Editions MSS
Editions MSS
MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND
Divastigations
Sixth Divastigation

A byword for lunacy

Antlion. From a photograph shot by Otto X. Goldbarg, c. 1924–1927, of a Mountain Fukari clay bowl (#2004.24.13595) found with Ossuary 162 in Room 21 of Swarts Ruin, Grant, Wyoming, and on display at Harvard’s Display Institution of Old Folks and Tribals in Boston, Mass.
§ 116.
As though in a fog. — And should I hit suspicion’s gift? Spartan aim as dazzling as it is satiric. In contrary proportion as rhythm to gravity, a singular world split or wrought from plural. Illusion and possibility in functional opposition. That’s what I said to him. That I could spin a crashing trail of light. Diminish this limit or wring shadow from obscurity. Rational imagination. It’s worth a whip’s wording of it, for all I know.
§ 117.
Floating, dancing, mocking, childish and blissful art. — And should I solicit this fool star a form of cinnabar dust? Such gods as I furnish this room with hook a laugh-hatch from suicidal plots of passion. This way out, thank you. Was I so afraid of falling that all I could do was jump? Paid for in kind. A show of virtuosity. And so worn out from that solitary unitary god cult’s folly, morality has lost its humanity. My hand is light with a dizzy quill of its own doxology. To balk bottom-up a play of chant and timing. Sun-stiff shadow angling up a wall.
§ 118.
How could it grow and multiply? — And should I justify world’s intrusion into art? Of any world a possibility is a world in fact. Waking pools of light from a dusk-dull pond, a flat flint thrown skips world world world and sinks. Dirt-poor analogy for what mind consigns to art: world from a possibility of worlds. Instinct cuts dull habit. Throw again. Of any world a thing (this flat flint found on flood plain, that trochaic thrum of whippoorwill chortling from far across this pond I squint at (and as you probably know too plainly, it’s a glancing squint that aims at truth)) is in many worlds a shadow (but not, as far as I know, a shadow’s shadow)). So light and thin and smooth and round and condign in my palm it fits. To toss is both joy and loss. But nothing will pass away. From world to world swimming into shadow infinity’s light casts on possibility. That’s a hybrid world, I think. Poor try at opposing confusion with cant. Art abstracts world from world’s shadow. A glancing path through poplar and willow I follow from brook to pond. This gnat-stung vision and spiral flight of rut. Throw again or toss. Of any world’s inhabitants dying or living occurs in all worlds as shadow’s transformation. Nothing can pass away. Say it plain. From this world your body unborn is waking unborn again into world world world skipping and sinks. In this world always I am sobbing.
§ 119.
But as things now stand. — And should I rival by day my midnight boast? Dutiful fiction claims childish proof for custody’s traffic. At bottom’s a domain to fill affairs with trading. Morning’s a rarity. I drank that pain. Doltish and livid and long past noon my skirt’s a cat-cot fold warm and fuzzy. Thong-lost, I borrow a fly-front pair of his cotton sousshorts. Chatting’s obligatory, I’m told. Gin and tonic’s Tony’s drink; straight vodka’s Vighdan’s. It’s not that I’m mad. Of worth and longing vainly for it. It’s that I’m mockingly placid. Of lack and wanting what I lack. What shows through my spirit ought plainly to surpass most in a workshop such as this, I’m told. Chart a quantification. Transform this woman into graph. Ludicrous to botch pursuit of status with or without paid fact of my stunt. I do both.
§ 120.
