What is it today? smiles the Dreamer, with well rehearsed deceit and politeness.

It happened again. Animals, they come in here, like pagans in heat, trampling grapes with the Great God Pan, Stella cans and crisp packets, foot marks and stains of miscellaneous description . . . undetermined till further autopsy . . . there will be an autopsy, all on the 6'0 Cream Superking, 20% reduced but still a dame, not to mention what I found on the Ottoman.

I respect your right to an Inquisition, but I can't help you Martin. 

But this . . . just makes me want to torture starfish. 

Calm down mate, you really need to get out of here. It's no good for you. Plus it could be so many of the employees. 6 of us have keys, the head office aren't paying for the security cameras to be fixed till spring. Someone’s having a little bit of fun on company soil, it’s not like they’ve fisted your nan’s urn.

I'm gonna stake it out. I have a tent. 

Martin, change of scenery . . take that fucking tent to Wales, it's alright round there, you been to the Brecon Beacons?  

Sending this up the chain of command is too good for these cretins. No . . . I'll make a headboard from their ashes, sell it 50% reduced to a fetish club in Dagenham. No 70% . . . 75%. No, Croydon.

I'm going to talk to that couple. You’ve lost me.

We’re a closed system of the damned, Martin heckles, to a withering crowd of no one, I’m the Serpico of Springs! 

Martin is shaking by his substation. The Dreamer talks to the couple. He’s no Terry Wogan, but he makes good small talk.

We had to rid ourselves the last one on account of the bed wetting, Woman Blessed With Oversharing goes. Man Not Blessed With Oversharing Thank You Very Much, standing holding her hand, recoils.

 I've done it for years, Oh it's OK, he does it too, really, we're made for each other, but don't get any funny ideas, it's not in a sexual way! 

Man Cursed With Shit Job recoils in synchronization with Man Well Rehearsed in Public Recoiling, Less So In Midnight Relief. 

We’re downsizing as well. Priced out of the area. The new place is tiny. So we need something small, super practical, durable . . .

The sofa bed is becoming more and more the go to solution for many space squeezed couples living in Central London, says the Dreamer, the industry understanding this are producing some things of real beauty. You could say we are in the golden age of sofa beds, really.

In the realm of the abstract everything is just a mask, says the penguin. 

I really need to pee. 

You're a boy, you can piss where you want! 

The penguin is correct, so he heads out of the club house of his childhood football team, where the grass has grown long now and everything feels forgotten, and ascends to the roof, via stairs that were never really there. He Caspar Friedrichs the surroundings. What a prime pissing pantheon. The Dreamer starts yellow brick roading hard, it doesn't seem to end! Then the tingling on the back of the neck, klaxoning the gaze of another. Not alone. He looks back and The Man With Oversharing Partner is there, cock out, also, Wizarding his Oz, but intently staring across.

Do you mind! 

Listen, the Alpha Shemale is looking for us. 

'Cuse Me? 

I had to come up here. 

Fuck off. 

There's not much time. I can see my top. A bee is on it. Can my top see me? 

I think it's time to fuck off. 

I was only trying to help. 

You spend any more pennies whilst staring at me and I'll punch you between the eyes.

Lunch break with Mo and B. A fog has engulfed the day and the sun looks vulgar and gaudy in it's attempts to break through it. An English Cafe serving the English staples, needing no other description. 

Who's turn is it this Saturday? 

Mine. 

With your lady friend? 

Right. 

Careful, Martin's gonna be setting bear-traps all around shop. 

Well I won't leave evidence like you did last time. 

Yeah, I don't really care man, Mo laughs. 

Do you find it funny, the longer you work here, the stranger the dreams you find yourself having? 

Dreams about Dreams? 

Yeah. 

Don't think so, says Mo, thumbing his phone. 

Feels like a nightmare. Things we say in this job, the shit you have to hope they will gobble up, the shit they do gobble up, we all gobble up, I don't know what's worse, the emptiness beforehand or the shame and emptiness after, says B, between BLT bites. 

