Skeeter

I do recall -
But with great difficulty now being as it is nigh fifteen odd year
Since the winds of fate blew me away from that land of inclement clouds
To the land of soft mornings where mist arises from the warm earth
A glowing shroud over the graves of thick skinned negroes
And white skinned fools who killed for harsh corn mash bourbon
And a fist of tobacco.

My eyes once were filled by a grey landscape of grey people with dark blue eyes
and wrinkled foreheads, thin lips and mustaches.
And my eyes which were as blue as any man's turned grey
When I crossed that cold river that runs through coal and iron
And I saw the flat lands of Mississippi and the long overgrown fences

The fallow ground, the derelict house, the old mule were my new companions,
The creek bed, my bed, where I dug with bleeding fingers and broken nails
Into the round holes of the crawdad.
I did work while I could, and for a time, I could
I retained some humanity. But I could not keep from fighting.

I found myself, passing through the tall grass, I was like any other beast,
Infested with ticks and fleas and lice and indifferent to the skeeter
Which plague the better sort.

All this - long time - until my heart started beating again
And I walked into the mission house in Jackson.
Lying in a filthy bed I began to read Faulkner,
And the old man died there in that mission.
I grieved for him a little, a pitied him beyond anything else in this world.
And when he was buried, and I was at last free,
I walked out onto the street.
And for the first time, I looked North.

Good Sir Reb

The mad dog in mad fashion howls,
and acid gut doth churn in the bowl;
this man of honor, he roams this earth
like the razorback in deep, mud-hole bearth.

He was raised like the pit bull,
with the taste of blood in his gullet,
welling hunger within not near full
yet with sharp eye and aim he places the bullet.

This man of honor, it was planted deep
Yes Sir, yes M'am, toss and turn, no sleep.
He'd open doors for the less polite
he'd help the stranger in the darkest night.

The Southern man with his rebel's cross,
roaming the Southland, his blood like the frost.
From clan of old country to kin of today,
his hands were all weathered, fingers they were splayed.

Much work, much agony but with it shagrin,
for some Yankee she-devil to beguile him again.
There is no pleasure in pain, it deep within
the pain does not surface for dishonor the sin.

So he roams the mad earth in the darkest of night,
he seeks only comfort from Eden's white light.
For this modern-day gallant, riding white steed
he thinks not of dishonor, for in it the soul itself would bleed.

With love of the country and love of the land,
this Knight of the valley who'd joined with the band.
The brotherhood of righteous, and in it delight,
for this man of the Southland, this modern white knight.

So onward and upward he travels beyond,
through dark northumberland, and rank, filthy pond.
Through Satan's veiled plight, and the craigs of the hills
he'd ride fast as lightning, chasing enemies for thrill.

Some say he's a ghost of long-past rivalry,
to others a haint of some misbegotten chivalry.
But the way of the man is chiseled in heart
like the mason or sculptor beauty in rock split apart.

While no sword could split him (for his soul already rent)
in living all the pleasure, and the pleasure now spent.
So hail to the enemy, as he runs and he flees,
this ghost of the Southland shall drive him to knee.

Will his honor secure him? Will mercy prevail?
To this Knight of honor, would he drive the nail?
With the Way as atonement, and the word as his bread,
He rides chasing heathens to that land of the dead.

Onward and upward, white knight, white steed
the enemy he beckons and plants evil seed.
Weak minds he will tangle in an intricate knot
manipulating their hearts in diabolic plot.

With the truth a rock for your foundation
you'll ride the wind, oh hope of haggard Nation.
With the enemy's dark lies still ringing in ear
let not evil talon pierce brethren heart with fear.

Of rising and falling, the waves perservere
and pound solid shoreline (as in constant arrear).
We owe lying beast his one final stroke,
to cut off his head and cast it afloat.

So stand for the righteous and stand for the true,
your heart beats with fire and will never be blue.
Rattle their cages and poke them with brands,
these, Lucifer's liars, misbegotten cads.

