THE POETRY COLLECTIONS: A TOE IN THE QUEEN

A TOE IN THE QUEEN

BY BARRY VAN-ASTEN

2016 

GATHERING AT GOLGOTHA

 

(Second draft sketch for a proposed larger work, never completed) The scene shows Christ following his crucifixion being boiled in a large pot stirred by a German S. S. Soldier. The soldier is looking at the figure of Moses who in turn stares at the Devil dancing between them. Standing with Moses is the young naked Adam (carrying a bucket) who shepherds the Lamb of God. Seated upon a white bull (Zeus) is the figure of Europa and in the foreground amidst the broken bones and skulls, the rotting corpse of Lazarus still lies un-raised in his coffin. On the other side of the picture we see a primitive warrior and behind him are John the Baptist standing next to the figure of Death. Behind the warrior’s shoulder, lurking near to the tree is the loathsome Judas Iscariot. We also see two beings in radioactive suits carrying out the Lord’s command that the first-borns of Egypt must die! Above them peers the distraught face of Eve. In the background there is a hanged man and the spirit in flight basks in the crimson glow of an atomic blast!

 

MY ARTEMIS

I was sheep in your fold
Of emerald and gold,
Cradled gently at your thighs,
Where thy milky limbs begin –
Your young face flushed with sin
And summer’s sweet surprise!

Two minds, two souls, collide;
Two hearts as one inside
And at the scent of death our lips were pressed.
The air was thick with madness
And your subtle sighing sadness
Beneath the midnight moon as we caressed!

By soft seduction, I could tell
That our hearts were damned to hell
When your body, ‘neath cold stone, graceful lies!
Love’s murderous midnight rapture –
Something strange in your super-nature
Evokes a world of love that too soon dies!


AT WASDALE

Sparking at moonlight, I tender tread
Through distant avenues of the dead!

This, my crag-root of desire;
My devil dance of destiny!
Here, shall I awaken and solemnly wear
This woven robe of landscape and devour
The mossy saga and the pagan energy
Where Diana, in strained Lancastrian
Unfolds her fruit and reclines, again.

Hinged by nook and boulder, blown
By an endless goblin-cloaked darkness –
England’s wild, wet shaggy beard...
My mind wandered into cosmology;
Into a memory once that you were here;
Here, my hermaphrodite, my Mercury!
Manifest! Move! Awake!
Amidst the untold horrors –
The veiled threshold; the secret door
Into the ‘House of Ra and Tum,
Of Kephra and of Ahathoor...’
And so in silence I surrendered
And worshiped the elements that haunts
This bog-crusted splendour,

‘While o’er the shrinking dale
The insatiable gale
Roars with unconquered and impassive might.’*

A figure appears in the gloom, the salt
Of your body came through –
Hail, Priest of the Phallus; my Prometheus;
Warrior of Priapic tempests, stirred
By this intimacy of darkness, dealt
By strange seduction and words sublime
That echoes through my heart’s decline...

A mad moon lies over Wastwater,
Scafell, Lingmell and Great End;
Lightbeams are descending Great Gable
To the wild roar of enchantment, I find
Magic remains – Your scent is here!
Knuckled into crevice, the physical realm
Yields to the spirit of the mountain again!

‘Clad in sparse robes of white
The mountain beckons Night.’*

Sleeping beneath the white-shrouded summit,
The little tent dreams death away,
Beyond the moon-rush of insanity
In a widdershins spiral kiss of Thoth;
Your commanding voice, like music
Where flowers forever bend dream-wards
By ceaseless wind and star!
But morning brought clarity, and the view
Of sister peaks, peering down
Into the little valley, immersed and steeped
In spellcraft, sensuality and you!

My God, how I breathe in your essence;
How I secrete myself to your portal flame!

And I whispered:
I am following your footsteps, knowing
The pathways of your thoughts, again!

Ascending the Pike a veil of mist
Swirls as incense on a sacred altar –
Odoriferous offerings to summon the dead
Whose features burst upon the senses
Like nakedness to the eye of adolescence.

