It was late, approaching midnight, when Professor Foutre au Cul made his final decision. The wind through the open shutters wavered the gaslight in its isenglass globe, casting blood dark shadows over the scattered pieces of dirty laboratory equipment, making them seem like instruments of torture, as indeed, in the professor’s case, they were. But, mon dieu! he had no time for that now, not when he was so close.
At last he felt his serum was perfected, the serum that would transform the laboring underclass into willing slaves, obviating the need for expending capitol on wages, or those clumsy robots the dwarves were always bragging about, and which always rusted into oblivion before the warranty expired. Professor au Cul had a bit of a poetic streak, and thought of his potion as "The Foutre au Cul Ultimate Obedience and Indifference Induction Elixir."
He had as yet to come up with a marketing slogan. “Watch Them Drink and Obey!” perhaps. Or “Save a Fortune on Scullions and Automatons! Make Your Wife, Regardless Of How Formerly Intractable, the Perfect Domestic Slave!” or, alternatively, “Transform Your Drunken Sot of A Husband Into A Responsible Wage Earner!”
The possibilities were endless.
No matter that the earlier concoctions were a mixed success at best, causing the loss of several typists. He’d been forced to terminate them when they removed their bustles and began a bacchanal procession through the lab, completely indifferent to both social mores and the terms of their employment but alas! no more obedient than ever. While not wholly averse to the former manifestation, it was not the reaction he was looking for.
But at last, after the introduction of tincture of mercury, the reduction of the grain alcohol component and a ticklish adjustment of 27 different herbs and spices, the serum had reached the stage where human experimentation was vital. He was the only one left, and he owed it to Science to finalize his amazing gift to mankind by making himself the last trail subject. He had no fear. He knew his process was flawless.
He upended the delicate crystal vial, and rapidly drank off six ounces of vile, murky grey fluid. It was only after enduring hours of agonizing bellyache and acquiring a raspberry rash over 86% of his body, including parts best not thought of, that the professor realized he had no way of telling whether the serum had actually worked, as he was already totally obedient to his own every whim, and complete indifference to everything else was a natural trait.
Back to the drawing board. Perhaps this time, something in a little blue pill?
A bit of a departure for me; normally I find writing prose to be like pulling teeth, but in this case, the thing refused to be a poem, (I linked an older one of those if preferred) so there you go. Apologies for the length--it didn't want to be short, either.
Optional Musical Accompaniment
Image: Goya Attended by Doctor Arrieta, by Francisco Goya 1820
As usual I've procrastinated insufferably on this feature, waiting till the absolute last day of the month to change out the Off the Shelf selection. Again I'm falling back on a poem I've lived with for the last few decades, one from Octavio Paz, called Beyond Love. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read this one in a dark midnight.
You'll find it here, in the Off the Shelf archives for July.
Process notes: "In Haitian Vodou, Papa Legba is the intermediary between the loa [spirit world]and humanity. He stands at a spiritual crossroads and gives (or denies) permission to speak with the spirits..." ~wikipedia
Image: Mosaic art by Isaiah Zagar, as photographed by Daryl Edlestein
Image: I've once again borrowed the work of my friend Petteri Sulonen, whose images often inspire. Thanks, Petteri, as always for the use of this shot:
Karin Gustafson hosts this weekend, and she's asked us to pick a profession and write a poem using the verbs associated with it--or using an occupation as a springboard. I have sort of mixed up the whole prompt with a Cuisinart, using the terms of a postal worker's lot at random.
Quoting Kerry: "Tetractys, a syllable counting form invented by Ray Stebbing, consists of at least 5 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 syllables (total of 20). Tetractys can be written with more than one verse, but must follow suit with an inverted syllable count." This is a triple one.
I cheated a bit on this prompt, which was to take a line from a poet you felt you should like more as a way to get into his/her poetry; however I patterned it after a poet I actually do mostly like, John Keats, but whom I find very stylized and florid compared to modern poets. But this little rhyme seems to play off that style to me, so I hope it qualifies.
As always, blogger is playing headgames. This time I can't get the video to play-if it won't play for you either, refresh the page and click the "watch on youtube" button and you'll get it on a new tab. It's worth listening to, though it has a long meandering instrumental intro to set the mood.
Process note: "Damascus steel was a term used by several Western cultures from the Medieval period onward to describe a type of steel used in swordmaking from about 300 BCE to 1700 CE. These swords are characterized by distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water..." ~wikipedia
I have used the idiosyncratic term lambstongue to refer to lambsquarters, or pigweed, an edible weed in the goosefoot family. The second stanza references Oppenheimer's quote from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." when the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico.
Petteri blogs on all things political, social, Buddhist, photographic and horological, as well as anything else that catches his interest at his eclectic and always instructive site, Come to Think of It.
"..she's stoned said the Swede and the Mooncalf agreed. I'm like a viper in shock
With my eyes in the clock...
......and as my mind unweaves
I feel the freeze down in my knees.." ~Robertson/Helm/Manual
Where do the
wounded go when
triage is through the madhouse?
To huddle in smokefrozen anesthesia
corners dark with a banked combustion
that smolders hotter unseen
where witch doctors dance
in feathers around bodies
full of plague, skeletal grotesqueries of fever shadow.
Dragon-lit campfires built of bone can only
be extinguished by buckets of blood, by the cold complete
chemical foam of annihilation.
Take that clubbing drumbeat
anodyne, opiate organ key visionquest
plectrum plucked purple haze
and mainline it; vicarious junkies
of the undying beat.
We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for the music,
for the broken who gave it to us
dead vessels walking, bright stars of loss
poets, addicts, drunks, wild
flaming madmen, incandescent blue
desolation sibyls desperate to see
something alive behind the
corpse's eye, looking for diamonds
finding carbon's blackened
ash, poisonous and filthy
drinking the bitter cup so we didn’t have to,
my abandoned generation of cripples
settlers and compromisers slaves and drones, cowards and loons
scarred, abused, never healed except
when made into angels
by that insubstantial
medicine that fades
from the air
but not the heart.
May 2012
Process Notes: My title as well as the line above referencing "the bitter cup" are both drawn directly from the lyrics of Chest Fever. The surreal organ on both this and the cut below is played by Garth Hudson.
Levon Helm, drummer for The Band and the vocalist on both these heavily drug focused songs and many others of far less depressing tone, passed away last month at the age of 71, which says something to me about the persistence of hope over despair, that one can walk away from choosing death, and that art is a better drug than any chemical for treating inner wounds..
