Patterns Which Connect #2

PATTERNS WHICH CONNECT # 2 (Hypnagogic Transitions)

I begin again to finnagain...Afloat, emerging miasma...a refreshing mies-en-scene arrives...segues criss-cross, doubling back ,back again. Berserk paroxysms erupt...gloaming incendiary splendor, shallow opulence, whispering groans flow from Sisyphean haunts: “Humpty Dumpty was pushed.” “Chicken Little was right.” “Peter Pan is a pedophile.” “Popeye was gay.” Flash, animal spirits, like Kudzu, flood deranged idolatries...unleashing bellicose sybarites...bastions of ecocide...A stalking horse for giddy debaucheries...Without expectation, I’m awake...I shift and slide among soiled sheets...I‘m back, amidst a swirling cocktail party. Shrodinger’s cat, its preoccupied hostess. Wearing my chosen Casque, I stumble from stage left into a crux of empty suites orbiting a slew of potbellied pigs...quite dizzying...flicking a lamb chop into a pool of Piranha's sudden parallax shift: A bag of nails rings a tin bell, attracts our collective attention, proclaims an end, finally, to sputtering bodily fluids, splitting pubic hairs, flushing toilets, spiting in public, all that.

The party resumes in slow motion. An emperor of ice cream arrives with an empty quiver. Fragmented small talk blathers on...“Some prefer hard rain in Hartford over drizzle in Venice.” “I’ve decided to challenge the implications stemming from Feynman’s quantum electro dynamics.” “ I’m leaving Jethro...for Buddha’s eight fold Way.” “Darling, lets leave, I’m running late for my liposuction date”...A sudden drumming dirge...I’m on an escalator climbing, on all fours, in reverse direction, never arriving at the top...Another round of high-balls arrives with generic finger-food...Things, doings, resume at warp speed, party is heating up, boiling...Flash...strangers from a strange land enter unannounced from stage right. A clown parade of glass-eyed besotted Carthusians sashay onto center stage...turning on a dime, composing a collective suicide note...written in disappearing ink...three extensive volumes, with footnotes. I inhale a sky of relief...Fade to satin black.

With deliquescent fervor, sprays of uric acid inflect, deflect...selecting a cozy corner in the rear of my sinking craft. Vitriolic, oblique, comedic ramifications ensue. Pale fire and a very dark horse in pain assume their place within a torrent of pale shadows. Interstitial and calibrated obeisance assume command. Thus, any measure of merit reduces, neutralizes the obstreperous conflict between chivalrous consideration and mere bombast. Duke it out! Please! Without so much warning, swarms of flaming balaclavas settle on my left shoulder. This fuzzy event jolts me awake, alert...on the money, ready to rip up the carpet. Debonair, swank, coteries urge a return to the pre-dawn, to no avail. I retreat to the sheets after knocking back gins and tonics...A Draconian Imprimatur awaits. I’m in deep cream cheese, helpless...Quixotic and synoptic struggle resumes, in red spades. Talking out of my hat, I attempt a Fanacheto defense...no soap. I try to cheat, to trick, to out wit, with very very little success. I’m trapped, handcuffed. Meanwhile, above my notice, a Bildungsroman is picking up speed; generations upon generations procreate without a mere bit of care or a close reading of Budenbrooks. With this extensive view in mind, my soaking dreams sashay into a rushing waste stream. Fade to black.

Stomp, spit, upchuck! A fresh, lush, nightmare recaptures center stage, with renewed spleen and a reset compilation of volcanic rage. Face it, Earth is pissed off! I shift and slip, roll over, returning to a wasting heat...it's a flame out, a burnt out case...performing Hari-Kari in a snake pit. Bring me up to speed, I’m boiling, please! Elsewhere, dreams and their fragments scatter. I’m semi-awake yet again, crawling out of my haunt, dry swimming towards a dumpster adjacent to Salty Dog’s sloppy bar. Refreshed (well, sort of) I manage to return, eagerly resuming my Folie de Grandeur. Fade to black.

Cast into a crevasse, within a Saturnian reign, I read, hear, attempt to grasp an inscrutable utterance projected on a back-lit shimmering screen...“To assert that time is immutable...is akin to reporting that a peach is sweet, except for the pit.” What to make of this? Who cares? I squirm and settle on my funky back...inviting realms of surprising delusion to stream over and into the drifting sensorium...And it complies: With the gall, the iridescent temerity, the loitering adenoidal squalls (announcing an approach of lubricious midgets) things are carved in soft stone...No warning, a cacophonous loony tune links up with the lewd midgets, sets them marching in lock step...quite a breathless alliance! Providing carrion for lunatic finches, no less...Then, without fair warning, things and their events pivot yet again...Now, in a high octane, absinthe-addled mist of thunderclaps, another novel twist turns belly-up: percussive impacts, one following another, fanfares, clanging, the bashing of cans...All in the sudden captive interest of arousal. Arousal, an infinity of mirrors with bellows of acrid smoke expanding infinitely...Thrust, feint, parry...With all the exuberance of a mountebank on meth, I clamor to Butler’s cork board, scanning its offerings. One stands out : “Starving cult seeking heretics, apostates, and other various deviates. Some experience required.” They don’t return my repeated calls. The apocalypse may not live up to expectations. Too many orgies, much too much coke. Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, Hope bleeds eternal, under the volcano. Fade to scarlet red.

