THE HERMIT COMES TO TOWN         written in 1991  by jd bellamy            

 

Flanked by a prologue and an epilogue, this collection of psychodramatic poetry
and prose scenes are expressed through the persona, used metaphorically, of a
latterday hermit. Technically and lingistically complex at times they are
nevertheless engagingly  profound.
Sometimes private and occasionally surreal, the situational and
thematic content of the poetry is always accessible to the reader. A monologue
by a man named Johnson 'calling the desert downstairs' from a pay-phone, shows
the powerfully moving utterance of a married man in a state of frustrated aridity
of mind and sexual impotency, and a duologue between two men, who could
possibly represent a post-resurrection Christ and apostle, present the reader with
much more than just food for thought.
Other poems convey, with witty emotional intensity: a sense of isolation,
psychological disturbance, defiance, challenge and resolve. Lovers of the deeper
insight into life will gain much from the reading.

 *

FOREWORD

The Hermit: eremetic outsider, as personified in religious and
irreligious dicta, dating back to the dawn of Man. The Hermit:
eremetic priest of wisdom, as personified in every media,
whether classical or modern, as the suzerain provider of
knowledge, both shamanic and workaday.

The Hermit is pinpoint everything. As an outsider, persistently
searching for absolute understanding, an eremetic, 'Everyman',
the Hermit is all and all. As an eremite, the Hermit represents
both men and women: he is both sexual and asexual, being
as he is the lodestone to quintessential Humanity, regardless
of proclivities or desires. The Hermit is the watcher in
Plato's cave of shadows, and, being so, bears the elements of
the ultimate anti-heroic genius, observing as he does the spectres
of existence from a distance, while still revealing enough to his
eye to understand virtually everything. The Hermit is both mad and
sane: Brooding over the vast abyss, he is all-knowing,
experiencing every mode of living, regardless of their cognizant
stability or otherwise.

The Hermit comes to town in order to divulge abundant truths.
His sense of innate wisdom is filled with unrequited feeling,
both romantic and platonic. The Hermit is Saviour and
Destroyer. The Hermit is Pioneering Essence. Without the
figure of the Hermit, the world would be void.

....

PROLOGUE

As the creature leaves the comic-strip to conquer death
I write this, and bid that you write your own
comedies of fusion, with mettles set aside
for the central passions of the raging bone;
and in that you write, i bid you words of flame,
fusion, madness, gladness and acclaim -
as the creature leaves the comic-strip to conquer all,
I write these puny words and cleave away the pall.

 

 

THE HERMIT'S DELIRIUM (A HETEROMORPHIC STUDY)

You women who pluck the deadest rose that you might seem as thorny,
I am the wangling botanist who can/shall draw the equator
between you and the Outsider, one-cell, truth behind all beauty;
I am the one, I am the He who shall/can
canvass for the androgynous mind!
Gut your pupils, my lotus dears, your vamped complexions are
but a kiss-proof grave!
The flesh is done, is dumb, is for a blinkered vote of Outing -
my lotus dears! pray-pray-pray
and gut your sexy tears.

Here I am, who is ( ) that far
from bruising on to your secret wishes.
Everyday, we cast our dials and borrow off love's unearthly
china-shop, cowslip calf and croon,
'Heh-hehhh! why shouldn't male bull have an ideal
female equivalent?
Heh-hehhh! don't even think that you don't know that a woman
is just as capable of doing in capable as a man;
don't even think, for I am absolutely certain
that thought is of a conflict with quality looks!"

And here I am, who is ( ) that far
from bruising on to your secret Gods.
Yes, you're right, I do not fathom you
and, moreover, do not wish to because
you petty generals are no pals of mine
and doubtless will never be until a prudery
which impassions, 'I luv yah, I luv yah - Luv Is,'
knowing that the kettle is mute all of the sub-sad while!
Who knows, for love's questions are often statements,
and women who are awed by their hormones in the morning
are that certain of their manliness by lunchtime
that they are forever the misdeterminate facts at hand,
live matey.

OO-OO-OO, don't I just love to ramble
an edge of lost control to poetry; don't we all
just live to ramble life into a living
that madly tickles the testicles with its
mocking shout of, 'Eat this, sucker!'

SOD IT! - I'm coming to town
and will not give our people the thrill
of thinking that I am ill. I still have
the warmth to perceive us as well, that I am
absolutely past it, but
as ready for action as the monsooned rain.

LISTEN TO ME, GIRL!-
What with you being the greatest puritan of them all,
put this one in your camera and smoke it!

 

*

THE HERMIT'S MANTLEPIECE (A GIFTED EXPOSITION)

From a man-at-war skein, I got my mantlepiece crudes
one month when, wired with rockets, my ghostly conscience pulled
its chain, and I was left, livid in my mentality,
pointed as the holly and neighbour to a raw radish
rumour, with whom, I suppose, I had sired much placebo
authority over the years - you know the sort of drill,
forgetting to take gifts for your soul-furled scripts,
which somewhen you've sold off, incidentally.