I don't care, says Mo, and he really doesn't.

Sometimes the place is so empty. You literally stand there. Doing nothing. And then there's that new boss, who's right on it. I still can't tell if he's Australian or just English and nasally. How do you look busy for the boss when you average 3 people an afternoon? Yet he's always about, doing his rounds, putting weird signs on the Ottoman that are full of typos and misremembering my name though I've been here for 6 months. My name's B.

A waitress appears. 

I worry about my reality, says B, I live in a world of speculation and fantasy. Nothing feels dangerous. My existence is bubble wrapped. 

The waitress interrupts, Sorry darling, that’s not yours. This is yours.

She takes the Dreamer’s plate and replaces it with an identical plate. Where sausage was, sausage is, bacon where bacon and beans immaculately copy beans. She has a middle finger tattoo on her forearm, but is a kind, affable lady. Once she told the Dreamer of her heady days raving in Belgium, which for the record, The Dreamer does not consider a real country.

I don’t know how this happened, she continues.

No worries, he replies.

Sorry for the confusion.

That’s OK.

It won’t happen again.

She leaves the table in grave, penitent steps. The plate, being newer, than the last one, though identical, tastes the better, to the Dreamer.

Lunch ends with exactitude and the afternoon conforms to the routine standard experienced by all the employees of Dreams. The day drifts on and another day under the sun concludes in glum formless residues. Artifice! Full speed ahead! The Dreamer laughs, and sleepwalks back home, floating in a world that feels half incomplete, past the fog enshrouded shapes of probably cars and people. The evening turns to night. In the distant corners of REM flutter, he awakes to the sensation of something. The something is confusing, and not quite able to place it, he falls back, to the sack.

Where shadows eat shadows. The winding down of a strange machine. Down in his head stream, black, heavy mass, smashing lead into bits of lapis lazuli, azure twisted fragments, crushing into fine, white dust. REM afterglow. Hypnopompic visions. Crumpled redolent pillow. Coffee. Commute. Dreams. 

Early morning images, there is one solitary customer, there is a blinking fluorescent light waning, the window reflection transposes, what is inside, over the blue world all surrounding. B is hungover, Mo is stood talking with Martin. Though from across the room it appears more an exercise in nodding and listening. A woman dressed like Miss Havisham, is asking the Dreamer how many beanie babies he reckons could fit across the Edwardian Small Double.

Of course you could always get the Manhattan here, with concealed slide out storage, why I reckon you could get at least 30-50 of your little friends under there, though it would feel a bit like a mausoleum mind. 

Live in a tomb!

Right, sighs the Dreamer. 

You think i’m crazy . . . I didn’t come in here riding a goat backwards, Havisham intones with severity, dabbing her weeping eye.

Right well . . 

He went off with my best friend, and that’s the end, you know, after that, not like I havn’t tried, I met a man, a new one, I’d never met him before, but online, Big Al, he lived in Scotland, I went up, you have to take chances, you can’t live life in fear, you have to take the risks, for the rewards, yes, I went up to Scotland, he was 7 years my junior, not good looking, though he said he liked watching Springwatch, I love Springwatch, apart from that one episode, when the baby tits were massacred by the stoat, you don’t need to show that, she dabs her eye, Nature’s cruel, we all know that, so I’m up in Scotland, I’m not feeling it anymore, with Big Al, negative energies, his aura was brown, his carpet stunk of cigarettes, uglier in real life, I told him there’s a cat spirit in the house, and I must leave at once, cat spirit? he said, yes I said, you need an exorcist, and I left, you don’t trust easily after that. 

An awkward pause.

Reality does you, but fantasy will never disappoint you son . . . 

The Dreamer says nothing, for what is there to say?

Fudge, she says, and ambles away.

Another customer walks in. Out of his collar, leaves are sprouting. He coughs loudly for a minute. A pigeon flies straight into the shop front glass. It lies motionless on the pavement. Mo picks his nose. All these moments, are unrelated.

