Monday, June 3, 2019

Jack Harvey writes


Daughters of Anomaly 
       (for Traci Lords)

All the cock-sucking,
all the cunt-lapping,
all the butt-fucking
in the world
can't forge a bond
that lasts beyond
the bounds of flesh and boredom;
time, a river with
Charon waiting
patient as Job,
shuttling busy
as a bee
from bank to bank 
carries us all.

Thrice holy,
over the shivering waves,
the sauce of life
sets all aflame,
spurts all over the place;
Traci rears up
pretty and weary,
her face not safe
nor her backside either.
Apollo, bright
as the day is long,
casts his shadow,
on bush and brake
and then departs,
serene and singing,
the lyre pinging
like sonar.
Traci gapes,
her comb drips honey;
pendent the homunculus
in her hand's saving grace.

Evening.
The god of the sun,
red as a rose,
makes off
with Venus roving
ahead and behind;
scary night falls
like a ton of coal.

Holy cow!
All the tits and ass
in movie bedrooms,
all the hired roosters,
loveless and uplifting,
not more foolish
than the knights of
Parsifal, than
Parsifal himself,
spent and sinning.

Daughters of Anomaly,
pierced through and through,
make me pay
like Faust;
between the lines
the lamp stinks still.

Traci was
cute as a button,
rode like a queen,
and was ridden;
Christy was
sweet and thick
as marmalade.
What do they do
to make us make
them live and live
in the memory
like caryatids
standing in a row?
Something.
That touch of
easy abundance,
ripe and serene
as the lazy summer sea.

Daughters of Anomaly,
let me give you,
each of you,
lauds, metaphors,
words lost in time
and space.
Naughty naked girls,
straight out I say
I love you truly;
forget the lines
the limbs
we never knew.

Daughters of Anomaly,
anomalous, anarchic,
my treasures, hunted forever,
all the cavorting and bumping,
all the laws of life
and death,
the brave remarks at
gunpoint,
can't make us forget
it's only skin in
the flickering fucking game
that comes and goes
before the lens,
meaningless,
without terror,
without love,
without us thinking it's
error this human act
doesn't support
the innocent flowers
and daughters,
Horus' penetration of
the beauty beneath.

Mary, Astarte,
maiden of the moon,
crown of flowers
come for me!

Daughters of Anomaly,
get close to me! Or close enough.
Asphodel, wine and
sleep please;
sleep without end.
Time, ladies,
dull as dishwater,
is up,
praise is done,
your patient labors dismissed.

Sisters [Traci Lords] -- Jeff  Pittarelli

3 comments:

  1. When Nora Louise Kuzma was 15 she obtained new identification as 22-year-old Kristie Elizabeth Nussman and started working as a nude model; for the September 1984 “Penthouse” centerfold she adopted the stage name Traci Lords. (This was the name of the strong female character played by Katharine Hepburn in the stage and screen versions of “The Philadelphia Story” and by Grace Kelly in the 1956 musical film remake called “High Society” – who was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, a socialite who once convinced Edward VIII to stand on his head to reveal what was beneath his kilt!) Then she became one of the highest-paid porn stars even before she reached the legal age of 18, but after her real age was revealed all of her films were forcibly removed from distribution. She made her last porn film 2 days after her 18th birthday, then began a legitimate acting career, leading to her appearance in John Waters’ “Cry-Baby” (1990); Waters called her a “sexual terrorist,” but her Wanda Woodward character inspired a fashion line produced by Pinup Girl Clothing. In 1995 she released the album “1000 Fires,” which spawned a couple of hit singles on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs, but her acting career also continued. From 2017 she starred in the cable TV series “Swedish Dicks” about Swedish detectives in Los Angeles; she plays a rival detective Jane McKinney, whom she described as "the kind of a woman who likes to play with men and use her femininity. At the same time, she believes that she definitely has the biggest dick in the room." In 2003 HarperCollins published her best-seller autobiography “Underneath It All.”
    “Christy” was a TV series that ran from 1994 to 1995 on American network TV. Based on the best-selling 1968 Christian novel by Catherine Marshall, regarded as one of the most influential books in shaping evangelicals’ minds. It was about a new teacher in a rural, old-fashioned Tennessee town. The sentimental series led to 3 made-for-TV movies in 2000-2001, and the original series was later syndicated on the Gospel Music Channel. The novel and series inspired the annual ChristyFest held from 1999-2017 to celebrate Appalachian culture.