Squawk! While rearranging the drapes, I roll over, emerging at Rome’s Temple of Saturn, then moving on to Trajan’s column, then to Circus maximus with its thuggish games and torments underway, then, with some hesitation, on to the baths of Caracalla…At the time, sipping gravy from Celine’s Cup...pushing water uphill with a fork. So, a Rabbi, a Priest, and a Grand Mufti walk into a bar, the bartender says: “Ok, so where’s the joke?” Fade to black.

Banzai! I’m floating...I’m off to rotting remains...of Uruk...off to the rodeo, off to the slopes of Machu- Picchu...The moving finger, having writ, moves on...and on. Off to hovering clouds of ramshackle pantomimes, each of which realizes a single alluring riddle. I roll over to my left side, waking for several blurry seconds. On spot, a haunting melody washes over the gladiatorial games of subconscious fury...You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sign is just a sign, the fundamental semiotics apply, as time floats by...I’ll be seeing signs in all the familiar places that this mind of mine embraces...for you, its true. Rick busts in demanding silence, Claude follows: “Round up the usual suspects.” Fade to black.

The cocktail party, in all it's drooling depravity, resurfaces. Upon arrival, I’m offered a clench of Stapelia in full odious bloom...A simple whiff knocks me silly...I collect my self and swan dive into the brazen fray. “To be is to be perceived” someone whispers into my cups. Lets rumble, knock over fire hydrants, drop a dollop of cyanide in the raspberry punch, crush such slick drolleries as John Galt’s wardrobe, bury alive craven sycophants, pulverize Pandora’s box, drain the cesspool...I need a rest...a rest within a dream. I flicker, stomp awake, fully awake...I stagger into the galley, grovel for scraps and hooch, defecate, and resume my mental health issues with the lingering ne'er-do-wells sprawled akimbo on the slippery deck. Debauchery appears to quit, through in the mop, call for a truce...Amen...Never-the-less, as if out of foul air, an implausible fall from grace shows up at the back trap-door (the servant’s entry)...Anthropic grunts, threats, catapult flaming coals into torrential, lavish pits of common trash...All greeted by triumphant hosannas and drinks on the house. Fade to satin black.

I barely remain afloat. I cast about, floundering amidst stringent delusions of declining grandeur. Hyperventilating adjutants creep in for a final lick, a last kiss. I moan, I’m a pretender to the groan. Sturm und drang, stormy weather, tectonic shifts, empty shelves, lost keys, dead pets...rapidly close in and chomp without a scintilla of decent mercy. By far, most lives are endured, not enjoyed; tolerated, not embraced. Living with these bleeding hard-core smirking facts is a misanthrope’s salted pork, and just desserts I flail about, sliding off the sack, slamming my scull on the glossy tile. Crawling back to bed, I slip once again, slamming my scull on the glossy tile. Slow dissolve to black.

Squatting on a gargoyle, I flounce, strutting above Raphael’s Stanzas, as if atop a blue cloud, gazing down at Plato’s index finger pointing skyward, Aristotle’s towards Earth...I whisper slumber...an elegant, archetypical summation of the wide ontological chasm haunting musings of Western conjecture. As Wally never slackens to remind us: Life is an Old Casino in a Park. This refrain falls and rises within the dicey precincts of my current on-point hypnogogic phase shift. Now, abruptly, I’m hovering above Chartres, swooning over its medieval Labyrinth...bathing in incomparable light. My libido recharged, my grip made certain, I’m off to Salisbury’s plain. With charmed seduction, Avery’s chthonic megaliths splay their linear processions. Time implodes, I’m suspended above an active rhythm-soaked Neolithic grotto...“Civilizations begin in dance, and end in rhetoric.” Reverberations...flux to-and-fro in harsh hindsight. Now, the cone of vision slides, shifting to the main event: Stonehenge. In an eerie fusion of memory and dream, I conjure my initial encounter with this supreme megalith...

“If you think you understand it, then you have not thought about it enough...” Slides into focus, like Danish pastry...Unrelenting hubris drives the global-climate crazy!...Slides into focus...Vile blinding weight...abject suffering slip-slides, arresting me...wrenching me awake, in a mist of Dacian floods...Murderous incursions, corruption, intrigue, pillage...scream down winding sluice gates, fighting over rotting spoils...Taciturn reclusion, perambulation, snoring, bad ass, ear bleeding, shock waves, opera buff...a default opens, turning straw into platinum...return me to steaming sheets. Fade to vanilla yellow.

Batten down hatches...flip the bird...haul blood and treasure...crush dementia...clear your deck!...Dictates of apostasy take command, full throttle exhaustion follows...memory is much too fleeting...Things quicken, I’m on Charon’s barge, a sinister shore in sight...arriving, I’m stuck in slipping tracks, racing thoughts, vestigial nostrums, groping obfuscation, restless effusive regret...

Biding my time, I recoil.

Frank Gillette

New York City / East Hampton / 2002