As the pupae churn and shrivel,
And the worm chews on my brain,
I speak to my little devil
And ask him what’s his game

As the robbins tweet and whistle,
And the land’s engulfed in flame,
I speak to my little devil
And ask if we’re insane

As the winner claims her title,
And a horse is named a lame,
I speak to my little devil
And ask why we’re the same

As the forest shakes and rattles,
And the leech is drained in vain,
I speak to my little devil
And I tell him it’s okay


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow

Controlled subdermal cage
we all have our own fields of fire
the world changes elements of boron
to day again ah the furious wet traffic
to my suit looking good but tired
white silk mammal lips
punk yards of spirits in magma
grace flies scream in antlers of highway
in through the iris out through the heart
nascent ghosts in time for life

Clocks grow pupae in my arms
under the frock and over the frame
disgrace the leaves at joy in autumn says the wind
poppies remain drooling in seas of light
the way men move through gas
champagne pours the cricket the gecko the feather the drake
the touch the brim the uncured wild
the street creates a world of song the koalas boom with fur
the mantelpiece wounds the air
the figments of life known as love live outside
until we grow kingdoms within.

never look back,that easy to say ,
harder to do when you're stuck in your ways,
replace lots wife with a Pillar of Sand...,(man-echo)
that's me to a T,never mind the plans,

but...-that was yesterday,clipped that string,
metaphorically,physically taking wing,
movin up-outta my shell,
like a Pupae burstin,time to raise hell,

The original Butterfly Effect in motion,
Sandman's Dreams cross time and oceans,
flap my wings-watch the firestorm,
EC take another land by storm,

Huh!-that's my role,the batterin ram,
mad March hare with the guile of the Sandman,  
Kilojules outstrip a railgun,
first blast to the past,never goin back to Square one.

meet me in the morning.
tell me this is real,
old friend.

ruins.
fallen old bricks just like people.
like the reincarnation of a dead boy
into a living boy.
zombie johnny.
bought and paid for,
brujería.

naked son &
jungle stone heads.
in the olmec valley
is the lizard and the spirit and the pupae.
particle cellular fabrication/ or retrogenesis from within
a million points of light.
skeleton witch.

& with eclipse
he is the night.
he is the city skull and steel.
an electro-flesh apparition, bloodletting the living for fun
&/or nostalgia.

some ghosts desire vengeance.
some ghosts luminate from the dark,
& emerge as a needle of near perfect retribution.

the riches and gems and towering
years later.
the families of men who buried johnny moon alive
in a box in mexico.
death to them.
like retro-teen laughs in the horror movie exploratorium.
rituals.

I have been living on a diet
of cigarettes and digestive biscuits.
My bowels empty into the System
and my hunger concedes
to the supermarket glow;
bigger names
under surgical lights.

The operation was not successful.
You can see it in the grey faces,
upturned collars;
that manic headphone stare.
The lone smoker skulks a bus-stop
like angry eczema
on a bride's upper lip.

I see it for myself now.
How crowds congregate by light,
stamens of fat and sachets of salt,
then separate as sadness
cuts through the delusion;
working poverty and panic attacks
on the hard kitchen floor.

The ache of anxiety
caught up with you again.
Self-imposed catastrophes pile up
as you find yourself walking against
the grain of lunatics passing your way.
The pupae gather and slaver
at their freedom;

you broke through The Promise.
I followed the path of your recovery.

There was this pupae
living in my mouth.
It grew into a chrysalis.
Turned to mush then
reconstructed in a shell.
When it comes out
will it be a butterfly?
Or will it be more like
The Silence of the Lambs.

In the cancer museum
I imagine where mine
would rest in peace and ease.

My eyes scan rows of organs:
Disney’s lungs on top of
Newman’s own **** pair;

Ingrid Bergman’s left breast
bump Bette Davis’ right—
indiscreet voyagers;

Audrey Hepburn’s colon
nesting Farrah Fawcett’s
like Tiffany Angels.

I saw my spot next to…
but the doctor called me
back to look at the scans.

He pointed out my growths
grouped in a triangle,
told me of their plan/cure-

called them clouds but they seemed
caterpillars vegging
out on my intestines.

