David Spittle: Two Extracts from HALLUCIGENIA

from H A L L U C I G E N I A

     Enochian shock-treatment from the birds,

     Yantra! galactic swirl the petroglyphs –

     We stone circles, we Hyrax, we Wombat.

     Slap athame into Arthur’s round table,

     quick let us compass the empty symbol

     with another knife in the upturned palm.

     Silly Moondial, the sacred toothpick –

     the scribe Ani and wife Thuthu enter

     the hall of double Maāt, wherein the heart,

     symbolic of the conscience, is to be

     weighed in the balance against the feather.

     But the tide brings back the same old mistakes,

     cupped look on each mask of what isn’t seen –

     all the characters are here, revolving

     in typecast variations on a theme.

     The Occult drags in its trawling-net, torn,

     lurched from dull shallows of its latest wake

     to leave them flipping on the deck, the stage,

     stale ‘variations’ on the not so deep:

     The Teachers, The Hipsters, The Heretics;

     I know better, I look better, and I

     am the danger you fear, the transgression

     of that vital dark brought to bear on now.

     And where am I in that triumvirate?

     Chasing my tail in search of belief,

     paddling like a giddy retriever

     in the quick froth of a holiday sprint

     as, committing to the frisbee, I bound

     hoping to discover a cosmic wheel,

     or, perhaps, snout-cheer a sandy thrust of

     nose-digging for ragworms, discovery –

     the intuition of our limits

     being cause for celebration, a hole

     through which all passing colours might announce

     the creator’s kennel as unseen ark;

     a book eager with its bright confusion

     to grasp the lashing ragworm in its teeth.   

       The world of thought is thronged with false births and malformations which were entirely bred of perverted typography. The theological doctrines of evil, the depravity of matter, the fallen nature of the flesh have no other basis and had no other beginning. Gerald Massey

     more estimations                        from the buried present reach

     and this, this who, who is this, who is this you you talk about or

                                                                                                 of

                                                                                                 for 

     waves                                                                                   from 

                                                                                                 or

                                                                                                 end

    -lessly in now, beginnings pyramids and theélan vital of how,

a

     Dumuzid the Shepherd and Jesus in the rave of the Gallûs,

     demons just like Jesus – hungry for lambs; you don’t even care,

a

     or know about caring for what you might know –

     you are the carried away, you, the talking talking, dying and rising

     in Osiris gab or garb and searching for Set, bear at the foot

     of the cross – paw swipe to pluck – decapitation songs

a

     of Barabbas, feathered morphology,

     the indecision that calcifies

a

     to make a statue

     of the pause

a

     considering

     evolution

a

     is not simply, or not only, what changes over time,

     but also exists in the scale of time

          by which we changeably experience

     the what of what is changing,

          so that what and time become inter-

     dependent propositions, two circles

a

     intersecting in relation to whatever geometry

     we have to hand, unlike the underhand

a

     of what populates the unknown

     that supports our knowing, and you don’t know

a

     just as I don’t know, but we are held

     together in this makeshift suspension, trying

a

     *

a

     Fear   HAL,

     Dear jobless twat , Dear indulgent,

     Dear sobbing into a tame void,

     Dear humano scumbucket, Dear D____,

     Dear blind blip in the over earnest seeking

     as distraction from the flimsy excuse

     for why you are here and insist on continuing

     because maybe this will gather pace, or

     Dear flatulent solemnity (                    )

     and fraudulent ‘vision’ , Dear aimless

     Dear opulent irrelevance , Dear me

     Dear privileged crisis, Dear squid ink

     Dear predictably unhinged & unreadable

     Dear living a dream that is not ‘living the dream’

     but is an irresponsibly vague way of living

     Dear perversely tangential, Dear self-inflicted

     and repetitive, Dear frightened of      I

     Dear quite nice sometimes but formidably unreliable

     Dear devoted to obscurity as its own virtue

     but also wants readers? Unremarkable

     on a torn sheet of why? Dear more Peter than Pan

     Dear SELFISH ‘maybe I made the wrong choices’

     Dear morbid irreverence with a terminal patient

     Dear MR. mortal UnDerSTudy for a better failure

     Dear far behind being ‘up ahead’, Dear reliably

     unprepared, Dear MESS Dear HOPE Dear SONG

     from a cancerous throat tell me about flowers and living

David Spittle is a poet and filmmaker. After the pamphlet B O X (HVTN, 2018) he has published three collections of poetry (All Particles and Waves, Rubbles, Decomposing Robert) with a fourth, How Eyes Rest, to be released later this year. Spittle has published a collection of interviews with filmmakers and poets (including Guy Maddin, John Ashbery, Andrew Kötting, and many others), entitled Light Glyphs. His short films have screened internationally.