Sly Uses

Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish.

July 9th • Nausicaa

The Twofold form Hermaphroditic: and the Double-sexed; The Female-male & the Male-female, self-dividing stood Before him in their beauty, & in cruelties of holiness! Shining in darkness, glorious upon the deeps of Entuthon. 8:47 pm

Scene [Tranquilla convent, in the back garden. The sisters are preparing to receive a novice for initiation into the order. St. Agatha and Sister Mary Peter wait with ten fingers locked for her to arrive. ]

St. Agatha: Sister Mary Peter, have you seen my breasts?

Sister Mary Peter: You left them in the rectory Reverend Mother, shall I retrieve them for you?

St. Agatha: No, no. No. Nuisance they are anyway, really, although I do feel like I lose a charm every time I take them off. Still, we have a new novice coming and it would be a waste of this whitewashed face and cool coif not to long to appear, well, complete.

Sister Mary Peter: It is a natural craving, Reverend Mother, but you’re looking splendid. Dressed up to the nines.

St. Agatha. Never mind, no time. I can see her coming with my dexter optic! O look who it is for the love of God! I thought they were dumping Martha on us and instead it’s Lizzie Twigg! How are you at all? What have you been doing with yourself? [kiss] and delighted to [kiss] see you!

Lizzie Twigg: Hello Agatha. I would have been here sooner but there was all that barbed wire.

St. Agatha: We do like to cloister ourselves here! But never mind never mind. No hurry, my dear sister soul. I’m just so happy you’re not Martha! So vindictive for what she can’t get. Oh my child! So, here you are, giving up your desire to aid gentlemen in literary work.

Lizzie Twigg: Yes, I’m done with men. I loved an Aeon and that ended badly. Felt like I was drowning half the time. Now I want to dedicate myself to somebody more, I don’t know, along the straight and narrow. Linear minded. Gets us from then to when.

St. Agatha: Well as a fellow bride of Christ you will have that, even the calendar starts with him, to some end point. So, let’s have a look at you. Nice well-filled hose, though they are a bit down around the ankle.

Sister Mary Peter: Voice like a pick axe, no good for the choir. Are you lame?

Lizzie Twigg: No. My boots are a bit tight though.

St. Agatha: You might have a high arched instep.

Lizzie Twigg: Um. I have a question. I’ve heard things about the sisters here. That some of you get a bit, well, odd. I’ve heard about some sisters licking pennies all the time, and wanting to smell rock oil, and all kinds of. Is this, is this true?

St. Agatha: It’s only the virgins who go mad in the end. I take it you’re?

Lizzie Twigg: Not. No.

St. Agatha. I thought not. You have that I’m all clean come dirty me look. Now, when was the start of your last menstrual period? Must have been within the past couple of days.

Lizzie Twigg: Today. And it’s awful. Feels a ton weight. How did you know?

St Agatha: The plants are withering. And the fiddle strings have all snapped.

Sister Mary Peter: The milk is turning too.

St. Agatha: Sister Mary Peter, go get St. Patricia, she can coagulate Miss Twigg’s blood. Now Miss Twigg, we’ll stop your menstruation for now, but you’ll have to get into step with the rest of us. We all bleed together according to the moon.

Lizzie Twigg: I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude or question is it all a fake or anything but, none of you look like, well, like the menstruating type. No offense. How many women?

St. Agatha: Listen sister, we feel it ourselves too, ok, all of us together. We can be a pack of devils when it’s coming on, I can tell you, especially Sister Mary Peter!

Lizzie Twigg: She’s a hot little devil all the same. We were girlfriends at school you know.

St. Agatha: Oh were you? And how do you find her now?

Lizzie Twigg: Well back then she was yours for the asking! And not to pick holes in her appearance or anything, but she does have fewer teeth than before.

St. Agatha: Never you mind that now. We all have bodies, we all have curves inside our deshabillé, but if you are to undertake a novitiate with us you’ll find within our walls sanctity and corporeality intermingle. Bring your agenbite of inwit, but don’t forget your frillies for Raoul, honey, He likes them both. Now come with me child, that’s a lovely shirt shining beneath your what? But we must get on with dressing each other for the sacrifice.

