#20.
F
E Vol. XIII #8
January 4, 2K R
M Dr. Roy Lisker, Editor
8 Liberty Street #306 E
Middletown, CT. 06457 N
T
http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/ferment
News :
” The world’s grown honest. Then is doomsday near! “
A generous gift from poet/actor/teacher John Basinger enabled Ferment to send a copy of the Hamlet essay to 40 Shakespeare Festival theater companies around the country. After a month, it’s received in acknowledgment but a single post-card, scrawled in haste, from Tennessee: “Thanks ”. Civilization?
Between January 17 and 20th I will be in Washington, attending the annual meeting of the American Mathematics Society and taking a course in Quantum Computing.
A cozy love story for the Millennium ( this year’s or the next) :
Cats and Crazy Razors
1.
Slithering the length of a drainpipe, ( which ( not having been fashioned to support human weight) found human weight insupportable ( yet supported it nevertheless ) ) , a naked rapist, escaping through a window ( left open by careless attendants at the county branch of the state mental hospital system ( a feudal manse in the heart of the dying town , ( near the banks of the great river
( dying, and churning quietly downstream ) ) ) ) , descended the drainpipe by noiseless slithering.
To support the insupportable and to support it well, to do it noiselessly,
( without the slightest soft groan ( or sigh ) of complaint ) , was the drainpipe’s outstanding achievement . All other things ( such as transporting water
( through gutters ( clogged or unclogged ) on the tin roof of the feudal manse
( wherein were locked up so many minds thrashing about in hopeless perdition ) to gutters ( clogged or unclogged) on the ground ) ) , it did badly.
As he had chosen to make good his escape in the demonic fury of an unanticipated thunderstorm ( in the course of which more water fell onto the terminal moraines of the river valley than at any other time in living memory ) , the naked rapist ( long before reaching ( by noiseless slithering) the base of the drainpipe ) , was soaked to the bones.
Therewith ( skin bitter and wet, hair jutting in stiff frozen spikes ) ran he howling into the wilderness of the world, roaming through the valley seeking God or shelter until ( eventually) he came to the woodshed under the bedroom of the lovers’ house. Here , once more, he ( beside the velvet glow of an improvised peat briquette fire ) fell asleep ( cradled ( in sweet dreams ( of
rape ))) .
For the world is connected in just such a fashion.
ffffffffffff
2.
At the time that the woman ( after watching a moving moving picture
( about a woman (ruined (by her love (for a man ) ) )) ) stepped into the street through the door of the cinema she saw, running up the street, a man, ( for whom she conceived a love ( that would ruin her ) ) .
In such a fashion are the situations of this world connected .
The woman’s lonely eyes followed his movement ( alone in the dying urban settlement ( by the banks of the great river dying ) ) up the lonely commercial thoroughfare ( even as her heart yearned for the love of the lover
( portrayed as living in an urban settlement (dying by the banks of a great river dying ) ) in the movie she had just seen) . Her melancholy slow walk directed her, ( slowly moving on the cobblestoned quais ) against the current of the mighty river and its quiet downstream movement ( its belly churning with angers for grievances unresolved from ancient geological epochs ) .
Shedding its spectral wan, the great eye of the sun stepped through the door of heaven to cast its dazzling love over all things ruined, entombed or resurrected , all creatures dying and yearning.
When the man ( thickly entangled in litigation ) stepped through the door of the courthouse ( having just received a verdict confirming his total financial ruin ) and ( running up the street ) saw the woman ( who , ( having just seen a moving moving picture about a woman ( ruined ( by her love (for a man )))) walked alone in melancholy fashion on the cobblestoned quai
( against the churning of the mighty river and its quiet movement downstream ) and who ( upon seeing him ) conceived a love ( that ruined her ) ) , he conceived a desperate scheme ( involving her and not devoid of cynical calculation ) that would restore his shattered fortunes ( though in the end it would cost him
dearly ) . She , as everyone knew, was rich.
