Venatio; Lucid Oversleep; Aural Hallucinogens; Lemon Rinds and the High Ceiling; Withdrawal
Liz Sheedy ~ Class of 2018
I. Venatio
A B-flat bugle exudates measures in a scabrous paroxysm of sound;
each successive tintinnabulation wrinkles the duck cloth encircling
my vision into folds analogous to flapjacks piled as high as the
Triangulum Galaxy. My neurons sense a skillet’s touch, a pucker mark
where the cast-iron surface had branded me with ustulate gums.
I am unsure about whether this imago was conjured
by twill canvases woven in a choke-dry riverside mill,
rancorously nailed to an easel before paint wells
bearing the viscosity of clowns’ cerebrae imbrued
with Dimethyltryptamine, or of the ophidian sleeves
stitched to a straight waistcoat manufactured to secure
both arms in a rigid self-embrace.
Which is more, a repulsive aftertaste draws bile on my breath.
The buglist’s crude performance holepunches my frontal lobe;
this musician has grown like Alice after consuming a fungus and
proceeds to crush the caterpillars smoking La Auroras underneath him.
The man’s mechanical embouchure shadows the inken
contours of his face—his cheeks swell into dirigibles
with every inhale; his Adam’s Apple chafes into a pie
pleasing to Aristippus; unvarnished passion hemorrhages
from his esophagus and filters through the harsh translations
of his instrument; the alveoli compress until his ovine lungs
are submerged halfway in Pinot noir.
So formidable a presentation belongs to Paul de Vos.
The ungodly malady shrieks most clearly now through the brass.
Only momentarily does it continue to rive perceptual space before
de Vos’ music breathes with finality into a resounding silence.
A gloved hand forms the gesture.
A venatio commences.
The mastodonic artist slowly withdraws his bugle, and, with
sinistral hand, lifts an oyster fork from his velveteen pocket,
the utensil, horrific with three noisome prongs.
I could hear the fork’s hideous laughter, shrieks akin to those
of metal sparring with dinnerplates, as the colossal Flemish
laves his cutlery in the twizzler-shaped amylases of his maw.
The maniacal face differs not greatly from a mime’s
mouthful of sea urchin: copious with cocktail sauce as his
blood’s antigens reject the horseradish, he fails to scream
lucidly around the meat hooks pulling the erminette paint
off the mute’s horrifically silent expression.
De Vos pries open my frozen integuments and muses over
the clittoral shape of his half shell Hors d'oeuvre.
Peradventure, with his dextral finger, my hunter molds
around me another snare; could I be more than a mollusk,
but a stag who rests his neck too closely to the setters and
whippets, the finest specimens of their stock?
What malversation have I committed in my sovereign office
to end up here? Is the casus belli my continual attempt at
escaping predatory boredom? Is it my constant pursuit
of the naloxone whenever I inundate myself with the slender
probosci of needles that quaff my natural elixirs dry?
Beyond the pancakes and Paul de Vos,
I descry an adventurer, hungers having been
curbed by the granaries and nectars of his hosts.
If you can suffer another onus, Papilio ulysses,
take heed, then, of my words, however much
they may please or displace you.
Onward to Ithaca, through Messina, you are fated to travel,
but while you pass me by, may you reel me out of Charybdis?
Do not let the bourrasque toss me any deeper,
where the stairs cultivated by my poorest decisions
are ongoing; for I fear that there is no floor anywhere
to cease my descent down these merciless flights.
II. Lucid Oversleep
There are Ren and Stimpy, sated on a balanced meal
of Haribo sugarfree Gummy Bears and Johnny Rockets’
multi-stratum hamburgers. They blow on clarinets,
juggle flaming hoecakes in an attempt to shoot an
Amazon parrot with paintball guns, and pogo-stick in a
bouncy house impregnated with C4, pipe bombs, Venetian
glass, and a blind Chianina bull, all while they platespin
on their noses. An internal constipation of concussive pains
and muscle spasms renders me in this demolishing state.
However may I comport myself when tryptamines are rubix-
cubing my nerve net into a cannabutter-stuffed sock monkey?
III. Aural Hallucinogens
Something was just birthed within the linings
of my embalming thoughts. Its caul still bleeds
through my linens, leaves my lips sticky with a
placental sweetness that softens my semiliquid
sight of the lollipop girls Lindy Hopping to the
binaural beats summoning Mephistopheles in
my skull. The shadow in the shape of a sarcophagus
looms pervasively over the table on which I lie.