We picked our way amongst the cairns that
Lie like scabs on an old man’s back:
There is no forgiveness here, I thought,
Only nature, drained from the mundane –
You are near! You are near!
And impurities are purged by a sacred flame.
Mountain God, feel this anger
Forged by fear! Know this insatiable ache;
This despair! Know my naked soul – Appear!

And by equal measure of wind and muscle
We reach the summit, charged by something
Beyond the circumference of what we are;
A magic and Light, known and Divine –
You are here! You are here!
O Prophet of the Lovely Star!
Consume me – on the mountain shrine
Of this old ecstasy – Magus mine!

*A Spring Snowstorm in Wastdale, from ‘Songs of the Spirit’ by Aleister Crowley. 1898. [see the Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I]


IMPERFECTIONS

In childhood I wouldn’t open my mouth
For fear of what things would come out!
I discovered the Devil and serial killers:
John George Haig, John Christie, Peter Kurten…
Then the damned lot came tumbling out!
We erased ourselves in a death-pact
That we did not follow through!

In gutter dirt you find old treasures:
Bottle tops, ring pulls, buttons and spark plugs –
Childhood archeology and intoxicating history…
I sat cross-legged poking a stick into a dead bird:
Death has been my greatest obsession!
It begins in the basis of the brain!
My garden became a graveyard full of remains:
A dog’s jaw bone, two rabbits, a hedgehog’s paw…

A rodent in my wheel spokes one day
Caused a barrage of ecstasy!
I repeated the motions again and again
In a manic space of compulsion
And bawled myself into oblivion!
The rabbits were exhumed and the skull
Of one I made into a pendant and hung
It on my bedroom wall!

Dust of human, my Action Man figure
Was un-ceremoniously transformed by me
Into Guy Fawkes! I cut my mother’s
Sheepskin coat, carefully hand-stitched
A suit of clothes specific to the period
With a matching hat, somewhat resembling
Matthew Hopkins the Witchfinder General!
I spent time negotiating his prospect;
I got close and devoured the mythic stance
Then decided upon the great sacrifice and
Burnt him in the back garden with little dignity
On Bonfire Night! I remember, remember his
Charred remains were left like some sacred
Ossified relic nestling in the flower bed!


AB UNO DISCE OMNES *

In taking up the Royal robe of Light:
Hail to thee - brave Thelemite!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law:
Thou art a beauteous star, adore
Thine earthly temple; invigorate
All substance, sacred; contemplate
Thine pleasure engine at thine hand:
Sword, disc, cup and wand -
Fear no-thing, O warrior of war:
Every man and woman is a star!
Observe thy soul and mind, expand
The universe at your will's command;
A parallel shift in your dimension;
A complete altering of perception.
By the Law of Love and Liberty and Light:
Hail to thee - brave Thelemite!
Should things unmentionable appear
Before the mirror mind of the seer,
And evocations from the deep
Restless realm of astral sleep,
Constrained by talisman and rune
And the wild enchantment of the moon,
Banish all forms unto the void
With thine angel at thy side.
By unforeseen sorrows, beyond the veil:
A mind compelled to darkness - Hail
To thee, prophet of the sun
And tremble at the dark deeds done,
Thou shalt not perish, thine heart be still:
Love is the law, love under will.
And thy life radiates with Light:
Hail to thee - brave Thelemite!

*Latin: From one learn all


NIGHT HIKE

At three p.m. the march began
As we ascended blinking in the sun
From the dark depths of White Scar Caves;
On, past man’s rusting remnants
Connecting the past to the wild landscape;
On, past Yorda’s Cave,
We sat in the embers of sunset
At the magical water pool of Yorda’s Gill.
The ascent began on the tallest peak
In Lancashire – Gragareth, at 2,056 feet.
Also the steepest climb in England:
The summit secured at twenty-five past eight!

The clouds came down low and dark
As we trudged across the ridge
To reach the summit of Green Hill:
2,059 feet at nine-thirty p.m!
Peaking through sunset, we climb
Over stone walls and barbed wire
In our descent of the mountain
That seemed reluctant to let us leave;
Down steep gullies and boggy dips,
We followed the line of mossy stone
Like a hound's trail across Grimpen Mire!

