Refractions
A series of short pieces by Clarke Nova
Guns slip into holsters of slick leather, like cocks into
greased and nameless arseholes. Butts carved from rich black ebony, inlaid with elegant
cameos of naked boys, crafted from mother-of-pearl. Barrels worn smooth from use, the
bluing worn from sights and muzzles. Holsters, simple flaps of leather, not the vulgar
tie-downs used by those who merely kill. Random images flash down the corridors of time,
lodging at intervals in the brain.
Rolled them up in a sheet of oiled paper, to preserve them against the rust of time -
already a fine patina of corrosion had formed on them. Memories fade and flicker, dim with
age, burn out neuron like neuron, like talent. Dream shadows, black and white swirls of
Freewheelin' Bob's weenie. Typewriters filled with shredded wheat, coffee beans roasted
over a candle, rivulets of squalid semen flowing down from greedy urchins' mouths - some
old queen's come the last hot food they taste. Open the soap ducts - Dutch Schulzts's
voice calls from the 20's - cries for French Canadian Bean Soup go unheeded. Dry dust
bellows from collapsing lungs, as cows push through gaps in temporary enclosure - are they
too caged? Come dancing, who thinks of these names? As penance, David had to collect an
hundred foreskins, before he became leader of the Israelites - he brought back two hundred
Philistine prepuces, founding the Hebrew nation on dicks. Probably bit them off, like the
pissy queen the gentiles always portrayed him as. Sling straps break, a penchant for all
things cavalry ends a monarch's reign, Russia decays in a morass of serfdom. Garland's
voice, sweet and sorrowful, echoes from the stereo - freed from the aged, bloated, drunk
and drugged body that came to house it. Passed the taste for booze and pills on to her
daughter, transferred the allegiance of gays from one generation to the next.
Pain trapped on the sensitised cells of drink affected neurons - surfacing only when
required, just in time to fuck all over again the object of hate, the object of love.
Burning bushed give false advice, call for the sacrifice of children, ridicule their
audience, then extinguish in a puff of self-satisfied smoke, smell of dead leaves, the
whistle of trains. Distracted by interruptions, disturbed by random visitors who come and
go, clutching carriers of Yiddish loaves, shiny discs and sipping sugared caffeine.
McCarthyism rears its ugly head, and I am entreated to trust in medications prescribed and
proscribed by street medics. Placental blood stains the sheet of calculations, then they
are hurled from a window - clocks stopping at 8.15, fixed by the rapid division of an
atom. Peroxided hair settles into place, framing the white face, red lips of a long dead
Goddess.
Distant - always distant. Conversations held seemingly by semaphore signals, stilted and
disjointed, halting. Ground zero impact - flesh boils from the very framework of human
bodies, shadows are etched forever on walls. We have become destroyers of worlds, said
Oppenheimer, daddy of the all encompassing death used twice. They bred - more ugly with
each passing generation, able to fracture the every existence with their intensity....
Faces melting, merging, flowing like warm plasticine, before they are consumed by the wall
of flames. the very air itself burns, pulling the oxygen from the still breathing lungs.
No other species systematically tries to destroy themselves, nor succeeds like us. An in
built genetic flaw - the altruistic gene seems to have been eliminated from the DNA which
encodes our future. the ultimate soul trap - buildings stand still, but the occupants
vaporized. Neurotoxins, virii, haemotoxic poison cause death by drowning in your own
blood. Germ warfare reared its ugly head during the plague - wells poisoned by corpses,
bodies flung over the ramparts by catapults, to spread the lice born pestilence. Blankets
impregnated with smallpox distributed to Indian and Aboriginal alike. even the common
cold, and syphilis were used to expunge other races from their own homes. We are a corrupt
and evil species, and we have systematically corrupted, polluted and destroyed our very
living areas - even dumb animals do not shit where they eat.
Rage - hate - madness, these things fuel writing. No drug can adequately synthesis these
emotions to the point that functional word pictures form, ready to be transcribed. Each
page is a kind of petit mal, jerked into being.
