our lady of the three-pronged devil [by clayton eshleman]
galathaea
Our Lady of the Caves
dressed in rock,
vulviform, folded back
upon Herself, a turn in the cave,
at Abri Cellier
an arch gouged in a slab
makes an entrance and
an exit, She is a hole,
yet rock, impenetrable,
the impact point of the enigma
"no one has lifted her veil,"
the impact point of the enigma
yet rock, impenetrable,
an exit, She is a hole,
makes an entrance and
an arch gouged in a slab
at Abri Cellier
upon Herself, a turn in the cave,
vulviform, folded back
dressed in rock,
Our Lady of the Caves
As She folds back
I sense a long sentence dissolving within itself
and when it ends, it is just beginning,
a presentiment that Her sign is
one turn, uni-
verse, end of the first line, curved about
a vaginal gouge, as if what is bent about is foetal
as if She
is a foetal arch bent about a slit
that goes in one quarter inch.
Our Lady may be the invisible archwork
through which all things
shift gears in the dark, at cheetah-speed,
at snail-struggle, on the shores of Russia
where paleo-archetypes compressed into radar
gaze around with dinosaur certainty.
Before Okeanos, continuing through
Okeanos, before the uroboros, continuing in it,
Her gibbous half-circle tells me She was,
before an association was made between fucking and birth,
before a bubbling parthenogenesis was enclosed --------------
but to what extent She is
in self-enclosure, in my beak triumphantly
raising my penis to the sun,
to what extent She neatly
slides Her slit between my self and its point,
I do not know.
For the self has grown so enormous,
I look through literal eyes to see Her
on a slab chopped out of Abri Cellier,
in a cool limestone room in Les Eyzies.
She seems only several inches tall.
It is a funeral to be there,
in a burial-chamber where first otherness
is displayed behind a rope, with written instructions
which only describe the age of the shape.
And I who look upon this am immense,
encrusted with all my own undelivered selves,
my skeletal papoose-rack through which my mother's
85 mile long legs are dangling, out of which my father's
right arm with a seemingly infinite switch trails
down the museum road, across France, to dissappear
in the Atlantic, and I jig around a bit
not because I have to pee, but because this ghost dance
starts up as I stare through the hermaphroditic
circle the snake made, so self-contained
but what it and I contain, the "divine couple,"
is the latent mother-father who
has taken over the world.
Our Lady moved about
like a stubby pitchfork,
yellow fiber gushed out from between Her prongs,
She hobbled, toward image ----------------------------------------------------------
what lurked under Her vulviform was the trident
yet to come, for men realised that not only
could the point of Her slit be hurled
but that its two bounding lines could be too,
_the_whole_woman_could_be_thrown_into_the_animal__
At Les Trois Freres, only meters away from the "sanctuary,"
is a huge bison abattoir. What is now sealed over
was a ravine at 15,000 BC. Was it because She
was nearby that this ravine
struck, like flint, "abyss"
off the rock of those hunters' minds?
And way in, trident deep in Le Portel,
did Her three prongs close?
Was the uroboros hammered shut
when those hunters at last hacked
themselves free of the animal sinew?
And was this the point at which
the wilderness was mentally enwalled,
serpent the outer circumference,
to teach, and banish, our Adamic Eve?
Below Our Lady, on the wall of my mind,
is the foot long rock phallus Her devotees may
have taken inside them while they chipped in Her sign.
I have been straddling, all poem long, that insistent,
rapacious thing, of phallus, the tooth-phallus,
the borer for the tooth-phallus is insatiable
male hunger to connect at any price,
but not connect, to cease being an island,
a speck before the emancipatory shape of
the birth giving mainland, to build a mole
to tie fucking to birth, to cease being ticks
on the heaving pelt of this earth, to hook
their erections to the sleigh of a howling starvling.
