THE SUCKERS AND THE HAIRS
From a rubbed out patch high above (that is a rubbish strewn garden leagues beneath) that fallen perpendicular,
THAT BAD HORIZON, THAT FOOL-STUMP HORIZON,
crept forth a singular apparition - sunk, sunk, squeezed and sunk. Bled to laughing-point. Skinned to dropping-point. Smoothed and patted; pleased to howling-point.
From a drain papered over, a crater, a bunker; a white limb too, dislocated, and flung itself forth. The smooth suckered arm, some thirty years long, thrust itself out again; crusted and mocking, bleating and failing, it tossed itself out again. Dredged an alternative audience - it did, yes it did - and gathered with salivating suckers a speedy inventory of cheerless fan-wreckage...
DEBRIS AND SKIN-DUST AND KIDNEYS AND LEMONS!
But observe clearly this. Floating a little way above: the stretched and hooded mind. The crumpled, shaven orb that sees, perceives, conceives, snatches at sleepless rest: revives, survives and spunks! spunks! spunks again!
And lo! Flung out with that boneless arm: a nerve disentangled. Endless and reckless; wincing and fruitless, it spatters itself - oh yes it does - across the limited backdrop...
AND WHAT DO THEY DISCOVER, THE SUCKERS AND THE NERVE?
After all that scratching and etching, belching and rapping?
JUST WHAT DO THEY DEDUCE?
"WELL DARLING..." It seems they deduced the scenario of a face. Faultless and blameless; a target most worthy and open to those who are closed.
AND THE FLOUNDERING SPECTATOR, HAVING SURVIVED AS LONG AS HE WAS WILLING, GURGLES AND CRIES ALOUD (IN A LOFTY VOICE, BENEATH TWO COHERENT WORDS):
"Faultless and blameless! FAULTLESS AND BLAMELESS!"
NOW COME WITH ME...
He removed himself to the other end of the crumb-broad universe, until at last he was at once:
The Dirt At Both Ends Of The Crumb-Broad Universe.
He did it again before dismissing his own suckered TONGUE. He detached his balding FINGER-PRINTS, too. Tossed them into the pleasant arena. (That tongue was white and jointless, too. Those finger-tips shrill - though by no means SUCKERED).
He dispatched them all with a lolling urgency & very little PANIC: out, out and out - back back and back to
THAT BLASTED SOURCE.
The tongue GRAPPLED with the limb (sweet grapple).
The finger-ends TEASED into the nerve.
(Had he not long since relished a tease such as this?)
They then beat themselves down and beat themselves upright. Each and every last one. Succumbed and conquered. Flat as a crust. Yes. Flat as lust.
He shouted it: "I HAVE YOU NOW!" (sweeping illusion):
"YOU ARE MINE! YOU WHO DETEST ARE INGESTED! YOU WITH YOUR PLEAS AND SLANTED VERSE, ARE SWALLOWED DOWN WITH SALT AND BURNING GRAVY!
"I WIN MY GAME AGAIN!"
He shrieked, again, and set to work.
(THE SUCKERS AND THE HAIRS continue loudly and blandly overleaf... (sic) )
He had to rest in spite of himself, after that colossal organ-limb embrace of himself, and recoup the plucked hairs. He squatted in the centre and restored to greasy perfection a photo-fit semblance of all the plucked hairs. Regrettably, the result squeezed itself into a decision. That decision in turn led to a peculiar, irregular happiness.
- However, this was not discovered until much much later, when all was fairly well beneath the world..
And, by the straightening and tidying of the sucked, ordered and finally catalogued plucked hairs, he convinced himself that his character would be strengthened. Even, that the span of his existence would be lengthened. Also, he assumed that his history, his infancy, his melancholy journey and the fucking sucked, plucked hairs themselves would be strengthened, lengthened, healed and mentioned in halls and in hovels, in cathedrals and brothels; where things of the kind are esteemed and celebrated WITH THE LAYING OF DULL STONE SLABS.
A TURNING POINT.
Much later again, he considered the nooks and creases within sucking distance and decided, without the hint of a struggle, to suck out the contents of all of them. He started with his teacher, tutor and school-chum. He had followed, from a safe distance, the maturation and degradation of all of them. Stripping them of blazers and ties, scrubbing out their ears, he sucked them all in. Naturally, he spat them out immediately, for the taste was alarming; then sucked them in twice more. Twice more.
He reeled in, too, all the wasted time he had generously and selfishly spent at border crossings. He lay in wait at the first of them, caught hold of some virgin ghost of himself, and sucked it in. Its taste was obscenity condensed, quite as expected, but he gulped it down with a jar of pickled ex-girlfriends and a can of worm beer: then purred his way through the hangover.
Spread-eagled in the pea-green grass he lay, at the end, and chewed things over. Mulled and chewed things over. Chewed, mulled, then boarded things over. Once and for all.
The next step:
To re-hash every meal consumed by himself in the recent-distant past, prise them loose, outwardly ingest them and suck them forevermore from his flagging substance.
Another challenge:
To suck out the endless arsenic lies he had wittingly swallowed. (Strangely, they slipped out through the relevant pores to surrender noiselessly, thankfully even: and he flushed them away.)
Bye, bye, relevant lies.
Next:
He would pool together all the gravy he had inhaled with burnt meals. He would establish a LOCH OF GRAVY purposed to flow into the shallows of his two ropey spines; leaving chalky peaks of vertebrae stranded and looming, the way he had always pictured them. The way they should have been set in the first place. In fact, the task proved more easily accomplished than jotted down.
In the epilogue he would suck off the chain...
However, try as he would, it refused to budge. He resorted to blowing it away in the accustomed manner, but before he was able, it dissolved at the thought.
MADNESS & SUCCESS!
MADNESS & SUCCESS!
MADNESS & SUCCESS!
MADNESS & SUCCESS!
But for a little thing:
He grasped and fought long with the wobbly structure of his shoddy existence till it lay defeated and respectful on a chipped terracotta roof tile which he discovered, upon coming around, clamped between his legs.
SO! He had massaged away his enemies and, at length, even impressed his very sad friend.
But a phrase now recurred and jammed in his tract.
An idea had been loosed and now snipped its way with dreadful knives to the surface.
The Fault in THAT BLOTTED HORIZON creaked savagely and announced (yes, the Fault announced):
"The Face! The water in the Eyes! The flanges of skin idling warm between Lip and sensual Gum. The smear on the Chin. The Larynx, the Lung..!
...Bid you ill, they do.
Bid you ill.
"Dear, oh dear!" Thrown and amazed! Amazed and thrown! What ought be done? What may be done?
- Placing the over-filled glass on his belly, she allows him to pull the trigger. Greedily, deafeningly, she persuades him to pull his trigger...