We turned our noses towards Whernside
The highest point in North Yorkshire
And the fourth highest in England!
We followed its great profile
Like a beacon, beckoning us on.
The moon rose over the bridleway
(A moon full the night before)
And we stopped suddenly – the cold gnaws
Through bone and sinew; the path glistens…
My knee damaged and energy seeping
From every pore and every thought!
My companion suggested we sit it out
And wrap frozen souls in a survival blanket
Until the return of the warm sun of morning!
No! I said, we shall surely die and so
We moved on and kept moving.

Onwards through night and through Deepdale
Evading the ‘Whernside Werewolf’ I conjured;
Through the finger-tick of time’s passage:
We looked Death square in the jaw!
I made no peace and no surrender
To any celestial power beyond mortal thread!
Close to death from exhaustion and no food
And the water a distant memory, long gone;
No fear of death, a quiet acceptance
And a willingness to explore the next frontier!
We trudged through black bleakness –
I damn you Death!

We joined Ribblehead – the sun came up
And we reached camp beyond the Viaduct
At five-forty-five a.m!
After tea at six-thirty we fell into sleeping bags:
Fourteen hours of walking continuously
And forty or so miles underfoot and
The night hike had ended!



NEW YEAR’S DAY 2013

In Buxted byways, we encountered
The ghost of old Nan Tuck in the lane
That bears her name; shifting silence
Responds to eye movements and gone again;
Gone, like the old year… tender moments,
How we danced on its corpse and gave cheer!
A meaningful menace –
But ends and beginnings
Have always filled me with dread and fear!

At Tickerage, the mill pond seemed to beckon
Two companions and two lovers, in talk:
‘Of all the romantic poets, Wordsworth,
Dull as forced arithmetic, and cold…
I attempted to read the old sod once’ I said,
‘And got no further than a few dreary lines’;
I’ll save him for old age, I thought,
When the rot has set into the brain
And I no longer care for such a waste of time!

The lake was a black grave of starlet remains –
I could see her tending her flowers by the door
And I spied her hanging her head…
Deep, reclusive – Scarlet, once more!

The stark woods were flooded, knee-high;
Detours took us to mud, I recalled
The Great War and the trenches of the Somme –
I almost heard the hushed hearts of the dead, falling!

I hesitated on entering the little church at Chiddingly;
A lady approached and unlocked its great door.
We entered into its darkness to behold
The wonderment that is the Jeffery monument,
As the old air rushed out to meet the new!

At Blackboy’s we sniffed-out the ghost of Ann Starr!
On, through Kiln Wood, Scallow’s Lane and East Hoathley…
And thoughts turned to the Mortlake Magus –
Doctor John Dee and Faust and Prospero!
We kept Orion’s belt in view as a compass
And nearby Jupiter danced in the hunter’s wake
Caressed by the surrounding sorrow-filled stars!

With a moon-eye on the descent,
A moon four days waned from full,
I thought: lucky we’re not in ‘werewolf country’,
In the northern shires or Wales!
And battered, we steered our weary bodies
Towards Berwick and the journey’s end!


THE MOON HAUNT OF SILENCE
TO NORMAN MUDD M.A.
OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
(1889-1934)

This bountiful bower, where shadows play
To the sunlit kissed afternoon;
A sensual enchantment that seals the day
For the drawing down of the moon.

A fragrance of roses fills the glade
Beneath a mad moonlit scene;
Where the willow sheds her murderous shade
In a sacred space, serene.

Where tiny creatures stir at night
Between stone and stretching root;
Scaring those who conjure fright
And eat of the poisonous fruit.

A foxglove hollow and a madness born;
A monstrous glimmer of moonlight shook
The radiant magic till the mystic morn
Wakes to the shimmering woodland brook.

And here, by a sacerdotal shrine
Knelt one whose soul in silence dwelt,
To the eternal entrancement and sublime
Quintessence of the heart. He felt

Drawn to the Law of the strong, but he
Was held by the grim hand of fate;
Torn between mankind and misery
He chose cold silence - Omnia Pro Veritate!


MY EPITAPH

Friend, listen, forsake me not –
Your body in the earth shall rot,
Or else will be consumed by flame –
The end of life, ‘tis all the same;

From dark depths didst you begin
And unto darkness shall go again.
Yet my force compels me to deny
That there’s a heaven when we die;

No god of miraculous wonder, bent
On our salvation – no great ascent;
No judgement and no fear of hell;
No life breathed back into the shell!

