Dinnerless: dead, buried & heaven-sent. Not even a vichyssoise to moisten them lips. That dry hack’ll speckle Peter – robbed to pay Paul, wrath metastasising.
Hare Krishnas have their art and dance the treat and are far from commenting on the rakes of society. But it's nothing compared to the snapshot of Christianity and the artworks of the period giving rise and reason to the hair that exists where the seat of your pants makes its daily bread for the turtles checking out the pool.
Before I became a materialist, I was religious. I was spiritual. And, I was nourished. It was 1978 and I was studying literature at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education. This would soon become the University of Southern Queensland, a distinguished institution, but at the time, desperate as it was to attract staff, it was still offering life tenure contracts.
Alone against all comers is the Esphigmenou monastery. On a peninsula more accurately referred to as the Self-governed Monastic State of the Holy Mountain – and hiding in the shadow of Mount Athos – one monastery wages war against nineteen others.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Be done with the lot of them. Flying about, flailing even, and hitting the left eyebrow with an intent toward deliverance. Ready for the moping and sloping jaws to payback in return of sorts. Of favours, deceit and general missives on the state of the world. Sounds like they know how to talk into the mirror without watching back on the reflection.
Placing cold hands under the armpits, jitters quiver to end. Squeezing tightly and gently at the same time, breath is deep, breath carries quick to a pace. Watching the light over the break tip over into the eyes and shield all manner of shadows running along the horizon is the kind of past time for the dawn to enter into. Thar be silhouettes with no arms. No arms leaving them with no armpits by default.
Fine grains of sand find themselves deep under the eyelids, warding against evils of sight and the subsequent tricks on the mind.
Clean cut and down the middle with ruminations on weary streets and roads made of tears. Rivulets burn canals in the craggy surfaces and only the chewing forces against the wind — a massive beast of amorphous delicacy — take the stir. Streets made weary for lawn bowls sake! They never give credit for the ones who fall first or for those who take the detour from behind and come up through the other end.
Crushing bay leaves between the toes for a sparkling sheen of raspberry delight, and oils drip from the noses as the eyes wince in the heat of the sun. Hot under the shade of the non-existent shelter, aghast at the thought of waking up into the night's dusty ventures with dentures loose from the rot of gnawing at visions in dreams wet with acid rain.
From beyond and from the other side of the bank, where the grass grows on clumps of edible moss. Standing with straws hanging off lips cut from the sun and brown from the dirt. Sucking seers with dilation in their eyes and corn in their ears. Prescience is in the air and there is only one thing left to lose: the future.
Figureheads stand at the end, all hands between the loaves of bread. Made from the wheat of raw fabric and fired in the kilns made by the Dutch as sewn with the spit of the drunken galley. Holes from the inside, eating on the outside, and condiments made of pus only taste as sweet as the sale of human flesh into the slavery of entertainment.
Rub some of that red dirt into the eyes, washing it with the urine of the baby goat drying out on the cooling fire. Skinned alive while otherwise dead, it's pleasure unfound and unsound when the maggots get into the ears.
Questionable substances riddle the outer linings of Kinder surprise and Fabergé eggs during this, a most severed time of the Christian calendar. Where the case and shells in the time of Easter makes for curious hunts in the middle of the day in backyards and grass parks. Where small salivating children on sugar frenzies run amok banging baskets in search over hard boiled eggs which they can only hope melt in their pockets and not hatch a chick.
