Beautiful silence

Editor's note: This is a traditional minimalist shake-n-bake hill-stomp number usually played with a 10-key concertina and a Roland MC-303. It was reportedly heard during a recent visit to a rustic laboratory while traveling through the Appalachia when the researcher happened to come across this porch performance.

Beautiful silence
How i miss you
Now that you
Are gone

Left me here
All alone
With my mind
And this song

Beautiful silence
Before you were broken
It was like that moment
When the day broke in
And she banished blessed dawn
But it was always that moment
the whole day long

Beautiful silence
How i miss you
Now that you
Are gone

Never leave me here
Again alone
With my mind
For this long

Ghosting & Falling

Like a ghost I’m falling forward
and with each step forward
to catch myself
I fall the faster.
A strip of rubber
a ribbon of hoop
a collection of sticks
that roll;
running, static
running, static
running, static...

And while I do this
a thousand songs
occupy my mind
and a thousand throngs
cavort and crash
about me and only when
I imagine
my native brother
alone in the wilds
both vulnerable
and threatening
to every challenge
and every adversity
and then all the birds
and all the small game
and the tracks of enemies
come into focus…

I collect the data
assess it and
discard what I don’t need.
Collect the data
assess it
discard…

Good things too, come from
conflicts and collisions
I have been part of many
Moby Dicks, even the parts
that suck, lived every
conflict of man
against man,
against himself,
against society,
against rule of law,
against Nature—
Ahab had even knocked up a teenage Quaker!—
every conflict, I’m against
and have survived
with lungs on fire and
drunk with the bends…

Everything is sweeping vectors
magnitudes and directions
angles of inclination
moments of inertia.
In the goodwill of
the human marketplace
the streets fold and shuffle
like decks of cards and
raucous concertina bellows
while pouting women
beautiful in their boredom
gaze down from their balconettes.
Everything comes and goes
all at once as I do, too.
I crease them
I sew them up
I clip and drag
cross a bumper crop
effortlessly slipping between
objects with a perfect economy
of motion and force,
just like the Day’s light.

Σn[in Hz] ⅟∆τ is constant

through a coiled copper tube,

distilled and dripping with brilliance

each drop faceted and radiant

a diamond third eye

winking in the moonshine

a shimmering smile that

dissolves sugar cubes

from a perforated pewter spoon

billowing into milky effluvia

cupped in the gentle touch

of crystal slightly leaded

just to soften against

lips that ever thirst

more with each passing

and are never drained but always

prismatic upon consumption.

with such a long and slender neck

you shall never be emptied

no matter how many times

your heavy bottom rises.

dropping a needle in your concha,

your tympania pierced by a 

low gauge through which steel

the caliber of Big Bertha, 

bursts with a slight dimpled stretching. 

the head now a broken womb

curst with an inequity

poisoned only by the Verb, 

which disseminates towards

a grace that cannot

be Earthbound, 

has upturned heels so vulnerable

that are held in scarred palms

and are tentatively grasped

and touched in a pledge,

that wordlessly proclaim

a bounty to avoid being

turned over to the flag 

that covers those

that bore and kicked

the ass to higher

platitudes & treasons

that shimmer downward,

like confetti laced

with fallout that rains

upon skyclad wooded

forms replete with

nothing but

another

Light twice removed.

You fade to black

Every time, lunging,

Leaving airstrips,

And precipices,

And the scent of

Long nights and

No launderings.

A plea to linger,

Or not, to not 

Explode into the

Everyday of the

Everyone, but no

Holding you

Is like pinching 

The neck of a taut,

Untied balloon

In trembling fingers

Her weeps made

the sound of

duct tape stretched

fresh from the roll

used to futilely

contain the grief that

poured from her coeur

‘Lest her soul escape

like flies from a swatted

fruit rind and not remain

intact as a beam

to be refracted

to everywhence.

Is it tract, or transit

trajectory, or the impact

that makes this mote

upon my eye?

You make me shiver, Arachne,

Hanging in your web with another

Enshrouded victim, whom you

caress and suck at like

A lover, jetting about his still

twitching body, kissing him

all over, between silver thread.

