BLANK VERSE
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism,
and a bunch of other Stuff.
The End is fucking nigh..
’bout Time too!
-37; Blank Verse
•October 8, 2023 • Leave a Comment-36; THE POWERS OF THE MIND, REMINDED REDUX
•October 2, 2023 • Leave a CommentWe are proud to present this classic Sermon from the Vaults,
now translated into the Modern Tongue, with copious notes from the Learned..
THE POWERS OF THE MIND
“Magick is the art and science of causing changes in Nature
in conformity with the Will. “
– Aleister Crowley.
My daughter and I were discussing Magic awhile back.
“But is it Real?”, she asked. “Well.. yes”, I replied, “but it’s not like in the movies. Sparks don’t shoot out of people’s eyes just because they mutter a couple of words in Latin like with Harry Potter. Magic is generally more subtle in how it works, things just.. seem to happen.”
“But how?”
“O.K.”, I said, “I will tell you a True Story about the time I proved that there is indeed Magic and then Dear Daughter, I will show you the proof.”
So I told her the tale of how, long ago, I had come across a book that was kind of a training manual on Magic.
Be reassured, gentle readers, that the book was no ghastly, blood stained Grimoire or tedious medieval treatise on elaborate ceremonial conjurations. It was in fact more of a kind of Sixties Pop version of modern Crowley style techniques mixed with a bit of Tim Leary style psycho-babble. I can’t recall the title now, but one of the authors was that old psychedelic prankster, Robert Anton Wilson, he of the Illuminatus Pop Conspiracy legend.
Basically, the book proposed that we live in a kind of plastic Universe that could be shaped by your Will. Magic was a kind of concentrated prayer. The new age Magician simply tuned into the unseen currents and patterns that shape our lives, and focused their Will to make things happen. No need at all for lengthy ceremonies or all that Tantric sex stuff. Unless you felt it helped create the right mood.
The book spruiked a New Age philosophy of modern Magic, where through training you evolved to higher levels of consciousness, accessing your untapped human potential, your mysterious powers of the mind, etc, etc. It took a “retool your psyche for the millennium approach”. You know, upgrade the old mental-software routine.
Now at the end of each chapter were training exercises. One chapter had a training exercise entitled: “Making Money Appear”. (Yes, for all their New Age rhetoric these modern Magicians’ preoccupations were proving somewhat medieval! Just like all those old grimoires obsessed with finding buried treasure. Poor Magic, they talk about consciousness-raising but all they really want from you is money, sex and power. (Oh, and the death of their enemies.)
Anyways, the Exercise in question advocated that you start small, by mastering the Art of making nickels or dimes appear. You commence by concentrating on the coin in question. Memorise its appearance. Imagine coins appearing. You repeat little reinforcing mantra‘s like “Dimes are everywhere” or “I will keep picking up change” Do a drawing and pin it on the wall. Then you start consciously looking for them to appear while your walking around. Etc., etc..Apparently this practice will lead to coins mysteriously coming into your life. The book’s authors affirmed you’d start finding money everywhere.
What the hey. I wasn’t doing anything else at the time so I thought I’d give it a go.
Since I live in Australia it seemed to be stretching the odds somewhat to be looking for dimes so I substituted the local 20 cent piece, (“two bob” in the old currency). Its design was simple and familiar thus easy to memorize; a silver circle with a portrait of Queen Liz II on one side, with the year and some lettering around the edges, and on the other side a swimming platypus with the number 20.
When I went to bed that night I made sure my last thought was the 20cent piece. When I woke up there was a note to remind me. I started the day with a focused meditation session on the subject. I repeated my mantras over breakfast. I pinned 20cent-finding-affirmations on the mirror and walls. When I went out I walked everywhere, ever alert for the presence of 20 cent pieces. When I went to the shop I looked for them in my change.
At the end of a long day I went to bed, grumpy and dissatisfied. I hadn’t acquired a single 20 cent piece the whole day. Be damned, I thought as I fell asleep, if I waste anymore time on this.
The next morning I was awoken by a loud, cheerful knocking on my door. And when I open it, there on my doorstep is my old, long-lost lunatic friend Stuart, with a scowling black cat under his arm.
To understand Stuart’s role in this affair, you have to understand that Stuart is an Agent of Chaos. His Life has been different from most folks since he first ate Magic Mushrooms aged 12 and decided to leave school then and there to become a musician. He has never had a straight job in his life but has somehow always managed to survive, drifting along, playing his guitar. He is at heart a stone hippy. He is a relic from my long lost, wasted youth when I hung around with the Wild Boys and we Walked tall
with the King! Ah, crazy, crazy times.