It - that month was a case of
pebble-dashing the Civil -
it told how silly it had been up to then
and probably how silly it would be to go
for a second try. Away, after love, I mean. And, of a sort, I'm sorry;
sorry that breaking up is as much mine as yours today.
Sure, we have wisecracks worth fighting for, but if I were any wiser,
I'm certain I'd feel unwanted now and then.

When a boy in the park, I saw many man-hole covers
and then thought of women and men. Well, you do, don't you?
And, after that, a sixteener in the woods,
I could never look a man-hole in the face again.

That one's from Eiffel, that one's from Pisa,
that one's on loan from Pompeii - each of us has our idols, our souvenirs, our
mantlepiece crudes through which our tales are badly told.

What's your problem, sister? Don't you conform? Don't you
apprehend? No worries
one month dead love shall eat you also,
and your personal quests, your duties, wired with rockets
shall flush, and livid in your lonesome mortality,
you shall know

me, as I rotate purple through the park,
to approach my home of homes a man.

 

*
THE HERMIT'S PASTICHE LOVE (A CONCATENATION)

'Love and lust, the Cain and Abel
of the Canon of Bible,
revile each others' languages
but eat at one blue table,
and thus, in valleys of ashes,
our reprisals are stumped
by ears and hearts and hearts at sessions
of a leaning to the sweetly
desperately stalled
ventriloquists of approach,
thrown up high
and disabled.'

****************

My baby, my boo-boo, my cheeky, my bowdlerah,
it's you, you-you-you, who is crisp, who,
upon a fabled cable, shouts a 'So long!.'
and then conceives a little label
as to why our love's so feather-cosy - it's you.
with your shriek of 'Put it in me!',
who does me like simply no other. O,

my baby, I've got this much to yell about you -
your toes, they're bells, and they ring and ring at beddy-byes
a torrid rumba about that cock-a-mouth of a date
when you and I were altogether certain
about those old folks and their sour-faced rubber scowls;
yes, child, your toes are bells, I tell you,
bells that forever chime about those lovelorn bitches
who married off to Disney
a grief in time ago -
be ye alive or be ye dead, your toes are bells.

And, baby, I'm scared
you, you and all your opal charms,
are eternally under the influence, and I'm
scared that you'll home one day to find
all of these cliched confluences
scavenging forcefully like the resistible glories
of the dawn, child, I don't feel comfortable -
here, there's no edge of deja-vu.
And that's why I love you so dearly child,
for you have no pretence of being new.

And therefore if we've lost it, do not be sad -
after all, I have never said that you and I
are still as good as those yabber-dabber years gone by;
those days when when we could comb the beach of ne'er-known
and Still come home plastered and remembering.
Because, baby, we've got to concentrate;
have got to overcome this rutting rut we've fallen into.
Yes, sweet boo-boo, we have to concentrate again.

Yet, don't you see, we'll surely soon be detached
from these myriad perceptions of sodomy?
Yes, so so soon, this noxious vision of love shall depart
and we'll never have to deal in brief encounters again;
and, child, again is a brain in the rain,
and I have no passion to attempt once more
to clad my brain in a rain-proof bag. No!
Don't you see that that's the reason why we're
so feather-cosy in our cliched love?
We ain't certain whether we're pagan or christian,
but we sure as hell do a lot to translate
these pages into something of a precipitating scripture -
our early works were just preludes to preludes;
now is the time to flurry hotly forth
and create a most sanctified finality and -
you are not me and I am not you and
I am not me and you are not - we're just
Scared Antagonists, and you know,
I don't think that we could ask for any better.

So please, babe, listen just for my sake.
Don't you see that it's you, you-you-you,
who is crisp, who, upon a fabled cable,
has embroiled me in the waters of a Lover?
And really, child, really, boo-boo,
that's all that matters you know, all that
matters in this case of taking steps.

Or maybe, baby, maybe
I've simply gone out of my mind,
maybe, baby, maybe
I'm simply hogging the picture,
and there are genuine freaks out there
who need a fresh deposit of love,
genuine freaks out there
who need a fresh deposit for a soul.

Maybe, baby, maybe
is all I can think to say,
as these clamouring bodily fluids implode
upon the empty roads of live and let die.

*******
'Love and lust, the Cain and Abel
of the Canon of Babel,
revile each others languages
but eat at one nude table,
and thus, in valleys of ashes,
our resprisals are stumped
by ears at hearts and hearts at sessions
of a leaning to the sweetly,
desperately stalled
ventriloquists of approach,
thrown up high
then disabled.'

*

THE HERMIT'S IDEAL EMPATHY
(A CALL FOR SYMPATHY)

Maidens, ladies, loaders, caddies,
why you play a part in manhood's scene baffles me,
for you, who build conceptions, who procreate amalgams
with a click of your intinerant heels must be
that bad-sad to hang around like you do
that it's about time you barked your teeth at us
and slighted our scatalogs we underers and overers
rattle with our mug-crazed bragadoccio!