What is the experience of a pigeon, lacking a concrete language relationship with the world, who flies to it’s death, in such circumstances? Fear, emotion, and impulses and some signifiers attached to those things. But is it all some rushing All-ness? An abstract palette. An incredibly rich, shifting symphony, in the present, and undesecrated by symbols? To experience such a world! To be a demoted dinosaur, oblivious of oblivion, slamming into eternity!

The entire fucking universe is frivolous, says Martin.

I’ll get the brush, sweep it up, Mo chirps, seizing his opportunity for escape.

I once had a pet, a Pomeranian, Maldoror was his name . . . a duck killed it, Martin gesticulates, to no one in particular.

That’s that, says Mo, with standard lack of enthusiasm flooding back, his exotic trip to the Outside Bin, on his Outside Mission, thoroughly in the past.

Flesh dissolves, Martin prickles, I'm just counting the days. 

The Dreamer looks down at his phone screen, the message reads: “hope you are having gd day, took max to the vet, had to have him put down, looking forward to yr brthday, love mum x”

She’s finishing a joke, it goes something like this, What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Half a worm. What’s worse than finding half a worm in your apple? The holocaust. What’s worse than the holocaust? 6 million Jews.

You can’t laugh about the holocaust.

What about the funny bits?

That I cannot argue.

So, what is this? 

I thought you could be my feng shui consultant, this place needs some expert help.

Haha, sure, but I think the problems go deeper in this place.

I tell you, this Martin guy, and this other character called B, I swear they go home and they’re shitting blood. And puking. And crying. On repeat. For their angst that overfloweth.

I remember him. Maybe he likes you!

Two phrases, I abide by: You don't shit where you eat, and you certainly don't shit the bed.

Chocolate spread philosopher.

There's a premise. Look, I have these. The key is to chew them. Lots and lots. None of this hidden in tea nonsense. Dilutes the effect. 

First date, and you have me in your place of work . . . doing magic mushrooms.

So far, so good.

Half an hour from this point, the room begins to change, from the mundanity of the everyday, into a slow fire of ineffable, pigmented, singing surfaces. The walls start to feel alive, and strangely from another time, as if they are now in the sanctuary of an old monastery or in the caverns of an ancient cult. They lie on a bed giggling like children, as the effects crescendo to greater delirium. The places we inhabit, and when we truly see them!

Feel anything?

This isn’t real is it? I’ve had these dreams before. With the colours. Then there’ll be an insect. Or you’ll be an insect. Or -

This is actually my dream, you’re welcome to stay for a bit.

The Dreamer looks down at the floor. No signs of tunnel systems, and the possibility of subterranean madness. Hands still humanoid, her face yet to be adorned with mandibles. A warm feeling resides in his stomach, that makes him want to burp. So far, so good.

Listen. London chimneys. The occult properties of London chimneys. I think London chimneys . . . in the right light . . . are the trippiest things in the world! the Dreamer burps, You know how much I stare at the chimneys?

These things make you really chatty, it’s like verbal diarrhoea roulette right now.

It’s important. It doesn’t matter. 

I think I saw a bat.

Focusing on the bed, directly in front, the crumples of duvet are flickering. They dance in magical, impossible contours. Now the bed is starting to move. Now it is really moving. A contagion spreads. All the beds are swaying. To the same incredible movement. A legion of magic carpets. Sacred geometry.

I tell you I have this recurring dream? Yeah, you did. Wheel chair man. Haha, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Wheel chair man! No! That didn’t happen? Not that I’m aware of. We do too much drugs. True . . . This though, this, this, this, this. This is all I need. I get all my meaning from this, I mean. Wherever you find it I guess. George Bataille had his photographs of lingchi, the Swedes had Runamo, we interpret the runes. You’ve lost me ya weirdo. This is real. The urge to blanket myself in moss. The covenant of my . . . . fucking wow. Turquoise. Hahaha every time you speak stars are shooting out of your mouth. Cartoon stars! Stupid big fun fuckers! Say something again! Dick. Ha ohh . . can you hear that? Mystery language. ESP. Out of my. Flaming. No. Flaming world. No. You ever listened to Hildegard and done this? That's the ticket. You know there's nothing better than making a beautiful woman smile. There's nothing worse than a man who thinks he's funny. There’s nothing worse than half an apple in your worm. Hahahahaha. He kisses her neck. It tastes like metal. He looks at her face. It makes him laugh. The room is breathing. 

