Sister Autumnal by Charlotte Praecox Regina

Sister Autumnal by Charlotte Praecox Regina

Sister Autumnal
you of equal night
how you blush
in the weary hour
of fading & lighted touches
which push us beneath
quilted bed clothes
embroidered
with emblazoned
Maples & Elms
with lips stained
by Blackberries,
your nape
smells of greened Apples
you bring me deeper
to embrace
this dark & great slumber

Poetic Stalkings

By Dick B. Roman

To the reader. We at Panic Down the

Well are happy to have a flagship poetlike Dr. Roman. Only a highly labile mind and libido could adapt poetry in such a modern response to what is appropriate in pan-gender interactions.

All must lay prone in the decay of thought,

and the entropy of warm buttocks.

Stepping like a horse

over a three-bar gate,

the disease held deep within,

in check with a latex aura.

Never shedding chitinous armor

no jingling clink about avian ankles,

to reveal a soft ruddy undercore.

Always feeling vile and enveined.

Neither spreading the legs to expose

nor falling within a hidden chamber,

some outer vestibule.

Fearing the neural splatter that would

stain the white bed-sheet of the mind.

World on fire, smoking, sporidial,

seed-sack broken, sown in the wind.

There are few flowers as fair, amongst

Purpled, poisoned ivies

Your locks would level any waters

I would your form to eclipse the sun

through my bedroom window

in your naked gait,

fresh off the savanna.

All birds are startled 'cepting the one

gorged and lazy who wishes

to be devoured by such a

creature that lays lowly

with no baseness

Your perspirate body would

shimmer like cool waters,

like a dozing pond that shivers

in hot breezes.

For a time you are transfixing

as a rosette window of 
stained glass,

a turning wheel of Nature that rolls

over more than my toes,

giving such things as faith

a recourse, causing me for a still time

(while you sit there in study)

to sketch you in words, though

even the air about you is electric and

adamant.

Hammering my head, now a dull chisel,

the only thing I strike are chords of

disdain and remorse

as you raise your apheliotropic flanks

off your seat and bend out on to the street.

You can make on choke on nothing

as I would say, but enterprise as most are

concerned, but these things die as you

shadow the light

through the door

for a second in real time,

but an etenity in

mine.

 

To E.D. [Ernest Dowson, d. 1900; transcribed (and spell-checked) from a cocktail napkin— ed.]

In consumption

Your words are better than tounges

Crosst lips bought at any cost.

May I never see your docks at dusk;

Or you to view Maeve’s eyes at close

As they all are out here at the perimeter.

For your many hands won at Killarney

Are squandered at the price of a few

Scratch tickets, cheap voddy, and imported smokes.

Your mantel is heavy as a lung collapsing in

Jubilee.

 

I have not touched you in months.

Your form pale, taut with blue lines
And rigid-back; ever-spriraling.

Looking over you, into you,

Opaque, not yet creased,

Dry humors sucking stain

From my stylus.

This moment is freeze-frame,

Tableaux. All else is tuned out

But you. Lack of silver and sugar

Mean naught, but to fill you slow

And frantic, each stroke more

Profane than the first look, so wry,

Upon your smooth bareness.

This line the last I have emptied

My cartridge, but still

Turn to another.

Lyrical Snares

by Charlotte Praecox-Regina
to the reader: Dr. Roman was adamant that we include the work of his paramour, Ms. Regina. Though we first harboured doubts, a lively and and rather insinuating conversation with the French chanteuse convinced us of her penetrating literary depth. We are proud to present her here.

I was new born dead
when you found me,
Blue veined alabastered,
Body thin as kindling,
With no Eulogy, you
lay me upon a linen
slab and loved
me like an autopsy.
The moment. swung
like a pendant  'gainst
my still chest.
Your thunderous roar
echoes through my empty cavity.
Your grip fills me
with the heat I lack.
How you laboured,
How you travailed.
With my deaf ears
You need not say thanks.

When I was a little girl
I would whirl like a dervish.
Spin so fast the world would blast off
In electric white
And I would finally be alone and
Subterranean.
I whirled myself warm on cold winter
Mornings at the bus stop with 
Legs too long
And sweater too small.
When my cycle came down like a
Whip at the
Town pool I whirled in my first 
Two-piece.
When my brother and his grubby
Friends would
Hoot like apes in their treefort I would
Make
Them ascend with the blood pulsing,
Ring in my ears until
My mother would punish me for
Lifting my skirt which had flown up
Like a tilt-a-whirl
I’d rather be a spinster.