SEE! Our desires, spitting on the road for a whittling laugh,
lunge abrupt and completely unlike you.
SEE! They slop their slits with an image of images -
blundering buses no doubt play their part
in our rumble-tumble talk of dead-end beauties;
SEE!
SEE! SEE!

Ah well,
who am I to scotch my tongue in this way
when all these rantings lour from my male and solo ears
so as to ratify woman's obsolescence?
Ah well,
who am I to dirge to you about surging
when all my dreamed up lovers have swum to the dust-cart
like tigers who, possessed by dieting,
have not lived for so long that they're beautiful?
(WHO AM I?)

Maidens, ladies, loaders, caddies,
I want to say, to get back to the subject and
say that I Know you are bored with me
and furthermore with others like me,
that is, 'The Guys',

and that surely you must grow up soon and clock
your stokings to duality's Centre, speed
evidence of your shapings of God's zig-zag Viking vie;
evidence of your shapings
of us swag-bagged, liquoring chaps.

*
THE HERMIT'S METAMORPHOSIS
(A DELIRIUM DEFINED)

Ku Klux Klan commandos
bear us the ovum that we certify
as the nude-strutting story of the Jaw-Jaw, War-War
manhood-in-demand, Okay-Okay-Okay
of balling on soft ground while entering a 'Who AmI I?'
reign of revelled deaths, with a call of "I assure you, I
melt at cliches the same as any mad sod of a
film-maker/excecuter." - LISTEN TO ME GIRL,!
I ain't sexist, but I think you should conceive, be
positive you're the pillar-box pinta through which we
pensive Gods get going. Yep-Yup, you know the score -
like your foremothers, you've signed up to displace your
forefathers as the murderers of coldest sociability.

And if you rightly can, you'll read this over when you're eating
and build a patta-cake confidence just for you and
give the index finger to your homeward dairy comforts and
generally strive to for a yearning after touch.
And if you rightly can, you'll churn this over when the business of
bricking up the new-born
is progressing like a dream;
then you, if you rightly can, will commune
in the schizophonic font of tabloid news
without a single affectation to
the broadsheet facts of life;
if you rightly can, if you can-can rightly!

Ah-hee-ah-hee-hee-hee,
I'm sure I had you fooled there/ Ah-
hee-ah-hee-hee-hee, congratulations to you all -
we've got over the stowaway science of this piece
already, and the paucity of change and change alike
is ours to pet and pinch
until they bite our thumbs again/Ah-hee-ah-hee
ah-hee-hee-hee!

(WHEN HER SMITTEN IDIOSYNCRACIES ARE GONE,
THE HUMAN RACE IS JUST ADORABLE!!!)

HuH
HuH
HuH
Farewell! you are too dear for my possessings
HuH
HuH
Farewell! - With this quotation I do feign
that what's been said here tonight may sit as well
amidst the original as any
cardiacal span.

*
THE HERMIT'S SELF-DOUBT
(A BEAUTIFUL CONVOLUTION)

What am I doing with these hairs
when you belt-braced fools don't even know me
and state that beauty is truth when, in fact,
beauty is a schizoid nomad who,
sweating fast in the cuckoo's mouth,
bears limbs that bride immobile caravans.

What am I doing with these accusative curls
when you brace-banged quarries do not stone me,
or rather, when the heart has lost her endings
in a raggle-taggle vehicle of young men jeering
at

their long-haired mobile fears

WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!!

*
THE HERMIT'S SAD RESUME
(A SUFFIX TO SUFFERING)

Hence born to sensual prison-walls
we find our valleys external and raging
with raping volumes, as the collective soul
starves on, an envious student of the passed on
reapers, who devour with the backs of their eyes..

(WE ARE THE HETEROGENOUS UNDERNOURISHED)

And it's not easy being green.
Neither a stirrer nor a stove is no pie-job man.
With the watchers on us as our watchmen booze
off their registry bellies, we don't seem to choose
a being either vigilant or sickening enough
for sexuality's verbal padderings..

(WE ARE THE HETEROGENOUS UNDERVALUED!)

And it's no hardship looking yellow.
Neither a freshman nor a backwardsman is no turkey, Ma'am.
With a scorpion cave in the centre of our kiss,
we're a nought-to-a-hundred Centre of sentience.

PLEASE LISTEN! - It's a riot stepping through
reapers, who devour with the backs of their eyes.

Please listen, for this speaks volumes.
Please listen, for this speaks.
(PLEASE!!!!!!!)

Hence born to sensual prison walls,
we find our valleys external and raging
with timeless, hot deriders

and not one of us is Dead.