Even you cannot but help

to raise a leg and shake it in

Ecstacy.

never bet on saving a dancer's daylight

when we finally met
it was already the late afternoon
in the day of our time together
when you got off the bus
and I saw you in your sundress
how you waited with girlish anxiety
for the long traffic light to change
so you could cross over to me
I knew I had the green light
to be with you
for the short time you'd be here
I heard there's a rook, you said
sphinx-like smile
eager to start to explore

there were no dirges as
we tripped over worn gravestones
and spider-webbed crypts
remarking more about the life
left in the summer and the day
and in the other animals around us
wild turkeys puffed up at us
young rabbits ran away halfhearted
not able to pass up good clover
a young falcon gazed long
down at me
my totem giving me permission
to be me
what you would let me do

I miserably tried to get you
to sit by me hidden in the dell
I wanted to seize you
and run my hand up your dress
feel your dancer's thigh and butt
that's why I laughed when later
you revealed you wanted to
take me in your mouth
on top of the rook
the roof of the Hub
treetops already blanching
but the yard's workmen disturbed us

by the reflecting pond
while we talked of politics and feminism
I looked down your dress wanting
to see the nipple of your small breast
I wanted more of what I could see
I wonder if I'd have been surprised
it was pierced if I saw it
then later only pleasantly so
and too when I lifted your dress
kissing your stomach and found
you were shorn
you are a dancer after all

and funny too how I ridiculously
asked if you'd like to come to my home
and your concession was so blasé
I was still perplexed about
that sphinx-like smile
at my place I tried to think quick
about how to invite you to my room
and you honed in on my photo
of victorious Victoria Pendleton
I mumbled a few things and then
took you in my arms and kissed you
to shut you up
so you'd not wake my housemate

we both had surprises for each other
when we stripped one another
rocked and flickered in candlelight
cool sweat coating us for hours
your brown eyes twinkling in candle-dance
with each thrust
deforming that cryptic inscrutable smile
in your rise and peak
shudder and fall
nice to meet you we joked
glad you stopped by

we paused at turns
I didn't want to finish what
your exit would
we enjoyed our company our secrets
our jokes our honesty
and when the car came to pick you up
I should have known it was
already midnight in the day
of our time together

Recently Uncovered Revolutionary War Document Featured In An Omnific Anthology— M'Lady's Secret Service

Taking Liberties: A Yankee Doodle Dandy Erotic Anthology

A recent contribution to Comin' Up Holdin' Darts by the grand-daughter of Vivian Rider called M'Lady's Secret Service has been published in an anthology put out by Omnific Publishing. Pick it up before the King suppresses it for sedition...

Route Seventy-three; 'Meet me at da Dunkins'

there's this couple
who ride my bus
they look like
they're serious pillheads
opiates and benzos
they are probably
much older then they look
but they've been together
a long time
you can tell
because they
look so much alike
they have the same expression
all the time
their faces are
deeply creased and
chaotic dashed lines
mar everywhere else
the skin looks like
it is about to slide
off their skulls
their eyelids hang
like thick heavy awnings
i've never seen
their eyes open
just squinting enough
to scratch tickets
or screw with an old phone
their mouths share
the same grim frown
i've never seen
if they have teeth but
they have too much cheek
it hangs loose on the sides
while their neck skin
is shrinkwrapped
under their jaws
they have the same
nasal raspy whine
but his is a tone
or two lower
they always wear shapeless
boston sports fan
activewear
and faded baggy unisex jeans
their slouching posture
makes their bodies look like
they are about to
slide off their Selves
so much do they look alike
they both wear a lot of
cheap yellow gold
he has big ink blots for tattoos
the high-dollar tickets
they scratch
have odds of 1 : 8.33
for even money
[i looked it up]
they mumble to themselves
or each other
while they scratch them
their phone conversations
are insane
like today it was only her
i sat two seats away
she fiddled with an
old junk phone
it rang and she answered it
hello
hello
hello
hello
each time her tone was
more confused and irritated
a question to the void
i wondered how it
would be to
live like that
two stops before
the train station
she made a call
every thing she said
was a loud confused question
lynn
hello
lynn
i'm almost dere
where d'ya
where d'ya wanna ta meet me
i'm on da bus
almost ta hahvahd
da seventie-tree
at da station
what
what
yur goin in an out
yur goin
i'm almost at da tunnel
where
where
mmm
ah
da dunkins
da dunkins
mmm
by da trains
da dunkins by da trains
downstayahs
okay
i'll be dere
da dunkins by da trains
a few min
i'm going down da tunnel now
i'll be right dere
yeh
bye
yeh
oink-ok
bye
when i got off the bus
i had to get away from her
as fast as i could
while waiting to pay my fare
in the station by the trains
i looked over at the dunkins
lynn was there
dirty blond hair
pulled back
in a tight ponytail
with matching grey
baggy sweatpants and shirt
and immaculate white sneakers

Maturation of Wine || Trans. by L.S. Todt:

Trans. by L.S. Todt:

Note to the Editors. While at the farmsale of a local vintner, I came across a small and curious volume in a box of old books. The entire book was in Old French, with the above title. The first part was a botanical guide to different types of grapes for wine, and the second was concerned with the process of blending and ageing them. The third seemed to be a fragment of a novel entitled "Imperator Du Vin." I believe this translation would be of interest to your readers.