Towards a schizomythology of ritual (VI). A ruling out of prior scholars’ confusion. — First, a scholarly touch-up job. Owing to a rancorous busybody thrusting his thumb into a jampot that I, morbidly formal, would normally forbid as “Paws off!” to him and authors of his ilk, and through no fault of my own pawn, a bookish intrusion juxtaposing uncouth proof with slavish audit, originating, so far as I can confirm, in a spurious insinuation by S. R. Damon [1], found its way into my glossary of Towards a schizomythology of ritual (V) [2]. Ktar, I must clarify, is no muddy concoction of mustard and cumin, and contains no putrid snails. Fruit of a continuous distillation involving rosy briar blossoms and saffron liana blooms with hints of vanilla, ktar is a strong, flavorful liquor similar to arrack, but as light and soft as your most distinct tokay. Sip it with a bowl of figs; lap it up with a traditional dish of tulpuyauor (Norlian snails in a cumin and mustard roux au jus); quaff it during Glo Barš from a strapping ktar-cup of basswood cut: from wish to lust, ktar is thirst compliant! That said, what follows is autumn. My first; my last. Strong wind in a parking lot billows black trashbag soaring. Sound familiar? I’m sub-top form at Tiliar Boarding School in Tixpu. But you think trimming my sails with that crowd’s what I’m hot for? Think again. Strong right arm of popular opinion. I won’t, I can’t, I shouldn’t, I shan’t, I shall not, I would not and I did not. What’s past is limp against my back. This broad’s going aboard Djuma’s yawl for two days’ trawl of yon Arathu. Jumping off point’s Owlstain, ISOCPHYS, Vighdan. Watch him drool my lipstick. Who knows but that this particular path may pay off handily. To touch is only human. Hands on au pairing. Wordhunting in backwoods Flouziana. Paths in high mountains for this curious nanny. To Wyoming by foot along rill and by narrow rail along canyon’s rim to sift Mountain Fukari paradigms most thorough. To touch is human. To hazard upon a ruling (and a rooting) out of prior scholars’ confusion, lack of sociophysiological sophistication and gross linguistic muddling. In short, “Grammaticalization of schizomythia and taboo in Mountain Fukari root class: Confirmation of a functional proximal–distal quantal continuum of ligativity in affixival clitics of womaninity and pronominal control,” as I call this brouillon I scratch in morning gloam sitting plump down back straight in larch shadow on a smooth-worn stump of fir in Iagip [3] in front of my black yurt’s doorflap my proud round tits awaiting sky to limn matinal toil and gray ash coals still hot to boil a pot of Assam and dangling chains of a porch swing not too far away on which an old woman (his mom) sits stitching spirals of chikan blooms into a rainbow patola of antlion silk in which I’ll squat on that sacral day to croon Tony’s child [4] a Tagma song or chant a Sihlaucal ditty about a slangy liar strolling Tilia Road’s run-down shops and bars with sawdust floors and dirt looking for a stray barstool to build for two or chair to script palindromic Vratsyata on. Thus is boy taught slant by girl what man of woman should know. Strict form’s pursuit’s what distracts this mind’s puritan impurity from what constrains it. Your tradition and ours. Spit and blood. Out back’s a shack. I’ll submit to Prof. Vighdan for publication in his institution’s Journal of Sociophysiology. Plump your proof down now of it on my rich Argus lap [5].
  1. Spurious insinuation. — Damon, S. R. (1928). Food afflictions and food intoxications. Stockholm: Wahlstron and Widstan.
  2. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (V). — Vid. supra, § 113.
  3. Iagip. — ‘Big fir camp.’ A community in which popular morality is constantly at work.
  4. Tony’s child. — And should I run stumbling forward from autumn falsity to vain spring? Girl to woman moulting nymph from bloody imago crawling. Flash a full hand of suns to Glamporium. That witch saw us doing it out back. Owlstain High School’s junior prom. Gloomy chap at bar gloms a look. Or was it graduation? Dado’s dad. All bloody this bait. Stands an approach to my rhythmic invitation. Into my virgin wrist it snaps a painful rash. Sitting sinistral to him. Background mountains of snow and dusky firs. Small talk first. His oh so happy unhappy words. Straight vodka’s Vighdan’s drink; gin and tonic’s Tony’s. Rapacious vision fails to cough up what’s past. This timorous girl’s first communion. Ishtar’s Hand. I’m Ada. Gotta run.
  5. Rich Argus lap. — Johnson, O. W. (2003). Grammaticalization of schizomythia and taboo in Mountain Fukari root class: Confirmation of a functional proximal–distal quantal continuum of ligativity in affixival clitics of womaninity and pronominal control. Journal of Sociophysiology 11(8), August 2003.
§ 121.
