“Every great artist has the sense of provocation.”

– Arthur Cravan 

XVII. For George Orwell               

Death, peel off             

my ragged cast –! 

Your dawning             

brings the end of lies –             

an empty stage,              

a heap of bones.             

XVIII. For Andrei Tarkovsky            

Frozen kisses             

& a rusty bunch of keys            

drowning in slow motion.            

Blue narcoleptic shivers.          

Black birches in the mist. 

  

 

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Scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (зeркалo), 1974

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSpVGW5BxFc&feature=related

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Peter Bies © 2012

*** 

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

– Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin (1974)

XVI. For John Singer Sargent 

braids & flowers

asleep

in their beds

sung softly

into summer dreams

where scents speak

with a child’s voice –

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose 

still faint but,

o how different! – Fiat lux!

& laughing at

the fall of darkness

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The Temptations - Runaway Child, Running Wild (1969) 

 The Temptations - Runaway Child Running Wild - YouTube

***

Peter Bies © 2012

 *** 

“A human being is a bad conductor for reality.” 

– Paul Reverdy

April eyes, a cold rain                    

& a warm steroid smell:                    

the keyboard                    

the candles                    

the teacup                    

the screen                    

Karelian whisper:                    

“Никогда, никогда…”                    

a window                    

a crow                     

a cloud                    

& a dream                    

your Karelian whisper –                     

“Никогда, никогда…”                 

  

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France Gall - Y’a du soleil à vendre (1968) 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12z5YBXb3k0&feature=related

 *** 

First Soviet hydrogen bomb test – Semipalatinsk, 1953 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0dUIq8gHgc&feature=related

***

Peter Bies © 2012 

 *** 

“When people go insane, they are actually seeing deeper than most of us.”

– Colin Wilson, The Glass Cage

 A few rats ran for an undefined mission, scurried around, their beaks open: ‘Be high!’ Their telepathic mutant brains were abruptly cut off.  Slow mental echoes continued to reverberate for several minutes in my forehead. ‘I’m getting feedback – nineteen percent!’ Eager for an opportunity to serve, the Mad Poet was very much afraid – what if he was normal again? I stood up, my ears ringing. Why nineteen percent? ‘That’s all we need,’ cried Doll Mother. Such a chance. It suggested just a slight tremor in space-time. ‘Just a tremor,’ said the Mad Poet, ‘like, present assignment done. To get out of it.’ I couldn’t believe that yarn. But the Mad Poet was staring at something, horrified. Something bright caught my eye – a wallet, spilling radioactive dollar bills. Glowing softly in the darkness they looked alien and brittle. Doll Mother saw them too. She glanced around, met my eye. We had known each other before the beginning of time.

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Pretty Things – LSD (1966)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXzgMQM0B-8&feature=related

***

Peter Bies © 2012

*** 

“Mes cils se rapprochant […] me kaléidoscopaient les choses.”

– Paul Verlaine

“A linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, in a setting that by all appearances does not fit them.“

– Max Ernst 

Dream up the glandular regime –                                           

our bodies wed, our bodies bled!                             

Swing fly-by past a string of pyres –                             

our bodies wed, our bodies bled!                             

Of martyred protein robot saints –                             

our bodies wed, our bodies bled!                             

 Concealed & kept alive in dreams –                       

our bodies wed, our bodies bled!                           

   And the Mad Poet cried:

O sex change operators from hell –

you laser the lithe & fragile types

you champion – too young & early!

 

 

Ô poète moderne!

Tes mots sont vides

comme ton cœur –

timide, timide!

 

 

O electric skin sealing 

at two dime hospital!

O New Jerusalem – !

Libidinous death wish, 

encoded in flesh bits!  – proliferate! 

 

 

 

 

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Scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEnYT-kFuGc

***

Peter Bies © 2012

 *** 

“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.” 

– William S. Burroughs

                                          

Protein robots, prophetic        

of the sexual arms race – overall     

there is a warm smell of steroids                                               

& we abuse our raw bodies,                                              

deep from within.                                             

Deep from within,                

of pure maiden tissue,                                    

glandular nightmares unfold –        

scaling off nodular snakeskin,                                           

our bad dreams reflect our shame.                                     

                                     

Our bad dreams reflect our shame –       

we’re slaves of the very same flesh.     

Craven,                                             

we kiss & embrace                                             

our alien controllers.                                            

    

                                        

 

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“Uncontrollable flesh!” – Scenes from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome - TV Scene - YouTube

***

Peter Bies © 2012

*** 

My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them. 

– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

XV. For Mary Shelley        

Organ slingshot slipshod heap of cells –        

the body,       

as in naked body –       

temple force-fed flesh miscarried      

hybrid death wish of male souls      

camouflaged as 9 ft fallen angel      

& flash-forced into self-operating      

the body,     

as in naked body – now,      

contain or beat my armies facing west!     

 

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***  

Scenes from James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Izq-E3o7Y&feature=watch_response

***

Peter Bies © 2012

 *** 

“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed.”

– Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

XIII. For Jim Morrison                      

                 

This morning in July,

comfortably strange

& strangely familiar,    

a conscious reprise            

of what I dreamt            

of last night – 3rd eyes  

keep dreaming of exile

but it is only Day One 

 

XIV. For John Donne                  

 

 

Now your deadline is nigh 

& the saints have left the inn,

mere love’s a lack of saturation – 

fearest thou cold ecstasy?  

 

  

***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdgIcJaaNWg&feature=related

Scenes from Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984)

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Peter Bies © 2012

***

“Surrealism is in fact a betrayal of desire.” 

– Hakim Bey  

    

 XI. For Andrè Breton     

 

 

In dreams I know the female ore,

amorphous shapes & shadows

hiding something sore & smitten

by childhood fears of darkness.    

 

  

 

XII. For Herman Melville 

 

Meanwhile in a hidden hold,

spectral bodies from beyond

strike the dead sun & 

the white waves roll. 

 

 

  

 

 

    

   

 

***

The Yardbirds - Dazed And Confused (1968)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58mQvW0ROag

***

Peter Bies © 2012

*** 

“Let us burn Raphael in the name of our tomorrow!”

– Vladimir Timofeevich Kirillov

Doll Mother’s silent trepidation maintains a wholesome healing distance -

one minor demon tried in vain the flesh computer’s whole black body armor.

Unknown nodal patterns attract the short variety via live transmission… 

but out of the highest motives… flesh computers combine ideal nucleic acids

& instant heart view with electric night mobile & armed atheists pull a heist: 

OPERATION MALE UNIVERSE! Life is variety! - but sex-specific of both distance

& genetic string theory, homeobox trucks had been hiding low for generations,

so turn the table on the demiurg!

 

 

And the Mad Poet cried: 

 

“O Doll Mother! Female universe!

Eat me! With or without cross-dressing!”

 

 

(Nearby in the hidden brain factory the cabinet makers keep turning out 

prodigious Elektronengehirns, entirely made of embryonic stem cells,  

as camouflaged surgeons watch cold blood congeal in open vats of steel…)

 

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Garbage - Milk (1995) 

Garbage - Milk - YouTube

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Peter Bies © 2012

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