vague gatherings

vague gatherings

* #oneiricfiction excerpt:

 

collapsing memory structure of environment, barely intact , non critical features

I think-

courtyard, school compound, outdoor walls, overhead shelters, halls and broad spaces meant as doors for

crowd, professors, public, students

 

beige, beige, painted

 

names called from rosters, announcements from thin air, are we on a mountain plateau? bridges connecting hills and ascents? I know the face of a name called, but he left seeking shower, change of clothes, then returning, in old wrap of cloth, returning as if to a clinic, as if to school days, walking past me to his wife who crouches in corner, she does not see me, husband’s name, called, to what, to where? why? possibly lynching / democratic voting

 

night clinic offers not enough info

 

I fight to keep the scene together but its amnesia taking over, forms collapsing into forgetting

 

environments erasing

 

not enough to hold up this world, not enough to mean something

 

my mind reels further back, into illusion of time before

 

an afternoon light, an evening light, finished

 

land elevated to roof, lesser walls, non-mountain, now on top of building, windows and light

night clientele coming in from cities, from offices, post-dinner into drinks and else kind while the world sleeps, roamers

 

seeking dealers, reclining in sofas, on bean bags, on beach chairs, on carpet floors, illicit substances passed around, consuming, encompassing bodies, blood flow, mind experiments, lung reaction, smoke inhalation with no smoke, I’m turning on the concrete, turning to face my dealer, inhaling, nothing significant, nothing here, meaningless here, an animal craving hardly snuffed out, the medicine isn’t working

 

#dailypoetry2016day9 #dailypoetry #irvingpaulpereira

carparks and corridors

We are investigating what appears to be an abandoned car. Dark blue, windows rolled down. The carpark is mostly empty on such a night but the housing building has more than several lights on, as if people were staring from their kitchens, watching us, hypnotic. Up in one of the houses, there’s allegedly, a birthday party, now paused and depressed, full of people in dark clothes. Are birthdays and funerals the same thing?

 

“what fool leaves the cake in a car?”

 

I remember the chocolate cake, creamy, possibly with strawberries and jagged slices of white chocolate, single tiered and raised between the driver and passenger seats. The logic of the open window is to keep the cake unmelted. Foolish to leave it exposed like that. The cake is now gone. A split second film in my head suggests a wild fanged dog reaching through the window, but the devouring or stealing isn’t shown. We stand around the car, owner no where, deciding on how to proceed.

 

Pack and leave.

 

A woman, impersonating a mother, packs my backpack with toiletries, white towel, not enough clothes. I inspect the bag in a sloping, unlit hallway with black doors to every side. Are the children in the nearby pool in sunlight? Memory tissues connect, this place also houses an ex-wife from an ex-life. I’ve been here New Years day, years ago, silent in the hall, remembering our flesh and sex in bedrooms. The way teh corridors are arranged also reminds me of a lawyers house where I was tempted to erotically sniff a toppled ladies shoe outside a house party. But the sunlight now hardly reaches the corridors. At a specific door with no number I am let in by people in dark corporate clothes, secret society secretaries, elite men in tuxedos, all inhuman, part of a strange world. It could be The Society of Night but more so not. The wild dog is a man in a dark blue sweater, almost the same color as the car. His hair is curly and oiled, he points with a fat marker to a whiteboard where a perfect circle, with lines and dots, is displayed: A Meta-Sigil. A Magical Banner. Memory tissues connect. I’ve been to this room, impersonating other rooms.

 

One: a den with drugs, prostitutes and masseuses in batik sarongs, sweating onto my topless body:

Two: a hotel room in Australia where I spend days with a woman posing as a mother.

 

I understand I am a stranger in this secret meeting. An implant among men mutated by bad money. How long I remain in such company is unknown. I do not even know If i made it out as the same person.

 

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what did Mandy want? * or the dream as a result of antihistamines **

 

“We fought, we broke up, because I was rude to Eric.”

a tricky conscience, semi-clear, what did I say or how did I say it? She made it clear but i wasn’t sure. She, the manipulator.