*

DRAMA INTERLUDE A:
WAITING FOR THE SON

MAN 1: (flatly) Why aren't you driving?
MAN 2: (factually) I can't drive.
MAN 1: (flatly) But time's a Roman plantation
MAN 2: (factually) I know.
MAN 1: (flatly) Time just keeps on going in a detering crucified line.
MAN 2: (factually) In the driver's seat.
MAN 1: (flatly) Yes. And you can't drive?
MAN 2: (factually) No.

(Pregnant Pause)

MAN 1: (flatly) Whose sandals are those?
MAN 2: (factually) Mine.
MAN 1: (flatly) So who's Jesus then?
MAN 2: (factually) I am.
MAN 1: (flatly) I've never seen you breaking bread.
MAN 2: (factually) No.
MAN 1: (flatly) Nor have I seen you turn water into wine.
MAN 2: (factually) No.
MAN 1: (flatly) So what says you're Jesus then?
MAN 2: (factually) My manner, my nature - as involves my
consumption of berries and nuts each day, as opposed
to meat and fish.
MAN 1: (flatly) Oh. When were you last crucified then?
MAN 2: (factually) Oh, last Tuesday.
MAN 1: (flatly) So you've been arising from the dead for a week.
that's sure some hotdog.
MAN 2: (factually) But You were crucified eleventeen times
during the past fortnight.
MAN 1: (flatly) Yes, but I'm not Jesus.

(Pregnant pause)

MAN 2: (factually) What's the time
MAN 1: (flatly) Thirteen 'o' clock.
MAN 2: (factually) Not long till tea-time then?
MAN 1: (flatly) No.
MAN 2: (factually) Where did you get that watch from?
MAN 1: (flatly) From Joseph the Carpenter.
MAN 2: (factually) When?
MAN 1: (flatly) At thirteen 'o' clock last Thursday -
just two days after you were last crucified.
MAN 2: (factually) Oh yes. Are you fond of thirteen?
MAN 1: (flatly) Of course - that was the last time I saw you die.
MAN 2: (factually) And when was the second time?
MAN 1: (flatly) At thirteen 'o' clock the following day.
MAN 2: (factually) Ah yes. So how old are the heavens now
then?
MAN 1: (flatly) About fifty-fifty as the Crow flies.
MAN 2: (factually) Pretty old then?
MAN 1: (flatly) Only as old as any wheel, Jesus.
MAN 2: (factually) What do you mean?
MAN 1: (flatly) Simply, Jesus, I mean as old as a castor or a
tyre - you know; as old as the driver comes.
MAN 2: (factually) I understand entirely.

(Pregnant pause)

MAN 1: (flatly) Can you help me, Jesus?
MAN 2: (factually) But I only healed you last weekend - at
thirteen 'o' clock in fact - your favourite time -
and I really don't need you healing again for now.
MAN 1: (flatly) Not with healing, with my nose - I reckon it's
broken in nine places.
MAN 2: (factually) That is healing.
MAN 1: (flatly) No it's not - surely my nose is not broken enough -
it needs a little more Caesaropapy to make it so.
MAN 2: (factually) Stop fussing.
MAN 1: (flatly) Do you kiss your wife, Jesus?
MAN 2: (factually) I don't have a wife.
MAN 1: (flatly) What happened to that girlie you married, then?
MAN 2: (factually) I turned her into a lampshade.
MAN 1: (flatly) Oh.
MAN 2: (factually) But I guess your wife is doing well - I'm
sure you kiss her regularly - at least as many times
as sin.
MAN 1: (flatly) No, no - my wife is a lampshade, too.
MAN 2: (factually) Blasphemy. Only Jesus can turn his wife
into a lampshade.
MAN 1: (flatly) Oh well - I'm a disciple, and that means I follow
by example.
MAN 2:tually) I suppose so.

(Pregnant pause)

MAN 1: (flatly) Stop picking your nose, Jesus.
MAN 2: (factually) Why?
MAN 1: (flatly) Because there's an insect in it.
MAN 2: (factually) That's precisely why I'm picking it.
MAN 1: (flatly) But you musn't. That insect makes you holy -
it's home, altogether crucified, provides a nest for
your miraculous brain.
MAN 2: (factually) Nonsense, Man.
MAN 1: (flatly) If you wish for me to serve you, Jesus, you
would not defy me
MAN 2: (factually) And if you wished to truly serve me, you would
do no less than see that the insect in my nose
is nothing less than a simple bogey.
MAN 1: (flatly) Very well. (Man 1 punches Man 2 in the nose)
There. Now your nose is also broken in nine places.
From now on, your insectacidic nostril is flat with
nought but snot.
MAN 2: (factually) That hurt man. That hurt the word of God.
MAN 1: (flatly) Good.
MAN 2: (factually) Good? What if - what if my head bled so much
that my miraculous nature lost its memory?
Then what?
MAN 1: (flatly) Then, Jesus, you would simply pray more successfully.
MAN 2: (factually) And what if my head was so broken that my prayers
led me to hell?
MAN 1: (flatly) Well, then, Jesus, you would be hand in hand with Rosemary?
MAN 2: (factually) Who in Satan's name is Rosemary?
MAN 1: (flatly) Your wife, dumkopf
MAN 2: (factually) But I thought I'd told you - my wife is now a lampshade.
MAN 1: (flatly) Yes indeed Jesus, and by that token she shines on and on
wherever you choose to tread.
MAN 2: (factually) And how's that?
MAN 1: (fatly) Because you, Jehovah, are a green sort of a miracle man,
and green is innocence and innocence is forever trailed by the
flashlights of the devil; the devil being your lampshade of a wife
and you being the reason for her never-ending devilry.
MAN 2: (factually) Well that's certainly a revelation - even to me?
MAN 1: (flatly) You learn something new everyday, Jesus.
MAN 2: (factually) You certainly, certainly do.