I imagined them cocooning,
metamorphosing to
surgical butterflies

or staying just rounders,
yellow earrings just for
Audrey’s and Farrah’s lobes.

Then the doctor turned it
and the picture became
more terrible things:

rats, sharks, wasps all vying
for valuable shelf space
in the small gallery.

Tourists and soldiers from
the plane crash/war museum
wander in wondering

why there are no jet planes
reassembling in slow
motion horror, dog tags

melted into the seats,
flesh in the torn engines,
no screams of real terror,

just the crowd bumping and
marching into me in silence,
sometimes taking pictures

while **** yellow chemo
solution runs down my
leg in pupae slime lines.  

The last one opens me,
looking for spikes of grief
or fury.  Finding none,

not even a cold tomb,
just a rip, tear, dim sounds
as the crowd echoes down

and surges out the door
for all the Holocaust
store souvenirs next door.

I hear my heart rustle
in the computer bytes,
the breath of trees

and swallows in my files,
a dusty cross inside
releasing butterflies

to the sky as I step
back and watch all
****** into the blue.

“Do you think I got it
all in?” the doctor says,
snapping my last picture

I have returned
Although I must,
To this glittering bowl of dust
I had to,

In this so similar form
The jackals recognize my shade
In the dark, they watch and stalk,
My moon to daylight sun

The seasons of my change.
The pupae without
Awaiting for grand mals
Or some winged departure
Of my light

Expecting me to fall...

But seasons stir with lightfoot
Pages turned,
Between the numbers in all that
Man's made
Hands knocking hours
Ticking seconds
Minutes crawling
Under every door

Like a shadow unnoticed underfoot
Moments walk on wires
As life watches from below
Or is it vice versa?
The Circe du foils
The urchins that we drown to be
Voila! Not much ventured
In the rings and side shows
We spectacles
Of flesh
Fallen and fearing
The feelings

Of just before
Steps
(Beyond)
If catlike careful some nimble beast

I must be
To return from the place
That once birthed and attempted
****** the unlearned me
I am too
American in the humidity
The parasitic biting
The heat

I'm a stranger in strange islands
Beautiful mystique
Of superstitious super strength
The beliefs become aswang legends
Come true life
The slaughtered pig as sacrifice

I vomited and **** out
My inner being
Waters of life projected out
The length of tongue and the depth
Of insides
Gushing out
Even through my tears
And delirium...
Possessed as tho' a lever had been pulled
To reverse what flowed in
The nutrients
The rehydration of excretions
Sucker punched to spew

And thru the pain I knew
The swine and its smug snorting laughter
And the old ones in the villages
Living among their own dead
In the trees and sands and sea
Their jealousy of City boy me
The threat I must be
Fearful of what I might ****
Tho I dare not and have not
Done
Unto
As they have now done to he
I have karmic grace
To make them mine,

But what and why would I want
Such long gone then and agains
Or rage against
In revenge?
At my beautiful motherland
The face of my race
The home of my blood

I keep my silence as their defeat
Render them
As a breeze through palm trees and hiss of sea
Rumors of the weather
Food poisoning

You have yet to fabulously flutter
My pupae of frozen adores
Stricken are you to utter
How from larvae to insect, one matures
Pain of stages you must endure

For as you were once caterpillar
Such simplicity of infancy
Mother butterfly placed near daffodil a
Miraculous plan of decency
Life arranged in such complexities

Little do you know, surprising?
Welcoming event so explicable
How wondrous wings of this uprising
Nature joyful and formidable
Your glory so perfectly permissible

Truly a divine intervention
From chrysalis a manifesting
These plans have set emotion
How Mother Nature has been testing
Longevity of ****** investing

She flutters on and you have come
Launching momentous occasion
Your time is near, you have become
An allure of life’s suasion
Flutter on, flutter on, all love’s persuasion

They are coming. The airborne winged bevy, the flock, the herd, the horde. Their hideous skin-wings, the revolting ***** of sinew. The cerci come for me, when I try to retire. My torpor perpetually interrupted, never completed. I have not slept in days.

The wicga want to lay their young in me. I’ve seen them do it! To the others!

