Two Philosophy Students

The discovery of the decayed body of a depressed Brown University student at India Point in Providence, brought to mind this poem. The rain-swept opening scene took place one block from where the student's body was found in the water.

Randall’s umbrella is tatter-torn,

bare spokes inviting leaf-catch or lightning.
Rain pelts his hair, his eyes
     swell shut with sea-brine.
He thinks a thought-wedge
against the wrenching wind:

     this thing above me possesses the form
          of an umbrella,
     therefore it must be
          an umbrella.
     Therefore, I am dry.

Sleet pounds his brow to migraine.
His soiled jeans get a needed washing.
He asks himself: What constitutes
“the Wet” as opposed to “the Dry?”

In lightning flash,
Armando passes Randall,
the wind to his back,
stooped as always,
his shapeless gym bag
weighted with something
the size and shape
of a bowling ball.

His back-pack, drenched now,
contains the yellowed pages
of his doctoral thesis,
begun a dozen years ago.

He sleeps in a carrel
on Level 3 of the Library,
a spot behind a stairwell
that no one enters, ever.

There he will dry himself,
thumbing through Heidegger,
warming his dissertation
from log to turning sheets again,
his gym bag unzipped
to display the head
of his advisor,
gone on sabbatical
some years now
but never missed.

Armando does not like
these rainy afternoons.
The head seems heavier,
smells ever so slightly
as he shuffles upstairs
to the cobwebbed stacks
somewhere between
Metaphysics and Ontology.

The Special Ward at Butler Hospital

A new "poem-monologue" to be read at Ladd Observatory, Brown University, in the annual commemoration for H.P. Lovecraft.

Ah, here we are. For the state of these hallways
I must apologize. The janitors won’t clean here:
It’s in their contract since the 1950s. We make do.
I hope that handsome suit of yours will not get soiled:
I haven’t seen one cut like that since my father’s time.
There’s nothing really down here, you see. I’m sure
You’ll want to inspect our new outpatient clinic. No?
Ward L? A special ward? Can’t say I know of it.
These doors are locked. They’re always locked.
There’s nothing to see there, really? Inspector,
we’ve done the annual visit the same each year.
You’ve never asked about this basement. Oh?
An inquiry? Grand jury, you say? I’m sorry, no:
I’m not allowed to open this. Subpoena? I see;
Yes, yes, it all seems clearly worded: “Ward L,
locked rooms in Butler’s basement. Inspect.”
I still don’t think I’m authorized to open — ah,
I see your two friends’ badges there, and, oh,
I’d rather you not display those handguns
considering our population here. Ward L.
The key is here somewhere. You’re making me
exceedingly nervous with that .38. Wrong key.
Damn! Here it is! It’s open! It’s open!
You’ll need a moment to adjust to the dimness.

The men are on this side,
     behind the plexiglass.
There’s a certain family likeness for some:
those lantern jaws, that gait aloof and awkward,
all dressed in their grandfather’s suits.
Every one of them thinks he’s H.P. Lovecraft.
Untreatable, incurable (and certainly unemployable);
nothing short of lobotomy will pull them out of it.
Last count, three hundred. They come from everywhere.
Most states outsource their Lovecraft maniacs;
Their loss, our gain. At least it’s easy to feed them.
Crackers and chili, a slice of pie.
They’re calm except for those nights
On which we bring them ice cream.
They eat it off each other’s bodies, something
you’d pay me not to have to watch.

The Lovecraft women are on the other side.
No, only a dozen or so right now. They suicide
as fast as we get them in. The “Howards”
are not remotely interested in meeting them.
Some lie there at night, exposing themselves
toward the Hyades; some play with rats
and give them endearing little names.
Most of them just read, and lick the wallpaper,
and fill up the room with plush toy octopi
(we sell them in the gift store up above).
A number of them turn out, on closer inspection,
to actually be men. We call them Cthulhu’s nuns.
Every woman who ever reads Lovecraft
winds up this way. They really should ban him.

Here in the back, we have the “machinery.”
There’s the lobotomy kit, and over there
the latest in electroshock, but as I said,
they’re pretty much incurable. Just take a look:
they’re not particularly unhappy. They read;
endless long letters they write to imaginary friends
(of course we never mail them); and they dispute
among themselves for hours fine points
of eldrich lore and Arkham geography.

Report what you like. I think we’re kind to them.
Back in the 60s a former director said, “Empty the place,”
and so we had them all drafted to the infantry:
imagine a platoon of Lovecrafts in Vietnam!
This is not a bad life. It’s not as though
they could go out and get jobs, you know.
And they’re not such gentlemen as one
would think: that Negro attendant they tore
to bits in 1953. Oh my goodness.