In which is there more discomfort:
My silence, or your revelous
cacophony;
My quietude remains amidst your
joyous sounds,
Your face twisted in frenetic zeal,
Embracing friends you pretend to
Have missed.
But not the unknown. You are not a
plumber or spelunker. 
You are cattle mooing
And cavorting, far less civilized than
You'd like. I to like to cavort,
But it is on the pallet, in a hay
Stack. On a checkered blanket,
In a grassy grove 
Or a graveyard.
My joy comes from a oneness, not a
multitude.
Not many, nor a mass. Never have
I seen so many bored faces amongst
What you'd call, if you knew the
Word
Euphony. How joy is silent. pulling
The ear of a smiling face whose
Eyes lock mine like a loving raptor. 
It is not the bestial beating of bodies.
but
A reach that touches. A pucker
Received
And eyes that shine like stars in
My silent room.



Sister Autumnal,
You of equal night,
How you blush in the
weary hour of your fading
And lighted touches,
Which push us beneath
Quilted bed clothes
Embroidered with
Maples, oaks and elms.
With lips stained 
by blackberries, and your
Nape smelling of greened
Apples you bring me
Deeper to embrace you in
Your dark slumber.

Well of Grubs— Preface to the first issue of "Panic Down Well"

Beelzebub— from Dictionaire Infernal, Jacques Auguste
Simon Collin de Plancy; 1818

To the reader: This preface to the first issuing of Panic Down the Well was penned by one of our contributing editors, on the night prior to his deportation.

The ground breaks wide and there is a full-fractal fall into a larval cistern. Pupils become constricted shining no light upon the back of a hollow skull. The visage is incandescent in panic sweat. An August desert sun rolls on by in apogee. These chitins are repulsive. Their society is sonic, constant mechanical hysteria, like the groans of metal seething suddenly, atomically. This noise is their pogrom against thought. Eons of evolution are unraveled and the primate is revealed. All gods are destroyed with cries for the tit. Living far beyond the real of time, there is a short, bright tracking beam that is burst asunder— in an instant. It shines across a prehistoric horizon, and is witnessed by a man with a malted brain, who knows he will soon be dead, and the hunt drums pound. All visions fly away in the vapors of breath on an autumn night. Blue smoke curls into a halo, about an eggshell bead, in oily despondency. All things remain foreign, expatriated, and half-caste. Porcelain figurines in the moonshine doing a candle-dance. There is no grandeur in the naked trying to affect a firm grip upon the shuddering shaft of Light. All is lost amongst heady perfumes and fine linens, used only to conceal a deformity in the human condition, an aberration that shackles us each alone, to a great stone jutting out of a wine-dark sea, beneath an azure sky.

The third eye turns hazyy upon construction, yellowed and half-lidded.

The Drunken Bike

To the Reader: A janitor at
36 Bromfield St. found this bit of prose scratched into the wall of a bathroom stall, and felt it would be of some interest. It was apparently signed only by the moniker "52".

The Dawn storms Dusk, too soon,
staining the curtains with the blood
of a New Day.
Never the Earlyborne, I unfold
myself from bed like an old map
with destinations obscured
in the creases.
Sirens, horns, alarms play like
drunken, Arabic fiddles as the
world wakes with a perpetuate
hangover, yelling catcalls
and profanity.
The bare bulb overhead is a full moon
reflection on the North Atlantic
in my coffee cup.
At the basin, dragging the dull edge
of the Republic crosst my chin, my
throat is crimson as the Morn.
I strap the vestment of my vocation
across my back, unstable my
well-oiled pony from the ceiling,
run my hand up a still, slumbering form,
from leg to lumbar (to the coo of a
window ledge bound mourning dove).
Door latch, downstairs, out on the streets
without a key, now in the shambling
euphony of commerce. Dropped off the
curb, slipped into traffic, I call out into the
static, am dispatched, and the profession,
immediately employed with the
invention of the Word, sits lightly
on my shoulders, like a witch's familiar.
Through veins, arteries, corpuscular, like
hemoglobin, I deliver tidings of the number,
the tort, prayers of complaint, the bottom line,
the red tape, beneath a sky as grey as
other launderings strung out to dry.
By noon I am rich as a dog, and
gobbling a chunk of soft cheese,
and a tin of fish, between a loaf of bread,
the sky breaks blue wide, and
my head is peeled like a Sputnik-sized
orange, too easy.
Revitalized, I am pound and crank
within their rage and fume.
Perspirate agony precurses the
the endorphic uprising, red and sonic
pulse in my jaw, ascension in
chrome and glass, redbrick
and puddingstone.