It is with great sorrow and desolation that I, Tria Oculo, scribe to my Liege, tell of His last days. It was my news of the bearded Nazarene that had stricken him with that perpetual ennui of the day after. It was I who provoked in Him, The Deep Sounder, the desire to return to Thebes. I have forsaken my own savoir and Gentle Master.

He who saved me, a Sacred Virgin of Naxos, from the invading Herculi. Those infidels who violated me, rendering mute and deaf. It was Bacchus, the Careless Lord, whom I saved and committed to another realm

Since the massacre of his followers and Constantine’s conversion of the Empire to the Christ, we had taken refuge the deserted estate of a bankrupt vintner in Illyricum. That land, as much of the Empire had ceased to be fertile. The numbers of my Lord's worshiper's had dwindled, it was only a few who declared their devotion, and still it was only convenient for them to do so.

There was Debacchus, that whimpering simp of ill-prudus, who was the ungrateful son of my Liege and an acolyte of Medea. He whom the Father of Liberty did take charge over to avoid suit of paternity and palimony from the causidicus. Those are dark days when a God can be sued.

And Sardia Licentia, whom Sapho's high priestess did lure down from the Caucus range with a trail of oysters and mussels, to a boat filled with lobsters and crabs and, set sail for Lesbos. There she was drafted into service, and achieved the rank of Sergeant-at-Arms. However having hunted all the stags and trapped all the ganders of that isle she fell victim to Diana's jealousy, and she was forced to wander as the eternal huntress. Having been intrigued with the strength and fierceness of the Bacchanals, particularly my Liege’s own aunts, she was mercenaried as His protector.

By far His Most Fidelus was Bababalouk, the Great Dark Giant of Tremendous Girth, the former Emperor of Sudan, who was enslaved by the Perses and made a eunuch for their petty harems. Meus Rex did find him in the woods, having escaped and suffering fron several wounds in the belly from their scimitars. The oil that oozed from his avulsions was tapped into our empty lamps, which lit the many nights he was nursed to health with grapes and olives. Bababalouk’s devotion never wavered and for this Bacchus frequently restored him to his former virilitas.

The Maenads, those most mysterious of spirits, are those who always accompany and herald Him. Some say they are simulacra of the nurses of Jove's Most Pious Bastard, to others they are his incarnated aunts, the daughters of Cadmus. It is they who shine in the drunken maid's eye. Their form is ever shifting, their number unknown, both befit their fancy. Sometimes they are swarm of thighs and breasts, of carameled hair, kohled eyelids, and hungry mouths. Other times, as then upon our departure from that refuge in the hills, they took the shape of five Egyptian slave girls with tibae and sistrum, accompanied by a peacock and his hen who with their music they incited into a mating dance.

Bacchus' litter was supported by a company of statues of soldiers from the court of Pluto, who in flesh were victims of the Gorgon's, gaze. They had been reanimated for divine attention, and many were missing noses, heads or arms lost in faithful service.

We had journeyed far in the Dalmatian Mountains. into the glowing hills of Uranium, whose realm was governed by Regina Cerratonium. She was a barren queen who desired a great son to rule over her decrepit kingdom. All the young men had expired from exhaustion from her wanton, yet futile desire. Those that were virile enough to survive the crush of her great thighs, had paid for their efforts of spilling their seed into her broken womb with their heads. Her court now depleted, she took audience only with the vermin that proliferated in great abundance. She greatly admired these rats, for their ability to reproduce, and hoped vainly that their fertility would somehow relieve her of her great desire.

She never left her bed, a great walled eiderdown sunken in the middle of her chambers, and let these rodents scurry freely about in her presence. She cooed to them and spoke soft and lovingly, declaring them her children.

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

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A Day In the Half-life

To the reader: A special agent to a federal bureau, left this file at the apartment of an avid fan, who then submitted it to us, with you in mind.