Anal - truly one of the more disturbing words to have entered modern usage. People forget
that there are two separate phases of development - expulsion and retention. Why not use
the terms "oral", "genital" or polymorphous perverse" as well -
or are they not scatological enough? If all things are reduced to shit, then what is the
purpose of living? What does it matter, what ever you do, you will die, and your body will
return to the corruption of matter from which it sprang. Too late to salve the soul with
mystic unguents, magic crystals, poison it with pills and booze. Corrupt, all is shit, all
shall become shit again. It's the old 3/8 principal - most of the shit is hidden by a
facade of friendship and trust, while an eddy of putrid excreta circulates beneath the
exterior. To read is to seek an understanding of what is being read. Without
understanding, it is meaningless. Understanding is not analysis - that is the vivisection
of words, the tearing down of an idea into its component molecules, and rebuilding it in
your own image. Doctor Dent's magic cure fixed Uncle Bill over a decade ago - now it's
nothing stronger than tea & vodka. Gone is the belt gripped between the teeth - gone
is the junk drawn up from a blackened spoon, through the gauze, into the eye-dropper.
Replaced instead by methadone, then apomorphine. Replaced by a triple-bypass, a cracked
hip. New York, Texas, Mexico, Tangiers, Paris, London all replaced by the small town feel
of Lawrence, Kansas. Ian Sommerville replaced Kiki, replaced Joan - all ultimately
replaced by James Grauerholtz. Jack died an alcoholic recluse, died of liver failure, like
Billy Burroughs - Uncle Bill's son.
He wrote, too. "Speed", it was called, seeing as he was addicted to Benzedrine
and booze from birth. Died in a ditch - William didn't go to the funeral. He had a step
daughter, too. Never heard what became of her after Joan's death. Jack's daughter became a
junky whore - her book's in the Hub library. Keasey was in & out of jails, mental
institutions - acid and smack and the Merry Pranksters with Neal Cassady driving an old
school-bus across the 60's. Cassady died of exposure, counting railway sleepers in the
chill of night. Paul Bowles crouches in Tangiers, no phone, no desire for contact from the
outside world. Sits there with his little pot of majoun (the basis for Cronenberg's Black
Meat), hashish candy made from resin, almonds and spice. Killed one of his characters with
it in "The Sheltering Sky". Jane Bowles had one stroke after another, aphasia
clouded her mind, rumors that she was poisoned by their Arab housekeeper.
"Heir's pistol kills wife - he denies playing William Tell" - "Evil spirit
shot Joan to be _cause_". No dogs allowed - No dogs are loud - Know dogs allowed -
Know dogs are loud - No dogs aloud - Know dogs aloud. Confessions of an unredeemed drug
addict. Junkie, Junky. The characters spill over to Queer, a yage quest. Fucking around in
a jungle, 1953, looking for a vine that had the potential to be the ultimate fix. Dragged
suitcases of it back to the States, threatened to cut Peter up with a machete over it. In
the end, it just made them so ill.
Cabra girls, desperate to break free from the convent, talk loudly about the unsafe sex
they have with their shaggy, hairy passing rough. Plastic bags, hiding cheap vodka,
circulate from bag to bag, to be hidden and consumed in an orgiastic binge of release,
culminating in drunken sex. Cheap makeup and perfume hide unflawed skin of youth, free
from the blemishes of age, applied seemingly at random so as to resemble nothing more than
circus clowns. They talk of going on to better things - it seems that most burn with the
desire to be secretaries in law firms, for some strange reason. Yet to hear one say that
she wishes to go on to Uni... only on to the Austral on Fridays. Austudy, thrush and grass
seem to be de rigeur to have, though it seems that NSU will do in a pinch. What will
become of these girls? What will they be like in five years time - for five years is not
that great a time period.
But no sex is truly safe - it creates its own little set of problems - emotionally
turbulent, muddying the pools from which we drink. Causing tensions and frictions.
Pervading feelings of worthlessness, episodes of black depressions, longings for release
from a self created prison. Even auto-eroticism, the simple wank, does not dispel it.
One way street this - no exchange. No trade, no barter. Words never come free - Ginsberg
knew this. There is always a price to be paid - old men sell their souls for a strap-on,
young men just grow old. Pointless, futile, damaging. It cannot go on like this. Vanished
- no contact for months. The only thoughts seem to be those of return. Someone once wrote
that you can never come home - it is never the same, and people change whilst the fixtures
and fittings do not.
This is enough - as Wyatt Earp allegedly said:
"It all ends here".
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