The ****** spine-tailed hell spawn. I cannot sleep. I want to sleep. They will burrow in my flesh if I do not run. I need to run. I must run.

I hear the clouds, the living far-off black mist. I am warned by their distant revving, their humming. Warming their wings off in the distance. The far-off burn-up, thousands working as one. They are coming. They will find me.

Every night I am conscious at dusk; twilight sentience. I am chased every night until first light.

The swarm; my body their incubator. I am forced. I will sustain their young. The nymphs, the pupae. The larvae.

Ectoparisitoids.

I can hear them. Closer. I run.

Run, trip, run, Run. Run.

Run through this disgusting and hideous rotten silva.

Light fading.

The dark is here now. Murk, gloom, pestilence. This place; iniquity incarnate.

The miasma of decomposition.

The fetor.

This rotting place.

They are closer. The swarm. I do not want their brood!

I trip again. My ankle twists and shatters.

I drag myself, through the slime and decay.

I feel the stings. I am seized.

The burning. The buzzing. The biting.

The paralysis begins at my feet. Creeping through my legs, hips, and torso. I cannot move.

I feel new stings. Eggs injected now. Hundreds.

Pennate *******.

I feel them give me life. Their life. They fill my body with their offspring. My flesh will sustain their young.

Where the ectozoons will grow, consume. My body, a living nursery.

I shut my eyes tight. They force open my lids, many mandibles prying.

I feel the stings. I see them chewing. Everything blurs. I see them crawl in. They push through. They enter my oculi. I feel them fill to burst, their eggs many.

My world goes black.


= = = =


I awake. I feel the warmth of them all. The children in my derma. Hundreds.

Oviparity is nearly complete.

I can barely move, my dermis husked with them all. The young.
I feel my face. The sockets where my eyes used to be, a rind covering both. A stringy membrane tightly seals the unborn. I cannot see. My world is black.

I lie there trying to count, trying to fathom the number of nearly born within me. The many bumps and blisters covering me whole. Every orifice filled with oothecae.

Then I feel. I feel them kick, I feel them poke.

Birth!

I feel my belly split open with life.

They ooze out. My ears begin ringing with their pitter patter. Echoing. Thousands. My skin crawls. Pores sweat the fetid embryonic sap of life. Their life.

They wriggle and wiggle out; hundreds.

Every inch of my body bursts with birth.

My eyes hatch last. The pods split. I feel them. I help birth the spiked young, I pull them from the embryonic mephitic discharge.

The many legged, my anatomy their first meal.

My babies. My children. Eat ‘till you are strong.

My body is your communion.

He speaks to me.
Turns me into ice cream.
Covered in raspberry sauce.
Or maybe strawberry jam.
Get a little sticky sometimes.
I try to continue the chat.
Him, himself a pupae.
Dark secrets stuck inside.
I defy his heart,
Pray not to break.
Pressure brewing  inside his eyes.
I detect a smile.
It's rare.
It hides.
He dare not spill it.
Spill nothing to she who's there.
Two weeks out of a lifetime.
And the book falls open gradually.
The story's not the same.
Him my elixir.
I ask him step forth to leave those night shadows.
(c) Livvi

I have been to where the monsters dwell,
I have seen their twisted faces in a place known as hell.
When all of your nightmares, correct now reside,
I was cast and washed up on an unchartered tide.
I have been to rock bottom and seen the other side.

Pushed my head through its wall with the last strength I could muster,
From my hands to my neck pushed with all of my bluster.
Violently wriggled and pulled myself through,
like a new born pupae on a ****** Spring dew.

As I laid there exhausted in the new morning sun,
I witnessed heaven and nature merge into one.
Colours more vivid and sounds filled with splendour,
I then witnessed God's awe in a moment so tender.

I now walk on alone with this wondrous gift,
And when others see problems.
I look up and can see the heavens shift,
For I thought I was cursed, but was given a gift.

They said the world was paved with opportunities
oh yes it was. Businesses of all kinds
Both good and bad, sliding in and out of your conscience self
effortlessly. Writers of all kinds gathered in a pool
of subscribers, hoping for their craft to catch the eye
and gain the comments that so elevated them to pedestals
of happiness. Pain was ignored. Pain creates joy?