He was ideology and I was methodology.  

This is hardly a confessional. It is not a rail or rant. Neither William Chadwick nor I are weird beardos hunkered down in the woods. Nor are we gun-toting white power right-wingers. This is to prove how our project failed due to the very elements we were compelled to eradicate; the sedentary incompetence that has infected this country.

I arrived at Logan Airport in Boston late, due to fog, one morning last September. My only luggage was carry-on, a briefcase containing a neutron bomb that would wipe out the Greater Boston Area up to the Raytheon plant in Wilmington. I wasn’t nervous about the time, once I made the drop I had to catch a flight to St Martin by 3:30. At 5:30, in rush hour traffic, atonement would be made.

Chadwick and I went to MIT together & graduated in 1949, both with Master’s degrees in physics. He was the beautiful bastard, and I the awkward Wunderkind. He was the idea man, and I the one who made the ideas real. He got the gorgeous women, and I got their frumpy friends. He was ideology and I was methodology.

We were in school during the war. Chadwick’s father, who was inspirational to us both, sympathized with the Fascists in the face of the Communist agenda in America. The Cold War reinforced this sentiment in our minds; there was none of our hearts involved. It was this patriarch who made me aware that the underclasses must be put down and their proliferation halted.

I took a cab from the airport and had driver, a Caribbean, drop me off at Harrison and Stuart, in the middle of Chinatown, in what’s referred to as the Combat Zone. I wanted to soak up the filth, and clear my mind before the big event. I started walking west, toward the Back Bay, where the drop zone was.

At the New England Medical Center, I passed mothers holding bald children whose pallor was green. I grinned, thinking, “Soon your cancer will be burned out.”

The two of us built bombs in California. We always worked for the government, in some capacity, up until the eighties. Because of cutbacks, I then began to do consultations for nuclear medicine. The crowning moment in my career was a speech delivered to the American Oncological Society.

“Individuals are the rebel cells. Affecting all others. They metastasize against society.” With this future credo already entrenched, business was good through the sixties. As the decade closed, the sympathies toward a Free Burn Society improved. The big guns wavered from outward to in.

From Rutherford’s early experiments to Cockcroft’s and Wilson’s, the mission was clear: to accelerate the human race to a singular and pure destiny. But these men of the highest ideals, only thinking in platitudes amongst the clouds, had no awareness of the glutting masses, which labored, but prevented this flight from even beginning.

Chadwick and I were the medium through which these lofty dreams were to be made real, or at least truly begun.

But indeed, today it had begun.

“Though even as a body fights a foreign infection from without, how does one amass an army to fight against those most lethal to the self, the enemy within, soldiers from the order of their own?

“Nothing is more dangerous or crippling than a revolution from inside the home ranks. But occupation need not be taken battle by battle. But, by the displacement of sheer numbers using up too many resources.

“Case in point, the supposed invasion of barbarian hordes. The Eastern and Northern Europeans tribes’ progress into the Mediterranean region was recorded by those whose land was taken up by the uncivilized brutes. These brutes, however, had no written language to record their own migrations. Thus the record is one-sided.

“They chose to have only an oral history, not for lack of advancement, but for higher ideals. The barbarians chose not to develop a written language, because in their own thinking, that would lead to a sedentary populace, which leads to kings and tyranny.

As we are earthbound by the laws of physics, without
these laws we would have no hope of ever lifting off it.

“They chose personal freedom over civil order, a choice that still divides this world today. And the hardest choice for any man.

“Order cannot be seen as unhealthy or unfree. As we are earthbound by the laws of physics, without these laws we would have no hope of ever lifting off it. As a body becomes more complex, more order must be enforced, or the system comes in conflict, and a fugue ensues resulting in cannibalism of the self.”

I walked swiftly over the Harrison Street Bridge, spanning across the expressway. The wind was cutting. Passing the Boston Herald, I thought of how the paper declined into a mere tabloid, yet tried to maintain its status quo, working-class roots. Its lies were thinner than its third page. The liberalist Globe wasn’t much better.

The area was desolate now. Some rummies collected like trash in the wind. In an alcove, one pushed another while the others yelled. He reeled around, drunken, urinating and stumbling. Barely breaking his fall, he leaned on the trunk of a car, urine still cascading onto the middle of the sidewalk. The scent of his sick, fetid water knifed along with the wind.

