7 rooms for seven brides
“we keep going back to that desert
we keep coming back from that desert
this time, we were not like the lizards
naked and scorched along the nile
scales on skin
measuring the anger of the sun
nor did we dream as the black arks
mired in the tunnels, under the earth
calling for vinegar and water
we were, at some point, rendered as shrouds, windswept and jaded
age long marked, out there in wasteland
a burnt wedding dress on a pole
stripped by sand storms and time
or as gravestones near forbidden gates
touched by meat and darkness
we might lay barren by the river ga
given in to our creatures
our flesh, muddied by soot and soul
our eyes; an atrocity of colour
our lands, rolling in fragrant tar
we are in our towers
facing our decans and lots
chained like the seniles or Prometheus
positioned with our tech and screens, our books and spells
we are the seventh room with one bed
ashen and laced, follower of a father that lives in caves
a deer that appears in the garden
vultures in a parking lot
motel room sex and red neon nights
smoke rising from the streets
seven beds for a room in the desert
II
we did not intend to ‘mercurial birth’ Tespu
he was not on our radars
but alas, here is he
shrivelled like a desert lizard on the mahjong table
black sand on his lips
we could count the bones of his ribs
his sim a charcoal yellowed
he is staged like a fetus
a fossil from temperate climes
choice figures on ancient numeral coins from the past, circles his skeletal crown
a clown, a colonial, a vesper, a vitz-nah’
No, we did not intend to invoke Tespu
there are no nubile images for him here
no delicate winters
nor ‘hidden’ barns
out there on scorched earth
hiding astronauts and nesting creatures in darkened rooms
nursing the photo plates of octopi and women
locked in a cycle of Tespu
III
he seems called back to the playground
nocturne and evacuated, in search of the girl in the blue dress
“ ec’k no, ek’ nim”
he read this is the gravel, written by her hand
she’s been biting her nails again.
Half burnt hell money stank the air
caught in mid degrade with the leaves
trapped in a place with no wind
he thought she saw her dress in the forest,
bound to a crooked staff that pierced the rivers edge
“ she did not know the name of its waters” saith the serpent
“ her waters hath dried up” saith she
Looking again, her dress was gone
only the many tentacled mass of night
complicating the hearth of the jungle
artificial suns, too far away to give any light or warmth
he continued the debris map along the Sile,
half scanning the highway with his mind
while prodding the earth before him with a crooked staff
–
4
a wrong house has entered tespu
and he now considers a miso soup
stolen from the olden cabinet
staged with an oblong fruit, a filthy pink, broken to reveal its citric heart
the candles in the room are on their last breaths
the wolf dog sleeps next to the girl in blue
the blind man is touching the mirror
he remembers tespu from that difficult time
“ you were trying to give out strawberry biscuits to the nurses, just after your mother died…”
tespu, who is no longer starved from nicotine, didn’t quite respond. he was contemplating a cigarette.
the girl had been fed with milk and honey. This is her fourteenth hour of sleep. We do not sense her, dreaming.
We were surprised the wolf dog was still alive.
We remembered him from the time of the ches men, when the whole neighbourhood had disappeared.
Craters, in place of void decks that once held Covid wakes.
There is a wasted sewer running beneath the house.
An ugly tunnel of tar, not unlike a vein that runs from beyond the stomach crypts of stutter gutt. An off tangent sun is hung in the distance, there were rampant fevers in the tropics, and a lake, famous for its blood and fresh sea cucumbers.
tespu had lapped here once as an animal
hairless and taunt, eyes, jaundiced and watching for the washing of feet
the blind man is hoping, the girl in the blue dress would know the words to call upon the following:
halogen lights in the late night supermarket
search lights in the skies
insomniacs drifting down strange and irregular aisles, opiated and gazing at species that hide among the wedding dresses
the dog is pacing by the foot of her bed
then suddenly leaves the room, grazing the feet of tespu on its way out.
the girl on the bed, stirs.
she dreams of the woman in the fish tank, in the coffeeshop, shutters halfway down. The water is overflowing. There are first responders in a large, unlit hall,black leather sofas pushed against the northern wall, ripped up, damaged, wounds exposing sick, yellow cotton. Digging into its orifice, she discovers coins, like fire, for the first time, and realises how many ferrymen she must pay to get home to her father, Septu.
5
there is moss, growing on the body of a young girl
but her flesh is more psychic than sex
she was staged in the night club
smoke machine, sluggish and weakly spewing
the lights, the colour of purgatory
all else plunged in darkness
a place with no water
but the body of the young girl is in hydro
tubes and vents and knots
misunderstood in gordion
she is a dreaming chamber for the sleep clinic
sheep, trapped in fish tanks
(water, overflowing)
a bride, in her gown, on the shore
the sea like the face of the moon
The girl in the blue dress points north
“your house, is out there…shrivelled, in the desert.”
