Barefoot in the Head Read online

  Only then as Boreas crawled off the platform to lie again in peace under the caressing feathers of his heated pond did the Master speak to him.

  ‘You are an artist — come with us along the multi-value mazes of our mission. Your film caught all the spirit of our cause my life my thought the unspeaking nature of spontagnous living in mystic state!’

  Then Boreas turning his great bare bead and naked tearlined cheeks like udders grey with dawn: ‘You stupid godverdomme acidheads and junkies all the same you live inside your crazy nuts and never see a thing beyond! So you mastered my masterpiece, was it? Pah! My fool man de Grand was supposed to bring the cans of film but in his stinking state forgot — and once caught here impossible to leave again the cattlepen. And so my masterpiece my High Point Y unseen and unshown this golden importunity!’

  ‘We saw it all! It sparked right over with total lootage!’

  Sick with disgust salivating.

  ‘God knows what you thought you saw! God knows, I swear I’ll drown myself, shoot myself, harpoon myself to death, never film again! Not only is my masterpiece unshown but not one of your armada knows it or misses it. This is the nadirene anti-death of art!’

  Bitter and acid, Angelines rank morning laughter bit them.

  Charteris took in breezy semi-grasp Boreas’ coat and pointed at the emptying square of stood squampede grey in washed-out light but ambered by flames that now consumed the pinnacles recently putrescent in other taints.

  ‘You have no faith in transmutation or my well of the miraculous! Your oldtime art has caught a light at last! Everything you Boreas tried for broke fire materially and burns into our sounding chambers! You are my second blazer henchforth, Boreas, a black wind blowing off the old alternatives and hurricaning those who cling to what was, electric, electric, see the sign! What you making here in newchanced happens! Stellar art!’ He laughed and cried tired dregs leaping leaping.

  Through his blandering tears stared electric Boreas, clutching at his bare brow, screaming, ‘You gurglingodfool — your rainbowheaded randyears have set fire to the place! It’s the last loot! My poor beloved city burning! Bruxelles, Bruxelles!’

  The poison that powered their inner scrutinies seeped into beetling baldbright Boreas so he saw himself tumultaneously making the cripple still upon the cabbalistic asphalt making couch among a lake of flames making love to a dummivulva making Age old Ina suffer him. His face cracked its banks china thoughts depiggied. Boreas saw more of boreased self than he could dare or wish to see. He rocked with unreason on the staggered balcony of outsight.

  Manifolding with discardment he cheek in hand into the dull inner chambers of shade past old banners toothed with black lions collided with the birdlike nervous drapery-deportment figure of a human cassowary to hiss shoulder lept unmoving and instantly with locking blubber arm seized him groaning and yowling for accompaniment.

  ‘I am ill — magisterially ill!’ Hollowly to his lackneed squir.

  Thus the blind bleeding the blind and dankring leech to leech upon romaining leechions highways where this wesciv sinbiote first took its blindwheeling veinhold with the cohorts tormenta in hurling knowhow to the punchy vein and murk the scenariover evermorgue till savvy was a scavengers filiure of which this sciatic scattering long kuwaited just the last bloodstrained curtain. After the legendary coherets among the darkfalling walls of oh my westering world the venomilk of progross gains its bright eclipse and suppurages from the drawbridgeheads of cleverknowing Charteris gold-pated Nicholas Boreas and black jack cass.

  Nothing for Cass but this supporting role uneasy-eyed or never rubicond to shuffer with the ruined borean bulk out down a lamenting grand stair and by tenuous tenebrous betelgrained deathsquared slipways to Boreas’ luxconapt.

  There with continuing cunning whines for succour, Boreas almost hauled him to his pool edge. But at the sight of those bulbous hyacinth the castaway squealed like a lifted root seeking too in the convex gilt eyes twin unaimed deadmen of himself!

  ‘Yes, die-by-drowning, Cass, you undreaming schemer of your hire-oglyphed runways! Wasn’t it you who brought this pyromanichee circus into city just for hope of trade, Cass, for hope of trade? You neo-Nero para-promethean primp, they’ve sacked our silver-breasted capital, haven’t they? Haven’t they? Under the gargling lilies with your scant scruballs!’

  He wrenched and tugged in buttacking flapping angony but Cass was nimble and failing took the epicurer man off balance with one tricky twisting cast of leg. Together they struck and smacked among showering orfe and weed and tame piranhas glimpsing for a nanoment undersea eyes of each with sibyling hatred widely divinited beneath the parting roots. Then Cass was sourfacing and outkelping himself, evading Boreas’ doctopurulent grasp to snatch from his stocking nestling a slender beak of knife.

  So they confronted, Boreas half-submanged with foliaged morses dotting his sunken suit. Then he recalled his anger with flecked lungs, leaped up brandishing his arm and in megavoice again on set bellowed in long bursting vein the terrors of his repudation!