So that’s the tour. Gentlemen, your guns.
Thank you for bringing the Inspector down
without his being any the wiser. Just tie him down
to that bed by the electroshock. There, there,
Inspector, it will be fine before long. Your boss
is repressing all evidence of that sacrifice you made
during your South Pacific vacation last year –
all that mess, tsk! tsk! and no Cthulhu
to show for your trouble. You’ll be all right.
You’re going to have three hundred best friends,
and they’ll be just like you. You could live
to a hundred down here. All those books to read
and we even have our own closed-circuit TV:
all Lovecraft, all the time. And now, stop talking.
I’ll just tape over your mouth so you can listen.
Just for you. The rats. The rats in the wall.

They Had No Poet...

by Don Marquis
Published in 1915 in Dreams & Dust

"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
 They had no poet and they died."--POPE.
By Tigris, or the streams of Ind,
  Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon,
Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned,
  Setting tall towns against the dawn,

Which, when the proud Sun smote upon,
  Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride;
Their names were . . .  Ask oblivion! . . .
 "They had no poet, and they died."

Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned,
  That loll where fellow leopards fawn . . .
Their hearts are dust before the wind,
  Their loves, that shook the world, are wan!

Passion is mighty . . . but, anon,
  Strong Death has Romance for his bride;
Their legends . . .  Ask oblivion! . . .
  "They had no poet, and they died."

Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned
  Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn,
Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined,
  Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;

They built with bronze and gold and brawn,
  The inner Vision still denied;
Their conquests . . .  Ask oblivion! . . .
  "They had no poet, and they died."

Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn,
  Was it but flesh they deified?
Their gods were . . .  Ask oblivion! . . .
  "They had no poet, and they died."

Knecht Ruprecht, or The Bad Boy's Christmas

Don't even think of calling your
mother or father.
They can't hear you.
No one can help you now.
I came through the chimney
 in the form of a crow.

You're my first this Christmas.
You're a very special boy, you know.
You've been bad,
bad every day,
dreamt every night
 of the next day's evil.
It takes a lot of knack
 to give others misery
for three hundred and sixty
consecutive days!
How many boys have you beaten?
How many small animals killed?
Half the pets in this town
 have scars from meeting you.
Am I Santa Claus? Cack, ack, ack!
Do I look like Santa, you little shit?
Look at my bare-bone skull,
   my eyes like black jelly,
   my tattered shroud.
My name is Ruprecht,
 Knecht Ruprecht.
I'm Santa's cousin! Cack, ack, ack!

Stop squirming and listen--
 (of course I'm hurting you!)
I have a lot of visits to make.
My coffin is moored to your chimney.
My vultures are freezing their beaks off.

But as I said, you're special.
You're my number one boy.
When you grow up,
you're going to be a noxious skinhead,
maybe a famous assassin.
Your teachers are already afraid of you.
In a year or two you'll discover girls,
a whole new dimension  of cruelty and pleasure.

Now let's get down to business.
Let me get my bag here.
Presents? Presents! Cack, ack, ack!
See these things? They're old,
old as the Inquisition,
make dental instruments look like toys.

No, nothing much, no permanent harm.
I'll take a few of your teeth,
then I'll put them back.
This is going to hurt.  There--
the clamp is in place.
Let's see--where to plug in
those electrodes?

Oh, now, don't whimper and pray to God!
As if you ever believed in God! Cack, ack, ack!
I know every tender place in a boy's body.
There, that's fine! My, look at the blood!

You'll be good from now on? That's a laugh.
Am I doing this to teach you a lesson?
I am the Punisher. I do this
because I enjoy it! I am just like you!

There is nothing you can do!
I can make a minute of pain seem like a year!
No one will ever believe you!

Worse yet, you cannot change.
Tomorrow you will be more hateful than ever.
The world will wish you had never been born.

Well now, our time is up. Sorry for the mess.
Tell your mother you had a nosebleed.

Your father is giving you a hunting knife
for which I'm sure you'll have a thousand uses.

Just let me lick those tears from your cheeks.
I love the taste of children's tears.

My, it's late! Time to fly! Cack, ack, ack!
 I'll be back next Christmas Eve!