I made my way onto Appleton Street, and took a left onto Clarendon, and soon was in the now eclectic South End neighborhood.

Three fourteen year olds offered, mostly jokingly, to sell me heroin and then threatened to “kick the shit out of me.” A bug-eyed woman, face speckled with sores, said she’d “suck me for a rock.” The fact that I, a 73 year-old scientist, could be a part of their universe seemed to their bleary perceptions, perfectly normal.

Two men window shopped, oohing at a feathered dress, and then looked on into a shop that body pierced. They held hands, and as I walked by, one reflexively and openly stroked the other’s buttocks.

Two blocks down Columbus, I hooked a right onto Exeter, for a short walk to the Back Bay. The drop zone, the Prudential Building, had been bobbing and weaving across the rooftops.

"UFO" Siting at the Closing Ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles

I found some weird thread with a prediction about an alien, or a least a fake alien, invasion during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, most likely occurring during the 12 August closing ceremony. There was during the closing ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles an elaborately staged "UFO" siting that happened between the extinguishing of the Olympic flame and the reading of a poem attributed to a group named Pindar by the announcer, and the flash appearance of an alien— all before Lionel Richie busts in with All Night Long. Check it out, it's pretty funny. 

[ed. note: The reference by the announcer to the poem has been picked up by conspiracy theorists as a convenient slip. Pindar was a Greek poet (d. 443 BC) who did write victory poems, but Pindar is also the alias of the Marquis de Libeaux, known as Phallus of the Dragon. The Marquis is supposed to be a Reptilian alien leader who fathers royal Aryan bloodlines, like Prince William's. The whole thing is suppose to be rife with Illuminati, NWO, CFR, Bilderburgs and the Merovingian Bloodline complete with MK-Ultra slaves and Princess Di's murder. So it is hard to say if group was referring to our Reptoid masters, or that he was just another know-nothing media chump. Either way it has to be the worst production for TV since 1978's The Star Wars Holiday Special.]

Slipping...

He stopped because she said it was too hard. Not what he was doing, but what she doing. Climaxing for what the..?, he had lost count at five, and that was during the first two hours of the entire evening. He had yet to, even almost.

“God, just let my head slow down,” she whimpered. She was still quivering and breathing heavy. Her breathing eventually slowed.

Hey, you okay?” he asked concerned but with a chuckle.

“Yeah,” she mumbled something.

“What’d you say?”

She slurred a string of nonsense. “Sharper” What? “… shopping…” Slipping…

“You’re out aren’t you?”

She was.

He giggled, and then realized how inflamed he still was. “Shit.” He hadn’t been laid in over two years, but still managed to give someone the "best sex she’d ever had," and raise it the requested kink factor, which was higher than he'd expected. Not surprised, just not expected.

Maybe in the morning… why should that be any different? This is how it always went. Alone and wide-awake, in a dark, strange place, turgid and purple; physically, mentally and yes, spiritually.

She had bought him a pack of smokes, that’s where they met, they actually met online, but she picked him up at the 7-Eleven. Bought herself and his broke-ass packs of cigarettes. 

She said later she thought she was picking up a high-schooler the way he had acted. He fished out a cigarette, crawled over her, and walked naked through the strange apartment. Her hippie roommate and son were away.

They had been messaging back and forth for only two days. He liked her look; a little vintage, short black hair, red lips. He had heated it up quick, and she told him to call her. 

He did the next day, and got her voicemail. Her pre-recorded message gave her full name. She had a name from a crime noir novel and a gun moll’s tone and accent from the Boston area.

They later messaged quickly again, and it was at a feverish pitch. She said, “I’m getting in the shower and dressing up for you, I’ll call you to come on over.” He had told her that he liked old pin-up type fashions, totally in a straight-guy way, though.

She called back around 10 o’clock, and told him to come over— she was fortuitously a 15 minute bus ride away, at most— and to pick her up a pack of cigarettes. 

He told her he was totally broke, but would get the cash and run for them. She said she would just pick him up at the 7-Eleven.

He got there, and there was this group of four teen-age boys out front to the left of the doors, so he picked the right side, and stationed himself. 

Three young girls, skin still browning in the night of early summer, came out and walked in front of him. He looked them up and down, he rarely did that. 

The gun moll was closer to his age, and a little big, he knew; he was comparing. The teen-age boys tried to whistle, and cat-call at them, but the girls weren’t impressed.

