some Heavy Metal poems

A couple of Metal-related poems from back in the day (circa 2003-04). The first poem is inspired by my first Slayer show, which is to this day one of the most intense public rituals I have ever participated in.

The second is a a response to the murder of Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. I haven't actually listened to Pantera since I was 17, and they were pretty much a bunch of misogynist rednecks, but I had my phase, and Dimebag was murdered in Columbus, Ohio at my regular metal venue at the time, the Al Rosa. So there was some nostalgia, plus the fact that he was killed by a self-described 'huge fan' (and ex-marine who'd been section-eighted and released back into civilian society...).

Fellow Metalheads will recognise a number lines and titles laced into both of these. Both were first published in the Appropriated Press, and 'Divine Intervention' in Antiglobe as well. As usual, the blog format has fucked the formatting all up on both of these.




Divine Intervention



the crushing creeps before the blast
dead skin behind the mask
crowding (as if)
to see the serum spread before the clash
(of s/cymbols)
the loud impatient hush
then
dim forms the mechanical smoke
the air thick with blasts
(double-quick)
the epochal impend
the sixteen-cut call
the ensemble to sliding arms
and
the thousand-throated word:
then
the press gasping surge
the primal sweat
the sinew snapping at itself
the beat claw tribal flex
the thousand-tendon muscle
animal enlightenment of pulse-diluted minds
weirdly wakened to the chunk of charged string
screams
the cloven-hoofed spleen plays
the unanimous forebode of next
lone voice atonal screech and swallowed
by the vein outside the ear
the cleansing rain of blood
and
the (non)memory of millennia
heaved in shield-walls
religion written in gangrenous limbs
philosophy beaten on stretched skin
felt with the earnestness of flesh
the thrashed-dance spear-tip
damnation leering from forests that
slaughter allegory
and
have we fallen so far?
or
bonds still fold down two fingers
ward off vestiges of sunlight
one set of the philosophy of caves
ethics of embodiment
vicious sincerity of the newly crawled from clay
one tip of contact with essential
and throwing all reserve into the pit
laugh at the memory of forests
bristling with purely more that physical threat
and
skin and strings race like thoughts
savage intricacy
leaving words abhorred
slashing all complacency to chaos
ordered on the bones of ancient terrors

this is real art
(it makes the ears bleed)



************



Vulgar Display of Power


a grating thump of strings and then
the blast-beats stop

drink booze
smoke weed
make art
you are still clenched tightly in the jaws of the mad

and in the last seconds everything must unspool like notes abandoning the staff
must ring false among a harmonic hoarde

this is the obscure end to your exuberance
the smiles you
made have betrayed you
your racing frets knew not what they had done
eloi, eloi
my friends, my friends
you keep this love love love
how have you betrayed me


in a land of war and honey
this is where all beauty leads
even if it is soaked in smoke and blasphemies
gunned down because your art held the finger back from the trigger
gunned down because you were the only friend to kill
this is
what has driven ( )
far, far beyond


R.I.P. Darell Abbott 12 / 9 / 04

Current Projects

This blog thing is slow-going. An indication of what I am doing whilst not updating this:

Current Projects:

• An essay on JM Bennett's work in relation to Surrealist automatism on one hand and the Symbolist sonnet on the other, hopefully for an anthology dedicated to Bennett put together by Pudding House Press and aimed at a relatively mainstream poetic audience. If it's judged to be too, er, high-falutin' for that audience (I'm trying but I don't have much experience with mainstream writers) it'll find a home someplace else.

• My first drawing in some six years, an illustration of a gnostic creation schema that I've been developing, mainly under the influence of my half-arsed understanding of Valentinian Gnosticism. The piece, in two plates each containing a number of sequential stages of the story, is keyed to the interpretation that my brother Chris Lennard is developing for his performance of Emmanuel Sojourne's Concerto for Marimba and Strings; if I complete them time, they will serve as energeia or memory-tools in his development of the performance. I may at some point do a third plate to complete the cycle.

• Synapse 4. Yes, it is coming, despite constant financial and temporal roadblocks. The journal is 90% edited and the cover is half-completed, but after this there's the fairly laborious process of producing the master copy itself. Present estimate for starting to produce it is end of October. Beginning with Synapse 5 I'll be introducing changes to the process that will allow Synapse to start appearing more regularly and often.
  

• mOnocle-lash Website. This will be officially put into action around the same time that Synapse 4 is released, heralding the new publishing season after a long hiatus. Around the same time we'll also see some new releases of varying sizes by Megan Blafas, David Beris Edwards, Warren Fry, myself, and possibly more.

These will be occupying most of my time through October, after which a number of other projects currently on deck will begin moving. These include a collaborative book with Imogene Engine, a novella with Alan Reed, an anthology of essays and interviews regarding the creation and stewardship of non-commercial intellectual communities, and the launching of a long-term project into translating and contextualizing the work of the nearly-forgotten French avant-garde Bouzingo group. Among other things.

More posts presently.