 

I’m poised on the railing, overlooking the old school, nine storey drop, sun in my face. To climb down with sure footing is to clean air conditioning fan belts. I didn’t feel like falling today. Sister is talking to me, about bathrooms and perhaps, suicide, but I cannot decipher a thing.

 

Hung on the van door, or pasted, is a picture or painting of a pre-teen negro boy, shot dead. Above the faded body were matt black keys on rusty hooks, one for every gangster child killed.

 

In my hand, medals, the colour of those keys. I turned them over, looking for pins, some had them, some not. The crystal girl was selling them to me, ancient artefacts, one for every gangster child killed.

 

I offended more than Eric. There were other young poets at the table, my ego saw nothing in them. I preferred the depth of the midget, who told me, “Every one of us has a chaos centre.”

 

My zippo lighter, in two pieces, was engulfed in fire. Careful not to get burnt, but handling the flaming thing without pain, I put it out between the ice cream cake with its plastic wrapper still on. I did this after roaming a park where I saw a Korean or Japanese girl in costume. I called her, “Samurai” & “Ninja Go.” She made it clear to me they were compliments. i wasn’t going to get killed today.

 

My white, long sleeved business shirt was too big, bed sheet sized. I had not grown to fit those things but I knew to whom they belonged. A bus.

 

I was already at a party, at the open place designed for funerals. But I was also still getting ready, putting on pants that were too long. I have yet to grow into them.

 

Going past quickening, silver doors on trailers.

 

How pretty my sister is; hair, long and curled, jewels and make up on, looking up at the party. “it’s about time,” she said.

 

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alice on film thus the false war

*
we were too close to the cinematic screen, sitting at a bad angle. the film wasn’t continuous, too many broken parts, a non-linear anthology with long fade to blacks and back again.
it could’ve been Alice lost in india, if india was a storm, lost at sea; alice, first as animated, too young a girl, then in the flesh, in a golden saree, skin burnt dark and spirit worn out by heat and space.

the film took long months out of our patience, a seeded restlessness growing in acres. just as we thought it ended, another scene began, crawling out of the black screen, showing alice waiting, anxious, depleted.

the false war lasted 1930-1933, declaration paper wrongly signed by generals mislead by thieves of history, all of them, mourning women, dubious and exact in their manipulations. men they had lost to future wars haunted their every move. they launched the war covertly from submarines, deep within the arctic. “The true war started after ’33, with 80 troops, everything else before that was a lie.” Alice had been found out. This makes her anxious, waiting, depleted by the currency of sun and clocks. it is unclear who or what she is waiting for. it could be a zeitgeist, avenging, it could be a punisher without mercies.

after the film, we emerged in the solar desert town again. perhaps, years have passed and I am once more alone in a strange land. I searched street stalls for clove cigarettes, packed like cigars by chinese manufacturers. I asked for prices, either because I had little money or the consistency of costs had failed in the starving land. somewhere, the aboriginal bus was waiting to take me to an other

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white passage / grey passage

white: the universal code of illuminated bodies – clothed by oracles, makers, sowers – sent out to the day cities

woman as mental voice; instructing, suggestive.

hours as metabolism, as tempo or growth; time deceleration.

 

we are late for a gathering but never late at all

mall as difficult habitat, expanse and height, ever changing, stairs moving in opposite directions, climbing up facades that roll down and under, second floor never reached.

 

the feeling of time contracts while exposure to it expands

 

“the old man’s wife is here”

 

the white mansion is new, the double door traffics sunlight in and out. the old man’s wife paces outside, beneath concrete overhead train tracks, talking to those voices, those finely dressed ladies in her unmedicated head. it takes patient coaxing to lure her off the grass patch, into the white mansion, where finely dressed ladies are known to be, but never seen.

 

I feed her like a dog, by hand, shredded pieces of white meat. She’s a schizophrenic creature of daze, white dress bloated by an oval balloon body. I feed her like a dog as strange, pale men in pale clothes enter a side door, coming in from a false hallway made by beige lights. everyone is believed to be family.

 

it is known: the tall man before me is the dead brother of a hypothetical mother.

 

His animated body stands uncomfortable close to me and I know the woman in my head as ‘Nancy.’ I ask the corpse if he is Uncle J. “Uncle J? Nancy’s husband?” His irises are half moons of thin brown paper, irises rolling into his cheeks; eyes, distanced by light years and hypnotism. He leans into me and like osmosis, almost merges with my body.