Well the long years passed and we drifted apart, following our different destinies. But then, like Banquo’s ghost, he took to manifesting in my life at irregular intervals. I wouldn’t see him for a year or two then suddenly he’d just appear out of nowhere. Somehow he always managed to track me down. Then he’d hang around for a week or so and turn my life upside down with manic enthusiasm and crazy projects. Then he’d vanish into the void again without a goodbye. He was always in the middle of some absurd adventure. One time he turned up in an antique removal van he’d turned into a house. Despite the fact it could only reach 40 mph top speed, he was touring the country in it. Another time he was living in a yacht in the middle of the Brisbane river while he tended a pot crop in the mangroves.
(Of course I didn’t give my daughter all the details about Stuart I’m giving you, but I gave her enough to get the general gist.)
So, to return to the story, here I am, barely awake, with my old friend the Maniac manifesting on my doorstep for one of his unannounced visits.
And he has gifts for me. Oh yes, two in fact.
“Here”, he said, passing me the now furiously scrabbling black feline, “this is for you.”
Avoiding the claws I hastily put it on the floor. The cat peered at me doubtfully, then seemed to shrug, and commenced licking its groin. Clearly it had decided to accept ownership of me.
“er. er..Thanks?” I said.
“Oh, and I thought you’d like this too”, he said reaching into his pocket, “I found it on the way over here.” He fumbled around for a bit but finally pulled out and presented me with, yes, of course, a 20 cent piece!
“Really?!” interrupted my daughter.
“Yes”, I replied, “really! And I have kept that coin to this day. It’s in that box on the shelf”.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“Surely”, I replied and opening the box I held the coin up for her inspection.
“Behold the awesome Magickal powers of your father’s mind!” I told her.
For a moment she was silent. Then we both burst out laughing.
*
Why the laughter, you ask, dear reader? Had I not shown her incontrovertible evidence of the power of Magic? Did I not hold an actual 20cent piece produced thereof?
Oh it was a 20 cent piece all right, of that there was no doubt, but it was not your average coin. For one thing it was no longer round, but more a kind of irregular, wobbly egg shape. Looked at edgewise, it was bent over like an old man with rheumatism.
On the obverse side you could still see the number 20, but the platypus had been reduced to an ugly smear, mere road kill, which was kind of appropriate considering it had certainly been run over by something. On the coin’s other side, poor old Queen Liz’s portrait had been obliterated. Only the letters AUST, and the top of her crown were were legible. It reminded me of how incoming Egyptian Pharaohs used to erase the names and faces of unpopular predecessors from public monuments. Indeed, the coin looked like something you’d dig up on the outskirts of Cairo.
So yes, it was a twenty cent piece, but only just. A bank might still accept it as legal tender but a phone booth or a slot machine wouldn’t.
I had to admit, as a product of the powers of the mind it was spectacularly unimpressive.
One could even say it was impressively unimpressive. Nonetheless it was proof. The manner of its manifestation was clearly Magickal in nature. Yet as recompense for twenty four hours of mental effort, it was pretty poor payback. Perhaps my Powers of the Mind lacked focus.
Still, my daughter wasn’t entirely disappointed with the result,
and so on that happy note I ended my lesson on Magic.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
VoX/Populist for Alt/Primitivist Popists; “The Tapeloops”,
and a Legend amongst people who are aware of such things.
He works part/time at X-mass as a Cautionary Example.
***
-35; SALVATOR MUNDI
•September 24, 2023 • Leave a Comment
SALVATOR MUNDI
*
The Time has Come, as a minor pop group,
whose name eludes me, once put it,
to Face the Facts.
The Situation is Dire indeed.
Humanity, nay, the Planet’s Eco-system itself
is on the verge of Total Chaotic Collapse
into an Environmental Apocalypse.
War, Famine, Pestilence & Death stalk the Lands.
The fifth Horseman, Thirst is not far behind
as Agri-business steals the Water,
damning Rivers, draining Aquafers.
The Land Burns, the Seas fill
with Plastic & Industrial Effluent,
the teeming Masses
swarm the Barricades & Borders
There is only one Hope left;
It is time to elect Me
to be the King of the World.
Ok, finished snickering? Good,
because in your Heart you know that it’s True.
I have examined the Situation from every angle
and I can see no other Solution.
No-one else can be trusted
to do what must be done,
not one of our corrupt & venal Politicians
or self-serving, time-serving Bureaucrats
can be relied upon. All Liars.
No-one else truly Does Not Give A Fuck
about Popularity or Prestige or Wealth or Power
for it’s own Sake, or what I might break in the Process.
I will tear it all down, if I have to.
The World will reel
from my Grandmotherly Kindness.
Frankly I would rather not take on
this onerous Responsibility.
I have my own Life
and no great psychological compulsion
to be Big Boss Man and give Orders.
I’m happy as I am, a poor Poet,
and have everything I need.
Also, I’m a lazy, lazy man. I like
to sleep in late. I like to waste Time,
keeping the cat company,
looking at the birds in the trees,
day-dreaming & writing scraps of poems.
But you people can’t be trusted
to fix things up yourselves,
and if you were honest, you’d admit
you’ve been waiting for Someone to come along
and save the Day.