Seconds later he saw her, walking from the left-side of the store, in a tight red dress, fishnets, and some high pumps; like it was totally practiced. “Hello boys,” she said to the teenagers, totally practiced.

“Hey, you look great.” He held the door for her.

“So do you,” she said.

She got Newport’s, of course, and him a pack of his own brand. They got in this crappy Miata, whose top had been left down in the evening's previous shower.

“So, how ya don’?” she asked.

“I can’t keep my hands off you.”

“Aw.” They kissed a good bit. “Wow,” she said. And they drove away.

On the couch, he lit his cigarrette, and got nervous. Then the thought hit hard. The pills. Earlier, at his house he had a big chicken dinner, rare but that’s what he got from the food pantry that week.

During the evening's activities, he had to use the bathroom, and turned on the faucet to silence the immense farting that commenced. They came at a lengthy duration and standing at the basin, with his hand on the faucet, his frazzled eyes were drawn to the pill bottles above the sink.

“Oh, Jesus.” The first one’s contents jumped off the label, like in an 82pt. Boston Herald headline font: Xanax. Ritalin was in the other two, her son’s and hers.

Now, he sat on the couch wondering what to do. He would just smoke his cigarette, of course.

He wasn’t pissed or resentful about not getting satisfied himself, by the sex. She had begged him in all sorts of dirty ways, but he demurred; he was still too shy with her, which was pretty coy because he was a total switch. The night was pretty rough.

He realized he didn't have a "disease of more", as was oft quoted. He had a Disease of Want. 

He had messaged her that he was more interested in watching her react to his touches, watch her rise and fall, and “slip…” He had left that open-ended deliberately, implying slipping into orgasm and sleep. He saw the former more times than were counted, and the latter, as well. Shouldn’t he then, be satisfied as well? Expectations fulfilled?

Rather than cop her drugs, he got up off the couch, and before crawling into bed with her, he did steal one of her cigarettes, totally forgetting about the baby food jar full of marijuana right next to them. He smelled it earlier, he wasn't interested. He could get better, if he wanted. She hadn't smoked.

He put the little dish they used as an ashtray across her big ass; she had never moved from where he had released her. He enjoyed the novelty of the quick-burning menthol, and of hearing someone slumber deeply again. He touched her forehead, still moist and fevered; hooked her hair behind her ear. 

He smiled, self-satisfied, and respectfully picked up the dish before putting the butt out, placed it on the nightstand, hunkered up close and put his arm around a pretty much perfect stranger for the first time in distant memory. And slipped himself…

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

After finding a copy of the 15th century occult text Malleus Maleficarum in a Berlin bookstore,Danish film director Benjamin Christensen went on to produce the film Häxan during the years of 1919 - 1921 through a Swedish studio. The film ended up being the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever produced due to the length of production and Christensen's meticulous recreations of medieval scenes. The final version was banned in the US and highly censored versions where screened elsewhere, due to themes of torture, nudity and sexual perversion that were considered graphic and taboo at the time.


The film uses still photography of archival prints, animations and horror movie style dramatizations in a documentary study that proposes how superstitions and misinformation of mental illness lead to persecutions and civil unrest such as the Inquisitions and other witch-hunts of the past.


There are five chapters to the film each building the case of how the human need to provide supernatural, or worse superstitious, answers using faulty reasoning when confronted with the uncomprehensible or not understandable leads to paranoia, injustice and an ultimately sick society.

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) -- 240p, silent with English subtitles



The above version is best viewed while playing the "ULTIMATE WITCH HOUSE PLAYLIST" created by YouTube user futureextinguisher -- also on tumblr: witchgate




Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) -- Criterion Collection Version
360p version with musical score and original Scandinavian titles -- no English subtitles

“Victoria how could you?”; Pendleton takes one from the heart

This is a vintage-era postcard gratuitously
placed and has nothing to do with this blog

I am not a real sports fan; totally illiterate. I am not a follower of popular culture; on the street or any size screen I wouldn’t know… what'shername… see, I just don’t know, I can't think of any female celebrity that captures my attention. I’m weird with my crushes, they’re mostly historical. I am lucky if the camera was invented when most of them did their thing, or that some artist was around during the same century to hear a report of their likeness and capture it in some rendering. I once had a picture in my wallet of Emily Dickinson. I showed to my well-read friend. “Aw! She’s homily!” he cried. She was the Belle of Amherst, and I loved her, although I filed the picture away somewhere. I like female scientists, Lady Ada Lovelace, Maria Agnesi, as well as the real crazy artists, like Valentine de Saint-Point, and Suzanne Valadon. It is rare when I feel a fuzzy, pink-cloud admiration about someone currently on the world stage, and shaking it up. Then came Victoria.