 

I’m feeding her near the white wall. a woman known as mother is present, an elongated queen. there is a swaddled thing with her, possibly a pet infant, though I do not see any limbs.

 

the bloated woman is now a child, seen crawling up the curved staircase like a baby. I leave her red dog bowl and wait beneath the parapet. I look up her fake plastic lace skirt, I see disposable diapers made from papier-mâché. She walks backwards and falls off the edge.

 

I catch her.

 

another face grows in my head.

a face borrowed from childhood. different vision / same time line. my mouth is wide open and there’s a hand drill, unscrewing a metal slab in my throat, a doorway, a cover for the motherboard. cut the black wire connecting upper and lower molar. burn off remnants with soldering tip. melt the rubber.

 

the mind is turning to evening noise, into a back alley of drains and fences and trees. a place borrowed from childhood.

 

starting point: living quarters

ending point: canteen

in between: classrooms

 

abandoned school as grey world

abandoned school as classified zone

 

I am speaking to the unseen, in their native tongue, asking respectfully, for permission, making an announcement: “I am just passing through.” i say, “I am only passing through.”

 

 

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fallens

if I was struck down, I did not feel any pain. I only know I’m on my back, head tilted backwards to see what was behind me. the only truth of those things would be in the camera. It was hard to focus the lens, but I captured his face, those bright pin points of pink light in the black cesspool of his eyes, his fangs, a hunger baring. my dealer, and some others, had turned.

only in hindsight do we think about sources.
-was it the contents of those packages, consumed? or
-the sudden exposure to lights?
-where did the glowing green pallor of skin come from?
-was the aura coloured by human energetic systems?
there was something sensed, an otherworld, whenever he touched my shoulder blades. It is not allowed, the touching, but I let him do it, largely because he is my dealer, also because contact could reveal one or the many sources.

If they had struck me down, I did not feel any wounds or bite marks or blood changing in my veins. maybe those ways of transmissions are the ways of old. maybe I’m already turning without knowing.

the lost cousin rides into the arcade where we live, either on an animal or a machine built to look like one. He is searching for a woman believed to be a sister. it is told- he has come to study the imagination music of dragons. I let him pass, to go deeper into the arcade.

I am sent away from wherever I was, either by  train or aircraft. the carry on bag contains remains (possibly my own): ventricular, avenues of blood flow, possibly a lung no longer needed, torn plastic wrappers, utilities almost depleted. the third bag in cargo is full and heavy with unknown things. I say goodbye to thin agents of the art, those responsible for my travels. I leave them seated on plastic chairs in central neighbourhood.

a new, outboard component has been added to my body. this could be the makings extracted from pictures taken, studied and applied. a slim breathing tube, easily assembled in three parts; two airways for the nostrils, one for the brain. content of atmosphere and gasses unknown. I cannot fathom if the air I need makes the density of my bones lighter, or if my body had turned, thus needing such air. I only know I move with silence, in the heart of some deaf conflict. my enemies throw aspects of the room at me, deftly, I avoid collisions. the scenes where I end their lives are not shown, but I am talking to the last general, possibly struck down, paralysed or at the edge of death. on a tablet, I show him the bio of a Russian woman. “She is the specialist, here to dispose the bodies.” it is shown: she has exited her vehicle and is on the way. I see the aftermath, strewn stories below, corpses in suits in disarray. it is not known if i ended the generals’ life.

the serpentines

to and perhaps from night stations, i carry a virus, a troubled prolonging of sleep, the wandering body caught unawares in deep blank place.