Don’t be embarrassed, it’s understandable.
Anyway I am Sentimental
about all the other Creatures
living on this planet, minding their own business,
and all those trees of course,
so I feel like I should really make the effort
& do something to help some of them
to Survive at least.
There will be a Period of Adjustment
and many Dead,
but I’ll try and make it quick,
like ripping off a band-aid,
and overall
Casualties should not be greater, I feel,
than any other comparable historical period.
And don’t worry that I shall become
some sort of Grim & Humourless Tyrant!
Oh No!
I shall be a Jolly King,
always cracking Jokes
and laughing uproarishly at them as well!
(Ed.note; Here the Reverend pauses writing
& fixes the Reader with a Deadpan stare..)
You should probably laugh at them too.
(Pause)
That was a Joke.
See? A Jolly King, just like I said.
Yes, it’s funny the way things work out,
but there you have it;
You need me. The Village Idiot.
No-one else can be relied upon
to be as Ruthless
nor as Gentle.
So send in a cup of tea on a tray
in the Morning, and have a car
waiting outside the door,
ready to take me to my Office,
where-ever the hell that is,
and I’ll get straight to work.
There’s a lot to do
and not much Time.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism,
Vox-Frontalist for Alt/Pop Primitivists, “The Tapeloops”
and Salvator Mundi.
You’re all very welcome.
***
-34; DOUBLING DOWN ON DUMBNESS
•September 17, 2023 • Leave a Comment
DOUBLING DOWN ON DUMBNESS
*
With the Apocalypse looming larger,
We’re doubling down on Dumbness.
No Margin for Error now,
nor Time for Trials,
Marketing is working overtime
on the Nomenclature as we speak.
It’s important to line all our Ducks
up in a Row, so
we’ve Automated the whole business,
put ’em on a conveyor belt
and now all our Eggs will end up
in the same convenient basket.
But just what basket will we put our eggs in?
Amelioration.. or Mitigation?
Yes, it’s an important Distinction,
and there are two Schools of Thought in
Industry Think-tanks & Marketing Focus Groups.
Some say that we should say
that we’re working to Mitigate
the effects of Climate Change. Others
feel that we should be seen
to be struggling to Ameliorate
these reluctantly recognised effects.
Yes, it’s an important decision
so we’ve set up a Sub-Commitee
to kick the Whole Thing down
the Road again and hope
that sometime in the not too distant Future
Someone else deals with It,
without us having to change a thing.
*
***
***The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet and
an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
“Convenience is the Devil’s Servant, his other name
is Sloth.”
***
-33; UFO! A Tale of High Weirdness Part 2
•September 11, 2023 • Leave a Comment
UFO – A Tale of High Weirdness Part 2
*
According to Dr Bob, the events as I’ve related them to you previously, are correct right up to the point where
“the Light”
has responded to our signals for the second time, and then starts getting larger as though approaching.
But my friend maintains that the Light in fact did not recede after that, but instead continued to get larger & closer until the point where It was hovering right overhead.
At this stage the Light resolved into the form of some sort of glowing, clearly Alien, artificial craft. Also, we were both apparently paralysed by some sort of fiendish Ray by this stage.
Humanoid creatures then appeared and led us away. Dr Bob says they separated us and he doesn’t know where they took me. He recalls some sort of interaction with our captors afterwards, but has never clearly related to me what exactly happened then.
I’m not sure he knows himself. Later we are taken back to the car. He doesn’t remember seeing Them leave, just that They were suddenly gone. We were back sitting in the car. Then, he says, I appeared to suddenly snap into consciousness again, at which point I immediately gunned the car and started driving off wildly into the dark without saying a word. By the way, all communications with the Aliens during the Incident were of course conducted telepathically.
My friend is absolutely adamant that all this occurred precisely as he related. The fact that I could remember none of of these events after seeing the light flash back and grow larger, he explains away by saying they tried to wipe our memories of the Incident with their Alien Brainwashing Technology and succeeded with me. He only started to remember the events bit by bit afterwards, and indeed, much of what occurred was still a blank, he maintained, but clearly the Process wasn’t entirely successful in his case.
Despite my disbelief, Dr Bob has persistently and consistently maintained his story of our Abduction by Aliens for over twenty years now.
*
Needless to say I have trouble accepting Dr Bob’s version of events.
Not least because I was there and I have absolutely no recall of any such Alien Contact. I’m resistant to Hypnotism and hardened to Drugs, so I find it difficult to believe that my memories of a single event can just be removed like that without a trace. Memory isn’t stored in one spot like in a filing cabinet. Bits of a memory are scattered all over your brain. While I accept that in theory you could develop some sort of EMR technique to wipe memory in a crude way, such a technique wouldn’t be able to target a specific memory, whole swathes of the memory store would have to be affected. You’d notice that huge chunks of your memory had gone missing. I just don’t have that problem. The Past, alas, I can recall in all too clear detail.