  Wilting Cass turned his tail before the wind and like a deflayded animal ran away somewhere into the smoking cityhive to hide.

  That cityhive and what its singeing symbolled did cosmic Charteris survey from the shaking platform.

  Angeline shook the Master’s arm. ‘Come on, Masterpiece, let’s shake this unaimed scenario before the whole action goes Vesuvius! Come on! Uncoil the Kundalini!’

  He stood enwrapped staring as the centuries fevered to the edges and breathed and blew themselves to heat again and their stones ran in showers kill slate cracked down the long glacier of mansard roofs and hurtled into the extinct square below to be devoured with its old common order in the long morain of alienation.

  He pushed her away.

  ‘Colin! Colin! I’m not flame-proof if you are! It’s the last loot-in else!’

  Rich curtains at the windows of an old embroidery now released a noise like cheering and whistling swept the blaze and the crushed bodies in the square below burst into conflagration with amazing joy. One or two cars were still careening madly about to lie with black bellies uppermost lewdly burning tyres still rotating as their votaries dragged themselves away. The emptying bowls held ashes and a lascivious flute held court.

  Angelina was having a mild hysteric fit, crying this was London burning and slapping Charteris wildly on the face. He in his eyes scribbled on the retinal wall saw the graffiti of her blazing hate and all behind her flames like christmas cacti flowering with a lorry coming fast recalled her husband the white land as it rushes up but no impact and his blows and knew among the microseconds lay a terminal alternative to silence her and have no more inspector at his feast for she as much as any of the predelic enemies among the Neanders dream her speckled wake.

  She in her turn was not too wild to see a redder shade of crimson leap up his retaining wall and with a lesser scream now our valleys fall echoing before them now in our shattered towns the smoke clings still as the ulcerated countryside rumpled outwards at predatorial speed to her fluttering chimera she did the sleight-of-hand and dodged him as he once more sprang and pushed clutching at his ancient blue coat of Inner Relief but now no Christmas innocence. Slipping he fell and at the rickety platform edge hung down to see bloodied cobbles under surflare. With instinct she on top of him flung her bony trunk loading him back and cosseted him and goosed and mewed and sat him up and like a mother made all kindliness but milk there though the sun novaed.

  Half-stunned he sighed, ‘You are my all-ternatives,’ and she half-wept upon him at such grudged sign.

  Their hair singed and Buddy Docre came in an illusory moment with Ruby who fancied her and Bill and Greta yelling murder. They together all but not in unison climbed tumbled down the foul inner chimney stair and ran among the flailing lava of another Eurape to the battered cavalcade jarring to take off in another street with the nervewrecked bangwaggon.

  ‘Boreas!’ cast the whiteface Master. ‘We must save Boreas
!’

  And she glowed him amazed still in his headwound he had some human part that plugged for the schillerskulled director. But she was learning now and now stayed silent at his murderous feast with inward tremor knowing she would not break a single crust if Boreas loafed or died as maybe the Master minded: a gulf of more than language lay between them.

  Vanquished she tottered against Ruby his face moonstrous in the setglow and he grasped to the smouldering pompous columns gasping ‘Change gear Ange your way doesn’t have to be his or my car in the Chartercade you know that you know how I skid for you even since before Phil’s day two rotten no good bums — ’

  But he gave up as through her frantic goosetears she began on tearawy note that she was not good enough for him was no good to any man deserved to die or could render to no man the true grips of loves clutchment till the others turned back calling and Charteris took her failing wrist abraptly.

  For him the self was once again in its throne called back from the purged night’s exile and he commanded no more as he faced the lack of his own divinity in all its anarchic alternative. His pyre grew behind him as they barged off across the ruby pavements for as Buddy passed a reefer he flipped the photograph that he had godded himself because they had to crown some earthly king then had forgotten that he was their moulding not his make so tunnelling upwards through the sparce countryside the mole-truth set up its tiny hill that all was counterfate in a counterfeit kingdoom.

  He had cried for Boreas because that artifacer could help blow blazes from his parky wavering nature with the bellows of his counterfaking craft.

  Before real miracles he had to dislocate the miraculous in himself. New dogs shagged along alleyways with ties of flame. A man ran blazing down a side street. Dischorded impages of choleranis sang along the bars of his perplextives. All were infected from him and in that pandemetic lay his power to make or sicken till nature itself couched underground.

  A smoke pall canopiled overhead the new angrimals swimming powerfully in it or hopping along the crestfallen buildings. Shops stood plagened open entrailed on the echoing gravements as men noised abroad and struck at each other with fansticks more than one fire was buckling up its lootage as they acidheaded out towards the oceanic piracy of their motorways.