So here lies a man, Birmingham born,
Cruel of humour yet softly drawn,
Whose destiny in death would be, he said
To haunt the living and torment the dead!

He dined on antelope, bison and boer –
Work was, he declared, the eternal war!
It strangled the heart and numbed the brain
For there was no pleasure, only pain!

A lover of nature and all things wild –
Death enthralled him as a child!
Strange and dreamy, the mystic sort
Who claimed attainments in higher thought!

‘Five-eighths wolf’ and three parts fool –
He detested the brutal annoyance of school!
London swallowed his pure soul, cold –
‘Twas this which made the bastard old!

Roehampton fellow of Froebel College
Claimed his appetite for knowledge;
Stirred by lusts – his heart was flame
Within a body born to shame!

He loved only few and damn well chose
The Devil, as best to love, I suppose!
Books and music saved his young life –
He found himself a beautiful wife!

Laird and Lady, were both born to roam
Rivers and pathways they called home!
Yet misunderstood and drawn by ways:
Few things were worthy of his praise!

He liked a cigar or two or three;
Cakes and ales and malt whisky!
Beauty made his spirit soar,
So smoke and raise a glass once more!

The esoteric and the law of the strong;
Stars and sex and sun and song –
These simplicities of the soul, he found
Fired his blood above the ground!

And if you should ask ‘where does he lie?
What vague dimension ‘neath the sky
Holds spirit firm? Does his earthly soul stir?’
Perhaps! Yet he decomposes nicely sir!

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law –
He heard the footsteps beyond the door!
His heart and brain once fire, are still –
Love is the law, love under will!


ON READING VICTOR NEUBURG’S ‘LARKSPUR’

An apology, my friend
For gloom’d and grim, I finde
I am heartily inclin’d –
Yea! induced by God, with love
And deepe respect: I disapprove;
In fact, I find, I quite despise
Lyrics that could not higher rise,
Or reach the realms of Auroric Light!
Poet, I love thee, but thy dim verse is slight:
Dedication, prologue, epilogue, colophon –
Thy burden of ballads is fragile, spun!
Here, in the heart-space, I hath spied
Where thy stool of romance, awkward died;
Where substance crumbles, dry as stone;
Where garlands, gilded make thy throne!
Sweete muse, apace, forsaken thee:
Yellow moon – Bowpots – Trollie-Lollie!
Pan’s triumph sings the spirit – love was strong
When thy moonlit-magic ushered song
Raptures light upon thy brow... I fear
Thou art blinded; thy body pained ‘pon the bier
In sick lament I kiss thee, reclin’d –
Thy cold lips songless, death defin’d
The torture-passions of brain – no doubt
Thy flame ‘pon the sacred shrine is out!
Fell, the laurels, Keats once wore
With Virgil, awaits the eternal shore:
Larkwise soar poet! thy noble arte
Dies swift in song-groves of thy hearte!


A CHILD ONCE

Wild roses burst in spring
Wet with tears of children, lonely,
Falling bird falling, now laying dead
Of twisted beak and wing-spitting sky;
On the lawn as if in sleep,
Stilled menace in the heart remains.

Child, this bud of fear remains
To whisper-thread through joy of spring;
Morning creep slow through sleep
Silence stripped naked, lonely.
Above dread dreams eat sky
And clouds will the old sun dead!

Soul in flight, withered, dead
Weight of decay, life remains;
Child, jam-lipped under sky
Upon the butterfly birth of spring –
New smells, bad smells, cold, lonely,
Hushed into eternal sleep!

Dreams roll the round of sleep
Softly caressing feathery dead,
Drowning in distress and lonely:
Hearts are dark and doubt remains
Endless in the bee-bright spring
Portal pathway to the sky!

A child once feared that sky
Wrapt in sheets of sumptuous sleep
Like a velvet stone, crush the spring;
Shower beautiful child, the dead –
What is dead? Milk ghost remains
Longer than joy in the heart lonely!