This is her fifth hour, asleep.
6
the snow golems were brought in to carry wood, from the remains of the torched nightclub out there in the arctic, abandoned 352 days ago this night.
we did not find any bodies except the remains of a flag made from a burnt tuxedo jacket.
embriah’s psychometry placed it nearly a century before the nightclub and on a different moon. She could nearly grasp a rough shape to a name but was confused by an array of atmospheres, frozen oceans, arterial blood and salt winds instead.
“We should leave the sound console here.” She said,. “this place needs its gravestone and doorway.”
The golems carried the wood south, towards the Great Plains where naked ascetics from the Elijah caves would lie out there in the desert like lizards, upturned and soaking up severity and sun, stars and ice and night.
I’m the distance behind her, embriah felt the fleeting presence of a man on a horse. She turned to scan the white washed horizon.
Nothing. The storm was getting worse.
We would build a diner in the desert.
A waystation, by the time the next winter arrives.
We would bury the ‘mathematics of Tespu’ at the gates and place a bowl of water from ‘our womb, septura’ by the windows.
The candles would always be on their final breaths but their fire would never go out.
And we would wait, out there in the desert.
“The nightclub paid the first price and this house now, awaits her other.”
The blind man was startled by her soft voice. The girl in the blue dress sat up from bed and looked around for her wolf dog.
7
You’ll be drawn through lopsided hallways
drawn, as in, by the hand of a child
you might be missing a limb or an eye
you might be written as ‘having consumed pancakes’
She says you will be chased by a figure called fadre
but madre would save you
in the dining hall there’s a requiem
dinner guests in glass tux and sheer stockings
feather boa bondage murals
glasses full of black coal
tespu would be served as a dish
moist banana leaf, octopi, the fat of the lamb
a girl will be squatting over steaming rice
the meat will be the sound of tadpoles
breaking out of quantum physiques
‘ a braille necronomicon’ ‘a contraption’
lucid felines waiting under chairs for scraps from the mistress hand
you’ll be drawn into the playroom, on your honeymoon
past vanilla latex and over used spreader bars
the water boarding bed has soil and flowers stolen by the river ga
you’ll be bound into a book
into the figment of a shops’ imagination
your masters name is ghos_haus
he’ll only touch you with a laced hand
You will be operated upon by girls in blue dresses
fine dining, carefully inserted into your nest
If you should die on the table
a wolf dog will bring you back
she will wait for you by the banks
no matter how long she has to stay away from her charge
who is now having breakfast with milk and honey
in a bedroom full of blind men
8
her young body is covered with microbiology
mostly insectoid, abysmal, entangled in quantum
Tespu is in an induced coma in the cupboard.
The blind man is taking photographs of the girl, gradients shifting under black light.
the images develop inside him. terraforms, liminal markets, bombed out buildings, discotheques. He switches to video, memory nodules, nervous systems.
This causes Tespu to begin his fever. A necessary phase for his work below.
“Where is honey?” the girl in the blue dress asked, looking under the bed.
“Tespu is feeding her in purgatario. She needs strength, guarding you…”
The blind man turns on monochrome mode, bringing haze to the desert.
the ascetics retreat to the caves,
to shed skin,
to grow fur,
to bathe wolf-dogs
This causes Tespu to become water
seeping from the cupboard, up the stairs, pooling softly under her bed, a mirror, gazing at the sky
her young body is covered with ‘ordo cymasia’
nano-fibres is the text as fingerprint as scab
lines of smoke, thread like, from sweat gland
hormones released like a night flower
This causes Septu to follow the scent.
9
the ninth key
“ in the kingdom of trees, a splintered hand is a talisman”
the sea had sensed the hut, built with burnt wood by the hands of golems, whose skin craves for ice; with hearts longing for hypothermia.
through subterranean density, her waters move
seeking out the seeds planted by null, the first patient of house septura
She had given him his pale blue pigment, his cramped hands, his skeletal manner, his first books on post-one thousand one hundred art.
By the third night of silence, he began writing asemic, responding,in part to the scent of nocturne flowers, drinking from the meridians, rivers and interstellar corridors snaking inside him.
The wet of soil on his hands reminded him of his time with the corpses. When his tongue had gone numb and when he had lost his ability to ‘see into the many atu’
He would not eat for three days.
an anthologeist from a future time would interpret his fasting as “a vigil with the lord in his tomb.”
other off-world philosophers would say he was merely waiting for septura to produce enough milk and honey to feed him, to give him strength for the guarding.
“In the garden of talismans, null is the tree”
the criminals from the shore will find refuge in his swampland but in exchange for safety, they would do his bidding.
a boy, who would become ‘the finale priest’ would dream of his father in the hut, handing him a sword. a phoenix, burning with a strange green fire would be freed from its cage behind the hut. It was not immediately clear if ‘the father’ was null himself.
drug addled seers would say the phoenix was ‘septura in her pre-resurrection form’ and ‘the father’ is the figure of fadre that would hunt down Septu in the mansion during a ‘manic episode.’