*

 

THE HERMIT WANTS OUT (A DEFINITIVE DEMAND)

 

KNOCK IT OFF! or I swear that I
shall get up early and prove some septic
proverb right on the button - I don't want to
sanctify some aged wit, so please don't
shock me; PLEASE!
just knock it off for me.

Friends, the side-effects of speaking like this
are killing my individual;
he who peeks craftily within
my penances, and promises me the best
roll-calls from my sensual amphitheatres -
to me, he's worse than mother nature.

LOOK! I do not mean to affright you with
these costly chippings, but in the back of my head
there's a movie, a daydream of my cold-shouldering you
again and again; a celluloid collage of refrains
waving goodbye in the fast and cuckooing
mouths of indecision, beside an original
Big Dipper - these screamings are killing my boy!

KNOCK-IT-OFF! Knock these muddy spurrings from our Lord's
unholy absence away from the mark,
or I swear that I - I swear that

that I so, so miss
my unearthly home of homes.

 

*
THE HERMIT'S BID FOR TRUTH (A STATE OF SYMPATHY)

 

"All-assailing woman praises man through a blue
sorority of empty and drown-receiving depths
and then tell us to make for a settling sun
that doesn't enquire about a womb's dread cost!"

Hah-hehhhh! In this, I thoroughly show you
just how love to shout your business
where Christ unsuccours every purpose amid
the cheese-nutted feet of what I could've printed
if only I had learned, if only I could've just
learned like you, if only I could've just
stiched my lonesome way
to nothing but obtainable girls!

I'm sorry - that must have sounded contagious
to you/me there, scratching at the healthful
crotch beneath those achy-breaky strobe-lights
and folly-kissing back from chastity
a simple diagram of the destructible;
indeed, I know that one wholesome word shan't
deflate your female embarrassment
into anything entreating or similar to the phrase saying,
'God is dead,' or that is, unless this pencil can brighten
the deficient that well that God can no longer
project a thing except flipped one liners; but

what if we're not hell after all?
What if what's required is for us to starve
some meditation with an eastern throat that cries,
'Make me take it, for vague is lucky!
Make me fake it, for vague is plucky!'

Detours. I'm sorry. Although all this isn't quite as disconnected
as you might at first think, I mean -
doesn't it remind you of minds? I mean,
am I not, with these briefs printed from my bended brows,
a lot like you now? Am I not, with these ellipses, striving to
dismantle our philosophies of taste, troughs and tautology
with an appropriate machinery; the machinery of collages?

LOOK!
It is the nature of men to wander and assault
the air with hysterectomy: by them, the moon
is surpassed and ignored: it is the nature of men
to know that girls can really, really be women when given
half a chance to prove that their men are but baby
boys for all their searching lives.

It is the nature of men to confess and conceal.

I'm sorry - Are You?

*

THE HERMIT'S NEW COMPANION
(A DIVIDING DIVARICATION)

LOOK!! Who are you exactly?
A long lost Buddha awaiting a stick-up/
A mammoth-hurtled riddler
who's ready to abscond? -
Tell me, can you say just who you are
without resorting to fuss?!!

You know, I've heard many a lady quake
at the things she could've done
had her plans been less disjointed,
and I've really no idea if she's right to quake,
but I'd like to say that she might be,
because what else can men do when they're trying to socialise
except smother enslicing misogyny with a grimacing
heave-hoh of the attentive?
What else can they do but agree?

(ANSWERS ON AN ADOPTION CARD
ADDRESSED TO MASSAGE AND RELATE!)

LOOK!!! You don't know what I've had to endure
to earth my clench on space like this -
NO!
NO! NO!

I will not even give you the benefit of the doubt - I mean,
I've been last so intensely that I surely thought
that I would never awake impacted with this life-thing,
and yet here you are, mauving upon my metallicas,
in an effort to say that you are worth my wiles
and, well, - I am grateful to you -
even if your ends serve nothing but you egos,
I am mighty grateful that you
accidentally make me
see that I'm impacted after all.