And they did
get across, at around 10,000 BC,
one night fucking and birth were connected by a mole
burrowing right under the surface of a full moon
boring a red mortal line from the edge
to a point equidistant from the circumference
The corpus callosum was suddenly filled with traffic.
The last Magdalenians were aware that Our Lady
has closed. They padlocked Her
with the uroboros and planted the key.
She now grows on a long handle
out of ground at the edge of the abyss.
Some see Her as fly-eyed radar.
Others feel it is to Her prong they cling
as the gale of monoculture whips them horizontal.
Many more on their knees inch along the cathedral pavement
toward what they believe is her virginal compassion
which will somehow make their manure-colored
barriada water pure, their nipple blood,
their insides-of-their-bodies
muscatel in which their children play,
miracle and misery on which my index
touches, to stir for a moment Her
gouged rock socket
octopus current of
faceless suckers Veil.
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galathaea: prankster, fablist, magician, liar
Immortalist
Greek Mythology that is caves, but it will take more time to find out
if it was a god or goddess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_%28mythology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28mythology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_%28mythology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_gods
I said...
She said you don't understand what I said
I said no, no, no you're wrong
When I was a boy, everything was right
Everything was right
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FQ6r7S3_cTE
http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/she_said_she_said.asp
galathaea
> I give up is she Nyx, Gaia, or Chaos? There is a particular go in
> Greek Mythology that is caves, but it will take more time to find out
> if it was a god or goddess.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_%28mythology%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28mythology%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_%28mythology%29
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_gods
she is much more ancient
she is the union of two ancient symbols
1 and 0
who united in the caves of france
tens of thousands of years ago
the circle opened
became vulviform
---
/ \
| |
| |
| |
\ /
and the stroke of the segment inserted
---
/ \
| |
| | |
| | |
\ | /
|
|
repeated throughout the walls in france
this stylisation every mammal is familiar visually
eidetic
evolving in time
the insertion extending in time
from conception to birth
a prolongation
|
|
-+-
/ | \
| | |
| | |
| | |
/ | \
|
|
to an ancient symbol
http://www.hominides.com/html/art/art_parietal3.html
> I said...
>
> She said you don't understand what I said
> I said no, no, no you're wrong
> When I was a boy, everything was right
> Everything was right
>
> http://youtube.com/watch?v=FQ6r7S3_cTE
> http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/she_said_she_said.asp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCMjKzRxd90
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvj2zV8c1c
profbabe
> Our Lady of the Caves
I found this stunningly imaginative, meticulous, literate and, at
times, hilarious. It is also unadulterated nonsense. Why invest your
(to me) obvious talent, imagination and fastidious attention to detail
on an interminable and kooky track that ends up being little more
(less) than a faux-nihilist version on the birth of what Taoists call
'tai qi' (the supreme eternal, for want of a good translation)? (I
elongated the sentence as much as I could to be able to reach you.)
The ultimate triteness of the philosophy inherent in the piece
destroys many good qualities that it has. There was more universal
truth in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I still find it fascinating, although I am not sure that I can go
through another one. All the kudos to you and ...... yikes!
Paul Hansford
to this post, let alone read it all through. (I gave up after the first
stanza, not being entranced by a concrete poem in the shape of genitalia.)
He may be a newbie to AAPC, but this comment shows he has the critical
skills of a master. I particularly loved --
> an interminable and kooky track that ends up being little more
> (less) than a faux-nihilist version on the birth of what Taoists call
> 'tai qi'
> The ultimate triteness of the philosophy inherent in the piece
> destroys many good qualities that it has. There was more universal
> truth in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
>
Go, Ruhi! (and can I steal "faux-nihilist" from you?)
P
Leisha
I like the shape on the page very much, I don't understand challenging
the content or execution as not worthy, trying to tie it to some
imagined "real" diety, or the "faux-nihilist" statement. I love all
the sexy wordplay, of course.
