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Friday 28 March 2014

Excerpts from 'The Origin of Manias' by Craig Podmore (Oneiros Books)

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A mortal weakness overwhelms, the searing, scolding sun, suckling the energy, the sinister silence of the horizon pushes Blake into a mere insanity, one of which that derives from survival; the urge to scream with a monstrous effect, that of a primal desperation. A despondent baby, twitching, a ubiquitous cold sweat, shades of dirge filled skies roam the sphere, repressing the rays of the unbearable sun, mammoth mountains drowning in a darkness, the heat dying, evaporating, a deathly cold dispersing in the atmosphere, amidst the view of the never-ending road are the licks of credulous lightening strikes, their rage flickering in a haunting mute ballet of angry gods. Salvation starts to slim, Blake is faltering as dear nature and its affects, takes its toll on him. Anton is near dead, still and ghost-like, his lips are of an azure colour, Blake observes the brambles and bushes on the road side, his thoughts are of a morbid decision to perhaps leave dying little Anton behind. He ceases to walk any longer and falls to his knees, a melancholy shudder pervasively overtakes his will, a single tear descends, his dead wifes carcass rots in an automobile tomb, alone, in a bloodied mess, tangled in scraps of metal and man-made machinery, Blake negates his tears and ascends from the warm camphor of the concrete.
 
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After the drivel of morning prayers, we perform the sign of the cross and tend to our breakfast. I begin to feel sick. The intense visions that I often invoke eat my nerves, the chomping of hungry jaws on their cereals exacerbate audible chaos, the visions are often like clusters of blurred colours yet the shades take form of figures, figures so vulgar, so vast and frightening. I turn dizzy, light headed and cannot adjust to a state of normalcy:
A rage of voids raping each darker soul(s), rummaging reds in a vomit coloured orange, figment of brain in cold purples and neon stabs of aluminous stains forming the beauty of eyes angst in a mortem of a frenzy ferociously cascading in a reign of fire, sparks of cries, vessels of flesh bruised in an environment of a violent happening conjuring an organism of something vigorous albeit furious and confused. A rigour mortis convulsion of feeling; an awakening of existence, a realisation – a sharp pain in my guts as if my stomach morphed into a mouth of a hyena, an indigestion of bemusement, Jesus on the cheap cross looks like nothing disembodied from its primary meaning, my cereal feels like a torpid obligation, people are splinters left behind of a failed design like the zebras in the field and the building we are in is the crocodile hunting under the surface of a muddy, diseased water.
 
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Violent azures, seizures of genital red hues and headless saints, protests of messiahs scream in distortions of invocations of the sun, dead ash, dawn eyes slit open by blade of a reality in stasis, mothers voice like that of a monks, praying, flaying skin, rosemary beads in the flesh of ass, sweat and piss, their cloth shed, naked, vile beasts, a godless god born in nothing, sexual acts, car crash of piety, deity murder and cremation of virtue. Pain like electricity from my backside, the making of blood elicits a hunger; Christ watches this freakish fair, applauses on cue, 28 hits down, Eros lives in my cerebellum, plucking the nerves in conjunction with my penis and subconscious, not a tear, not one, shadows of necromancy inhabit the vision, ululating, dancing round a fire that is the violence of my true nature. 34 hits, I see mother, she bathes my feet in the urine of my excitement, this transgression, this carnal manifestation wholly due to the flagellation of my torturers, I cry but not of discomfort but of desire, an awakening, a summoning of a belief found in the abyss of my spleen. Ennui crucifies with each blow, 38, 39, 40, Erebus ejaculates…
 
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I awake and find myself strapped into a chair. My vision is blurry, a great comprehensive confusion distils me, a table in front of me, full of dirt, torn fingernails, a jaw bone, the odd human finger, portraits of Himmler on the walls, tarot cards strewn throughout the room, ripped pages of porn; their sexual parts scribbled out with a fierce biro, there is a pervasive smell of death here and even though one finds comfort in that, I am afraid, its what appears before me, a silhouette, large, brooding and disgustingly visceral. Light shines on him, I see him, he looks as if hes the inner me: the turmoil, the violence, the lust, the perplexity, the colossus menace that consumes me.
“Anton. Idiotic name. Weak and unhuman. How did such a stubborn mess come into this world?” Blake converses with words of condescension.
“I guess I wasnt invited to this world. Its unfortunate that I have derived from your sickening seeds.”
“Its unfortunate that I did bring you into this world…”
“Only because you think that this world has only room for one omnipresent being?”
“Omnipresent? Gods are for childrens books my dear child. You strip away all of that philosophical afterbirth and we are nothing. Just evolved animals bound in flesh and blood. Do you really think that the ape thought of Gods and monsters before the inauguration of the intellect? No. Were only as real as the blood on our hands, the victims we create are stains of our existence, thats truth.”
“Yes, you are an animal. That is indeed truth, personally, I am not of man, I am devoid of that. I stand beyond every single one of you.”
Blake laughs, belittling I.
“So, youre a God? Son, you lived in an orphanage all of your childhood, you began the age of adolescence with Newton which is, suffice to say, a fine introduction to psychopathy.”
 
'The Origin of Manias' is available here
 

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