The Black Prince

Sterquilinium

Three score years behind, perhaps
a dozen more ahead
The balance of my life now falls
Amongst my friends: the dead

The men I’ve sent to march to war
However just the cause
Stained the earth as they now stain hell
In Cerberus’ bloody jaws

To me was left a vast empire
The peak of mortal wealth
The promise of my father’s crown
Of long life and of health

Squandered that which was bestowed
On vain and feckless aims?
My empire shrinks before me now
And blackened is my name.

My folk despised throughout the world
My foes too bold and strong
My enemies win victory
Though ever false and wrong

Like a million rats descending
On storehouse and on field
The enemy, though base and weak
In numbers, will not yield

And now my friends all step aside
My people turn away
They feel betrayed; I sought too much
Their debt, my loss defrays

At last my end appears too soon
But leaves me with one claim
That all the evil that I’ve done
I did in God’s good name

Southern Rising

Sterquilinium

Where some see lost memosa trees
replaced by rows of bradford pears
and countless yankee restaurants
and yankee homes and yankee airs
those same declare: the South is dead
this South never to rise again
for how could Southern pride revive
where yankee emptiness has been?

But strange, as if the soil's a sun
whose rays, unseen, but still in force
do penetrate the yankee heart
and though are stained, yet fend off worse
Thus yankees, in their locust clouds
pave everything from field to fen
become, within a dozen years
akin to Southern Gentlemen

And so the brashest brooklyn cad
you plant beside Fort Loudon's shore
becomes somewhat acceptable:
civilized, if still a boor
His children, bred in Southern skies
Unlike their father, show it when
without hope of recompense
they open doors for fellow men

I am a Leech Field

I am a Leech Field

A poem by Inkki Garibaldi delivered at the opening of the brand new Tater Holler Township Squash and Turnip Monument in front of a crowd of mainly four to five year olds. Inkki was later asked to apologize which she refused to do, saying that her art speaks for itself.

I am a Leech Field

I am a Leech Field
Rising up through me is all sorts of (expletive)
Across my soggy mud
The dogs chase cats and cats chase mice
I am a compost heap where the possums root
And worms and rolly pollys dig out
citizens together in the warm smelly earth
Showing the dry grassy wheat
what it means to be moist
I kept the ground warm through the winter.

I am an old rusty bucket
With holes so big
You can see right through
And tetanus growing on each metal tooth
Rutted turf
Discarded melon rinds
Cinder blocks
And a broken shovel

I am a dead bird
An old baseball
Dog vomit grass
A worm infested tomato

I am a roughly rectangular area of approximately 1/6 of an acre
I am a couple of broken plastic spoons
I am a half-buried tire
Half-filled with water
Birthplace to ten thousand mosquitos
Bringing rhthym to the garden each time it rains

I have watched the birds fly South in the winter
And fly north again in the summer
Crapping all over me both ways.

I am not a son of a (expletive) like the front yard
Mowed and aerated like a (expletive) prissy (expletive)
I will not use the color of my grass to cover the (expletive) underneath
I am not a (expletive) garden whore letting little garden gnomes (expletive) me in the (expletive)

I am a Mulch pile
Mouldering in peace

Persisting Triumph

As I made my way through mire and bog
I thought of how that mighty Macree.
would cause the tremors in even Satan's dog
that Phaentom of the lowland lay.

Press forward, press forward,
while boot is mired in knee-depth peat,
press forward, yo! press forward ho!
for us there'll be no cowan's retreat.

Pray your prayers to heaven above,
pray God's hounds shall be at their heel.
Your prayers will be answered, they given the shove
be in this world er next, not for choice to seal.

While the darkness befalls that cold Northlund,
you'll find a glimmer o'er the East
in pale morn's light,
and with this advance, through bog and through peat.

So follow that morn,
from West to East.
Trust in your lead,
who'll keep at bay the beast.

Death's unfriendly hand
may soon deliver,
that knell from the North
that pales soul to shiver.

Press forward, press forward,
while boot is mired in knee-depth peat,
press forward, yo! press forward ho!
for us there'll be no cowan's retreat.