But there are other unsettling aspects to the Tale.
The car was never the same afterwards, subject to random, inexplicable losses of engine power that came and went. I took it to to various mechanics, none of whom were ever able to get it running properly again or even explain what was wrong, fruitlessly replacing large chunks of the engine to no avail.
*
And there were the ongoing Co-incidences. For example, about a year later I found myself thinking about that night again after putting it out of my mind for months. So on a whim I decided to ring Dr Bob, who I hadn’t seen for quite some time, and get him to drive out with me to the site of our Encounter and we could hang around there and see if we could see anything interesting. Maybe question the locals, find out if there were other Sightings in the area.
So I rang. “The Doctor is not here,” I was told, “he’s gone out to the bush to look for UFO‘s.”
Of course he had.
The Doctor and I also learnt never to speak of our mysterious Encounter when we were in the car together. To do so invariably brought on the recurring engine trouble!
For example one notable occasion occurred when we were going to yet another Doof late at night a couple of years later. We were chatting away and reminiscing, but as soon as we started talking about that damn UFO the engine sputtered and died again. We weren’t abducted by aliens that night but we did get the worst hitch-hiking experience of my life, when we decided to keep trying to get to the Doof and come back and get the car going tomorrow. Who’da thunk that hitching on a darkened country road at two in the morning would end up with us getting picked up by a brooding Psychotic who seemed set to kill us both
if we’d betrayed the slightest sign of Fear.
But he’s another Story.
So the years drifted by, and now, out of the blue and dizzy sky, Dr Bob has reappeared with pin-point synchronicity to tell me that the recurring neck pains gnawing at me even as we spoke were caused by the Alien implants in my cervical vertebra. He has an implant too of course. It was one of those blanked out bits but now he’d remembered.
This was not reassuring news. Indeed in my weakened state it was enough to induce a certain level of paranoia. What if he’s right?! What if THEY have tampered with my beautiful Mind and I can’t remember. Could it be true? How did he know about the Pain?
As I grappled with these thoughts the Doctor was asking me if my life had been, well.. you know.. normal since that night? I gave another bitter laugh.
“My life has never been normal..please remember who your talking to.”
He disregarded me and went off on another tangent. There was ‘Something Else’. Some previously repressed traumatic memory about that night.
He’d never been able to tell anyone before but now he just had to speak to me about it. I was the only one he could tell. Here he paused hesitantly before revealing the Terrible Truth.
Yes, yes, I thought impatiently, I’m a busy man, what is this terrible forbidden memory?
But there was only Silence.
The line was dead.
I waited but he never rang back. He hadn’t given me his new number or address. I tried all my old numbers for him to no avail. I sent out emails and feelers through the old friend network and waited to hear.
Meantime I wondered. Why hadn’t he phoned back? He had something it seemed he wanted urgently to say. He sounded worried and scared. Had THEY got to him?
What if it was all True, that my mind had been wiped and we had been the victims of cruel, inhuman experiments. And who were THEY anyway? Aliens from another world? Beings from a different dimension? Some ultra-secret American military conspiracy? Nazi’s from a hollow earth?
My mind reeled at the myriad of alternate realities set whirling around me if I accepted the Doctor’s story.
The internet was full of helpful suggestions. Apparently many people suffer from alien neck implants. There’s even a roaring trade in devices to remove alien implants. Unfortunately none of the ‘implants’ thus removed and subsequently shown on U-Tube looked very alien. Bits of glass and metal mainly. More like something someone had stood on and it worked its way into their skin.
*
Eventually I got my cervical CT scan and happily the results failed to show any signs of alien implants in my neck. Just the sort of terrestrial trauma you get from a lifetime of falling from fast buildings and tall vehicles.
I also eventually managed to discover the whereabouts of the good Doctor, lurking, as my Informants informed me, in some dingy Slum-Fortress of Solitude, out on the edges of Suburbia, right where it borders on Paranoia.
Despite the Doctor’s constant Suspicion & Fear THEY have not come to get him.. yet. Apparently THEY do interfere with his phone line however. The Doctor earnestly confided to my Informant that whenever he attempts to talk about these subjects on the phone, the line mysteriously goes dead. He’s convinced he’s being monitored by hostile forces.
Call me a coward, but despite my concern for my old friend, I haven’t been to see him yet. I guess I’m just
not looking forward to finishing that conversation about our Strange Experience. One of us is very wrong about the Reality of what happened that night. At its simplest reduction, either I’m living in a delusional world of denial or my friend has been driven to the brink of paranoia and madness by what we saw.
Neither is a reality that I’m comfortable with.
***
Seen “something strange” in the sky? Share it with the Rev.! He wont laugh at you like the Others.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet
and an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
(Legend has it that if you say his name three times in front of a mirror,
he’ll appear and ask to borrow money.)