Promiscuous clay. — And should I quaff sorrow with a blight of rum I’d say it burns straight down. Blank island out of wind that sighing gullmoan spins. What I forgot on that summit of talus and thorns is what I lost. To stitch ship into port past coral rooftops conjuring shoal from shadow. Nothing is unconscious, I would say again, but things too bridling may sink out of sight until, spiraling, a hawk soars, a coastal city glints, mighty Arathu is calm. I was too afraid to abandon that path. Throat’s truth skirts a starling-clad sky as a Sunday artist was painting it. Dab a moon into canvas and plush that passion spills out window’s hollow root. Prodigal quarry’s divination pays for this glass I drop.
§ 122.
Caught in a courtyard conspiracy. — And should I disavow that by which I’m bound to what I am? This brick’s an awkward pillow for my plastic words. Compulsion is optional. And your body was annually wound in a bright shroud. Transforming practical limits into possibility’s implosion. This orgasmic trap dissolving all your scholarly plans. A paltry sum of thought and action. Truly a mighty way of knowing was born of doubt’s conjugation with cultural constraint. A haphazardly lucky sort of cultivation that zigzags uphill and down, skirting, by fluid artistic motion, any notional cliff or rational abyss. It’s just such a growth as this that’s known as “organic.” Fruit of this blossom is poisonous to man and bird, though its lilac color is so alluring. Sacrificial wisdom, though it winks at you so invitingly. In that tradition you cut your own tomb into tufa or tuff, a crumbly sort of rock, gray, brown and black. Gunshot billows of dust and crows.
§ 123.
Any notion of which was far from his mind. — And should I unbutton willingly of what without forcing you’d know almost nothing? How much this canto contains! “From modal point you first ran forth, syrinx-clutching holy bard,” is how I start to shimmy out of it, my translation of Patrolius’s Ionis Astra, third canto. (Call it quatrain or stanza, if you must.) Nothing actually is lost by mapping schizomythic turmoil to mythic calm, transforming a combinatoric infinity qua Traum into a narrational laying on of hands and waking. By doing and by saying, by singing and by dancing, all ritual transducts finally to a sort of linguistic artifactual parsimony — but without such putting into acts, words and things physical or imaginary, no art can show its snout, no pathos bays, no passion sinks its fangs into us, no lust brashly wounds or cracks a moral molar on a sociophysiological chunk or crust of taboo; no story, in a word, is told. But that’s so fucking, you shout, obvious! Olvida mi (sic)! I snap back (for it is, as you know, my birthday today), and without pausing in my continuous or constant stooping and squatting, standing and straddling to unsnap, unhitch, unzip, unbutton and unfurl my ludict unpacking of lyrical glyph (my how your balls shrink tight to my touch!), I posit a supposition, thus: By imagining modal holding in its hollow a nodal capacity to kill; and point, a sanctuary to which a man (Dudu — “holy bard,” “strong sculptor of liquid music” — in particular) may withdraw following such invigoratingly mannish and possibly smirchful situations as hunting and fucking; a sanctuary in which among similar manly, chanting and pan-piping company, rituals to purify so much full-contact scuffling with fur and blood, animal and woman, may spirit forth, soit rowdy, soit staid I forgot what I was talking about. But it’s my birthday! “From modal point you first ran forth, syrinx-clutching holy bard,/Strong sculptor of liquid music born of Ishtar’s singular/Ravishing,” has a soft spot into which, through a chink in sociophysiological armor, schizomythological analysis — that is, clitalysis — may stab profoundly such that blood’s brutish datum spills: Any bard (and bard’s “liquid music”) is born of Ishtar’s violation, and any virgin daring broach a man’s taboo (“modal/nodal point”) winds up a totally unvirginal victim of thumb-snatch gangbanguish with an implicitly magical, thighsplitting conviction of vaginalgia and clitoral faith fit “to transform plural violation of body’s/Taboo, dawn’s luscious hollow fruit, into triply spiral ktar.” And so thus a fistulous modulation of syrinx mouth morphs into that guttural vibration of ktar string, “swart Atta’s wing-bright gift no pavid virgin could match” (canto 1). And so thus do womaninity and masculinity conjoin — thumb up ass (or pinky) and dripping snatchful nostril’s nod towards ardor or odor of “dawn’s luscious hollow fruit” — and so thus do womaninity and masculinity conjoin to constrain, by kin and by clan, by “singular ravishing,” that atavistic orgy (“lupanar joys,” canto 2) d’antan (cryptically surviving by fullmoonlight in form of annual bacchanalia during autumn and spring). I was that girl you “first” did fist. Anamolous “liquid music.” Historical transformation through (but still I’m not through!) oral tradition’s schizomythology puts paid also to that risky group grappling with, or mass routing and driving off cliff of, tusky boar, bison, mammoth, aurochs, or gigantic auk without wings, with naught but assagai, yataghan, spontoon, falchion or katar to lift as arms. From now on, solitary, you stalk with arrow and bow. Oh, do it again, baby! Kill it, baby! I’ll cut it up for you, baby! Stick my hands raw into it, baby! Wind its guts into chords for your ktar, baby! And string for your bow, baby! I’ll chant a loping, swinging translation in this lupanar, baby! And fucking fucking fucking fuck!