In regalia they are dressed,
in family coat they are wrapped,
this brave contingent
upon whom in all hope is trapped.

So wear that jewel with honor,
and tartan kilt so bright,
your clandaugh your birth-right
your broad sword the requite.

Press forward, press forward,
while boot is mired in knee-depth peat,
press forward, yo! press forward ho!
for us there'll be no cowan's retreat.

With blade in air, thy hand delivers
the cut unto archer, arrow and quiver
While heart beats like drum assunder
Your life-force delivers sullen death and plunder.

Press forward, press forward,
while boot is mired in knee-depth peat,
press forward, yo! press forward ho!
for us there'll be no cowan's retreat.

Into that eye, ice glance and glimmer
charge forward you, stabbing evil this sinner
Letting that blood from him now flow
Coloring crimson the river feeding soil for sow.

Press forward, press forward,
while boot is mired in knee-depth peat,
press forward, yo! press forward ho!
for us there'll be no cowan's retreat.

And into that morn, we'll pass like the Saint
travelling onward to bosom from this availing fog.
Into that eye's warm light sheilding heart from faint,
we'll travel to long home from this lowland's hell-bog.

Pressing forward, pressing forward,
one boot mired, knee-depth peat,
I press forward, upward and onward
for me there'll be no coward's retreat.

Early Fall, On a Winding Road

Sterquilinium

While driving on a winding road
I saw a wondrous tree
That may have seemed a joy to you
But seemed not so to me

Where one might see its scarlet flush
In a tower of autumn pride
I beheld its tumorous form
And the threat of life denied

And though its strength might show itself
To some less jaded eyes
For me its copper glory
Its cancerous heart belies

Truth

In the land of the ephemerie,
where the waters of Delphi flow
there the place of noble breed,
of men with purpose to few is known.

Ruled once by great King Richard
(of who's Knights, they were but poor)
it was a place of nobility
that would some day surely need shore.

For like the creature for which it is named,
(a life of slight instant, to be sure)
the life's blood of this place
would course but only for one measure, only for one frame.

Like Camelot before her,
the black Knight he would not tarry.
For Arture, Black was the lust,
in Briefington twas the Sir Teddy the lush!

To live but only an instant,
one breath, and only one beat;
they packs in the life before them,
before that life she is repleat.

The fate of this Nation,
its generations are untold.
Whilst breeding like wild banshies,
yet in that breath, nothing can grow old.

No knowledge is passed,
no ventures are gained.
No history for young-on's
for in one wink they are aged.

So drink merry knights!
Drink into this eve.
Thy temple not nagged by morning's bright light,
thy living not worried with such terrible slight.

With no need for religion,
no need for distress,
thy life is thy fortress,
thy life is thy death.

So live on merry gents,
(what living you do)
there'll be no morrow
so go on with your "do".

Fear not the wagging tongue
(for who will they tell?)
and that future generation,
is doomed the same hell.

If one soul is set free
from this terrible land,
let that soul be the one,
who'll build a future with plan.

Let his countenance be true,
and his writings be few;
but what writing is wrung,
let it be not in warning, but this "history" undone.

For no history exists in that raunchy, short life
That damned liberertine ephemerie
and forsaken, empassioned short life.

King Richard had wrought it
many ages ago
and lives just got shorter
with each passing new row.

The streams of sweet truth,
flow gentle, straight twine;
but for not the ephemerie
who drowns waters turned lie.

Their life is their reason,
their life is their proof
of what history of living
each life is a spoof.

So drink on poor ephemerie
till the spring is but trickle.
You drink up her soul,
yet the Father slings scycle.

Your libertine life,
in one instant undone.
Its Creator has ripped it,
from your fallow soiled fun.

When enough generations have come
and have gone,
the very existence you crave,
is existence undone.

Take NOT! down this Nation,
do not take it in strife,
for these hands that have worked it
your passions can't take ALL life.

Drink on short-lived Nation,
drink into this night,
your drinking shorts living
but ours is right, long life.