Child – star-cupped and lonely
The morning wept before the sky
Struck terror in the heart, remains
To haunt childhood’s sleep;
To immerse our life upon the dead
That dreamt a garden in the spring.

Child, see that dead dark explosion of sky
Crushed in sleep; fear forgives us, lonely
Tears of spring yet despair remains!


FRATER AUD
RAOUL LOVEDAY
(1900-1923)

Dream-child of the poet, forsaken,
The Gods hath delivered your prayer;
The songs of the Lord sung in darkness
And the eyes of the neophyte, fair.

Pride of the Prophet – since chosen
By a force in the fever of brain;
Yours was the first of the Great Feasts;
The first of the Saints to be slain!

Boy of rare beauty, outstanding;
Brilliant of mind... Youth’s courage
Answered the call of the aeon
And sought the great Light of the Mage!

Illuminated by wisdom and Love,
The shadow in your soul was still –
A sentinel of silence, you stood:
Love is the law, love under will!

Your sacrifice, here we remember;
Your flame in the cavernous Night!
A hundred years hence they shall praise you
Dear brother of the Magical Light!


THE LONG VIGIL

At the window I looked out to see
The winds bend the eclipsed elms
By a stream, and hand in hand

Two figures stand, as shadows dance.
A girl gasped to see my face
Pushed up close to that enchanted place!

She turned and stepped across the grass;
The wind brushed the covered path.
I looked around my solemn room:

A single ray struck the glass tank
Where two fish swam, round and round;
A cat leapt upon a chair.

I stood in the shadow of my room,
Watching the relentless wind, it rained
And the two figures ran for cover and kissed.

They walked by, I saw their faces clear,
Unafraid and hand in hand,
Turned a corner then were gone.

Blown from view but I was here
With the fish and the sound of rain
And the cat upon a chair!


LUCIFER

Like a sunlit rapier, he stabs
At the old anger, and the shame;
The heat ecstatic, the love-flood exhaust
At the invisible rapture of your touch.
Devil, wrap me in your robe of Light;
Encase me in your world of thought!
Man-God, the ecstasy of words explode
Upon my tongue to speak your name –
Flatterer and feaster of flesh… tonight,
Intoxicate my slain soul and
Languish upon the drum-throb of heart!
Breathless at Beltane,
You slide into silence once again, as
The Light within my being floods
The continuous ache of brotherhood!
Come, Lips are trembling to speak your name
And may the Glory of your Chaos roll
Through the dark wound of my heart, insane
And extend in horror at the dread kiss
Within the circle and the star
Drawn upon my beating breast!
My Lord, how I do aspire…
The satisfaction of the damned!
The Light recoils, this senseless pain:
Thy finger trails penetrate my brain!


A DARK ETERNAL LOVE

Dear child, your witch brew hath been distilled
And the clarity of your mind, fulfilled
To course through golden veins that stray –
You have anchored your lust in the lesbian clay!
Your tears – the pearls of the goddess, cast
Upon the ghost of affections past;
There is darkness, a terrible itch
That desires the sweetness of a sweeter bitch.
The soft stroke, the kiss that yields
And leads thee into Florentine fields
Where love’s chasm is closed and shut away –
The bare flesh is tempered to the day.
The heart is bound by Sapphic spells
That leads thee down to lesbian hells –
The mouth is locked upon mouth, and shows
Where woman’s ruinous river flows;
Down and deeper, deep and down –
There shall the death of the soul be shown!
The kiss, the embrace, the love-looks that wake
The hidden goddess in her arms, to take
A beauty plucked, a scent serene,
To die as lovers on love’s silver stream…
And love may always labor mournful
At life’s misshapen and nonsensical dream!


ON LEAVING LONDON

Bridge waiting,
Spying in shadowy pools;
Watching the thrilling clouds…
Red eyes wretched and ragged,
Cutting through murderous crowds!

Beneath a tower of trees, stood
By cold lips and a caress,
Gentle, the dark mind unfolded
An element of fear in our blood!

Moon-wrath, with long days behind you,
Stars sing to sirens, then gone;
I stir in the throng of forgetfulness
And tire in the depths, alone.

Music and lights – a distraction
To the rumble-grind of onlookers;
The streets are aflame with passions
Never mine, they remain wrapped-up!