***
-32; UFO- A Tale of High Weirdness Part1
•August 27, 2023 • 2 CommentsUFO’s have been back in the News of late so Sunday Sermons judges it fashionably relevant to resurrect this chilling memoir from the Vaults. Enjoy..
UFO –
A Tale of High Weirdness
Part 1
*
I received an unexpected phone call the other day from my old comrade, Dr Bob. We’d kind of fallen out of touch over the years so I was surprised he even had my number.
My surprise grew even more however when, without the usual-hi-how-are-you-long-time-no-see-etc preamble he launches into:
“Have you had any neck and shoulder pain lately?”
I laughed bitterly, for as it happened he was right. For the last month or so I had been crippled by ongoing neck pain. I had been forced to cut back on my work hours and was scheduled to have a CT scan the following week. The pain was no doubt the result of old traumas (it’s been a rough life) but how had Dr Bob known of my situation? I hadn’t seen him for over a year, or indeed any of our mutual acquaintances. With a sinking feeling, I could sense my day slipping into High Weirdness.
I also already had a fair premonition of the direction this conversation was going to dive, even before the good Dr asked his next question:
“You know that night?..How much do you remember?”
Oh yes dear reader, I knew what night he meant.
It was a night over ten years ago now, near the turn of the Century in fact, and Dr Bob and I were driving thru the darkened Australian countryside in the small hours of the morning, looking for a secret dance party or Doof, as they were called. As is the way of these things, the directions were purposefully obscure and we had got lost, ending up driving along a nameless and apparently endless dirt road.
Then the car started having trouble, intermittently choking and losing power.
We came to a fork in the road, and despite the risk of not being able to start the car again, we stopped for awhile to see if we could hear the party or see its lights somewhere in the distance.
It was a dark moonless night in the bush, with only the occasional cloud and the stars were out in their millions. There was no farmhouse near, no car. Not a dog barked, not a cow mooed. Even the cicadas were silent. We were utterly alone. We were nowhere near the party. Far away on the eastern rim of the sky we could see the faint glow of the faraway city we had left.
While we were standing there lost in thought, I noticed what appeared to be a Satellite tracking through the sky.
“Ha! Sputnik!,”I joked and pointed at the steadily travelling light. Then, as we both looked, it did a very un-satellite thing: it suddenly swerved in a kind of snake-like movement, leaving a little feathery trail of sparks as it did so.
We had just enough time to both say simultaneously, “Did you see that?” when it did it again, that same serpentine swerve and apparent trail of sparks.
Then it slowed till it just stopped dead in its tracks and pretended to be a star for awhile. It seemed to change colour too from a blue-white to a yellow-white. There was no sound of any engine, or indeed any sound. I believe if there was any sound emitted we would have heard it, because at one stage while we watched, a light plane flew over the other end of the broad shallow valley we were in, and we could hear its faraway engine clearly.
After the plane had gone, we watched the Light a few minutes longer. Then I realised the car was pointing towards it, so we decided to get in the car and try and signal to it with our headlights. The internal light had been on all this time because the doors were open.
Anyhoo, sitting in the car I gave three long blasts with the headlights on hi-beam.
Damn me if the thing didn’t turn orange and pulse back three times as if in answer.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
Again the simultaneous,”Ok..you saw that, right?“
So I repeated the experiment. I hit the headlight three times.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Back comes the response.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
Then the light started getting larger, like it was getting closer.
At this stage panic set in.
The realisation that we were all alone in the middle of Nowhere, with a mysteriously looming Light taking an Interest, swiftly dimmed the desire to make Contact. I quickly killed all the car lights and there we sat in the darkness, rigid with fear.
It’s at this point in the story that Dr Bob’s recollection of events and mine diverge. Up to here we are in complete concurrence as to all details and the order in which they occurred.
Now, as I recall, without our lights to guide it the Object seemed to recede. But I wasn’t really looking at it anymore, I was too busy gunning the engine as we screeched off into the Dark, driving without headlights for some way down the road till I felt confident we’d shaken the damned thing off.
*
Sometime just before dawn we finally found the Party, lurking at the bottom of an abandoned quarry, the seeping blue light lending the boulder strewn landscape an eerie, Primeval atmosphere. It was hard to talk to anyone after our strange encounter, we felt disconnected from the other people there. The Party was winding down anyway, so as the Sun came up over the horizon we headed back to town, the good Doctor sleeping fitfully in the passenger seat.
At home there were already lunatics sitting on my lawn waiting for me to solve their problems. In no mood for pastoral care, I delegated Dr Bob to deal with them and by the time I got out of the shower they had all conveniently disappeared. So Doctor Bob and I had no chance to discuss the night’s events over a civilized cup of tea.
A couple of weeks later, rumours started to reach me that I had been abducted by Aliens.
“Ah, Chinese whispers at work”, I thought indulgently, “how these tales do grow in the telling!”
So I rang the Doctor to amuse him with how the story of our encounter was growing on the grapevine.
But he already knew about the stories.