_______
Knecht Ruprecht, from German folklore, is St. Nicholas' evil twin, who punishes bad children. 

The Orphan of Chao

I carried this book to lunch today and read a thirteenth century Chinese play called "The Orphan of Chao." It's a lurid revenge play, with three suicides and one infant dismemberment on stage, 300 offstage murders, and a long 20-year wait for revenge. Oh, what fun!  (No, I was reading a Penguin edition of this play in English!)

http://amzn.com/0140442626

Rite of Spring In Its Original Choreography

Preparing for a talk I am giving, I discovered that the original Nijinsky choregraphy for the Rite of Spring has been staged by the Kirov and other companies. Here is the final scene, with the Sacrificial Victim literally dancing herself to death. Although Stravinsky later wanted the Rite to be listened to as pure music, the original choreography shows that this music can be taken literally. Terrifying! 

Marguerite Monnot

One of the 20th century's least-heralded woman composers was the classically-trained Marguerite Monnot, who collaborated with Edith Piaf in creation an enormous body of classic French "chansons," the French song genre that transcends pop mu

sic. Most of my friends who love classical music also love Edith Piaf. Monnot was her best friend, and together they made the 20th century "chanson" immortal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Monnot

Marguerite Monnot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Marguerite Monnot(28 May 1903 – 12 October 1961) was a French songwriter and composer best known for having written many of the songs performed byÉdith Piaf("Milord", "Hymne 

Patrick McGrath Muñiz

Patrick McGrath Muñiz had a show of his work at URI some time back, and I have kept track of this remarkable artist via his website. The technique of a Renaissance master combined with high political and social satire might be one way to describe him. Go look, and I think you will become a fan. http://www.patrickmcgrath-art.com/

An Exeter Vampire, 1799

She comes back, in the rain, at midnight.

Her pale hand, not a branch, taps the glass.

Her thin voice, poor Sarah Tillinghast

whines and whimpers, chimes and summons you

to walk in lightning and will’o wisp

to the hallowed sward of the burial ground,

to press your cheek against her limestone,

to run your fingers on family name,

to let the rain inundate your hair,

wet your nightclothes to clammy chill,

set your teeth chattering, your breath

a tiny fog before you in the larger mist.

You did not see her go before you,

yet you knew she was coming here.

Soon her dead hand will tap your shoulder.

Averting your eyes, you bare your throat

for her needful feeding, your heat, your

heart’s blood erupting in her gullet.

You will smell her decay, feel the worms

as her moldy shroud rubs against you.

Still you will nurse the undead sister,

until her sharp incisors release you

into a sobbing heap of tangled hair,

your heart near stopped, your lungs exploding,

wracked with a chill that crackles the bones.

The rain will wash away the bloodstains.

You will hide your no more virginal

throat like a smiling lover’s secret.

Two brothers have already perished —

the night chill, anemia, swift fall

to red and galloping consumption.

Death took them a week apart, a month

beyond Sarah’s first night-time calling.

Honor Tillinghast, the stoic mother,

sits in the log house by the ebbing fire,

heating weak broth and johnny cakes.

One by one she has sewn up your shrouds—

now she assembles yet another.

She knows there is no peace on this earth,

nor any rest in the turning grave.

The storm ends, and birds predict the sun.

Upstairs, in garret and gable dark,

the children stir, weak and tubercular,

coughing and fainting and praying for breath.

The ones that suck by night are stronger

than those they feed on, here where dead things

sing their own epitaphs in moon-dance,

and come back, in the rain, at midnight.

_____

Exeter, Rhode Island’s “vampire” case of 1799 ended with the exhumation and destruction of the corpse of Sarah Tillinghast after four siblings followed her in death by consumption. They burned Sarah’s heart and reburied all the bodies. 

Milkweed Seeds

The air is full of milkweed seeds—
they fly, they light, they fly again—
they cling to leaf, to cat-tail,
dog fur and hedgehog quill.

They burst out of pods like wizened hags,
white hair pluming on witch winds.
Do not be fooled by their innocent pallor:
the sour milk sac that ejected them
is made of gossip, spite and discord.
Pluck this weed once, two take its place,
roots deep in the core of malice.

Cousin to carrion flower and pitcher plants
they fall on sleepers who toss in misery,
engendering boils and bleeding sores.
These are no playful sprites of summer—
they go to make more of their kind—
and if one rides through an open window
it can get with child an unsuspecting virgin,
who, dying, gives birth to a murderer.

Just give them a wind
     that’s upward and outward
and they’re off to the mountains
to worship the goat-head eminence,
pale lord of the unscalable crag,

Evil as white as blasted bone,
his corn-silk hair in dreadlocks,
his fangs a black obsidian
     sharp as scalpels,
his mockery complete
as every dust mote sings his praises.

Do not trust white, winged and ascending to heaven!
Beware, amid the bursting flowers, the sinister pod!