I stumbled here
> Before Okeanos, continuing through
> Okeanos, before the uroboros, continuing in it,
> Her gibbous half-circle tells me She was,
> before an association was made between fucking and birth,
> before a bubbling parthenogenesis was enclosed --------------
At "before an association was made . . . " because of the sudden
change-up in line length, therefore rhythm, and the dryness of
"association" after all the exotic names that precede it. Can you
change that sound or ease me more gently into the change-up?
> She now grows on a long handle
> out of ground at the edge of the abyss.
> Some see Her as fly-eyed radar.
> Others feel it is to Her prong they cling
> as the gale of monoculture whips them horizontal.
> Many more on their knees inch along the cathedral pavement
> toward what they believe is her virginal compassion
> which will somehow make their manure-colored
> barriada water pure, their nipple blood,
> their insides-of-their-bodies
> muscatel in which their children play,
> miracle and misery on which my index
> touches, to stir for a moment Her
> gouged rock socket
> octopus current of
> faceless suckers Veil.
I like this last stanza as much as I do the rest of the poem, but the
very last image just gets lost, I think, somewhere between the gouged
rock socket and the Veil. It's all too much, too mixed, and doesn't
satisfy as a closing statement or a parting shot on Her. I like
"miracle and misery," indicating that both are to be had in this
worship, which I don't find to be either the typical woo-woo hippy
Earth Mama Salvation of many Goddess poetry or the suggested hit of
nihilism. I like you touching with your index (the poetic "you," of
course), indicating that you still Desire her, but I think the key to
nailing the dismount is probably in the both/and dichotomy of "miracle
and misery." I think I would dump the octopus & faceless suckers
(unless you want them to directly follow the touching action, which
could work if the order is changed up), align the Veil with the
dichotomy: Veil of miracle and misery. Make the Veil of miracle and
misery, make it shield them, them reveal them to the supplicants, or
something like that.
I guess what I'm saying is that the final lines need a more considered
order to them, as they feel hopelessly jumbled now, and that I would
finish with the dichotomy that does not resolve the open-hole-with-
spear. I feel like nothing can resolve this passionate and painful
vision, so that tone is right.
Thanks for posting this; I really enjoyed reading it this Monday
morning.
Leisha
Paul Hansford
"Leisha" <lei...@decisionresearch.org> wrote in message
>
> Thanks for posting this; I really enjoyed reading it this Monday
> morning.
>
> Leisha
>
Takes all sorts.
P
galathaea
> On Sep 17, 1:14 pm, galathaea <galath...@veawb.coop> wrote:
>
> > Our Lady of the Caves
>
> I found this stunningly imaginative, meticulous, literate and, at
> times, hilarious. It is also unadulterated nonsense. Why invest your
> (to me) obvious talent, imagination and fastidious attention to detail
> on an interminable and kooky track that ends up being little more
> (less) than a faux-nihilist version on the birth of what Taoists call
> 'tai qi' (the supreme eternal, for want of a good translation)? (I
> elongated the sentence as much as I could to be able to reach you.)
> The ultimate triteness of the philosophy inherent in the piece
> destroys many good qualities that it has. There was more universal
> truth in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
it is very interesting you consider it "faux-nihilist"
as i considered it an early movement towards noise poetry
in the tradition of the noise composers of japan and scandinavia
noise genres are regularly called nihilist
their disregard for harmonic completions
and abuse of prolongation theory
lead to questions of: for what purpose?
this piece
too
has stuttered prolongations
and an underlying rhythm frequently stalled and stumbled
but in its awkwardness
it acheives (at least for me)
a primitive art
a desperate grasping for expression of a primitive epiphany
one of clayton's scholarly pursuits has
for years
been researching the origins of netherworld imagery in prehistoric art
the shapes are clumsy
humanity's first art
dot patterns
zig zags
hatches and spirals
clumsy and halted visions
noisy simplicity that can only be trite
because it has been with us for tens of thousands of years
> I still find it fascinating, although I am not sure that I can go
> through another one. All the kudos to you and ...... yikes!
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