He was the one telling them.
Not only that, he believed the stories were true.
Really believed.
In the name of Jesus & his twelve bleeding Saints,
what the blue & dizzy fuck was going on here?
*
Tune in next week oh True Believers, for the Bizarre conclusion to this perplexing Tale of High Weirdness.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
and an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.
He does a bunch of other stuff as well
but let’s not get into that right now.
***
-31; WORD SOUP AND SALAD
•August 21, 2023 • Leave a Comment
WORD SOUP AND SALAD
*
A quiet day at the Lunatic Asylum.
“The Doctor” tours the Ward,
powerful & pompous as an Eastern Potentate.
In his train a gaggle of medical students
trail behind him like ducklings after a mother duck..
Now He opens his Word Hoard. The Students erupt
into a furious orgy of note-taking;
“Ah Yes..here we have one of our saddest cases.. Humanity..
complete Societal Collapse.. Language Dysfunction led
to Cognitive Dissonance building up
to the point of complete Psychotic Breakdown..
A Cautionary Tale really.. when Words fail
Bullets take their place..”
“When Language leaves Reality behind
and becomes the Product
of Advertising Think Tanks
& Illiterate Influencers drunk on a sense
of their own Self Importance,
Mass Psychosis is a natural corollary.
You start waving meaningless terms like
“Affordable Housing” and “Business Confidence“
around as though they actually mean something,
then the next thing you know
it’s all Green Steel
& Clean Coal
and then you’re on the slick & slippery slope
to Profitable Pollution
& Value-Added By-Products
like Plastic
being added to your Water Bill.”
“They call it the Smart Economy
but lets face it, Capitalism is Dumb.
It has all the Sentience & Purpose
of a Virus.
Perhaps Future Research will indeed reveal a Viral Link,
but for now there is no Cure,
and Treatment remains Symptomatic.
Ho ho! Sorry.. Old doctors joke there.
To say that Treatment is Symptomatic really just means
that there is no Treatment,
unless you count Palliative Care, of course.
Which is where we are today;
The World is a Basket-case
and the Basket is on Fire.
*
So much for Occupational Therapy.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism,
& Wordperson for Primitive/Perverse Alt-Rockist Collective “The Tapeloops”.
Yeah.. He’s that kind of Guy.
***
-30; INTERIM REPORT JULY 2023 CE
•July 31, 2023 • Leave a Comment
Interim report July
2023 CE
+
Surely the most heart-warming (in a strangely literal way) News of Late has got to be the Report that,
after spending 46,000 years Hibernating in the frozen guts of an Icy Mammoth dug up from the Siberian Tundra,
an ancient infestation of Round Worms
have sprung back to Life and started creeping around
after being thawed out in the Lab!
Not only that, they also apparently
Went Forth & Multiplied,
so that now there are Petri Dishes in Laboratories
all around the World chock-full of the squirming, multiplying Offspring of these Hibernatory Parasites.
Good news I guess for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and all those other Billionaire Parasites planning on storing their Post-Mortem Brains in an ice-cream bucket in some Cryogenic Labs’ deep freeze, pending the Day of the Great Thawing.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to Upload their Personality onto a silicon chip like Eon Musk, I ask myself, and then download themselves into a robot..or a fast car or a forklift or something? These Billionaire Sociopaths are all on “the Spectrum” personality-wise anyway so the Storage Capacity needed shouldn’t take up too much room. Couple of old floppy disks should do it.
Also Hot out of the Lab this week, is the latest
Covid Conspiracy Theory, cooked up by my old Comrade in Arms, John Tracey, aka John Nobody.
According to John’s Research,
Covid actually orginated in a Lab alright, but not in far-away Wuhan. In fact the Lab was located in Geelong! Yes folks, Covid right started here in Australia! (They should have called it the Kangaroo Virus and cracked jokes about it hopping around all over the place.)
Obviously that’s the real reason why the Authorities shut the airports here so early, because they weren’t trying to keep Covid OUT, they were trying to lock it IN!.
Upon my expressing Scepticism by the usual expedient
of the Arching of an Eyebrow, John did a quick dive into the Google Pool to produce a few web sites that seemed to show that yes, there is indeed a kind of Sister Laboratory to the infamous Wuhan Lab, located in Geelong
and studying various viruses, including Covid.
In fact it’s the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness Laboratory, a high-containment Facility, and there has been a certain amount of back & forth of personel with the Wuhan lab in China.
Although it’s a CSIRO Facility and thus you’d think it under local management, John says that they’re part of a string of Labs around the World that are all financed by “American Money” for mysterious purposes.
Though to what grim purpose was not really clearly established to my Mind, so I guess this Conspiracy is still in the making so stand by for further developments.
Check out John’s Facebook Page for his sources & further details..
But I bet it’s Jeff Bezos and those damned Globalists
that are behind it all! They don’t need Workers anymore, they have Robots, so they want to De-Populate the Earth.