I was different. I came with words, worthless in themselves
staccato butterflies that grazed the slim lines of poetry
and migrated south of the border to lie in a wasteland
of dead pupae and broken wings. Yet I was not afraid
to say so. Words are worthless-no matter how you look at them.

But sing them out, dance them in a dream, play
the orchestra with its flawless symphonies
and magically those worthless words take flight
couched in the wings of music soaring above
the desperate denizens of waste paper baskets
into opportunities of hope and lust and longing.

I love words. I treat them carefully, dress them in silk
and satin, paint their fingernails, don eyelashes and
red berried lipstick and kiss them into rhyme and rhythm
walk them down the street, heads turning and
store them in books, songs and minds
in a library of conquests of body and soul and when the day
is done. I forget them. Not one of the thousand poems I wrote
can be recited. Butterflies migrating to the swamp of reincarnation
where lie millions of other poems that never saw the opportunity
of musical flight.

I  love words and I hate them. Its a relationship
like Jekyll and Hyde. Two shadows, two voices,
one sound with too many accents, yet they mean so much.
I could write the music for every poem but I'm tone deaf.
I need to see the eyes of reader sparkle in the frenzy
of reading and then I know my opportunity to write
was not wasted, loved not littered about
not defeated and languishing in another dry desert.

Author Notes
Optional
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 days ago

In a field at the edge where
The Burnet's reproduced
Their dark wings with six red spots
Giving birth on our hands
From inside their chrysalis.

Mating from egg, larvae
To pupae and adult moth
Took about three weeks
We went almost everyday
The hot sun stroking our backs.

This was our moth Summer
Guiding our courtship with
Fluttering wings and newness
Stepping through the railings
To gain this precious time.

A cycle of

Egg
Larvae
Pupae
Moth.

To the flame and then again.

The winch of excentrics emanating cross hair dares
The layers, childhood and sound and her scent
The cinch in this fabric, Memory
From which all temptations seed
Euclidan Butterfly, at which point God
Supercedes, not breathing so
No words; rather, the pass
Of Mercury until it becomes glass
Like insanity,
The pupae aches to bloom, fast

I

I recall in tranquillity

Fever-dive hours.

Once I saw a sailboat listing

Upon a great-waved sea

The sea was I and so was the boat

I could not see any stars

For the blasts of ocean-spray



In what quiet cove can I go hiding from a storm

Blasting up the cartoid artery and flooding through

The cognitive estuaries, over-spilling memory’s tributaries?

Tell me where I might make my stand against my wrath?

Might a clever present play the future off against the past?

Am I to live only in the lacunae between foretelling & recollection

In the times between guilt and dread when, exhausted of mental flight,

Whether backwards or forwards, the mind drifts in easy content?



We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



II

Behold, a shattered glass bowl that held doubts

They multiply in shattering

As each beam of light

Crosses every glass splinter

It breeds a new splinter

And a new lance of light

Fecund heresiarch



Absolute clarity lies within

That lit glass rubble but the trouble

Is that so does everything else

As in Borges’ library up in that tower



III

Do you know where your right hand is? Walking through a shop and not knowing whether you’ve assaulted someone heedlessly. Analysing each moment of your past like a sicko prosecutor. The fears iterate by sinister Darwinism, seeking cognitive blind-spots. Did I mutter threats of violence to that child? Did I insult that shop attendant? Mixed memory and aversion form a rancid bin-juice born decaying.



IV

I came to the stairs

There was a wobble in her voice

By each step her voice rose higher

So I rise to her and she calls with greater urgency

And I rise to her with greater urgency

She and I can only meet after escalation shatters

Past the horizon of panic and further-

Past the sea rock of worn defeat

She and I must be one.

I sprint.



V

Imagine that someone came to you in the middle of the night, stepped into your mouth and began to grow through your capillaries. They were not content merely with habitation, their constant insistence was that you must keep grafting dead organs and limbs onto yourself. You become a born-again Frankenstein (don’t be a pedant) with all the zeal of a convert to an undead lifestyle. The new limbs are heavy, and stink, and burn up your flesh with septisemic fire and ****-flood, but the man who stepped inside your mouth begs you stitch on more.