I was a bike messenger for years in Boston mostly, but San Francisco too, and a fairly good one. Cycling history is important to me. The bicycle was responsible for a gender, sexual, and racial revolution in America during the last two decades of the 19th century. Fin-de-siècle women were suppose to be sickly, a costly doctor on retainer was the sign of a man’s success. The bicycle got them out of their corsets, hiked up their skirts, got them throwing their legs up and over a saddle, and sweating. It allowed them to move about freely without the aid of men, or a man’s horse, or other beasts of chattel. New York school teachers were not allowed to ride a bicycle; next she’d be showing the pupils her bloomers, and chewing gum, with a horrible bicycle-face. Sounds funny, but allowing a woman to travel, cheaply, under her own power, and have it contribute to her physical fortitude was a pretty powerful thing. Check The Kominas  video Sharia Law in the U.S.A. for a modern parallel.

A young savvy suitor, for a small investment could ensure some privacy while courting, something that was very new and uncustomary. Ma and Pa looked askance at some mustachioed gent coming a'calling, wheeling up to the homestead, with two rides, or a tandem. They were able to travel some distance into nature, and then let it take over. Sounds a little better than a cramped backseat of an auto, but then I’m a too tall, kinky romantic.

Major Taylor c. 1900

As a historical note Marshall Major Taylor was the second black world champion of any sport for two years around the millennial. The Worcester Whirlwind, the Colored Cyclone was the toast and terror of Europe, yet could not ride competitively in his own country. He died penniless in 1932, his fortunes drained by hucksters, and bad investments, selling his auto-biography The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World door-to-door. He was exhumed from his unmarked grave in 1948, and laid to rest by a group of former pro racers, with money donated by Frank W. Schwinn.

I was checking the BBC sports RSS to see if there was any advance track cycling news on the Olympics in London. I only follow two sports, both Olympic, with some interest; women’s speed skating, and women’s track cycling. I figure, why would I want to watch a bunch of dudes in tight clothes chasing a ball like a dog or small child? [Don’t get me started about a sport where the object is to dominate your opponents’ end zone, with repeated penetrations, with ends that are both split and tight.] Anyway, then I came across Victoria. There was some blurb about British track cyclist Victoria Pendleton saying how she wasn’t the manic-depressive psycho everyone thought she was, she was just in the habit of speaking her mind. She’s had an up and down career since two gold medals in Beijing 2008. [Which now makes sense, given how this plays out.]

I watched her world record setting performance in the team sprint with Jess Varnish at the World Track Cup in February before I checked the FHM pictorial. My ears burned at my peers comments to the pictures, how dare they puerilely sully her heroic accomplishments,  her incredible spirit and self-empowerment. While there were some incredibly sexy shots of a beautiful strong woman in various states of nudity on a bike and not, I downloaded the one of her riding on the track, no hands, sitting erect in team colors, holding the Union Jack over her head. She was Britannia in Victory personified. I’ve been getting a little anglophile over the past few years, but I felt a welling up in me like a damn Tory. [editor's note: UK artist and avid cyclist Paul Shipley was very kind to send his version of this amazing moment done in gouache, watercolor, and acrylic. The victory well-preserved, Pendleton's expression is even more fixed with determination. More of his art can be seen and purchased at http://www.veritasart.co.uk/gallery.html]  

I got two cheap picture frames, printed reasonably descent prints and hung them up. Keep in mind that ever since my girl left, I’ve been taping up every punk rock show flyer, every pin-up shot torn from a magazine I can, because it would piss her off. I actually bought picture frames; this was serious. I capped the 8 x 10 BiV with a 5 x 7 of her chilling in a black half-suit, helmet in one hand, still in the saddle and clips of one hot stripped-down ride, leaning against the track’s rail for support. Her long flowing black hair and makeup on the top countered the lower natural girl-jock victory shot.

I like two types of strong women; strong, and women—add a rumor of crazy and I’m a sucker. I said that to a friend, when we had people over, some women asked what Victoria's pictures, among all my bicycle ephemra, were about. He called it “bike porn.” Let me clarify, the whole idea of these shots, and pin-ups in general, is that the women are the subject, not the object. Pornography connotes a kind of ownership, hence its etymology; porne is Greek for harlot or prostitute, and is derived from bought or sold. Clearly, the only one owning it was Victoria.