DAMN IT!! Who are you exactly?
A long-lost Buddha awaiting -

I mean
I mean
that I liked hosting your invasions
I mean
I mean
that any successful dream
belies the colludings of coincidence and coaxing;
belies the colludings
of dust to dust.

*
THE HERMIT'S RETURN TO THE SEA
(A FALSE FAREWELL)

Farewell, my faceless monarchs
you promised me the fabulous, but I nobly know
that you have become as my sisters and brothers
and cannot possibly provide me with what I'm owed
or with more than appeasery.

Love's a good liar - when rooting for a well-point,
we hoot her prime context is a pylon, and yet
dug waters remain love's demesne.
Electric, life is a life, and by her
we make such a fist simply to secure
a false prognosis on heaven's turning back.

Farewell! and you connect that we are coming to
a dishy apocalypse! There! it's been openly said, my
faceless noble, etcetera etcetera - and I am sure that you perceive
perception might resign us from these psychotic
proliferations, just by
defaming angels non-perplexing, just by
shunting an alien applause
and screaming that we're not the only
juvenile origins to be pottering sadly
about the cots of the cherry orchards
in our search for a red, red rose
as a symbol of a full-grown love.

Yep-Yup-Yeahhh! - do your succincting stuff, brothers and sisters,
with your wrackful thoughts blanding treating the
constant symptoms of insomnia
and then expanding like the boudoirs of Babel!

Uh-Huhhhhhhh! - the long cliche has gone full circle,
and who could care when so much has been said?
Certainly not me-me, who's one love is to be
demoted to a smoking sea, shouting that the land
has a lilt, but no progress
to her adeptable hands.

Farewell! you are too cheap for my possessings!

But, then again, did you say, 'The Fabulous?!'

 

THE HERMIT'S DENOUNCEMENT
(A REVELATION OF THE FLESH)

Noo Nooo Noooo!!
I shall not shed into this cleft crease!!
All around, I see us snapping our caps and doffing the storms
released
in the confidence that jewels shall glister to their tip-tops
where hot metal intervenes.

Sadly, it's not like that at all.
Women and men split too swiftly for their own good
and gibber mantis pleasantries to each others'
bonsoir, focal footfalls,
with a horlicks cocktail dizzy on the grizzly
turntables of their jazzed-up black books -

PLEASE! - Look, Listen, Learn.

I shall not go -
all around, we're too fond of entryism
and I, lust's spectator, cannot overturn the truth,
which is claw,
which is tail,
which is septic,

which is receptacle equals Savagery.

 

*
DRAMA INTERLUDE B:
CALLING THE DESERT DOWNSTAIRS. 

 