After awhile one becomes accustomed to just such connections.
Several hours later ( while the full moon dropped its frenzies into the fat night as feathers will drop out of a slit mattress ; the cat sat on the fence chewing razor blades under the moon; and the couple made love ( on the antique wooden bedstead in the attic of her elegant home ), all the fat night long ) their agonized shrieks ( as the mattress( swaying with grief and misfortune) pushed against the antique wooden bedstead ( that ( dreaming sweet melancholy dreams of glorious stays in farms, manors and granges ) softly groaned ) and softly groaned ) slit the air ( chill with the frost of power ) , like razors ( slitting ( the throat ( of a cat))) .
The river ( heaving against the banks of the river ( which, ( swollen by grief and misfortune), overflowed its banks ) ) , rolled its waters, ( swollen by grief, and by misfortune as well ) quietly downstream. Clasping the full moon to its grieving busom the river heaved and turned, heaved and turned, heaving and turning some more, turning over and over like a pair of lovers who ( ( in the grip of carnal appetites ), forsaking dinner ) make love on empty and groaning stomachs .
The rainbow trout ( teeming in the belly of the river ( churning with angers from grievances unresolved since ancient geological epochs ) ) and rendered spasmodic through the imbibing of curdled psychogenic medications ,
( the contents of boatloads of pill-stuffed bottles dumped nightly into the mighty river by the sinister county extension of the state mental hospital system ( located right here in the heart of this dying town( not far from the dying river’s flooded banks ) ) ) leapt , wriggling in rainbow arcs, joyous and ecstatic against the full moon’s ( which , stepping through the door of heaven, cast its bleak and blighted love over all things , spectral and wan, blessed or wretched , joyous or grieving across the plenitude of the broad river valley) ruinous dying.
Already several times has it been remarked , ( and cannot be remarked too often) , that the state’s mental health administration had sited a sinister hospital in this county ( in the very heart in fact of the dying town ( near the banks of the great river dying, ( whose quiet passage downstream soothed many a mind locked up in its feudal manse and thrashing about in hopeless perdition))) .
And if the two starving lovers ( who, ( having forgone dinner in deference to their carnal appetites ) , had been making love on empty and groaning stomachs , ( and who ( motionless after too much and too moving moving) now lay motionless, bereft of all misanthropy, delusion or rapture ) ) had strained to listen, they would have heard the steady plop-plop-plop of boatloads of pill-stuffed bottles of curdled neuroleptic medications being dumped into the river’s churning belly ( angry through too many grievances unresolved from ancient geological epochs ) , blighting future generations of river trout and poisoning hereafter all life forms who would have the misfortune to eat them.
But the couple heard nothing - ( that is to say, nothing beyond the feverish hum of moonbeams gamboling about the face of the earth ( spectral and wan beneath the beaming moon ) ; the cat dying over its razor blades; the microwave radiation buzzing at 3° Kelvin from all directions of the universe; the belching of the rocks in the terminal moraines ; and the gleeful warblings of the skunk cabbages infesting the alluvial plains of the river valley. )
Out of the woodshed under the lovers’ house a naked rapist fled unseen , running along the river banks back to the safety of ( albeit sinister ) corridors of the state mental hospital ( from which ( unseen ) he had but lately fled ) .The blood spurting from the grim cicatrices on the soles of his feet ( lacerated by thorns, glass shards of broken bottles and a shower of razor blades ( dropping with a steady plop-plop-plop from the mouth of the cat ( sitting on the fence against the light of the full moon) ) ) laid down a trail ( as a crimson carpet of moonbeams will illuminate a swarm of ants upon a forest floor) of blood .