The Treachery of the Swiss

Sterquilinium

Everywhere I go
I never fail to see
the two accusing hands
of the clock outstretched toward me.

From time to time I've torn them off
and left the clock-face bare
But then I find I can't abide
the dial's empty stare.

And so I damn the Swiss
(and their awful mortal lock)
that wretched race that gave the world
both Calvin and the Clock.

Red Bess of Inverness

Sterquilinium

Red are her hairlocks
(ach legh ach leigh)
Red is her necklace
(ach legh ach leigh)
Red are her freckles
(ach legh ach leigh)
Tho' she be freckless
(ach legh ach leigh-o!)

Bessie she's red now
(ach legh ach leigh)
And wears bright red slickers
(ach legh ach leigh)
Over her kid gloves
(ach legh ach leigh)
And red are her knickers
(ach legh ach leigh-o!)

Ach legh ach leigh!
Ach legh ach leigh-o!
Ach legh ach leigh!
Ach legh ach legh-o!

Red is her weskit
(ach legh ach leigh)
Red is her pigeon
(ach legh ach leigh)
Red is the rose
(ach legh ach leigh)
She calls her religion
(ach legh ach leigh-o!)

Red are her elbows
(ach legh ach leigh)
Red is her lace
(ach legh ach leigh)
Best not to mention
(ach legh ach leigh)
How bright red her face
(ach legh ach leigh-o!)

Ach legh ach leigh!
Ach legh ach leigh-o!
Ach legh ach leigh!
Ach legh ach legh-o!

Philo's Fall

While Black Philo can argue,
in white hall so stark,
his progeny cowers in memory
of his fumbling in dark.

This liar of yore,
like adopted kin of today,
an existence in snore -
flawed character our bane.

So accomodate and welcome
enemies visiting our heel.
Hugging jackals your nature,
causing truth's skin to reel.

True heirs to your blood
see through flawed lies.
They trumpet antithesis
thus vanquishing disguise.

Donation

Sterquilinium

Around about the time I learned that time was born to die
I learned what makes all things corrupt would suffer its own fate
For it’s not that trees lay as they fall but trees fall as they lie
For unlike angels fallen man may never rise too late

Though we damn our deaths and we damn this constant change
That weathers us and grows us but to let us go to seed
Our temporal natures save us from the permanent derange;
The very thing that harms us is the thing we dearly need

For were we like the angels who beheld the face of God
And never touched by death and thus permitted to atone
But let our pride’s dominion be our scepter and our rod
We’d be, like they, eternally, in prisons of our own

Leper King

Sterquilinium

Whether or not he wears a mask
the Leper King must know his place;
upon a throne, and yet unseen
a paragon of sin and grace.

Anemia and ichor wrought
within one being's seamless heart;
power and weakness, visible;
death and life in equal part

The Leper King now rules this world
but pride replaces blood and pus
and dripping sores belie the crown
appealing to the worst in us

Icke's Pensees

This short reflective poem was written in Icke's later years during one of his "lucid" times. Icke had never been religious and his childhood could not be understood in any way as placid. In fact Icke's later life was quite tame compared to his early years. Most scholars believe this image of God must be understood metaphorically, but it is unclear what the metaphor represents. Some have suggested that God was his own artistic expression.

Icke only wrote several more poems before joining the Cognitive Artist movement at which point his pen necessarily grew ceased to move.

Pensees

At first God was but a star, cold and remote,
Then I saw God twinkle and he looked playful to me.
He shone brighter and he danced like the planets dance in the sky
Always surprising me by his sudden appearance and disappearance
He seemed to laugh and I laughed back and he grew as I grew
Until he was bright like the moon,
Still cold it is true, but within his beams,
I began to see the world,

Creation looked soft and gentle, gray and shimmering like God.
I mistook it for God.
As I took it up and let it pour through my hand
It mesmerized me
And for quite some time I neglected to look up at all.
But God did not cease to grow.