JOHNSON:  calling the desert downstairs? Do you hear me?
You know, I really need to talk with you...I'm here to tell you
that - that i know all about the dunes and the searing heat
inside...Christ! For year after year, I have put my trust in finding
an oasis... but, you know how it is, that oasis doesn't come
along. No, no - it never does... But listen now, old desert,
can't you see that I'm just dying to escape the sunshine? Christ!
That sunshine has been cleaving my being away from me for
what feels like a century now.... And, you know, if only I could
have a chance, I'd divorce you and your ruddy desert world and
get back on top of things.. But, old Sahel, you and really must
know that your punishing world, with all its burning gesturese
and gestations, does something to a man's sensual divinity. I
mean to say, when all this began, we were all trolling along
just dandily down the disco, dancing and dealing in virtual
love. But, these days, I just don't know, the whole desert scene
just keeps on getting me down.. Hello? Hello there! Why don't
you damn well listen? Can't you see that a man has urges? You
know what I mean, exigent urges such as laughter, mockery,
madness and grief? Yes, you could say that I am evading the
issue, but, goddamn you, what I'm trying to say is that..
too much of the de facto matter at hand can only end up in an
early grave... What's that you say? There's only a desert downstairs
for as long as one tries to live inside things? Christ! You don't need
to tell me that.. But - I've always been one for looking into
things.. Even when - even when a tiny child .. I used to search for
fossils at the seaside. No, I never found one, but, you know,
the anger I feel now at not finding just one damned T. Rex bone
is impossible to define... Christ! If only you'd just listen, then we'd
surely surely get to the de facto centre of the whole damned
thing and - and do something about it.. Well?! What do you
say, old Gobi? Don't I deserve at least a little respect for
trying to my best?.... Christ! I really must loosen my tie...
Take my wife, Polly, she never expects to be taken for a ride,
but, God!, it's in the bag that that's what she needs. "Johnson!"
she screams at me, "Johnson! If you're my only husband-type,
then why the hell don't you get down from your pedestal
for once in a while?!" And, dear Nevada, however I look at things,
I just can't seem to find a way to relive my own
miraculous nature... You see, the irony of it all is that I do NOT
have a pedestal to stand on. No, last time I stood up at all, my
rotten trousers fell around my ankles.... So much waste, old Gobi,
so much damned sadness..So sad, so full of sadness... Listen!
I'm telling you to stop desertiying the big city me.. Do you hear?
Calling the desert downstairs! Why don't you do damned well
hear me?.. Take last week. It had been one those busy days in
the office. When I got home, I just lay there and drifted off,
and, do you know, I had that dream I reckon we all have from
time to time; that dream about grandmother standing there before
me in the nude. There she was, all toothless and gnashing
around. Well, as you can imagine, desert, I thought at first
that I'd turned into a right old pervert - I mean, the burning
I felt in my loins at the time was too harsh to explain away..
But I know we all have those dreams from time to time -
I guess we all do and die by the visions of things we neither
yearn nor wish to see.. You know, I sometimes reckon
that all our lives are spent just waiting to make love to
someone old and past it. You see, Nevada, only then'll
the true source of of purity will be found. You see, old Sahel,
then the maniacally roving eye'll be gone and the matter
of those foolish teenage fantasies'll be dimmed forever;
then, the matter of sexual gratification'll be sated by a
complete lack of youthful consternation; a lack that is
altogether sacred. Yes, old desert, only then'll the true
source of purity to be found...I suppose what I'm trying
to say to you is that your scorcher of a world is driving
me into the ground. You're the desert downstairs, see,
and I am just an ordinary man trying to do his best to prosper
under the flatulent heat you flay across my mind and body..
Hello! Hello there?! Please, old Sahel, just listen to me for a
second or three, 'cause I am trying to please those b'stards
on the topmost floor, tired - tired of scrawling and scraping for
the mutations who make me break my back all these
live long times. Christ! If only - if only Polly'd see that I
just cannot be held responsible for the roof falling down
and the state of her womb and the slope of her breasts,
and the, and the... Please listen! All I want, Gobi, all I want,
old Sandy, is for the chance to prove that I care about the
indifference of society. You know, I could be like them:
doing as I please, eating high-fat foods, reading mucky books,
asking for as many holidays the State can possibly provide,
but, you see...you see, I - I served my time being trammelled
into accepting the apathy a material machine. Old Sandy, these days,
I just don't know my place. One moment, I'm king of
the castle, churlishly clad in my business suit and all
all-weather, lace-up leather, man-made shoes, and the next thing
I'm just biding my very own multi-sufficient prison-cell..
Hello? Calling the desert downstairs! Hello! Goddamn you,
if only you'd just listen, even for just one deliberated nanosecond,
then you'd learn a thing or two.. I am here and you are here
and all this wide world is here, but still no equanimity is made -
still no sight of the land of milk and honey comes into rotten view..
So, I am asking you, old Sandy, so I'm simply asking you, just
give us a chance... just give us a break!! 'Cause if I even begin
to close my eyes, I'd begin to see those other closed eyes and
eyes just looking in on me, and those other closed eyes eat
away at your brain and eat away at your soul and never, never,
never give you the chance again to question the blinding,
blanking, non-seeing purpose of the material world... Christ!
All those bastard eyes leading us all into the weeds and not
giving us the chance to live again! Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! And, d'you
know, old Sandy, it's you and your desert downstairs that makes
them flicker and a-flutter like they damned well do... Sometimes
I reckon those eyes were created by the devil, seeing the way
that they always glare and glaze over at the things they should
be loving the most. 'Cause those eyes breed further eyes and
further eyes breed further pain and further pain breeds a
whole morass of sadness. - 'cause it's all so sad, so full o
goddamned sadness... Hello? Hello there! Calling the desert
downstairs! I'm asking you to listen to me! Just shift your fat
and burning and sandy arse away from my compos mentis. I
mean to say, if you and your shirty pals out there on the desert
plain don't damned well do something soon to take away the angst
and the agony of this low-blow heat, I will just not be held
responsible for the circumstances.. You see, that naughty wife of
mine, Polly, she won't ever let up except when I'm serving time in
my garden shed, and, you know, it's all down to you, old Sandy,
that your desert downstairs makes her lose her handle with me.
Christ! We'd just be all right if you'd let us lose our passions to
flirtatious exploits. But, let's face it, you and your burning pals
out there on the Sahara just won't give a second look at one
so hare-brained as to wish for a little flirtation...You see, old Sandy,
eyes breed further eyes and an eye is an eye and a tooth a tooth,
yet, when it's all said and done, we've just go to burn the
mother-cheek..Yes, they say, old Gobi, that it is the Scriptures.
Well, when it comes it comes down to it, all I know is that
an eye is an eye and a tooth is probably an eye as well,
seeing the way a tooth flashes down on to all things that
look its way - just like an eye, just like a bloody eye itself. Yes, old
Sandy, a single grimace is as all-seeing as a billion glaring eyes..
In fact, if I had it my way, eyes of all kinds would be carved out
their blaring sockets so that me and my wife could just have some
privacy and you, you and your multisonous burning, would be
burnt out in one great molten fury.. Don't you know? Your heat,
old Nevada, scours a man's heart and mind entirely away from
the purpose it was born to, which is to propagate a little faith,
dam a few emotional rivers, bear a tide of truth upon the land,
and, of course, to make way for the moans of bed and bier
that plucks the chords of the whole damned universe... Hello? Calling
the desert downstairs. Calling the blood and guts of mystic misery.
Calling the aridity below the bestiary of the belt.
..Calling, calling, calling the desert downstairs...Calling, calling,
calling, calling, calling the desert downstairs... Calling, calling, calling,
calling the desert downstairs..