Outside Dreams, the car park is in mystery fogscape. A white van pulls up. It says: “ALL KINDS OF BLINDS” on the side. Unfortunate civic blue font continues: "Windows, glazing, frames, shutters, installation, refits, threshold specialists, CALL TODAY”. The engine stops, the van rocks, and the back doors swing open. About 5 people step out, gingerly to the pavement, like babies taking their first steps on the moon. 

They are all completely blind. Two with canes. Most with the cliché blacked out glasses. One of them looks like Andrea Bocelli. They shuffle towards the shop front, one by one, like the Cathar Martyrs, eyes stabbed out by their captors, who left the leading man with one eye, to lead them to their graves. 

Another looks like Ray Charles, actually. Though the Dreamer cannot tell, as he walks to the entrance, if his working eyes are playing tricks on him, if it is the real McCoy, or his brain sees a black man with glasses, and chooses to go all racist. 

We are the Luminous People, we are very excited to be here, Old Man in White Suit announces. 

Very happy to have you, replies the Dreamer. 

The lease of the deed is not agreed, says Maybe Ray, smiling at him ambiguously. 

The Dreamer nods his head. Maybe Ray hands him a box. 

And we have travelled very far. But if you accept this gift, we were hoping we could gain entry, see the show everyone is talking about, you are still open aren't you?

See . . . Yes. See?

Great, c'mon in guys, Maybe Ray turns ambiguously again to the Dreamer, patting him on the arm, Thank you Boy, thank you . . . We’ve just come from the House of the Face Shifters, their faces look like clay! Great show! But we heard this is even better!

Everyone moves inside. The artificial lighting seems brighter. 

Dark in here, had to turn them up, says Martin. 

Appreciate it, smiles Maybe Ray. 

No tickets required, go on through, relaxed rules, smiles Martin, who then pulls out a torch, and starts shining it at the blind men, in the light, lucid, white room. The Luminous People follow the Dreamer, their faces are stuck smiling, like uncanny wax dummies.

It’s over here, the Dreamer explains, leading them through the middle of the store. One bed is covered in in bakelite toys, eye goofing cats and pocket cars, another littered with lamps, that make light reconditely, the roots of wire cascading, pooling on frayed carpet. They walk past one bed, with a figure lying face down, a female body, motionless. She seems to be dead, or in a deep sleep, to differentiate between two nullities. The Dreamer desires to see her face. Though she is so close, she also feels so distant, and as he keeps on walking, he is certain who it is.

The Dreamer walks the blind men to the Ottoman. There is a red rope in front. It looks the same as it always does.

Collectively the blind group pause for a moment, some on their sticks or arms akimbo, at the edge of the red rope. Mo is standing beside the Ottoman, in a smart valet outfit. No photography please, Mo goes, and resumes staring ahead, as if his brain were made of lead.

Perplexing, pronounces the Eldest Blind Man.

This is a disappointment, says Maybe Ray.

A damp squib alright.

All this build up.

Somebody’s taking the piss . . . 

Hey Boy, can you whistle me a song for the road?

I can do two tunes, Whistle Stop from Disney’s 1973 Robin Hood, the one with the cartoon fox, by Roger Miller, or Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, by Penderecki.

I’ll go with the former.

The whistling Dreamer, watches the van slither off, in rivers of silver.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

The Samuel Beckett

Last night I had the most peculiar dream. Samuel Beckett's face on the front of the Samuel Beckett, like Thomas the Fucking Tank Engine. He was scanning the horizon discerning in the metal tides the Absurdity of Existence. His Existence being more Absurd than most others on account of being this strange chimeric dream entity, some aberration of the waves, in a risible, ludicrous scene, hulking his stupid mass futilely to some as yet to be determined end point.