Creation began to take on color
I delighted in this,
There was food.
I ate and still more came,
Nectar sprung from the Earth
I drank and more flowed up

But then the fountains dried
The world become hard,
I dug in the sand for the sweet Nectar and none came
I looked for the fruit but all had withered

I became angry,
Where was the soft earth?
Where was the earth that flowed?
I struck at the rock twice.
And I remembered God and I cursed him.

I felt his hot breath upon my back and my neck.

I looked up in horror and there was God
He burned above me fiercer than a thousand suns
His wrath fell upon me like molten lead
It consumed all about me
And I lifted my hands up to him
And his weight fell upon me even as he burned me

I began to bear his enormous weight
And it did not crush me
Even now I bear it
Even now it burns

The Virginia Bluebell

From Lime Hill to Three Springs
on steep ridges there this flower clings.

If brilliant beauty were a song,
this siren's color could sing it so strong.

This flower in beauty, it truly sings
of tall, blue ridges and wild mountain streams.

From Walker Mountain to Walnut Grove,
young men there seek her for to woo their beau.

This gentle siren of the blue hills,
she has the beauty, and the looks that could kill.

Like Narcissus before with locked-in stare,
or a Medussa who turns men's hearts stone-bare.

This mountain enchantress with color so blue,
will capture girl's fancy, and devotion so true.

From the Maple in Silver Grove to Holston Lake with its shimmer,
every eye in trance by this blue moutain Lady and her deep cyan glimmer.

In the town of Bluff City, there echos the tale
of the Evergreen Hills and that Virginia Bluebell.

Santuary -REMOVED

Due to the massive flood of negative e-mails concerning the work "Sanctuary", I as a synaptic artist have opted to remove it.

A few notes to loyal readers:

To Mr. Washington of Little Five Points in Toledo, Ohio - No sir, there is no such rap song - it was just a joke. I think it's time for Jerry Springer.
*************************
To "little Joe" of Lee Walla Wanna, Wyoming - no, pink cottages was not a metaphor for anything, and especially not bad cheese. It was actually a place I stayed when I was nine or ten years of age.
**********************
Haerve Michelleau writes "Mr. Visum, is it true that you were one of the youngest drunks in the history of East Tennessee."

No Mr. Michelleau, that title belongs to a country music star named Rhomba Jones. I was the youngest drunk in the ceded state of Appalachi.
********************************
One special e-mail of note from Mick Alliehaundrose- "(unintelligible drivel: republishing would require a beach towel issued to every reader)...you know where I can find that pink cottage?"...

Mr. Alliehaundrose, this was 20 years ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy but if it still exists it stands on a small stretch of sand on the island of Little Saint George just off the Appalachicola coast. Call Beulah and she can "hook you up".

And, as a side note, I know that they make "dribble cups" for those challenged by overactive "spittle glands" but if someone could engineer one to capture "drivel" overflow from the brain BEFORE it gets to the mouth/pen/keyboard ... WOW - what a gold mine that would be, eh Mr. Alliehaundrose?

Visum OUT
"my love is a pink cottage, palmetto bugs my disdain"

Ode to Roger Whittaker

Sterquilinium

If I could go back in time
through entropy's clouds I'd pass
to execute my only wish
and kick Cat Stevens' ass

Don't you hate that hippy?
and all his maudlin songs?
that reek of unwashed sweaters,
and communal water bongs?

Storyline: Barbarossa's Teats

Sterquilinium

L'il Timmy Rompkins was born in the Summer of Affection, August 1966. One year before the Summer of Attraction, two years before the Summer of Infatuation, and three full years before the Summer of Love. L'il Timmy was, like everyone else born that summer, a sort of victim of zeitgeist. Had he been born three years later, he would perhaps have ended up being a commercial real estate agent with a summer house on Martha's Vinyard. But instead, like everyone else born that summer, he had become a research scientist, and a respected one at that.

L'il Timmy's first memories were of dappled green lawns, replete with metal toys in a time when metal toys were enjoying their great victory before the onslaught of cheap plastic shit. Some would say that L'il Timmy's mind was like a metal toy. But those shortsighted fools would be wrong. Dead wrong. For L'il Timmy's mind was far more like a spear of brocolli than any metal toy. Uncannily similar to a spear of brocolli, in fact.