  FAMINE STARTING AT THE HEAD

  She clad herself in nylon

  Walked the flagstones by my side

  The feathered eagle

  To the skies

  No more uprises

  Instead a palm of dust grows

  You know that earthly tree now bears no bread

  A hand outstretched is trembling

  The flagstaff has an ensign

  Only madmen see

  With famine starting at the head

  Some judy delivers a punchline

  In the breadbasket today

  No fond embraces

  Are afoot

  Death puts a boot

  Where the bounce was once

  In among the listening lilies a silent tread

  Bite the fruit to taste the stone

  Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

  The rain to stalk

  Famine starting at the head

  He only has to say one word

  Roses grow from an empty bowl

  In our shuttered streets

  The cars roam

  Don’t need a home

  Or volume control

  Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

  We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

  On the Golden Coast the cymbals

  Start to sound

  Salvation starting at the head

  TORTURES

  There’s no answer from the old exchange

  I want to push inside you

  The sensations you find in yourself

  May just be within my range

  Grimly sitting round a table

  Fifteen men with life at stake

  They may torture themselves but those tortures

  Will not make them awake

  The cards were somehow different

  The board I had not seen before

  Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with s

  Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

  Last year they stopped their playing

  Phone just ceased to buzz

  But if you find them there tomorrow

  Better start in there praying

  Reincarnation where the cobwebs

  Are comes daily from your keep

  We may torture ourselves but those tortures

  Cannot break our sleep

  POOR A!

  (Gurdjieffs Mocking Song)

  Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

  He only wants to talk and he is happy!

  I could have pulled his trousers off

  Un-noticed, silly chappie!

  Poor A! Poor A! What sort of man is it

  Who only wants to talk and he’s okay?

  I tell you everyone’s like that —

  They fill the world today.

  I might say poor old A is rather better

  Then some wild talkniks I have met, a

  Chap who in his way knows what is what —

  On military onions he knows quite a lot.

  In a superficial public way he tries to find out Why:

  And he’d hate to think he ever told a lie.

  Poor A! Poor A! He is no longer young!

  He said so much I think and was uncouth

  To guard against an awful chance

  To listen to the truth —

  He led himself a merry dance —

  He hid his head in circumstance—

  To fight against the truth!

  Disciples: Poor us! Poor us! We really felt his tongue

  He drank Khagetia and chattered without ruth

  To guard against his only chance

  To hear G give out truth —

  He led us all a merry dance —

  He leads himself a dreary prance —

  To smite against the truth!

  To fight against the truth!

  THE UNAIMED DEADMAN THEME

  Foreign familiar filthy fastidious forgotten forbidden

  Suicide’s revelation its sunnyside hidden

  Death’s black-and-white checker is down on the table

  Fugitive fustian funebral infinite formidable

  Far down the runway the black sheds are standing

  My love talks to me with a delicate air

  I am the victim the assassin the wounder

  Her face looks no larger as I stand close than

  It simultaneously does in my telescope sights

  But pleasant is walking where elmtrees paint shadow

  If I fire I might as well hit me

  I walked with her once where her elms brought their shadows

  The dogrose dies now while the invalid car

  Barks vainly and I the assassin the wounder

  On the runways the markings are no longer valid

  Hieroglyphs of a system now long obsolete

  No this button first love yes that’s the idea

  If I fire I might as well hit me

  Foreign familiar filthy fastidious forbidden forgotten

  I sprinted a dozen times over where rotten

  Things grew and she cried for a sweet-flavoured minute

  Fugitive fustian funebral formidable infinite

  LAMENT OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE OLD ORDER

  (A silent dummy dirge)

  We kept up our façade

  The unworld showed the third world how

  And prized its pretty inhibitions

  They undressed us

  And possessed us

  And now that times are hard

  The unworld holds its outward show

  Too late for us to change positions

  They have dressed us

  And confessed us

  THE SHUTTERED STREET GIRL

  (Love
song for flutes)

  Her face showed like a shuttered street

  Under the mauve and maureen flash

  From which iguanas might crawl

  Golden gullets wide

  She stood there in a wet shift breathing

  And just a mental block away

  A lane lay in old summer green

  Behind her pregnant eyes

  Where a young barefoot girl might drive

  Her would-be-swans all day

  Or night for night and day are both

  They don’t apply

  There’s always summer in the dreaming elms

  Till your last shuttered white year

  And while the small rain fills

  The thoroughfares of love

  So her face in blue fermentation

  When she crouches seems

  Like an ever-visiting miracle

  As she pees by old brickheaps

  There’s whole sparse countryside

  Buckling up from far

  Underground as she stoops there

  And our small rain raining

  THE INFRASOUND SONG

  Where the goose drinks wait the wildmen

  Wait the wildmen watching their reflections

  When the damson fruits the wildmen

  Wild Neanders dream their speckled sleep

  They have their dances ochre-limbed to a stone’s tune

  And their heavy hymns for the solstice dawn

  Their dead go down into their offices berobed

  With ceremony. Their virgins paint

  Their cinnamon lips with juice of berry

  They owned the world before us