(THE VOICE OF JOHNSON BEGINS TO FADE AWAY,
BIT BY TEARFUL BIT, UNTIL, ON A SUDDEN, THE SOUND
OF A TELEPHONE RECEIVER BEING GENTLY REPLACED
IN ITS CRADLE BRINGS THE MONOLOGUE TO A CLOSE).

 

**

THE HERMIT'S ALLUSIVE RIDDLE
(A DIVARICATION)

And so allusion's fusions flash like gipsy caravans
across a busy, cherry-busting and all-decried composure,
where mad dodgems crash and crackle round the sexy
sorcery of you and I, on a mystery of irreverent
contacts, wrenched amid a boss-eyed sulk
of bed-hop deviations; and that is why, a ring-a-ding
down the Harlequin corridor, we wield our tools and serve
a brace of selfish codes that our naive recessional
mummies and daddies can't decipher or slam.

Inadvertent, then, we maraud our oases,
an anithesis to adventure and the sensual Grail;
"We could have had!" we cry, and pick our gums and weep,
with an "As today, so tomorrow," and our knowledge of sweets
obscenely snubbed and chested by the hymen's leap.

THE HERMIT'S CALL FOR ECSTASY
(A SCHISMATIC COMMAND)

Mangy, moggy man, LISTEN
The politics of ecstasy are real - the guys who dote upon
the sixth-sense-personal
spring them from their locks -
LISTEN! and they move us to the cuddling fact
that we, the doubled-up cake-queens of the hour,
should be glad-coated and kosher choral lamps
putting fire to the Master's clothes -
LISTEN! And don't you think it comes down to this?

For the politics of living are surreal.
We, the livers, are unwilling to dictate
the soul; are senseless to the river's causeways
and know only that we are set to racket
our reasons through marbled ruins, fames
and fortunes
and emergency ministers
ringing their bells in case of an emergency -

LISTEN!
and dote upon the belly of this truth game,
upon the hooter of this daring dictarate
of shortening and sharpening on;
LISTEN IN!

For the politics of living are unreal.

THE HERMIT'S FINAL WORDS
(AN ANAMORPHIC EXIT)

Yet cartwheeled outrages must have me cool
the fusions of devilled displacements I've been through
since coming to town.

There's a silencer at my temple,
(I forget which one)
polishing off the lot of these bought-up bells
as just another smart of the intinerant.

Ahead, there's a babe, (the next tomb is being born).
The televisual dark shall soothe and charm him.
Behind, there are the spectres of my past sonatas;
spooled, they are reverting
to an uncrushed womb.

Seated easy between free-fall and garden,
I've had the rhyme of my life,
(Well, you can't have it all!)
and so, wanting my expressions to fit to the code
of sex's battery, it is not just for me to say
that I'm going, but that
I am over the edge once more, you freakers,
and shan't be coming back like this;
or at least,
it's dubious
don't you know.

THE HERMIT'S FINAL WORDS
(A HETERODOXIC ENVOI)

Mooneyed flowers traipse their growths into a trend
of rout-houses, afloat
and chim-chimneyed in the ermine
hulk of cut aways, bordering
the raggle-taggle spires
within the baseless motifs of our supersonic fires.

The cranium contains, the cranium compresses,
the cranium closes in - it is it's job to contract;
and therefore we cannot forget our true births -
the brain, leech-punching at labour's abdomen,
teaches us to annul, to
evolve in circles;

and thus Creation looks back to create
and pointless poems like these begin.

EPILOGUE

Slightly sensate, slightly sad,
slightly empty, slightly mad,
the embryo flounces fry for feet
and beaches south where the swallows meet
to step the steps of pigeon rogues
whose carrion valours, beaked in stone,
dredge the skies and destroy the clock
of time and tide and granite rock,
which, slightly sensate, slightly sore,
slightly empty, slightly bored,
pan the pules of young and old
and crawl asleep
amidst the palms of the world.

*
Copyright JDB 1991.

*

published 2,000    ISBN 1 85845 282 1.       the text is now entirely out of print /the ISBN was transitory and is now entirely redundant/the paid copyright is dying/the whole experience of this book is entirely redundant and at an utmost end.

..in a very small part, The Hermit Comes to Town was inspired by the poetry of the genius James Douglas Morrison.

searches for 'the hermit comes to town' @ yahoo.com will yield some interesting finds?