But London, the best of me was yours,
Yet Father Thames, I am not your son!
Another body dredged from the canal:
Farewell Capital!


DEATH’S SONG TO HUMANITY

His eyes are like corpse candles, that burn;
Two fiery meteors in the dread sky...
He turns, casts off his mantle and gazes,
Heroic, from his damned dimension
With veins and tendons and muscles a strain;
And with spectral flesh aflame, he sings:

‘What blasphemy crawls upon the earth?
What unspeakable corruption feeds
Upon the contemptuous lie of God? Insult of birth,
Condemned to darkness and its deeds!

Priest! Upon such sordid things you yearn –
Monster-wooer of old – confess
Thy hideous sorceries upon thy flesh!
This filth which occupies thy brain;
This adoration of sense and song! See,
This vision of God leap from the unknown
To flood thy bruised mind into flight, or
Into the passionate recesses of oblivion, again!

Lord! Gaze upon your creation, this atrocity;
Upon the shell of pitiful man, mundane!
Here, anoint the secrecies born by pain,
By union numbed – the scent inhaled.
Witch! Thy body cooled by antique shame
And hammered into shapes, obscene!

For here shalt love’s light upon thee break!
Yieldest thou, low-born maid – awake!
See this vision swift to end and rot:
Thou art ruined by consummation of continual thought
Upon the vermin child – nature’s mockery;
Beast of unborn joys, profane...
A step in the quadrille – the dance of death,
Like a drum beat: War! War! War!
The finite brain;
The savage mind; the plague of pity,
Specimens of pathetic lusts again
Dawns upon man – the end of humanity!
An end to the foul-smelling slime and their reign!’


WHERE THE BERRY GLASS SHINES
T. T. R.

Man, deafened by the sound of cunt:
You whirl passion's stink in an empty drum.
There is no time for exploration and expanse
When man's twisted by field dreams and devil's dance...

Look deeper, for the softness of her skin was rent
By the longitude of love's threefold sacrament;
Like that time in deepest Brixton... (1) Pray
My veins were favorable to you that day!

And you rode over my soul like a Byron in stockings;
Speaking in Spanish, you spoke mostly of 'nothings'.
Your lips, a red streak upon your wide-eyed face:
Of all the 'goodbyes': I'll remember this time and this place!

And in the drawer of childhood: bottles...
My body dissected and packed away;
Boxes labeled 'hair' and 'nails':
A life revolving in decay...

Grounding in Greek, (2) this celestial breathing
Echoes to the cry of a broken heart's grieving.
Jumping at moonlight... At the end of bone: nothing!
Man ruled by cunt again, must know something!

And should the sorceress awake to Nuremburg and nothingness...
Sleep, sleep, for I will take shelter in our loneliness:
And in the gasp of a kiss... I salute 'poete,
Qui-hait tout ce qui est mauvais'. (3)

But all the time man is content
To live within the circle of his element,
And hear the death-time rapture that I adore:
Man, sighing to the sound of cunt, once more.

1. Brixton, London, where the Spanish Sorceress lived.
2. The Greek Myths. Robert Graves.
3. 'A poet who hates everything'.


THE KILLING OF ERATO

Muse, thy fair and busty presence
Brought moonlight, madness and song;
Conjurations inspired wise words to mind
And invoked beauty, but you belong

In your world of mythology, not mine;
Come no more and trouble me not!
I do not care for your enchantment;
I do not want your alluring rot!

I am sick of your flowery love-words;
Sorceress, do not trouble me!
Go back to your sisters: Melpomene,
Urania, Thalia and Calliope,

Polyhymnia, Clio, Euterpe and
That haunting devil of dance – Terpsichore!
The old blush of youth has gone
And so has your hideous hold on me!

Still she came, she did not listen;
I pushed my pen firm in her eye;
I cut her heart out with my scissors
But still Erato did not die!

The brain slipped easy from the skull;
I tore her lungs out with my fingers!
The tongue was simple to remove
But still the muse of love-words lingers!

I cut her up into nine pieces;
Wiped my finger prints from the pen;
I left her body parts in bags:
She will not trouble me again!