Hoxie House

The high house, unpainted timbers already

blackened, was Truth and Wisdom’s armoury,

walls thick enough to bar the arrow

of the hostile Indian, windows so high

and leaded panes so narrow so that no sin,

however faint, could penetrate

the dim, cool classroom. “In Adam’s Fall,

We Sinned All,” began the alphabet. The boys

stayed on until they could sum and call out

the hymn and credo of the Puritan Fathers;

the girls, few and tubercular, were such

as clung to knowledge for scant hope

of ever seeing a husband, spinsters

in waiting for the church pew, the rounds

of chaste charity, if they lived. The stooped

and spectacled teacher made silence,

obedience, and the occasional slap

of an ominous birch rod his syllabus.

One early autumn day, as darkness crept

with dankness into the unfired room,

he grew distracted from his lecturing

on the certainty of Hell by two distinct

aberrances: the clatter and fall

of chestnuts from a spreading tree

that had grown too close for comfort

to the schoolhouse, and the pale face

of Sarah, the oldest of his female charge.

Her agitation at his lecture, agitated him.

His hands began to tremble as he realized

she had come back from a necessity

(so long outdoors and back from the privy

he feared the wolves had taken her)

with a dark smear on her hands he realized

was woman’s blood.  She trembled, crouched

in her seat, her voice a scant whisper

as he required amens and recitations.

When dusk came, and the boys hurtled

toward the broad pond, the trails among

the great trees canopied with vines,

the waiting farms and close houses,

Sarah moved slowly, raising herself with hands

protectively below her waist as though

she feared a trail might follow her, a lure

to bear and beast, a stain upon the landscape.

He blocked her passage. “Stay,” he said.

“Thou hast the mark of sin upon thee.”

She tried to dodge him; his hands reached out

and held her by the shoulder. Her blush

was like a bonfire. She could not speak.

He led her behind the schoolhouse. Silent

she was as he found a leaf pile and pushed

her down there. “Daughter of Eve,”

he cursed her as his mouth found her lips,

“Thou art man’s perdition.” She cried out;

the black boards of Hoxie House, the long

dark shadow of Truth and Wisdom’s armoury

muffling his groans and the tumult

of the lesson he taught her.  That night,

she would close her primer forever,

and take the unbibled spinster’s vow.

No one would ever ask, and no one

would ever believe, how on the day

she bled first, she bled a second time.

On a quest with my friends David and Kleber for pre-1700 houses, we found the famous saltbox Hoxie House in Sandwich, MA. At some point in its history it had been a schoolhouse. I found its color and its stinginess of windows appalling, and this is the only house we saw that seemed to have an aura of evil about it. I instantly flashed onto the "imaginary" events in this poem, as I tried to imagine a repressed Puritan teacher locked up in this confined building with children.

On the Island of Pohnpei

A Dramatic Monologue

Been to the ruins, have you? Not yet? I can tell
you’re one of those scholarly types. Deep.
I like a firm handshake. New Englanders
come from that Innsmouth place a lot —
limp, clammy handshakes is all you get
from one of them. I know their ways and signs
and can pass when I have to. Just slouch
and tie a scarf around your neck. Feel sorry
when I see their kids, all handsome-like,
until they grow into that “ancestral look.”
Still, there are homelier types around here.

You look more Boston to me, averse
as you seem to be to sunlight. I see the way
you pick your table, one beam of light
on that book you always carry, the rest of you
in shadow. If I painted any more
that would make a fine study. So, Harvard,
is it? you on one of those expeditions?
No, never seen anyone from Arkham before.
Miska — Miskatonic, you say? Can’t say I ever
heard of it, though we’ve had scholarly types
who wouldn’t say where they’re from
and what they’re doing. Sometimes they unload
crate after crate from the cargo ship
then hole up back and above the ruins.
Good pickings for scavengers, too, since
more than half of those fellows disappeared. Sink holes,
you see — they have a way of opening up
when you least expect it. Beneath those ruins,
no one can guess how far down it can go.
Funny thing is, there are tunnels down there
that go deep below the ocean, yet dry
as a Baptist on a blue Sunday.

A lot of those other scholars go sun-mad
or catch some funny diseases from the village girls.
One old professor, philologist I think,
said he would never sleep again,
so he razored off his eyelids. He’s off
in the madhouse in Wellington. Thank you, yes,
I do know just about everybody. Used to be
you could count the white folk on two hands.

Now with the hippies and the Lovecraft tourists,
this place is getting too crowded for me.
I’ve done a museum’s worth of paintings
in those ruins, and did a lot of diving
in my younger days. There’s more of those ruins
under the water than above, you know.
Those — what do you learned folk call them —
Encylco — Yes, “Cyclopean” — that’s the word
I was searching for. Funny thing is that out there
and down below, it goes so deep you could swear
it was never above water, not for a day,
so how could these Polynesians have built it?