Howbeit, there are neither resins nor curry powders
to ensure a safe passage through this bardo of stranger
sorts. The hands spidering over me are rubber and
artless, graced not with the massaging gentleness of
beloveds. Vinegar spites the impure hands. Meanwhile,
the newborn pules unto its bearer for a strength
without which it cannot perish.
IV. Lemon Rinds and the High Ceiling
The prize shelf in the nearby throwing-darts gamestall
is assorted with hidden rebuses (the “Rig” Master had
placed a pair of prescription glasses on one of the toy
bats and fitted an oral thermometer into a woolen beagle)
which escape the notice of passersby brainwashed
threefold by sparkling fruit punch; children ineptly miss
their targets and end up eviscerating the plush rabbits
hanging from the tent’s ceiling.
Pinwheels splice open air and scudding cloud
in emulation of migrant butterflies; their sundry
stars and stripes refract the downsliding sun
as dough would sheen under recess lighting
and slowly lose its stick on a vertical cookie tray.
In early August, the smell of funnel cakes is still
scintillating in contrast with the barbecue scrim
which quickly benumbs the olfactories. For the
joyous while I watch the menageries of foodies,
winos, adrenaline junkies, schizoids, and hustlers
behind the aegis of my Fender,
an identity where no one need know my name.
Nurtured by the tastes of lemon rinds I play
the Second Coming of the Stone Roses, stealing
glances at the heavens infiltrated by let-go balloons
and other mortal playthings. Stilt walkers graze their
heads against the troposphere’s rounded ceiling.
Before closing hours, the grounds become wild with
parents who search frenetically for their children
having been hypnotized by the simple harmonic
motion of the pirate ship ride or by their
psychedelic sweetmeats on sticks.
Come midnight, my lemonade changes into something
like Rittenhouse Rye. Come midnight, the rides are
brighter, the clowns crasser, the magazines raunchier,
the music, the fantastic music, louder.
Alone, my tears are freer, in constant wonderment
about those children elsewhere, hands intertwined
with the spirited candy flosses spun by the simplest
but most valuable matter in existence.
Fingers blistered, curled around gnarled guitar strings,
I bemoan paychecks void of validations
and a mini-fridge free of picture magnets.
V. Withdrawal
Slippery elms press their fragrant lozenges
into my pores, bruise my ankles with their
knee-roots projecting upward from the earthen
forest floor. You were soughing ceaselessly,
branches dressed with wax, while howling musics
quickened my adrenalized flight through your
dominion. Now, I feel leaden rootstocks slither
against the bottoms of my feet.
The single burning lantern does not avail to
illuminate the faces appearing from behind a
screen door and into the airless decay. Detained
in some shack hidden near an acreage overgrown
with pigweeds, unsure of my misdoing, I perspire
down my temple and the bridge of my nose, watching,
apprehensive, the table at which I am seated.
Mucous wells in my throat at the sight of the wood
as it rots with a fervid, insalubrious wet. Termites
and their larvae, squelching their bodies like creamed
hominy, make repast upon the moldy wood. A view from
the glassless window betrays an old, green gun truck,
likely a Katyusha rocket launcher, which wears red tire plates.
Splinters chew on my arms, nautical rope my wrists;
no anima remains within my spirit to overturn this fear
desensitized so long by forced habituation.
How is self awareness powerful when, below
the scalpel’s scribery and cigarette burns,
I know that I am naked and that these rapacious
hands wringing my body are not wanted?
Prayer, faltering prayer, penetrate this heavenless place:
if I am ordained to feel, then let me no longer see,
let me no longer hear what these needles have to say.
Permit me to peel the blood vessels off my eyes
with my fingernails, dun where bacterial cultures grow.
The simultaneous jabs inflame my serpentine veins:
in sequence, a spontaneous cry, coupled with
voluntary disgust, subsides as my body, in reception
of the influent poppies, is racked with an interval
of violent delight. The flowers of the transgressor
oppose my distress and slow down the surging backwater.
My head hangs aslant,
too heavy for an enfeebled neck to lift.
The roots in the floor and my circulatory
system share an unlikely kinship.
Before my clavicles and costae mend together
into a constrictor knot, a grave deduction is made
and quickly obscured by a perfunctory yawn:
abrading in the brief rhapsody of moments,
quiet mind, propagate this leitmotif no more.
Quiet mind, withdraw.