Yet on the granite and asphalt
everything is concrete,
as I whistle to turtledoves,
and whisper "Hey kitty-cat,"
to the clip of heels and
curling red mouths that fold into
the flips of horses' manes,
and are eclipsed
in truck rumblings.
But not to fear little bird, for
stories of cupboards bare
except for jars of sugar and honeypots to be
ladled out with silver spoons,
crookt and scorcht, are rumors that hold no air
under pressure, and I am no more
impressed by their storms that
come and go too soon and too easy.
I have dined on pigeon shit and
broken glass, defied the idiot factor
tenfold; metal yields quickly to my
skinny, sweaty frame, tight as a
long bow, but this city has raptors
that uncover all bones and cache I
stash like the rat I am, and they'd pull
me up to a high roost, save for the fact
that I know all the shortcuts in this place
where there is no such thing as almost,
and asphalt does weird things to the
skin, which it has, and I will bear these
scars as badges of intent and not privilege.
And this is shown by the Sun, who
beats me in her transit, 'cept her
proud flesh is broken all over the
sheet of the Blue Hills, and mine
is merely matted 'gainst black wool,
but no matter, for the race, so sweet,
stains my rusty mouth, so that I
must chase it down curbside and
crotch-level, with an oily moon-cratered
slice and a cheapsuck brew, whose
vessel echoes down the ally in the
empty rattle of Autumn's gusts.
The ember of the snipe I flick
is in tribute to my victor's course.
As I mount, a silent chain speeds
me away from from the words
scratched into fast curing cement:
"Though over-caution is not
a virtue, it is one fool-hardy in
Temperance, with no faith at all
in Luck, that forms and forces all action,
until it cross-threads in follow-through."

I introduced my Anima to my Shadow Aspect; now they are sleeping together behind my back

You are my sucking wound,
My sweet oubliette
(my little place of hiding),
For you to turn to ash in my lap,
A rarefied immolation.
How engulfing your arms,
Your legs of smoked ham,
so sweet— done to a turn,
how consuming.
Prone, your eyes are wells,
And I brink to fall
Padding through holes
Enmeshed in webs
Of candied pitfalls
And your trappings.
Your whiskied throat
Sings fine victory atop me,
And your ballast seeks to
Sink me back down deep
Into you.

♣

Even then I would
sit down on the curb
cracking wind-fallen
acorns open between
crooked teeth and spit
the shells in the
gutter which was
swept in autumn.
Did I look up
even in spring
to see the limbs
twisted in vernal dance?
Could I see them apart from
the dangling of leaves
like earrings on stretcht lobes?
Could I see then how they would
embrace me like they would when I was
drunk and sick on the lawn?
No, even then I saw them
shed with all vanity,
delivered to the passing
of the seasons,
their fancies and their patience.
So, I became used to being curbside
picking at sweet discarded meats.

♣

Far down here in the rag & bone shop,
poison nitre drips down from some
unknown ceiling and it is thee who
moans as the foundation settles upon the chest.
Here we are occupied in the vocation of
sputter and fume and less concerned by the
trivialities of clutter and gloom,
unfortunate byproducts which damn us
here apart from those we've already forgot about,
but no matter for there is much work here
so far under where filth grows beneath the boot.
Maggots cease to thrive and fungi falter,
for here the gravity is so heavy eyelids fall
but sleep cannot come. The mellowed air
that falls down shafts and passes for a breeze
hits the lung like that of a surfacing free-diver's
first breath over and again, but you and me
friend, we labor where light cannot escape the
source and who knew the silence of dead air
could be so distracting and unwelcome,
but we are so focused staring at the
little patch of void tattooed on each others
forehead. These things matter little in the
evaporation of thought, for who could not
fix a gaze on a more lovely sight than a blemish
from which not even black can flee much like
you and me.

♣

I come at night, for as she sang;
"The moon has nothing to be sad about".
I come to see you drop lazy stars from your
opened mouth, crosst your lip, and hang in
your hair like servitors, as your lifted hip
and thigh bone become the cosmos.
To see you blow smoke-rings of cirrus
clouds filled with violet & abandon,
as you lay to become the verdant range
that makes the valley.
But the bracken that breaks beneath
my boot cracks out like hell-to-open,
and there is nothing but axes and bone
to cleave the air with which you hide
your face.