If they were struck down, i did not hear it. but see-

the women known as mother and sister – emerging from a house I do not know,

into scared night, into a backyard of dense wood and orange lights

see them slowly stumbling, burdened, down the steps

a part of me is projected through cell signals, into white flouro dispatch static, talking to handlers

reciting medical histories, implants, surgical maps on old skin

part of me is studying the mother: red gash on lip (or forehead)

a cut tongue plastered with beige bandage

mouth agape, row of teeth on pink gums, flipping right to left to right like a page

jaw dislocated

sister could not catch her in time, sister slipped on bathroom water, passing out, coming to again

sister thumping her chest with blame (I have to tell her it isn’t her fault)

there is no pain anywhere among accidents

 

disconnect white headphones, it was time to enter clinical

This I understand – a live satellite broadcast will be missed at 8pm

This I experience – a projection to festival grounds, somewhere not on this plane

This is see – the domed tent, two men and a woman on a beach, touched by northern lights, neon radiation blue, electronic musicians walking through nebulascapes

 

night highway as gordian knot, an elevated serpentine coil

I hunt the hunter. a cat and a mouse

the taunter is a remote ghost in cell signals (is he also a presence in rearview / backseats?)

hushed conversations lost in vague

I see gas station lights like a beacon, I signal, I turn, something tells me he’s there

keep him on the line, catch him reflected in glass doors of entrances and exits

watch for the gas man holding a phone, watch for the man in the beige shirt, in the grey pants

he is the causer of accidents, the stealer of lights, the hunter at the festival

what he will do and to whom and how many, teh how and when, is not shown

but he is there, a threat in waiting

he’s been there before, a presence in the head, at crime scenes after the fact, leaving signatures, signs, taunts

he is there if your eye is fast enough

he teases you with glimpses, then gone again from one fugitive night into many

you can hardly remember his voice, his face, his whereabouts

near or far, it is not known

 

labyrinth highway as gordian knot, unbroken

 

I re-gather on the second floor of the mansion

trails gone cold. I wait with the others

I wait for the next cycle, the next signal, the next call, the next scene

 

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White land and the modern mysticals

I
this uniform has a history of anger – a sick, pale green; the memory of schooling and military

hair, as an extension of old consciousness, is shaved off at 7.30.a.m. it takes too much time, too many stressors, chasing a clock that does not move.

the black, electric shaver goes missing while messy, missed clusters of hair remain. 

through a mirror I see my skull newly extended from the back with possible implants, growth, swelling or otherwise. frustration escalates but I now kneel on the master bed of the old house. She is propped against pillows, a face mixed with alien DNA, a stellar glare, hypnotic static as aura, almond starry eyes, a cascade of pitch black hair. she whispers something electric, my body experiences it. A white modern mystical intimacy. 
II
i’ve taken the journey to the land of all whites. i’ve gone past the safe zones, into uncharted.

white sand and gravel, white road side stalls, white mountain, paramount, white ghetto and sun burnt villagers in white clothes. a third world heaven, uncluttered, without heat despite all the light

there is animal meat, deep fried in black woks, there are cubes of oil fat swine lard charcoal burnt for sale

I wander through tents without walls where contraband figures of idols, important adventurers, war heroes, spacefarers hang high. I spend unknown time here, resolving, becoming home. 

a part of me belongs to this pirated conclave, to this white, primal universe. 
III

 

we wait near the high altar, in the tall but small house, in our grey and black suits. We sit in leather armchairs, legs crossed, contemplating the mysteries. 

she will come back through the room (it could be the room that makes her what she is) 

we wait for songs to manifest, for art to appear on the wall above the bed

we wait for blue lights to begin glowing, like those lights from the festival on that alien world. 

then we’ll know she has returned

we will meet her for the second time in so many days 

we would ask her about the food consumed, and how it made her frequency adaptable 

we will study the sounds and shapes she brings back, with hopes they can teach the ways to follow, to enter, to fall into the worlds she comes from 

we wait to learn her name in a house without clocks 
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of sacraments, the medicine man and the two mothers

a descent into tunnels, the world below. escher steps, obsidian, polished, bringing me deeper, level by level, walking among voiceless souls. The roll of white paper in my hand contain the sacraments, to be consumed slowly but mostly never in public. this exposure is a freak of bravery, the showing of the hand in such exoteric company. an administration officer of the station, in red vestments, spots then rushes up to me. I try to keep the sacraments but she knows. she issues a complex threat. do not keep it, you’ve been caught, you have to eat it all immediately or there would be consequences.