“Do you want something to eat?” Septura asked the pale blue boy.
“I need to get back to my sister.” He replied, after his fifth day of silence.
X
“In the septurian continuum, the stars follow the movements of bodies on ‘earth’ “
The Lord plays a broken, sand covered piano in the contemplative hours of the pub. It’s walls, made from burnt wood brought in from winter deserts, give off a different scent when this piano player is around.
There is blood on some of the yellowed keys. The lords’ tempo is unhurried, tones accustomed to long suffering.
“You want some wine, boss?”
The barkeep couldn’t tell if he was slowly shaking his head or simply swaying to a quiet but discordant passage.
There used to be black stones on the wall of this hut that could tell the time.
They now sit in a dark wooden bowl, scratched as sigils, runes, dice, surnames.
“Do you remember that wanderer?” The Lord suddenly said, and the barkeep realised he had stopped playing the piano.
“The one looking for a disco in the arctic?”
“Yes…the blind one.”
“ I remember him.”
“The walls of this pub is from the remains of that disco. And the blind one will soon be passing us by.”
The barkeep poured himself a hot rum with stout and milk.
“I’ll take that wine now, my friend.” The Lord said.
11
“Etre-sorn
vi ley ta qua non set
con bula ret tu net
moa le tu red” – prayer for the loss of vagrants
Fadre
the painting frames are half-built
but the tape reel is running with no evidence of voices
as an aeging frame, I’m still half built
painted by the hand of Tuu
Madre
the black songs are not my enemy
but there are hours that are suspect
of coins tipping the scales
of voices calling me from the bush
Sistaar
the dog has a cone on its head
both ice cream and plastic
It has lost its masters’ voice
brother
as you revolve in the heavens
I am a childless channel
I have lost the powers I once loved
and those I love now are too young
or in wrong orbits
12
R
the man from the hawker grid
diagonal from fruit shop
recliner in chairs that lost its straps
cones to visit me at the playground
He tells me he tried to jump into his fathers grave but was pulled back
he misses his sister
and finds no point talking to chicken rice sellers
“Remember,” he says, “Jesus is all around…the lady and the dog…” R grabs his own wrist “(unintelligible)…take….Jesus won’t give…”
we might find ourselves later
(in astral)
walking the same circle but never meeting at the same point
I did not jump into my fathers’ grave because it was a fire
my sisters are still around
and the point of the chicken rice family is the brother in law
who thinks I’m a preacher
13
the blind man in the bedroom
photographs the mirror
the sleep clinic receives the image
he says to an indefinite ceiling, “the girl in the blue dress is gone in search of the she_wolf and I cannot find the door that finds them”
There are silences.
Tinkling of a piano
the mirror photographs the blind man against a green screen wall
the sleep clinic superimposes a boat unto grand carpet
the temperature in the room sub_zeroes
“ the maiden is in the frontal robe”
the blind man understands the command. retrieves a spade from the antique
He is walking through snow
*Silences outstretched like lazy yoga
He passes a playground
A bald man is talking to R
R tells the bald man about his sister
A woman and a dog and Jesus become subject matter
The blind man enters a garden
follows the wet prints of the dog
and the scent of ashes, fire and wine
Two fathers that cannot be reached in the flesh
‘Is heard of’ between smoke breaks
There is the distant fragile sound of the piano again…
14
(Data centres whir)
(backlog drop)
There are flat screens flanking the command corridors
every flicker, a convoluted map or fetish face or nursery rhyme
There are fat, curved screens in chambers
myopic lenses evoking scarred meat, smoked fluids, compressed roots
There are elongated bodies is artificial orbits
strand like, stranded, straddling severe droughts in harvested organs
There is milk on the bar top
a topless, headless Salome ‘in-eroto’
A line of suspicious powder on the windowsill
A singing bowl full of black stones and strange markings…
“The Lord walks through a fog of incense with a wolf”
15
every time I gravure
a church hymn hums in my spleen
she is a warm flame in a sepia room
a spider in an eye socket
a barrage of lace and garter
every time I softcore
I become liminal space
a screensaver field
of VHS statues
the skin of the land is a pink in decline
a river of detours, a passing vine
a spice we drink from lava bathrooms
every time I mind-craft the sex room
I happy birthday the world
candles blown out by blind animals
the song of obese coughing
black tar man arrives with soil for the garden
the bloated man receives his medicine
16
when will i see you
again?
when will we share
precious
mukbang?
are we true
lovers?
or just
friend rice?
are you the pig
and
I
the sty?
are you the meteor
and
I
the sky?
when will i see you
again?
when will we share precious
melatonin
IRVING PAUL PEREIRA 