Mu haha hahaa!
Not all was Hot out of the Labs this week, alas. Certainly not in the fields of Exo-biology and Alien Vehicle Crash Recovery, where the bodies are still lying stretched out cold on a slab somewhere in Area 51 and the Mechanic is waiting for Parts to be delivered from Lockheed Martin.
Such was the metaphorical progress made this week
by the United States Congressional Enquiry into UFO’s (UAPs in the new currency) where every Interesting Question was met with a Wall of Security erected by the Pentagon. Yes folks, there’s nothing to see here. That’s why they spend so much Time & Effort dissuading People from looking. Or talking about it. Or sharing Information.
Still it was possible to get a “reading between the lines” Idea of what’s going on by the Questions not answered.
Essentially nothing new was revealed that hasn’t been revealed before. Colonel Corso (amongst others) Head of the Pentagon’s “Foreign Technology” Bureau at one time, wrote about all this stuff years ago.
But this time Congress has taken an Interest and it’s all Official, done through the proper channels and everything!
Uniquely at this fractious Time with a Divided, Partisan Congress & Senate, there is Bi-Partisan support for the UFO Disclosure Legislation being formulated and the work of this Committee. All the Democrat heavy hitters (Chuck Schumer, Raskin, Cortez, et al) attended the Open Hearing and asked a series of intelligent and probing questions.
Alas, as always, the Military don’t want to share.
You can see their Point of View.
Here they are, a Noble Brotherhood for Decades closely guarding the Secret that can control the Destiny of their Nation, Nay! The Destiny of Humanity itself! The Secret that will take us to the Stars!
Gentlemen! We have the Future in our Hands! They think, and along comes a gaggle of hack politicians who probably won’t be around in a couple of years, led by a Tennessee Hillbilly the by-product of a transitory Populist Tide who says;
“Dagnabbit!”
when he cusses, and this Trailer Trash Grifter wants to know where the Noble Brotherhood keep the Key to the Future!?!
They’ll probably want to know where the skeletons are buried next, Dagnabbit, and there will be many.
Though probably not Alien skeletons, as I’ve been reliably informed they don’t really have bones like we do, it’s more like a thickened cartilege sort of structure.
Ick!
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet,
the Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism
and a complete and utter Bastard!
Or so I’ve been told.
***
-29; VISION IMPAIRED (This is What I do Instead of Dream)
•July 24, 2023 • Leave a Comment
“VISION IMPAIRED”
or
“This is What I do Instead of Dream”
*
I could write about many things this week.
The Congressional Inquiry into UFO‘s.. Robotdebt.. the Northern Hemisphere burning down as a prelude to the looming Climate Change Apocalypse.. the growing Societal Cognitive Dissonance as people still try to pretend its not happening.
All worthy Subjects, and perhaps I’ll tackle them next week, should the Fates spare us, but today I thought I’d share with you an odd & inexplicable Vision I had recently.
*
Now I am prey to Visions, as my long-suffering Personal Assistant will affirm. She’s used to seeing me slumped in my chair, hands folded in lap, or leaning over, elbows on the table, head in hands. Eyes closed, but still Conscious. Well able to answer questions but gets irritable if the talk starts to interrupt the visual flow of High Definition Images flowing before me.
“Where are you now?” She’ll ask with a sort of dry tolerance, “Flying over a Rainforest?”.
And indeed, I do get a lot of Landscapey Visions where I appear to be skimming over endless forests or oceans or jungle ranges. Places I’ve never seen in Real Life (whatever that is) but there they are before me in Real Time /High Definition /Pixel Perfect detail. I have a certain amount of limited control in these Visions so I can often zoom in to examine the scenes more closely..every tree, every leaf, every stone. But generally it’s better just to let the scenes flow by.
Where does all this Stuff I’m seeing come from, I often wonder. Where does my soft, squishy Brain get all the visual material it is so adept at presenting to me? Much of it is like drone footage but I was seeing this a stuff years before such images became ubiquitous. Is it just random neurons firing off and my brain making a pattern out of Habit? But why does it show me perfectly rendered scenes of Places I’ve never been to or seen?
And for all the money my Brain has spent on Production Values for these Visions, they are curiously lacking in Plot & Theme. Only occasionally does there seem to be some sort of Point to them or Meaning underlying the Action. Mostly they’re more like one of those 10 hour “Slow” Documentries, where they just put a camera on a train and let it roll. But yeah, sometimes I will get a full length Documentry or Action Drama type of Vision that can be quite entertaining.
Alas though, if I ever learnt the Future or the Secret of the Universe from one of my Visions I’ve forgotten it now,
but if I remember I’ll let you know.
Anyhoo, this Vision is perhaps notable for it’s strange Ordinariness, being that it’s Content or if you will, Subject Matter, was but a slight jump sideways in Space & Time to present a Scene not that very much different from where I actually was & what I was actually doing. And yet.. there was a kind of strange Transformation that occured, so that the Real became somehow infused with the Magical, and vice versa, and in doing so revealed something of it’s true Nature.