To clarify what I am saying, let me tell you about the Samuel Beckett. The LE Samuel Beckett is an Irish OPV (Offshore Patrol Vessel) and she was launched in 2013 to the tune of around 70 million euros. Samuel Beckett of course the famous Irish playwright who had nothing to do with gunboats and I imagine not much of a taste for Mastering and Commanding. Lamentably the ship has so far only appropriated the artist of the avant-garde’s name, but let’s not let reality get in the way of some clunky imagery. Poor old clunky boat face, spinning in his watery grave.

From this point on I will refer to Samuel Beckett the Original as “He” and Samuel Beckett the Aberration as “She” in respect to the nautical traditions of old. Actually, I will refer to Samuel Beckett the Children's TV Show Chimera of My Nightmares as “It”, as Lloyd's List publication declared in 2002 it would do with all sea vessels to bring it in line with other reputable titles and move away from the anachronisms of maritime custom. Julian Bray, editor at the time stating that “the shipping industry does need to move forward if it is not to risk becoming a backwater of international business”. No pun intended.

“It” has of today rescued 2,310 migrants, many of them children on the zephyrs of the Mediterranean, as they flee from the currents of 21st century geopolitical ruin. “It” has been spotted off the coasts of Cork, Sicily, Tripoli and the Isle of Sodor. Obviously it is not the “It” of my imagination that is delivering water foundlings to Western Democracy. “It” of my imagination benefiting from having a face, retains an extra humanizing quality, having the advantageous position to emote which elevates it above the boring utilitarian machinery of the Inert Real World “It”. “It” scans darkly the horizon, “It” pensively considers the clouds, billowing, full of themselves. “It” cracks a kind smile, one of those glowing and spreading around the eyes smiles, welcoming the new guests on deck.

My ersatz “It”, the real ersatz “It”, the real, dead “He”. Samuel Beckett the “He”, died 22nd December 1989 in Paris, and is also posthumously bestowed a bridge named after him to honour his legacy. It is a lot harder to picture a bridge with a face. Imagine a bridge with a face, really try to conceive of it. It is like an onion with a toe. To conjure in the minds eye Samuel Beckett's cantilevered countenance is a task that tests the limits of anthropomorphism. Perhaps not since the Watership Down Ultra-Violence Rabbits has anthropomorphism been so brutally clawed at. No puns intended.

But as heavy handed honours to dead wordsmiths, a bridge is surely the superior option to gunboats, fantasy pareidoliac cherry or not. Many in Ireland voiced criticism to the Immodest Proposal of the LE Samuel Beckett, suggesting that the dissonance of what an armoured state vehicle represents and how underfunded the arts are in the country by the government amount to a comorbidity of the Absurd and the Farcical. The same erroneous honour befalling James Joyce, or the LE James Joyce, or the Majestic LE James Joyce Venerated Lady of the Snotgreen Waves, or, Whatever (Yet we still await the LE Flann O'Brien, LE Brian O'Nolan, LE Myles na gCopaleen, LE Brother Barnabas, and LE An Broc, all writers of great distinction and singular vision!). Not to mention LE Oscar Wilde (do the Irish have sailors or do the Irish have sailors?)

Savigny, France, 1457, villagers witness a sow and her six piglets kill a 5 year old boy. The animals are all put on trial for murder. This was not unusual for Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and the trial is deliberated with complete seriousness and proper legal procedure. Looking back it is easy to conclude that these backwards peasants hanging pigs and donkeys in their kangaroo courts, meting out justice to the voles, and cracking down on moles, the illegal schemes of crows and the perjury of the sheep, were making an ass of the law. An alternative view, is that the people of the time, having a relationship with the land and the animals before the industrial revolution, saw agency and sentience in the livestock they lived with. Animals were given the same legal procedure because they were viewed as something beyond mere Objects. In the end, through witness testimony, the sow was convicted and hanged. The piglets escaped the gallows, despite being dabbled in the victims blood, for their role was seen to be ambiguous. The swines! No puns intended.

