§ (I am) a place for ointment

As I creep through the rolling dark, seeking sensation,
I am wary of the nebula,
The waters of anaesthesia
I am wary of finger-beetles drawing strength from the void,
Of what drools from the envenomed tips of steel needles

Gnashing on carpet,
I seek the intoxicating texture of velvet.
I find a tiny motorized Pegasus
Sparking with electricity,
A tiny tiny white Pegasus!
Oscillating not two inches from my forehead.
Estimating my skin.

My ducts are cauterised
I am a place for ointment

There was a time when my nerves were bare to the universe of sensation;
When they would whip and writhe at every contact,
When they would thrill to the miracle of flesh,
The miracles of linen and of cardboard,
The miracles of grease and of tinsel,
The miracle of pond-life ...

Once, I had a thousand names for the Apricot,
I had a thousand words for the following sea
A thousand textures in every word
A thousand possibilities in every footfall.
Once, I had a passing but pleasant interest in migratory birds

Now I clench for the baby fingers.
Here they come.
I am a place for ointment

I am thick with skin
A nerveless hide
bristling with dark hairs that reach blindly for the light,
Struggling to recall the scents of Spring.

What’s that feeble tapping,
Down the long corridor?
It is a corpse butler,
Bringing my plate of desiccated pleasure

She beckons from the margins,
like a lemon, like a feather
A nightmare descending like a steel cap.
Once she was bewitching.
Now she is siphoning my intellectual fluids
Into a pan.

In the oily folds, among the polyps,
There is a place for ointment.

Under the steady hand of an Austrian surgeon
I am elaborately transformed
I am proof against the elements
I am spaceworthy,
And perfectly spherical!
I glint in the starlight like a forbidden jewel!

And a final audit is prepared by The Giant Ear
Raised high upon a wooden scaffold by a team in red coveralls
Tuned to my personal emanations

The team leader nods to the unblinking sentinel at my orifice …
Here, he says, is a place for ointment

Here my wasted limb, there my withered sac,
Here, the tiara of cigarette butts,
I left behind
When once I lost my way.

The path back through my memory,
leads to a contaminated landscape
Of hardened orange peels,
And nausea.

You see it?
Scuttling?
The life form,
That readies a nest of torn fingernails,
for its degenerate young.

One step too far,
And I am wreathed in spangles,
Lodged in a world too vivid to explain.
These colours strike me dumb.
These songs that circle like crows.
When was there shame as sharp as this?
When were my regrets so sweet?

Flailing like a ribbon in the breeze,
I feel for the comforting banality of warm dishwater…
I find the finger-beetles,
Dull green and silver,
Pottering with my spine.
I find a tiny Pegasus,
fidgeting on my face.
A tiny tiny white Pegasus.
ruling my teeth.

The withered sac, the wrinkled membrane
I am a place for ointment

The stale grey sheets of my cocoon,
May shield me from these recollections.
Yet they may not.
My thought capsule,
Where the green oxygen candles burn in eternal misery
May sustain me -
With my puckered face,
And cratered skull,
I am the Moon of my own pain

Cranking through each day like a disarticulated lobster,
And bursting with putrefaction,
I am wary that my rattling does not attract the cold;
I pray that my shivering does not attract the cold …

My tongue is bogged.
I am a place for ointment.

*

The above is a lyric set from a forthcoming album by White Noise Carousel [with whom I work occasionally]. More can be learnt of them here and here.