Sunday, May 28, 2006

"Thirst!" From Diary Of a Drug Fiend By Aliester Crowley

Thirst! Not the thirst of the throat Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs--- that smote Alone to the heart of Christ Wring the one wild cry “I thirst!“ from his agony, While the soldiers drank and diced: Not the thirst benign That calls the worker to wine; Not the bodily thirst (Though that be frenzy accursed) When the mouth is full of sand, And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears Trick the soul ‘till it hears Water, water at hand, When a man will dig his nails In his breast, and drink the blood Already that clots and stales Ere his tongue can tip its flood, When the sun is a living devil, Vomiting vats of evil And the moon and the night but mock The wretch on his barren rock, And the dome of heaven high-arched Like his mouth is arid and parched And the caves of his heart high-spanned Are choked with alkali sand! Not this ! But a thirst uncharted ; Body and soul alike Traitors turned black-hearted Seeking a place to strike In a victim already attuned To one vast chord of wound; Every separate bone Cold ,an incarnate groan Distilled from the icy sperm Of hell’s implacable worm; Every drop of the river Of blood aflame and a-quiver With poison secret and sour- With a sudden twitch at the last Like certain jagged daggers (With bloodshot eyes dull-glassed The screaming Malay staggers Through his village aghast). So blood wrenches its pain Sardonic through the heart and brain. Every separate nerve Awake and alert, on a curve Whose asymptote’s name is “never” In a hyperbolic “for ever!” A bitten and burning snake Striking it’s venom within it, As if it might serve to slake The pain for the tithe of a minute. Awake, for ever awake! Awake as one never is While sleep is a possible end, Awake in the void, the abyss Whose thirst is an echo of this That martyrs, world without end (World without end, Amen!) The man that falters and yields For the proverb’s “month and an hour : To the lure of the snow-starred fields Where the opium poppy’s aflower. Only the prick of a needle, Charged from a wizard well! Is this sufficient to wheedle A soul from heaven to hell? Was man’s spirit weaned from fear of it’s ghosts and gods To fawn at the feet of a fiend? Is it such terrible odds--- The heir of ages of wonder, The crown of earth for an hour, The master of tide and thunder Against the juice of a flower? Ay! In the roar and the rattle Of all the armies of sin, This is the only battle He never was know to win. Slave to the thirst--not thirst As it is here weakly written, Not thirst in the brain black-bitten, In the soul more sorely smitten! One dare not think of the wildest and worst! Beyond the raging and raving Hell of the physical craving Lies, in the brain benumbed, At the end of time and space, An abyss, unmeasured, unplumbed--- The haunt of a face! She it is, she, that found me In the Morphia honeymoon; With silk and steel she bound me, In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me, Stifling me into the soon That still--but oh, how rarely!-- Comes at the thrust of the needle, Steadily stares and squarely, Nor needs to fondle and wheedle Her slave agasp for a kiss Hers whose horror is his That knows that viper womb, Speckled and barred with black On it’s rusty amber scales, Is his tomb-- The straining, groaning, rack On which he wails--he wails! Her Cranial dome is vaulted, Her mad Mongolian eyes Aslant with the ecstasies Of things immune, exalted Far beyond the stars and skies, Slits of amber and jet-- Her snout for the quarry set Fleshy and heavy and gross, Bestial, broken across, And below it her mouth that drips Blood from the lips That hide the fangs of a snake, Drips on venomous udders Mountainous flanks that fret, And the spirit sickens and shudders At the hint of a worse thing yet. Olya! The golden bait Barbed with infinite pain, Fatal, fanatical mate Of a poisoned body and brain! Olya, the name that leers It’s lecherous longing and knavery, Whispering in crazing ears The secret spell of her slavery. Horror indeed intense, Seduction ever intenser, Swinging the smoke of sense From the bowl of a smoldering censer! Behind me, behind and above, She stands, that mirror of love. Her fingers are supple-jointed, Her nails are polished and pointed, And tipped with spurs of gold: With them she rowels the brain. Her lust is critical cold; And her Chinese cheeks are pale, As she daintily picks, profane With her octopus lips, and the teeth Jagged and black beneath, Pulp and blood from a nail. One swift prick was enough In days gone by to invoke her She was incarnate love In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bounds, Leprous beyond all loathing. Black the plague of the pit, Her pustules visibly fester, Cancerous kisses that bit As the asp caressed her. Dragon of lure and dread, Tiger of fury and lust, The quick in chains to the dead, The slime alive in the dust, Brazen shame like a flame, An orgy of pregnant pollution With hate beyond aim or name-- Orgasm, death, dissolution! Know you now why her eyes So fearfully glaze, beholding Terrors and infamies Like filthy flowers unfolding? Laughter widowed of ease, Agony barred from sadness, Death defeated of peace, Is she not madness? She waits for me, lazily leering As moon goes murdering moon The moon of her triumph is nearing; She will have me wholly soon. ………………………………........... And you, you puritan others, Who have missed the Morphia craving, Cry scorn if I call you brothers, Curl lip at my maniac raving, Fools, seven times beguiled, You have not known her? Well! There was never a need she smiled To harry you into hell Morphia is but one Spark of its secular fire. She is the single sun-- Type of all desire! All the you would, you are-- And that is the crown of a craving. You are slaves of the wormwood star. Analyzed, reason is raving. Feeling, examined, is pain. What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it! Life is anguish, insane; And death is--- not a way out of it!

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Moonshine dance

Lo’, now, we walk the night, Hearts a pumping, Never fright, Stimulated, beyond stimulus, Right now, it’s all right, Hope is less, now is more The world is cool, Bathed in sleep, The voices around us are silenced, We can relax and forget The extrospective rays are gone, We can feed our introspectual minds It’s all fine now, No need, no fear, No stress, no tears, Just relaxed, In our quite moonshine dance