♣

She whom Lilith bore to Adam on his first
day in the garden, one of thousands, would
jump up on gangly brown legs to pluck
fruit, always missing, asking snakes for
ten fingers.
She who would tickle Onan's ear with
tongues and affected pleadings for her
want and wanton.
She who reduced Solomon to a boy,
wrenching wizened whiskers which
dropped from his bald face into her lap.
She, Theodora's consort and bondsmaid,
how the Empress blushed yet yielded like
pale grass to flame.
She whom Papal Courts would douse and
fire, yet could not quench nor kindle.
She with aquiline nose, showing expatriate
Frenchmen, couriers of the wood, how hares
would leap between her legs to be crushed
by ochre thighs.
She, giving haven under a thatched roof to
Brits and Austrians on a folly,
an emissary of deepest peace,
in Bonaparte's madness.
She, who over a glass of ginger beer,
for a nickel touches the knee of a lonely dirty
dog-face, so he may raise Ol' Glory,
long may she wave.
But she, form seemingly so liquid or
wrapped in rice paper, cannot be
emptied as a bottle or ashed in a tray,
she is pungent vapors and plumes of smoke
that can drift out of doors, as well as in them,
and is more likely to stain the air, like it was
clothing, with wafting scent that leaves
none too quick.

Ripping off the Belle of Amherst after hearing on NPR that Hemingway shot himself because he could no longer write

For Mercy is a passion presst,
Beyond the fleeting gale.
She waltzes like a girl distresst,
Puking in a pale.

And, Liberty with lock so small,
Afore the fingers long,
Which prattle at a broken gate,
With ventricle in song.

Invocation of an One-legged Afghani Bike Messenger Too High to Get Home

I humbly implore thee Persian overseer
Máh, twister of months,
Why are you so to our dear cousin Luna?
You encourage her to fullness
And drop her like a coin into darkness.
You are obviously an angel for no man
Would wax a woman so, to let
Her wane alone in the night.
Don't you know how many, commands,
Curses, contracts, cocks & cunts have 
Been mouthed in supplication, in her presence,
In her honor, in her dull and unwinking glory?
I ask then sir, please take a gentle hand to my fair mistress,
And turn her to a whole form to shine
Through the gauzy night, and lay bare
The flesh of the Earth, so I may travel
Safely to my pallet beneath a window into
which her arms do fall and lick.

For my "Rehab Sweetie": too bad I wasted this on someone else

Once we were high as the moon,
Now after the Fall, tripping from
Dim star to darkness, arms out-
Stretcht, fingers grazing, grasping
Never plucking from the stellar vineyards.
Your body is the yew that bends &
Sways in the breezes of Nocturne
But never topples. It has been hewn
and shaped by drunken gardeners,
Crackt by frost, and scorcht
By the August, but
Mai's gentle kisses and
The embraces of fogs,
And lovers' tumblings
At your roots, give a
Gentle grace to the young rake
That leans against you,
Dreaming up through your
Boughs.

From "Lyrical Snares"

By Charlotte Praecox Regina

After dappled upon a golden bed,
& pillowed by the dusky hills.
Still now browned, and glowing,
Covered by Daylight's coppered lips.
They have left quite the outshine
To the pale and even Sister, who,
In the wheel of Her transit, sweeps
The shattered sixty seconds of a Sun
Beam through occlusion, like the
Shards of a sugared coffee cup, to
The curb.

Mooncalf

By Dr. Dick B. Roman

So even now I am the mooncalf,
Hatched from a leathered sack,
With Chernobyl distinction.
They tried to drown me in the
Love Canal, because of my
Prehensile sixth fingers which
Coil around your knees like tongues,
To make you open and twitch
Like a cuckoo clock, every AM
First-thing. Trumpeting the dawn
In birdsong. May you coo like a pup,
As I come to suckle on your toes and
Earlobes, like Romulus on the
Seventh Hill. These are things that
Are your guise, that I must
Disimpact prior to procedure.
Stripped and flicked
With language, darting like the bait
Of an angler fish. Knotted pinings
Are nothing now, this pulpy smell,
So ancient on the stove before the
Dinner bell. In this hunger there is
No time for grace.