VI

The inside of a head becomes lonely as it becomes crowded

The only things that elbowed through those crowds

Were other hauntings

Brief dune-sedge love in salted ground

Warring wrath against money made world

Twin engines of raging-love and loving-rage

Racing for diversion and the exaltation of rebellious motion

Circulation round the track kept my blood in motion

Rammed down winds to bellow my lungs



Political contention, war, courtship, frenetic study

Vain dreams of greatness, discontent

Which gave me a little contentedness

To declare permanent war or endless love

And so to terminate surrender in unutterable resolution

“Optimism of the will!”- clenched hands, though they wobble

In the obsidian lands where resistance gave no comfort

Resistance still gave sustenance

Just as all the previous Sugatas



VII

Life is so long. Are you so innocent? You are tired. You dream of a gentle place. You saw it as anyone might imagine it- holy light on wild-flowers, easy with its comforts, free with its joys. To be such a place it had to be distant from this world and sealed against you.



VIII

Maybe I just wasn’t ******* often enough?

Victorian life is better novelised than lived

Hysterical, neurotic, guilty, phantasmal

Maybe I wasn’t drinking enough?

A friend called me the Ayatollah

In respect of my beard and sobriety



Hume and the Buddhist sages pronounced that persons are aggregates without greater unity. I find myself a bundle but there is no liberation here. The parts rub against each other like cans in a grocery bag bruise fruit. Or perhaps I am the curate’s egg.



IX

Give me a seabird’s wings

On the cliffs, about forty meters over the crab pools

I dream of ascending with the gulls, but higher

Diving and again rising in alliance with wind

What waves perturb the gull are brief

And if it is to end by hawk, that too is brief

Yet I would rise higher still, till I sat on a perch

Overlooking time and the jolting succession of moments

Above the waves of kings, ministers, exchequers

Yet if I am not to reach that exalted perch

I will be low enough to observe the bright net

Of refracted sun that plays upon the hills of water

Give me a seabird’s wings



X

Easier perhaps to talk of the accoutrements of terror and the reflections it invoked. Easier to do that then to photograph medusa. Yet I do remember being confused as to whether I was more guilty or more afraid. It seemed important that I be more guilty than be afraid, but it is hard to feel guilt while facing knives. Consequently, I felt supplementary guilt at my thin guilt.



We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



XI

The future is boundless, not only ahead but sideways

The patterns of your inferences only ever ape

The subtle causal chains which bind the forward momentum

Of the world whose surface you cling to

The mind is stretched between times and possibilities,

Beyond any accommodation by mental sinew and bone

The heart successively roars and fizzles



XII

I came to the living room

And it was filled with ash

Though I never smoked

Or sat by fire

I made an ink of that ash

And began to write these verses

upon my arm



XIII

He is there, and I smile into his oblivion

He never loved you, so ideas of romance

Had the character of Banach-Tarski’s sphere

He is gone now, other suburbs, other worlds

I do not miss him, except on special occasions

My affections were never lost, except perhaps at the first moment

Dead on arrival

Yet still worthwhile



It is right to rebel against most things

But not you, oh sweet tyrant

It’s good odds you kept me breathing



IXV

We do not sit upon heaven’s throne

Nor are we the rebel, cast down like a slash of lightning

We are the flesh that raised our gaze

Half wondering, half begging

The dance is ending, where is the bridgegroom?



XV

How rash are those who clamour for justice?

(I have been among them)

Life is wide, deep and changing. We are excesses

Of identity, act, motivation.

Of miscalibrated judgement and selfish grasping.



Do you think you would be clean under heaven’s eye?

Were there a book that contained each numbered thought and small deed

Of yours wouldn’t you shred it, burn it and eat the ashes?

I wouldn’t. I would give you that book. Press you to read it.

I do not think you would like me, but my terror is to be misunderstood

I fear that you will think I am a different kind of monster than that I am.

So I give you my promise, that should an angel scribe that book

I’ll give you a copy.



And I promise that if you ever give me a copy of your celestial biography

I’ll try to shut the my eye of judgement and open that of mercy

It’s simple self interest. Chesed pro chesed.