 

I consume it whole

 

the scene repeats: same pathway down, voiceless people at my sides, the same people re-appearing, a chosen pattern, cycle and flow, the sacrament has taken effect. In my solar plexus, an ocean of stars gather and gleams, the microcosm vibrates, a complex turning of orbits within.

 

I sense the medicine man behind me, in the distance, a level or two away, always following, as if watching, studying. I walk the length to the next station, dark walls turning into night. above ground, I watch him descending an overhead bridge across the road. I understand I am in a red car, telling this entire sequence to four other people. in the telling, is my mental self repeating its motion through reality? do world events in some cognitive zone, recur with every memory? I am in the backseat as the driver slouches, body sideways, either overtaken by the effects of sacrament or by my presence, resonating with the sacrament. Someone asks him what year he was born, he answers in riddles and ciphers but I understand it. ‘1999′

 

in a pocket of other t Sime / other space/ the medicine man wants me to complete a worksheet for him. A page of sentences, numbers, fill in the blanks. I do not heed his request.

 

it is uncertain If i board the mini bus at this juncture or the car had become the mini bus. i find a woman known to be a sister, receiving black notes from a vague figure. i am reclined at the back the bus, next to a foreigner, a traveller, who is playing an electronic handheld game on involving the song of dragons.

 

i am then sent through a corridor. dorm like, or perhaps a hostel. was this jump between planes because of the traveller? was this person a portal?

 

a door opens, i hear the end of a directive being issued and the individual i am supposed to see comes out. I catch a glimpse of the room, surveillance equipment, and receive the knowledge it’s a radio base. He bids me follow him into the next bedroom, a room of mirrors. There is a large bed, white sheets and beige curtains, half covering a window to afternoon light and nothing. He has no shirt on. memory flashbacks in real time reveals his persona, this superhero, flawed, in half suit, so full of pain. He had spent the night before pacing the room with a small silver gun in his mouth. I laughed at his attempt at suicide, I made fun of him, mimicking his weak, weepy sentiments and cowardice, as he crawled into bed and laughed with me. I do not know if we made love.

 

in this same expression of reality, day has turned to night. there are maybe two women known as mothers. one had tricked me into staying behind at the resort (dorm / hostel) in the day. perhaps, she had sent me to see the individual. by night, she was far away from me. The other woman calls me from a car in the city. she and the husband had been saved by the other mother on detour. Just as I had told the story of the medicine man in the red car, they tell me of events in theirs (could the passengers be the same?)

 

i am not shown the violence. those precise gun shots and the number of fallen men. but i know what had occured. the operation had ben green lit from the radio room.

 

the mother woman on the phone said, “there’s one left, appears to be the leader, being taken into the house. I know he’s the leader by the way he’s being treated. everyone is interested in him. “

 

i understand he is handcuffed and exiting the unmarked van into a house behind the trees in the night. and it’s the other mother who has him in custody. I am not shown his fate.

 

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the great black lion

there are no true signs of quarantine or panic at the hospital, only vacated emergency rooms, an array of disorganised equipment, crookedly parked beds, empty, unfolded towels, sheets, paraphernalia on the floor. it feels there should be more people here but there isn’t. a fireman sits behind a baggage counter, a dark blue uniformed man scanning tags, hefting large suitcases onto some other platform.

 

out of halogen light space, I gather myself under a canopy of looming trees and darkness, where a restless young girl, rearranging armchairs and footstools to form a bed, tries to sink into the sleep of vanishing. there’s an urgency to her young heart, she seeks to shut out the world but the woman, as a voice and presence with me, is trying to keep the her awake. i do not hear the things she says but i strongly believe she is stalling for time, for specific people to arrive. we could be on a hill like plateau, where a lighted staircase nearby shows humans coming and going, ascending, descending, coming out of the ground like from the mouth of an underpass.

 

a principal, a quiet Japanese man, and a young teacher, sex unknown, reaches us. they could very well be configurations of light in the shape of mankind. they could very well be holograms or ghosts. the woman begins telling them what the girl has been saying. there’s an undercurrent of dread, an emphasis on unknown fears. the girl says it in unison with the woman:

 

“even if I kill myself, they will just replace me with a new one.”

 

I am extracted from that place and before me on the night streets, seated, almost curled into a ball, an after image of a great black lion appears.

 

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