From modal point you first ran forth, syrinx-clutching holy bard,
Strong sculptor of liquid music born of Ishtar’s singular
Ravishing, to transform plural violation of body’s
Taboo, dawn’s luscious hollow fruit, into triply spiral ktar [1].
  1. My translation of this third canto of Patrolius’s Ionis Astra, along with a slight variant of my gloss on it, forms part of my contribution to that instar of Translogophonica put out by Tony Hamiltonian on my 15th birthday: TLog VIII (1999).
§ 124.
As a woman in a man. — And should I pity that poor artist I was? Tart spurt of noxious stimulus to spur a spar of sporting spirit. What I forgot by hiding in that blissful dissolution of a psych-ward bunk. Magnanimous administration of stimulant and soporific. Loving public humility of this worldly womaninity’s virtuous disgust inciting to catoptromantic striving. I was told that with such imploring I could harass knightly nobility to flight. Sacrificial duty’s will instructs so much inborn passion to bloody at worst what it can’t at first kill. Wary of chivalry’s chary charms, I cook up a strict constraint of form which through arbitrary picturing can bring lost things back to light. Blind crush of coursing casing causing a cursing crash.
§ 125.
To play around it. — And should I vault into sky and soar? Wondrously old and hollow it was, that lightning-struck willow trunk. A goodly vain conclusion. This continuation of fact and form I stow sadly to savor again. But up onto that high wall of rock I couldn’t possibly vault. I was too young and small still, imbibing your glorious magic which could triumph against gravity’s barbarity. But why did you tar it black, what I saw you pass straight through? I walk to him in significant fashion. Fantastic articulation of twilight. Doubting now what I thought I did so graciously. From downhill I ran to catch him, but couldn’t possibly. I was too young and small still, my thighs aglow with crimson mud. I had to climb, I had to vault across that rough post blocking our path. Look, look, I’m flying! You look and I’m falling. Joyous shouts of girls and boys.
§ 126.
How much good it will do you. — And should I kiss by cutting truth? I shall, in fact, do by form’s opposition in a proud harbor’s principality. Throatily full tonight as always lipshadow sings wounds and shards. Abort that boil’s pulsation. Hill was an island by class or country lost or found in a notion of sin or skin in bay and mountains of it. But taking up again form’s assumption, that sound bias of faith’s fashion acquits puss from scab. A supposition to affix with word though constantly I’m losing my shroud. I might admit to it in court, but not by any class-action lawsuit’s manic brooding of spit, frown, spirit, or lucid flow of fact and fabulation. Assuming that I will to avoid what I won’t. Utility was harmful in my account of it. Or want to glom tightly from losing ductility in a bright gulp of contradiction. No guns.
§ 127.
Not as difficult as waking. — And should I work that man for what I couldn’t possibly obtain on my own? Changing of gifts from hand to bloody hand. As good a sign of any of nobility, rich or poor. Drowsy pallor and casual slouch. War is simply a form of sacrificial trading. Public adoration. Trick is convincing him I’m fully up front.
§ 128.