The UCI Track World Championships in Melbourne were coming up in early April. I couldn’t wait, the field had some lookers, even the US’s Sarah Hammer is impressive, but lacks the union of form andintention. Most women cyclists get a little bottom heavy, which is sort of nice, but up top, they generally get too thin. Track cyclists are stronger then the road or mountain riders; Victoria’s arms made Michelle Obama’s look like chicken-wings, and the curve of her deltoids, linking to her trapezius, and down to the cleft of her lats, not huge, but incredibly curvy-feminine.

I read this essay by a psychologist who said that males couldn’t help but think of sex everytime they looked at women, because every gentle round curve; breasts, shoulders, knees, even the reverse curve of the nape of the neck, were meant to remind him of the butt, since early-on most sex was from behind, and that used to mean the success of the species was assured. Sounds good to me. That’s why most muscle mass women put on doesn’t naturally get the bulk and definition that men's does. Her body was an incredible machine, but not for assuring the species' success, but to sprint, with a sudden huge burst of controlled power, and thus assuring victory. She was perfectly, what is known in the field as a term of art, aero. [Now it’s all making sense. How could I be so stupid?]

Anyway, while I was engaged in this idle infatuation, I had attempted to get a little closer to a few individuals in the network of misfits I had recently been running with and found my domain. Right away, I failed miserably, and worse alienated some great people. There were some affections exchanged, but the average American fourteen year-old has more action than I had during these two weeks. The combination of a lot of things coming to head; professional, family, financial, during a period of gross transition and restructuring, caused me to choke. Out of practice, or better behaved, because in my courier days I would have kissed three girls the same night in the same bar [Come on, don’t mean nothing.], and played hand-on-the-knee with whoever else would let me, total lothario stuff. All to crank the wheel home alone, psyched because I was my own man. The fact that I was indeed alone would set in once I climbed into bed, in my dingy basement apartment. I had been trying to do things differently. Ultimately, the ladies who I had developed amiable feelings towards, were otherwise engaged. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and one that I had had a well-trod path on. Why had I saved that one pair of clean underwear, or the razor that wasn’t too dull, for the occasion? I might as well, and I think I did, get the full-on lothario mode going again; dirty, filthy and disrespecting.

But, walking by Victoria’s framed victory shot, with her iconic look of sureness, confidence, pride in her accomplishment; as an individual, as a woman, as a Member of the Order of the British Empire with her Union Jack, made these day-to-day pressures and misfires melt. There was indeed, always Hope; hopefully the offer wasn't just limited to the British. [Guess it wouldn’t hurt to be Australian either, jerk!]

So, the World Championship arrived and I combed the internet trying to find a source to watch the event. Not on US cable of course, not on my housemate’s forty-six inch HD television that we never watch, but finally I found a vender licensed to stream it live from Melbourne, at 5am, for $9.99 onto my crappy laptop. But while searching, I had been scanning the headlines looking for my Hope, and some expression of confidence, that she was back, and her name was derived from victory after all, and the same name as arguably the most powerful British Queen in history. Could she sweep it, go back to the London Olympics, and grab all three golds? Then I saw it. I didn’t have to read it to know what happened. The headline was Pendleton admits Aussie affair upset team-mates. Maybe the affair the SBS was alluding to was some errant intrigue?, but no it was an affair with a member of the British Cycling coaching staff. An Aussie Sports Scientist? Is there such a thing?, I am an engineer, and that can't even be a real nerd, and a caneater no less. She was acknowledging how the affair began prior to Beijing, was kept secret until after, dude quit the team, went back to Australia, and they’re now engaged. Since the World Championship is in Rooschtupper Central she’s now in his arms, when she should be thinking of being in the drops and clips.

According to the article on sbs.com.au, “She added: ‘A lot of people felt very negatively about it; team-mates that blamed me because Scott [Gardner] wasn't there to help them and felt I was being selfish; members of staff who felt it was unprofessional, even though we never flaunted it...’” And then I thought about her disappointing record since, there were some coups, yes, but somehow there was a fickleness, or doubt, caused… by… love? Then I thought of the most famous FHM cover shot, you can find it online easy, and her perfectly honed body… Freaking Sports Scientist!

"You don't choose the person you fall in love with.” No, you don’t Victoria, sometimes they choose you.

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."