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.