A florid stylization of form. — And should I look through adoring phrasal talk to any sort of bashful appropriation bridling touch? Against bird if I could spirit out this high in thought’s morning. Not swathing and boring. Nor wrapping. A soul that squats. Build my daring and my history. Inquisition of all that’s known of any and all dawn’s laws, known or not. Climb down that witty living as this woman accustoms to it. Back up again hardly through blossom all round again and again bristling bridling rattling thinking nothing. I watch it lay into history’s masonry. Sprouting blooms and myriad snaking fibrils of my own random choosing. A form of joy. I could climb right on through it from childhood into dusk. This limpid inspiration. Skirt’s blood stains iconic disk.
§ 129.
Diabolical obscurity. — And should I transform this miniskirt thighcross into an adjunct of authorial toil? Constrain that divinity from fountain to sky along a click clack crash and punch of mountain and wing. Protoplasmic wall of wilting calf. I was climbing a rainbow unwinding of string. But a quantity of such hooks didn’t attract him. I had to finish by hand what by such a long standing I’d paid for. Fairly suffusing what by judging was an impossibility of symbolic action. Call it miscommunication. Sun on my bold crotch was not so capricious a window as that, or so I’d thought. Not so difficult to fathom, is it, this craving for any sort of moan, spasm, or vain ancilla of passion? And without by thus slipping into a too familiar foil. Saffron blossom and cinnamon root, such a bold quantity of it. Banal and all. I, too, was afraid. Start fading this fall of what wishing’s wrought, of what want brings forth in motions quick, slow, smooth, rough, hollow, or full of a sunstruck rhythm of daffodil, marigold, iris, and plum. I was pulling my hair out mad. To call it lust is to borrow an armchair approximation of what moon’s mask thwarts of history and cult. Any cruciform solution will not play to what in my translation is tragic. And a comic account is not too fabulous, although.... And if a block or two fails to attain that diabolical crudity I aim at, form’s conjuration will carry forward what words in spirit may lack in signification. A glass of rum and still I’m waiting waiting waiting. It’s not from any angst I furrow this brow, but spring’s light.
§ 130.
How to dry cook a bag of light. — And should I moan as any orphan truly wanting it would? Limit domain to my natural throwing off of torpid agitation. Against any untoward flarings up of history. It’s not that I’m complaining about this prison ward’s minimalistic furnishings, but who was I driving so madly to moil it all so bloody and such? I was only following my instructions; making do with what I could; having production to spur wild voicing I warily guard. This narrow path winds from tundra down to plain. What sparks my cry of passion mocks that child I mourn. I crawl to a trot. I gallop to a fall.
§ 131.
Shoots and sprouts. — And should I irk by forcing loss? Stray crow was cracking snails in that stony courtyard slick with rain. You know what I’m up to. Proximity’s charm’s obliging. Fruit rots in a forlorn tray. To wish by staging an ashcan condition for what art could burn of any woman’s futurity. Your hands on my thighs. Story’s form’s privation accounts for a particular phrasal instantiation. It cannot grow again. Black plastic skin of limp trashbags flapping in wind. Throbs grip tightly that high contraction’s folly. Panting from cold lips a rhythmic mist.
§ 132.
Traditional vacuity. — And should I clarify why sad cold and hungry I sit scribbling on this cast-iron lawn chair in gray shadow of a city-park oak? Suicidal catalyst draws solid from liquid, waiting for martyrdom’s mud to sink. Ass by ass two girls walk laughing hand in hand. Word’s shadow splits light into quanta. A fistful of cruciform cards lists aims and motivations. Spiral cloudshock of swallow against conid [1] orgy of gull. Again two slim young rumps go sluicing by. Avatars of Ishtar. On that scaffold of arrows to pardon what only I am privy to, what kinds of craving map function to formula, forbid dignity from limning contrapuntal harmony of a slow body’s lush and limpid coming at a squat. Mind is world.
  1. Conid. — In schizodynamical jargon, a conid is any sort of fluid form in which two columns, narrowing and bulging chaotically, mix and match in ondular fashion; also said of rabbits.
§ 133.
Disgracing him with words. — And should I gambol with stick and staff across this bucolic ignominy of hill and wood? To crunch with boot a classical acorn or trip on a practical sort of twig. From too prodigal a skirting my goatish aristocracy. From mountain to plain hardly pastoral. Naturally loyal flock I forgot I was talking about. Slant consolation, that story, this city, a magnanimous groping to spill it plushly or scorch with promiscuous insult. And him in that situation to abandon all possibility of comfort. Jugular application making virtuous his sacrificial chivalry. I’d apply my own chin to a punch but lost among shadows of willow, poplar and oak I was on that winding path to him. Without shawl’s cowl, or pinch hardly of ruddy nobility, toward that scowling point of dawn’s mud I crawl.
