stories in the original matrix

Jul 04, 2008 - 10:31 AM PST

snakes smoking in the sky. Smoking unfiltered cigarettes in the haze, up there in the fog, the coelestial snakes, snakes like coelestrum, snakes like breast milk, in a breast milky morning of a snaky day. This is a snaky day in the sense of encouraging you to eat an apple you really shouldn't eat, in the sense of whispering tales of wheedling you to perform acts you didn't really want to perform.

Milk in the fog
It's like milk in the fog
Babies nursing milk in the fog
Snacking on a teflon phone
Phonecall in the teflon fog
Phone call in a teflon fog
Crows caw in a teflon fog

Teflon snacking in the sky. Whispered tales to perform.
Teflon smoking unfiltered sky
Snakes upon an unfiltered breast
Caradoc with the withered arm
Those proud and perky virgins
With their milky, snowy bosoms
High and bursting kirtles and long voluminous skirts
Skirts told volumes about them!

Skirts tattled on the scullery maids on the stone flags of the servants' walk the length of the house. Down along the back of the house, and their chattering could be heard on cold, clear nights from the bedroom windows. I lay in bed, just a child, and listened to their skirts rattling and the crackle of crockery and their sudden, impertinent laughter. That laughter fascinated me: the laughter of a servant! What on earth would they be laughing about? Some secret plan or agenda? Domestic mysteries and scurrilous fantasies and trivial mimicries?

Tattle, voluminous skirts
Tattle on the harlots, darlings
The sound those skirts make on the flags
Like endless brooms a brushing
And the mewling of the scullery girls
When Dirk the groom takes them up the arse

Tattle on the harlot darling
Angry vitamins in the air
The vitamins of a cloudy day
The vitamins of a Sunday day
Of a sunny day, sunny day vitamins, vit-uh-mins. Vitamin Ming, and Vituhmin Mong. These strange mongolian twins...just talking to them perks up a fellow! The Brahmin Mong and the Shaman Ming...those two, walking up and down the streets of London...what a pair of crafty characters! The tourists cannot lose their money fast enough, I'm afraid!
All those dicey games of chance, and the tricks the fakirs pull on you.

The gold war between US and the Soviets. We stared at each other over the table, the table littered, stacked, piled high with golden coins. On either side of the table, the susurrations of spies, spiraling about in the glooms of the corners of the room. exchanging places, crawling under the long long table, swinging from ropes through the beams above, tunnelling underneath.