He often thought that it was odd that his first memories should fixate on those robust Tonka trucks and metal robots of gears and wheels, instead of on his beloved older brother Big'un. For the remainder of L'il Timmy's childhood was lived in a sort of orbit around Big'un, an orbit that could not be described fully by the considerable impact of Big'un's physical gravity. And this was most unfortunate for L'il Timmy, for Big'un, while a genial enough fellow, had from an early age been afflicted with an affinity for the occult. Big'un's first real toy was a simalcrum of Thomas Edison's "spiritphone," a device that purportedly allowed one to dial into the phantoms of "Dimension X". In fact, Thomas Edison's "spiritphone" was an early experiment in toymaking by Platudinor Enterprises, and rather than connecting one to the spiritworld, it played a scratchy disk recording of "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" over and over again.

For hours a day, Big'un would ponder the meaning. What were the spirits trying to say to him? "Their tops are made out of rubber"... was this a metaphor for the elasticity of the mind? Did it refer to people wearing rubber hats (like the plastic helmets of hippy motorcycle riders or the American troops in Viet Nam?) And what about "Their bottoms are made out of springs?"

L'il Timmy, though, was content to sit in Big'un's presence as his older brother pondered these imponderables. And in that long detatched observation, L'il Timmy acquired the patience that would serve him well in becoming the world's foremost authority on biogenesis.

THE COGNITIVE MANIFESTO

Sterquilinium

There is a spectre haunting the visible world. This spectre is Untruth, and it is the duty of the artist to banish Untruth. In ages past, men sought Beauty, likening it to Truth. But it is not Truth. It is Beauty. And for ages, Beauty was Art, and Art was Beauty. But Beauty was not Truth and thus Art was not Truth.

Then men arose who said in strident voices: "Let Art Be Truth!" And they strove to make Art Truth. They broke free from form, from line, from perspective, from skill, from talent, from melody, from rhythm, from meter, and most of all, from Beauty.

But Art was not Truth.

It is only now that History has ended that We may know Truth. But Art is still not Truth. For Art is Man's rendering of Truth via Media. Whether that Medium be tactile or visual, audial or olfactory, the Medium has linked the Artist to the Audience in the communication of the Truth that only the Artist may know.

And yet, all media are corrupt, for being physical, they are fallen. And being fallen, they are themselves Untrue. And being Untrue, how can anything transmit Truth?

And still yet, in the Artist's mind, Truth resides. For it is in the Artist's mind that Art is created.

Now, We ask, why is Art communicated? Why do we communicate Truth? There are two reasons. The first is to fulfill that vicarious pleasure that the Artist takes as Creator in the reception of the Truth. But this is not the True goal of the Artist. For the True goal of the Artist is Truth. And Pleasure is not a Truth. Thus, the reception of Truth by an audience, in addition to being impossible due to corrupt Media, is also a means to corrupt the Artist himself.

Secondly, the Artist may pursue renumeration, in order to sustain bodily needs while he continues to pursue the Truth. In this case, the Artist transmits a corrupted Truth (and thus Untruth), and in return receives corruption itself, for Material is the greatest Untruth.

And so We see that the only two purposes for communication (and media) serve only to enhance corruption.

And so We issue this Manifesto: The only True Art is Cognitive Art. Art that never leaves the Mind of the Artist. For in the Mind of the Artist, Truth may be found. Any and all media are corrupt, and thus are not Art, for Art is Truth and Truth is not corrupt.

And so We, as the COGNITIVE ARTISTS pledge to furthermore practice our Art only within the confines of our minds, never seeking to communicate that Art in any way.

To ponder the descent...qui custos es mei

To teeter, fulcrum's edge, feet like talon and steely eye clutching and surveying at once one precipice of a canyon of psychosis; yet with souls sheathed in the armor of God we are the broadsword of mental accuity laying waste with fierce and bloody dominion the black and featureless chasm of numbing instinctual thought which defines that ruin below.