Icarus Was Right!

Christopher Brownsword

Icarus Was Right!

[Field Report Vol. 1]

Shearsman Books Exeter Published in the United Kingdom in 2010 by Shearsman Books Ltd 58 Velwell Road Exeter EX4 4LD

ISBN 978-1-84861-126-9 First Edition

The right of Christopher Brownsword to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. Contents

I: Mouths of Sodom

Vacuum Domains (Part I) 11 Beyond the Panoptikon 12 To River the Synapse Burnt 13 Quadrant of Pythonesses 15 Seven Hands Torch Gravity: The Sabbath Moon 16 Under the Aegis of Spears 19 In Every Star There Are Rats 21 Abysm 23 Lightning Trapped in Sand 24 Nausea and Its General Field 25

II: The Doom Too Long Awaited

Vacuum Domains (Part II) 29 Left Orbit and Temple 30 Chalice of Piss 31 Portrait of a Pantless Corpse Hanged from a Telegraph Pole Under a White-Hot Sky 32 Vortices 33 Four Altars to Neptune 34 Escaton 35 Tulpa 36 Slaughterhouse Pornography 37 Ecdysis 38 Ordure of a Hundred Thousand Birds 39 A Womb Without Walls 40 Sphere of Luna 41 Masturbatory Practices of the Insane 42 Black Rite of Osiris 43 To Rot Slowly Inside the Oracle 44 Ripped to Fucking Pieces on the Lower Auric Fields 45 By Centuries of Days 46

5 Trepanned 47 Fountain of Hyacinth 49 Parhelion 50 Sunken Eyes/Empty Mouth 51 Mirage 52 Crowned with Vultures 53 Midway Between Hunter and Snare 54

III: In the Vibration of the Wreckage

Vacuum Domains (Part III) 57 Meltdown of the Sun Gradient 58 Equinox 59 The Ancient Covenant of Symbiosis 60 Pyre 61 The Terraced Orchards 62 Tundra 63 Precession 64 Lay These Ghosts Aside 65 Sigil 66 Carrion 67 Jaundice 68 Uraei 69 A Chronology of Dead Ends 70 Iron Fist in Velvet Glove 72 The Solar Rites 73 Eclipse 74 Scaffold 75 Deplumed 76 . . . And Lucifer Shone Out Across the Scarlet Dawn 77 Shores of Attica Respond in Song to the Waves of the Aegean 78

Notes 80

6 Icarus was Right!

Mouths of Sodom

Vacuum Domains (Part I)

GATCAATGAGGTGGA CACCAGAGGCGGGGACTTGTAAATAA CACTGGG CTGT AGGAGTGATGGGGTTCAC CTCTAATTCTAAGATGGCTAGATAATGC ATCTTTCAGGG TTGTGCTTCTATCTAG AAGGTAGA GCTGTGGTCGT TCAATAAAAGT CCTCAAGAGGTTGGTTAA TACGCATGTTTTAATAGTACAG TATGGTGACTATAGTCAACAA TAATTTATTGTA CATTT TTAAA TAG

11 Beyond the Panoptikon

Have clean influx, blur, retch sight for role, saccadic as functional use, don’t beg—is this carbon drips to season hardly irreplaceable, warming VDUs

beneath the swollen river tract. Ought pep senses dulled by half-familiarity. Branching eukaryote. Push jab in- complete swarms tetanus, controls the nervous system under tubes. Hawsers slide through kainite groves, dank optic driven backwards (low-plane cornea, peripheral; may delegate an aberration). Shed pipeline at roll- bar, silhouettes shall face to face the body near ravel sullen price exhaust is or not to be enough. The body is a useful tool and easily manipulated 24 hours a day: chine respondant: mark the file as ‘resource’ e.g.

body and/or tool.

12 To River the Synapse Burnt

Snag up shank turns rivet-line off valgus quick to broken pyre, foaming more an orchard bid hangs mouth on flame smoked bruise yearns fructose tag (droning relay mips scald bioinformatics: root clogged and dragging something imperceptible behind). As that if gravel cleaves into itself—was not dried or similar; how easily about the flame licks moth—perfectly so flawed and given many chances, this as ever put steep may narrow-off prescription bottle almost rest- ing wing to fold: yearned arms consuming rain amidst the dense untainted glow. Paltry new development must be through clay a weaker place, garlanded via flowers interlacing wound; stored by axial- shift (prolate there) clamps

rag in circuits round the post let burnish its own signal bract thrown manky shade

13 de- vours

sparrow

blood to what pores corral an easy prey, feasting into drought. Go limber minus sun at 3 a.m. defines the depth of sky, merely tugging the electrodes under

acridine, ploughs insect glob stretched

further out from light.

14 Quadrant of Pythonesses

Bandaged out, that’s how these things are done: keep knives in back of throats for unit per capita. Wax lymph stream, brine run slowly through the column (drawn up blotting paper by capillaries). Tallow on the quick assemblage; one hand wash flame pulled down on flap of skin, washed timid like gristle.

Hollow flint at base, scratched itch keening marks the temperature. Detritus hounds sip orthodromic in each shallow breath culls further tide, the building of nectarous stems. As finds there to what rest and only ground beneath the field, screaming with invertebrates; clouds heavy through convection overhead. This house is a house and so on until the net- work dries, steps then recoils. Far enter bone peels off petroleum en bloc; tearing into waste grab burning film. Progenitors, kempt hands are sewn are soil fused passive bearing iris datum level. Corrugated ocean bled empty splits unhindered warmth by clusters edging cinder track.

15 Seven Hands Torch Gravity: The Sabbath Moon

Parch out cyst through upper jaw bites autograft half- skewed may sleepless gain reduction coup for bodies left pell- mell to rot in violet shade, weeping jeremiads loose from ruptured throats lean meat of gods hacked trophy antler.

Spores drip lesion under root of mouth foams prime- time silt up mantle wearing bovine skin for

16 sale: items one through two o’ five some rogue civilian casualties (tag that child number thirty- nine; face chomped back like topiary with shrapnel charge, will further xerox speech at huge consumption rate).

Buy wrought permafrost down tampered vein feeds blanket smoke if any, tracing bits of skull hit clean.

Such a useful apparatus—

17 mines the fetid take of air. Chew

less fallow bead clips wing apart scrapes tiny dislocation, loading frazzled curls and molar dregs filled jiffy- bag licks clean silver clean.

18 Under the Aegis of Spears

Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion . . . —W. B. Yeats Meru

Secondary cover flaws night else peak neut. stat glanders for import, rub dry parget tortrices about has hotel sooner touched crimp—dividing parados, lours horseflesh; marketed boom sell via profit margin, torn lax from gutted ochre (to be sustained). Diode set leech what hands on

public telephone

by warming skin to human skull to bile test: crushed up, dehydrated.

Three minute break pulse under infotainment (must need this) with sinew gorge pale bifurcation. Florid bitstreams

type em sutural adjust fleshy welt burns fascias ten a penny sign here vote

19 convocation of automaton. Coaxial wending back filled trellis concedes depletion layer down nullify stramata off raw material, slips inflorescent partial; braid corpse, go ruinous.