Thickly colonizing the alluvial plains of the broad river valley, the infestations of skunk cabbages furiously farted jungle crime. Rainbow arcs of buzzing moonbeams melted over river banks , ( flooded (by the river in flood )) . The devious trajectory of the rapist ( devious as the shedding of white leaves off willow branches , ( from which dangle the mutilated corpses of hanged lovers ) ) criss-crossed the breadth of the heaving river ( heaving and churning mightily downstream past peaks, pinnacles and dungeons of antique castles, ( and profoundly angry with grievances unresolved from ancient geological epochs ) ) in numerous places. Greedily, leaping and plunging, counterpointing the rainbow arcs of the ecstatic rainbow trout, he drank up the drug-saturated river waters ( each globular moonbeamed drop frosty as aThorazine tablet in the freezers of sinister state mental hospitals ( whose many locked-up denizens thrash about in hopeless perdition)) , soothing his nerves in the night’s fatty balm.
3.
Early the next morning the woman, ( following through on a resolution
( silently resolved in the depths of that interminable and delicious night ) ) slinked ( quite early the following morning ) to a splendid California town . Thereby did she confirm possession of her adored lover. Once having arrived on the West Coast she took an assumed name and married a complete stranger.
Not one coal-black hair, not one lipstick stain, not a single discarded cigarette butt, not one lingering sweat drop, not even one unpaid bill, remained in the moribund town decaying flake by flake into the maelstrom of the heaving river - nothing whatsoever remained to remind the man ( who daily walked the quais alone in melancholy fashion ( against the currents of the mighty river churning quietly downstream ) ) of the woman ( who had ( in the fat night ) made love to him while the cat sat on the fence chewing razors under the full moon ) . Pinned down for the next decade in the decrepit citadel, ( known throughout the river valley as the source of the ecstatic river trout ) the man retained from his encounter with her only his dreams ( joyous with longing and despair : rich, costly dreams; brilliant dreams; dreams to nourish him a lifetime ) ...... until he, too, following his destiny ( his destined destiny ( tracking him implacably as the gleeful warblings of skunk cabbages will chorus the lusts of a naked rapist tangled in the thornbrakes) ) would leave the alluvial plains of the river valley in search of her .
Daily , hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute, from the vantage of that splendid California town ( where for a decade she raised three children given her by a man about whom she knew nothing and cared less ( until ( joyous with longing and despair ) he wound up in the county extension of the state mental hospital system ( a sinister place, its corridors ringing with demented laughter ) ) lapping up Thorazine from saucers and leaping with the ecstatic rainbow trout ) , the obsessed woman offered up silent prayers to her distant lover, praying with all the force of her wounded soul that he would never be able to find her.
For she wanted him all to herself. She demanded nothing less than total possession. Yet destiny ( her destined destiny ( tracking her implacably as the warbling of skunk cabbages will chorus the lusts of a naked rapist tangled in the thornbrakes ) ) pushed her ...
to a rendezvous....
with her unrelinquished lover....
through which she lost....
everything....
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4.
The day arose like cracked crystal , clear and brittle. Soft odors oozed through the crevices of dawn as eagles, infatuated with their own majesty, swooped down in tortured arcs. The heaving bulk of the mighty river ( turgid as swampy mud, evanescent as drying bracken , its belly churning with grievances (unresolved from ancient geological epochs)) curled ( impetuously , through the broad valley ( over which arose an auroral hum ( layer upon layer of sanctified vibrations like the screeches of scattered flocks of birds, ( or the din of (unsynchronized) orchestras )))) .
It happened that on this morning an ecstatic rainbow trout, leaping and swooping in addled and majestic tortured arcs, pestering the sun for favors, shaking with the chill frost of power , disbursing ( like trains of rubies and pearls cast in reckless abandon ) sprays of tart droplets , and slurping ( from drug polluted waters ) greedily on each downward scuttle, arced itself boldly over the turgid muddy bulk of the heavey river and plopped down onto the cobblestones of the melancholy quais.
It was just about that time when the man ( having recently arisen from his bed ( which ( melancholy through memories of past ecstasies of razor blades and love ) softly groaned ) ) , while going to the courthouse ( ( along the way that led to the courthouse ) to learn each day of his impending ruin) , rattled his bulky briefcase along the moribund streets of the rotting hamlet.