Monday, November 7, 2016

Robert Verdon, #351, the imaginal animal


there were no openings in the real world
so
he slipped into his own story like Willie in ‛The Crop’
by Flannery O’Connor and
was never seen again,
sucked into the kaleidoscope of Illiantyn
with its toy plastic lens of ’59 that did not work
the brain that did, dangerously
the tadpoles that lived on in the slimy creek
scope for hallelujahs in the green line under the edge of the glasshouse pane
no openings anywhere and now age was a problem too
exclusion unto death
electricity in an egg
bon appetit
he was a fine fellow and his arse was huge
a paean to forgotten utopias
as the economy drowned in a whirlpool of inefficient capital
yet they ran from the bloody boar of child-smothering socialism
unable to tell property from propaganda
he transitioned into Illiana and died bound to the clapper of a giant bell
made up of vibrating fancies

8 comments:

  1. Ha. Beautiful, Robbie. Great. Strange. So many vibrating fancies, the brain working dangerously, I feel like I'm in the bell too. In-between getting nogginned, I find that I've still got a few atoms left to grab hold of a dim memory of Helen of Troy (?), and then the gall to ask you to tell me more about Illiantyn and Illiana.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Rob.
      Illiantyn is a childhood imaginary country of mine and Illiana is its strange goddess. It is a quasi-utopian 'magic republic'.

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    2. Thanks, mate. Illiana you may know is another name for Helen, the face that launched etc. I had assumed that these places were imaginal, somehow outside of these hard realms, but it's a bit interesting that your words, your lands, are related in another public language to a powerful feminine principle of lure and seduction. Don't know...and I'll shut up in a minute. Talk of Sappho as the 10th Muse today is obviously getting to me. Henri Corbin's work on the Persian poets and the Imaginal sprang to mind, and anyhow how it is more like a spring than a well. And what does that mean except that we are blessed by it. Now I'll really shut up! :)

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    3. All I can add to that is that my mother's name is Eileen (it was to be Elaine but someone stuffed up) and I think that name may relate to Helen too … but I'm afraid that sounds positively Freudian!

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  2. Terrific Robert. Especially like the ending. Stay away from clappers ...

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