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  2. Charon, the son of the primordial deity Erebos (“darkness”), ferried souls across the Styx and Acheron rivers that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. In the “Aeneid,” Publius Vergilius Maro described him as “A sordid god: down from his hairy chin / A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean; / His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; / A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.”
    According to Biblical tradition an angel called “satan” (accuser) claimed that Job’s righteousness was due only to God’s protection, so God allowed the angel to take away his wealth, his children, and his health as a test. After Job refused to blame God for his misfortune, his riches were restored and enlarged, he fathered another 7 sons and another 3 daughters, the most beautiful in the world. His steadfast faith was emphasized even more In Muslim tradition, and he was recognized as a prophet to whom Allah had given special guidance, wisdom and inspiration.
    The sun god Apollo, the son of Zeus and Leto, was the god of archery, music, dance, poetry, truth, prophecy, healing, and disease. He invented archery and the stringed instrument known as the lyre. As the patron of seafarers, he was also the god of foreigners and the protector of fugitives and refugees. In addition, he was the god of political life and of flocks and herds.

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  3. In 1537 the Swiss alchemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenhei (“Paracelsus”) described how a homunculus (Latin for “little person”) is created: “That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb, or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.” In 1775, count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein created 10 homunculi who had the ability to see the future; he kept them in glass containers at his Masonic lodge in Vienna. In 1832, in the 2nd part of “Faust,” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe featured an alchemically-created homunculus who embodied the quest of a pure spirit to be born into mortal form, in contrast with Faust's desire to shed his mortal body to become pure spirit. Faust was a scholar who made a pact with Mephistopheles to trade his soul for magic powers that would allow him to indulge in all the pleasure and knowledge of the world. However, the "Virgin, Mother, Queen, ... Goddess kind forever... Eternal Womanhood” bore his soul to Heaven instead, due to his unending striving for improvement. The Virgin, of course, was Mary the mother of Jesus. In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke she was described as a virgin at the time of his birth, since his true father was God.
    Venus was the Roman goddess of love associated with the planet of that name who is identified as both the evening and morning star (the 1st and last star to be seen). Astarte was the Greek form of the Canaanite/Phoenician goddess Astoreth, who was also known as Isis and the Sumerian goddess Inanna. She was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war, and was the deified morning and evening star. To the Egyptians she was paired with Anat as daughters of Ra who were allies of Set, the god of chaos, violence, storms, and the desert. Set and mutilated his brother Osiris, but Isis (Osiris' wife) reassembled his corpse and resurrected her dead husband long enough to conceive his son and heir Horus, the god of kingship and the sky; the sun was the right eye and the moon the left eye of Horus. Set tried to assert his dominance over Horus by having sexual intercourse with him, but Horus put his hand between his thighs and caught Set's semen and disposed of it, then spread it on lettuce which Set ate. The 2 deities then appealed to the other gods to decide which one should rule Egypt. When the gods called Set’s semen forth, it answered from the river, invalidating his claim that he had inseminated Horus, but when they called forth Horus’ semen it answered from inside Set, thus establishing the primacy of Horus. Then they challenged each other to a race in stone boats, but Horus cheated by using a wooden boat disguised as stone. Set’s boat sank and Horus’ didn’t, so Set recognized Horus as king.
    Parsifal was the hero of Richard Wagner’s 1882 opera based on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13th-century epic poem. The Grail knights were the guardians of the spear that had pierced Jesus during his crucifixion, but it had been stolen by the magicians Klingsor and Kundry, and only a pure man could save the situation. Parsifal, an innocent who did not even know his own origins, became the instrument of salvation. Kundry revealed Parsifal’s parentage and tried to seduce him, and Klingsor tried to pierce him with the spear, but Parsifal caught it in midair and made the sign of the Cross wit it, causing Klingsor’s castle to disappear. Parsifal then became the leader of the Grail knights, and Kundry was redeemed just before her death.

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