XVI

Can we remember pain? In our mind’s eye we might

See rose fluids or, under that, a startling glimpse of pearly white

Laid open by a scalpel. We shudder back. We peer forward.

But who has the pen by which to bind agony?

“Sharp”, “dull”, “throbbing”, “irritating”, “intense”

Wholly feeble, as if a snake tried to wander with its vestigial leg bones

But that is where we find ourselves- thirsty for conveyance in a desert of names

We can only hope to articulate pain through our inarticulateness

Just as, by chance, static on a television set captures a snowstorm



I remember wandering the streets, sobbing and calling for divine fire to **** me and all the other wicked. As I wept I listened to pop on half smashed headphones. What would it take to make you march through city streets weeping and calling the fires of an unknown God?



XVII

I ascended to the attic

To store, retrieve, invent

A mnemonic parade

Without volition my hands

Raise the dust in small incantations

How does one dislodge a fake memory?

Or terminate the routine of shuddering



I see

He and she are here, interlocked eye-beams

I am not in either eye

In this attic I lay in the pattern of my veins

I am sinews. Whether these gobbets

Be thought or flesh I am in neitherway free

I am chained by my own substance

Above me powers contend in the air.



XVIII

Think now

Life has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering trepidations,

Guides us by vanities.


After such knowledge what forgiveness?

Forgiveness after such knowledge what?

What forgiveness after such knowledge?

Knowledge what forgiveness after such?

Such knowledge what forgiveness after?



IXX

In metamorphosis the tissue is not merely subtracted from and added to inside the pupae, rather the whole flesh devours itself, save for microscopic clusters (imaginal bodies), becoming a soup of cells. What unites both life-stages is scarcely more than a double-helixed teleos. Yet memory persists.

We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



**

If I could but seize the wax of Icarus

The tailor of Ulm’s fabrics

Etana or Bladud’s crown of feathers

If I could but fly, I could seize the sun’s silver

Forge a mirror by which to demonstrate

The storm that rends the head

Of some shivering soul you know

Forgive a thief that stole for you and

Shelter all, for you cannot see their weather



XXI

To find a point of collapse at which

loss and victory die.

And that sea is now

A vast lake that

Night or day

Forms a perfect twin

To the sky

Over the stones of the tower

Drift currents and sweet, lazy fish

The waves will dance again

But I might hope to dance

With them

Aloft on the Tropopause
I discover my glitter
Gold and Blue
Red and black
The crushed dust and
Gossamer feathers
O’ these weathered wings
Jumped rosebud, aster,
and Little Leaf lilac
Through the circadian stratosphere
and thermal lift
Feather dust and fatal glitter
Colors crushed against my wings
Picked cleanly by yet another lover
One whose seductive skills
led me to believe we were alike
From sticky nothing egg
She became pupae
Eating of my leaves
Eating
Eating
Gorged and odd
So full of me
She became chrysalis
Cocooned herself
Away from me
Hardened
And changing
Changing where I could not see
Only to emerge as glorious
Grandiose and Gorgeous!
Butterfly!!!
Unaffected by my love
Flit away to pollinate
To inspire
Mate and mate and mate
Flower upon flower
If I'd only been a mantis
She’d have merely eaten my head
Instead, a Butterfly she was
And crushed my wings instead
I am mad at myself, truly
Mad at myself
for trusting another one
Believing the Butterfly
And letting her in
Again
They are all but butterflies
each many creatures
Egg, larvae, cocoon, and beast!
Watch out for open Springtime sky
Stave off your lust for pollen true
Behold my crushed wings
and fallen color dust
Once more
Beware the Butterfly

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Fire Ants Devouring the Corpses of Unhatched Wasps


                      Nature does not, in the long run, favour life.

                  -C. S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” 1948


A formation of formicidae trekked north-northwest
Across a vast and lonely sunbeaten expanse
Their imperial quest a fallen wasps’ nest
Between a lawn chair and a potted plant

The ants greedily ripped open the paper shells
Like Christmas crackers for the goodies inside
The ghastly drippings of pupae in their jaws
Fragments of dead wasplings for their demanding queen

A formation of formicidae trekked east-southeast -
What, then, is the number of an unnumbered beast?