Things were a lot fairer back then. At least they had trial before death. Not like today, in the industrial age, where no little piggy is whispering words of Habeas Porkus in the internment camps of the chained and the slaughtered. Anthropodenial, not existing just to make “Its” out of the animal kind, also makes intangible the plight of other human beings. A suggestion to re-anthropomorphize the migrant crisis must be taken seriously. Starting with the LE Samuel Beckett, boats will be given faces. And the refugees too! Bigger faces, cuter, wide eyed Disney-masks for all, sailing Westward to Brighter Shores and Super-Stores. A theme tune will be written, and Ringo Starr will ululate the utopian vision. Snapchat filter salvation for all the suffering souls.

The universe is a commodity and we sell ourselves the dream artefacts.

Do boats with faces have nightmares?

I began by describing a dream. A dream I did not have. That was what the voice inside my head told me to write. We live in a hollow that calls to our imagination and within the mystery we sing back into it. Our muffled voices, barely capable, break through the silence. The world is what you fill it. It is a smiling tree. It is a stool with a hat. The onion has a toe. It is the anthropomorphism of bunnies and the pliability of symbols. It is the sabotage of symbols. It is the stupidity of symbols. It is meaning in emptiness and it is void on void. It is Samuel Beckett's Gunboat's Absurd-Awry-Awdry Imagined Simulacrum Face in Honour of the Dead Poet.

No puns where none intended.

MARE SOMNIUM

Narration (Ringo Starr):

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new, on the Isle of Sodor. The Fat Controller, fiddled in his greatcoat pockets. Placing a stone from his right greatcoat pocket into his mouth, he replaced in his right greatcoat pocket a stone from his right trouser pocket. From his left trouser pocket, came a stone into the now vacant right trouser pocket. And into the left trouser pocket, he placed a stone from his left greatcoat pocket. The circulation of which, pleased him greatly, calling into mind the image of the locomotion of the trains, on his network of railways. There was bad news. The LE Samuel Beckett had disappeared.

Where? cried the Fat Controller, spitting out the stone, Why?!!

Beckett was last spotted following the LE James Joyce, out to warmer waters, but then veered of course in a new direction. Last position not determined Sir.

Curse this morning for the pain it brings!

Weather has finally cleared, I've sent a search party.

I thought it was meant to be rainy.

No, it was meant to be sunny, then it was meant to be rainy.

It's not sunny.

It was sunny.

It hasn't rained . . . (Pause)

Do you think . . Hmm . . . I become too attached to my workforce, by adorning them with faces?

Well . .

I think I should stop.

Well . . .

It crushes me every time I lose an engine or boat. Last year in October, I couldn't leave my cottage for a week, for the sense of loss I felt after Henrietta's passing. Now dear Samuel, dear sweet Sam.

It's a decision only the boss can make.

And the tragedy of the twins! The cruelty! That it should take one but leave the other. They were inseparable. Now every time I see Donald. All I feel is Douglas.

(Sighs)

No, I can't, I'll just downgrade them a little. Make them feel a little bit less real. Like the old days, the classic models.

Here we go again, on about the archaic smiles . . .

It worked for James, and Henry, and marvellous little Thomas. The archaic smile gives me comfort, and infuses a feeling of good in the world. The archaic smile is an old, dear friend, that beams back to his Creator. Sometimes I think we go too far.

[darkshimmeringworld-blog]

Ignite conceited young crackly sips the watermelon and bashes eight. Why discount funky buckaroo clever dumb instigating death and clearing goats and feeding the spider. Never! Crisp bread happy for you. I will make twentyfold lizard crucifixes hunch into my head. Peeled. Stop. Trample on chest.

Suicide note of Walter Dent, ???? - 1973