§ 134.
Immortality. — And should I brandish a disapproving frown? Public castigation. What can I truly know if not this raging singularity of mind? Lucid ductility of glyph and word constructs loving inspiration. All is flux of an obliging imagination. Always of what soul’s affliction is conscious. Towards a final dying off among a thousand million stars. In a solitary room a suicidal cat vomits what it couldn’t stomach. That laughing bard’s lurid docility confronts what among all my airy arts is black. Saffron flux of iris and lily.
§ 135.
Four ways to put it down. — And should I furnish this unfamiliar construction with a shaft of hardwood floor? As art, by swathing, paints this world’s proxy, pain, I was taught, is fruit, and holds cringing at a touch this guilt that constrains my all too human blush. Roll it in a throw rug and toss it. Spring sunlight aborts my wild god’s womb’s production. I stood waiting at that crossroads for palm or fist to arc down and scorch it. Throw it in a pillow bag and drown it. Colorful imagination has room for luminosity. Fur, claw, blood, skin, brain and throbbing hollow knot of what I must, by writing, call ‘spirit’: all go limp against my back. Cut its whining throat with a rusty kriss. Bind its paws and bury it. From cat’s body sprouts a maggoty blossom of liana and thorn. Tomorrow’s my birthday.
§ 136.
Half a man. — And should I arm imagination with skillful rut? Want of pussy’s manipulation could attach wings to it. Assuming that I will to avoid what I won’t. Forcing such good cultural things down a full half of it. This shining ruth I swallow. Attack for which I took too much a sorrowful liking. What any woman would do if world was up.
§ 137.
Possibly only in a land of loving good. — And should I oddify a flood of solar fusion? Quantal fiction spools it cyclical and choppy. Spun from antlion silk a chart of backward spiraling maps this world from sight to ludict. Oddification. By continuously scraping away at it with day by night brooding, what you think is a normal rainbow of hamiltonian sublimation arching from cloud to gloomy cloud will shoot forth a singular ray of rarity, a diabolic parabola of miraculous thorns will split that sky to shards and out will fall a clutch of starlings, cuckoos, cowbirds, sparrows and wrathful swallows. A wrack of bloody gods. Oddification. From dry chitin crumbling it crawls. Shiny gray instar of avatar’s crucifixion. Crush it.
§ 138.
So thus, by coming, did I find. — And should I nudify my skirt’s iconic disk? According to strict schizomythological praxis, nudification aims at purity, not pornography; knows that hiding within any grim and grimy annihilation of will and spirit is marrow’s annunciation of blood-proud passion making happy again that sad divinity who’d? which’d? that’d? lain rotting so long in its winding shrouds of your commonly typical sort of b-flat morality and d-minor disfigurations of dogma that rob natural humanity’s faith of its stormy plural joy. Succinctly put, to nudify is to skim foam from surf, sift silt from sand, strip bark from pulp, shift wilting sight’s focus until it blooms, spin fact from fabulation in our schizofugal dynamo pitting myth against myth, paring ritual from taboo, not so any scarification, sightly or un-, occurs, nor so that imagination dulls, but so that our mural’s dazzling color, our mosaic’s glorious harmony of lapis, onyx, ruby, gold and diamond may glow again, may burst forth again as glorious as our artist’s, our author’s, formally original and most lovingly, painstakingly laid shadow and ground, warp and woof, of his? your? our? totality of vision which, via a most profoundly gratuitous act of altruistically divastigatory nudification, had, in a word, wrought.
Antlion. From a photograph shot by Otto X. Goldbarg, c. 1924–1927, of a Mountain Fukari clay bowl (#2004.24.13595) found with Ossuary 162 in Room 21 of Swarts Ruin, Grant, Wyoming, and on display at Harvard’s Display Institution of Old Folks and Tribals in Boston, Mass.
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Copyright © 2010 Michael Sean Strickland