Or so it seemed to me Then.
So. Let me place the Vision in it’s Context;
It was late in the evening and it had been a long day. Now, after coming home from work I’d eaten, taken a long shower, had a smoke and was now feeling warm & langorous as,I sat on the edge of my bed
wrapped in my comfiest dressing gown,
trying to decide if I was too tired
to read one of the many books
on & beneath the bedside table.
My eyes must have closed without me noticing (you’d be surprised how often that happens) for eventually it occurred to me that the Scene I was looking at had changed somewhat and I was not where I had been.
This was followed by the realisation
that my eyes were actually closed.
“Oh ho! We’re doing that are we!?” I thought, and metaphorically speaking, sat back to enjoy the Show.
I was in fact still sitting in this Vision (mostly I’m a Disembodied Presence in these things, a non-participant) the same way that I had been perched on the edge of my bed, legs slightly apart, arms resting lightly on my knees as I studied the pile of books at my feet but now I’m in a greenhouse or perhaps on a verandha, plants all around instead of books. An afternoon Sun has replaced the desk lamp, and a cloud of golden dust motes are dancing before me, illuminated by a beam of brilliant sunlight.
It is a stunningly ordinary scene, almost banal, one you might see any day, but it was beautiful in it’s Simplicity and I felt at Peace. The graceful dance of the illuminated particles- mere dust, dirt, dross, the dull components of a Material World- became transformed in that moment to reveal them in their True Form.. as Energy itself!
All those Electrons & Photons
& Higgs-Bosun Particles,
All those Quarks with their Strangeness
& Charm
were there, dancing in the Clear Light
of the Sun’s perenial Nuclear explosions..
Yes, like a Silhouette reversed,
against the darker shadows of the verandha
those Particles danced & glowed, their true essence, the Quintessence, revealed.
I was entranced by the Spectacle, but more was in store, for, at some point or other
the Vision subtly shifted the Scenery again,
and though I was still sitting as before, now the golden motes of Dust had transformed into drops of water
showering down from somewhere beyond the edge of my Field of Vision (I didn’t care to turn my Vision head) Perhaps this spray came from a hose, or a sprinkler or even a passing sun-shower.
I don’t know, but like the dust motes,
the water droplets passing before me were also illuminated by the sun’s light, and shone like a sparkling curtain of diamond & crystal. And each drop contained
within it a Rainbow and a fishbowl simulcrum of the Outer World. Yes each droplet passing by was a Fishbowl World containing a minature Me in a minature Garden illuminated by a Minature Sun.
The shining, translucent Worlds passed by swiftly.
The Golden Particles danced in the Light
Earth & Air, Fire & Water,
all the Elemental manifestations of Energy
seemed contained within my Vision
as I sat drowsily on the edge of my bed.
***
***
The Reverend Hellfire is a practised performance Poet,
an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism,
and Vox/Wordperson for esteemed Alt/Pop Primitivists “The Tapeloops”.
Better Late than Never, Baby.
***
-28; The Oddly Shaped Girl & Others
•July 16, 2023 • Leave a CommentBeing brief extracts from “THE HUMAN AQUARIUM, an forthcoming Work by the Reverend Hellfire
THE ODDLY SHAPED GIRL
& OTHERS
*
The Oddly-shaped Girl was a Beautiful Creature,
but strangely assembled,
like some Cubist portrait /
conceived by Picasso that had inexplicably
sprung to Life/ She hung
dangling off her Boyfriend’s crooked arm like
a jangling collection of wire coat-hangers/
an impression accentuated by her earrings
(a cascading series of interlocking Triangles)
and the Sound
of her many Bracelets, clattering & tinkling
whenever She moved.
Her finely featured Face was
Attractive, but
had to be viewed in Installments/ all Angles & Planes,
the overlapping plates shifting
& sliding tectonically whenever She turned/
a kohl streaked eye
from an ancient Minoan fresco
peers out of the Assemblage./ her Lips, a ragged scrawl of Scarlet,
slipped me a smile that quickly slid away
like a skink slithering
into a crack in the wall.
The contours and curves
of her Anatomy curl imperceptibly towards
a Vanishing Point
as She walks away..
luring hypnotised men to their Doom..
*
*
Four Snapshots.
*
A raw-boned Redhead
all long shanks
& jawbone.
A cavernous Blond
thin-shouldered
and lank.
A Gothic Girl tattooed
& tank topped
gives me the Kohl Eye.
A Japanese Girl,
petite & lacquer perfect
as a Geisha Doll,
glides by
in invisible Kimono.
***
***The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet
and an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism
and lead vocalist/Word person for eclectic Alt/Primitive Musical Collective; “The Tapeloops”.
He’s down with the Kids.
***
Reverend Hellfire's Sunday Sermon 