I sold a lot of painting to visitors — the ruins,
a little wildlife, sometimes I’d get a village girl
or some boys to pose for me, very classical.
Nowadays they come and ask for tentacles.
They want that god (I’m not going to say his
name), dragging his squid face over the landscape.
I want to spit every time I hear “R’lyeh!”
Seeing as you’re not one of the hippies,
I’d be happy to take you to the ruins. Easy
it is to lose your way, and as I said,
there are places that fall away. You might
even find the skeleton of one of your own professors,
ha! Just joking! You don’t need to look that way.
Fact is, I want to get off this island.
A chance at a gallery in Sydney, fancy
I’d finally get to see Hong Kong or Thailand.

It’s the hippies, you see, these last two years,
since the stuff they call “trans-heroin” arrived.
Nepal is practically empty and the Afghanis
are mad as hell that some unknown white powder
has pushed all other drugs aside. Now Pohnpei
is the Haight-Ashbury of the South Pacific.
They’re building hostels on the beach.
Three Lebanese, ah, shall I call them
“businessmen,” and some Russians, shall I call them
“silent partners,” have set up a dance club there —
see the smoke? — not twenty yards from the ruins.
Since you’re a scholar, and I can trust you,
I’ll let you in on the secret: the white powder
comes from here, from fabled R’lyeh, Pohnpei Island.

Take it just once, and all you want to do is sleep,
and in that sleep — my god, what they tell me!
Those so-called gentle hippies. One sat there,
right where you’re sitting, and boasted to me,
“Last night, in my dream, I killed a thousand men.
The powder wore off before I could finish eating them.”
At first, it came from divers, not bringing up pearls,
but caked-up minerals from an outcrop,
a crazy place where those ancient stones
had fallen into something and the white
stuff, over many centuries, extruded outward.
But now the Lebanese, on the ploy of laying
a cement foundation for their nightclub
jack-hammered their way down to the vein,
the mother lode of chalk-like powder.
The Russians watch everything, sit down below
in what they call “The Kitchen,” Kalashnikovs
at the ready. There goes the neighborhood.
I have to listen to the thump-thump-a-thump
of the living dead zombie dance music
some nights till three in the morning.
There’s a neon sign, oh, you’ll see it
with tacky Hawaiian lettering, that reads
LOUNGE  R’LYEH — HOOKAH  ALL  NIGHT.

Inside, the hookah pipes emerge
from the floor below, where, in the “kitchen,”
three idiot village girls tend to the charcoal
burner, the bubbling cauldron of water.
The tubes run upward and through the floor,
right to the hookah tables. And they sit,
and they sit, and they sit. The waiters
empty their pockets. Dawn comes,
and the smokers awaken outside, piled
in a heap on top of one another. They smile.
They don’t even care that they’ve been robbed.
Each night at dusk there are more of them,
pressing against the bamboo enclosure,
waiting for the neon sign to come on.

You look agitated, professor. I guess
you didn’t realize what kind of place
you’ve come to for your holiday. All right:
for your research, your serious research. It’s fine,
I guess, to spend your days afield.
The ruins, yes, the ruins are beautiful.
You just don’t want to be here at night.
Did I mention the suicides? The beach,
when the tide comes in, is not so wholesome.
Drug tourists must, of necessity, exhaust
their bank accounts, and so they hope to join
the ranks of those who never awaken.
The Russians remove the bodies by noon.
Bad for business, you see.
Sooner or later they’ll just export the stuff.
They’ll close the lounge. Instead, a kind
of factory will sit there, extracting and packaging.

Oh, you’re a wry one. What’s that you said?
“Unless what’s down below awakens.”
Don’t tell me you’re one of those Believers
in that thing whose name I won’t pronounce.
All right, all right, let go of me! I’ll say it:
Cthulhu, Cthulhu, Cthulhu, damn you!
I’ve read Lovecraft, okay? Look, I’m a realist.
My paintings look like photos. There’s nothing
here, nothing whatever. Yes, yes, I follow.
They’re what? No, don’t make me think that,
don’t make me say that. You’re hurting me!
Fine! Just calm down now. I heard you.
I wish I hadn’t heard you.
Damn you intellectuals, connecting everything.
They’re ... smoking ... the ...brains ... of ... Cthulhu.

Written for H. P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Celebration
Providence, Rhode Island, Swan Point Cemetery
August 19, 2012