What the Great Saint Bernard Said

June 29th • Nausicaa

Filled, therefore, with confidence in thy goodness, I fly to thee, O Mother, Virgin of Virgins: to thee I come, before thee I fly a sorrowful sinner. 8:29 pm

[Scene: The Star and Garter Ballroom, Empyrean Building, Holy Mother Public Relations. Mary is irritated, a little drunk, and bathed gloriously in a radiant cloud of flies. Martha stands defeated with a fly swatter and a can of bug spray. Miss Bee Honeysuckle nervously buzzes just out of Martha’s reach.]

Mary: Where the hell is he?

Miss Bee Honeysuckle: He’s be here soon your virgin worshipfulness, we left at the same time but he had to go back to, well, to compose himself a little.

Mary: Martha get him on the damn phone. Compose himself? I’ll decompose him myself if he doesn’t show up now.

Miss Bee Honeysuckle: You know how he is, your heavenly motheringness, he doesn’t like crowds.

Mary: What crowds? There’s no crowds. Show me crowds! Who will come here with all these damn flies. Martha!

Martha: I can’t swat them all, Mary, there must be millions of them. Oh Christ! There’s one on your eye.

[Jesus appears as if from nowhere while Martha swats Mary in the face]

Mary: Jesus Fucking Christ when will you stop appearing as if from nowhere!

Jesus: Hey mom, sorry. Another fly plague? And who’s that hiding under that table?

Miss Bee Honeysuckle: [Bright with hope] Oh thank Jesus, you’re here!

Jesus: No problem.

Mary: Where? Bernard, get out from under there you agoraphobic freak!

Miss Bee Honeysuckle: It’s social anxiety disorder, he can’t help it. But he’s a brilliant exterminator.

Bernard: Bee? is it safe?

Martha: Bernard get your ass out from under that table and get to work! None of us can do anything until these flies are cleared out.

Miss Bee Honeysuckle: [Keeping a nervous distance from Martha] It’s safe enough.

[St Bernard crawls crablike from under the closest table to the door and on sight of Mary vomits on the floor.]

Mary: Great. Now we need carpet cleaners too. Martha?

Martha: [With a careworn heart, a toiler for her daily bread] I’m on it.

Bernard: Sorry about that. Weak stomach. I’ll need incense. Lots of it.

Mary: Jesus?

Jesus: I only do food, mom. Wine, fish, bread.

Martha: Jesus you useless dumbass.

Jesus: Hey Martha, how’s your sister?

Martha: She’s out back sucking balls.

Jesus: Where? Out back? Mom, I’ll go look for incense. Be back in a while. Soon. Be back soon.

Mary: Oh here. [Mary claps twice. Incense smoke wafts from all directions. The flies multiply]

Bernard: [With a compelling voice and look] Flies, if ye will not hear the church let thee be to thee as the heathen and publican. Whatsoever you shall bind upon heaven, shall be bound also in the Emperian building; and whatsoever you shall loose upon heaven, shall be loosed also in the Emperian building. Flies, hear me now. You shall be excommunicated at once statim, ipso facto. Res sacræ, ritus, communio, crypta, potestas, prædia sacra, forum, civilia jura vetantur.

[The flies drop instantly to the floor, dead. At least three inches deep of the bloody things.]

Miss Bee Honeysuckle [eyes wet with contrition]: Oh St. Bernard, you honey sweet teacher!

Mary: Thanks, Bernard. Martha, get a shovel.

Bernard: No, No, Miss Honeysuckle will do clean up. No extra charge.

Beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline,

June 14th • Cyclops

We accept reality so readily -- perhaps because we sense that nothing is real. I asked Argos how much of the Odyssey he knew. He found using Greek difficult; I had to repeat the question. Very little, he replied. Less than the meagerest rhapsode. It has been eleven hundred years since last I wrote it. 5:54 pm

[Scene: The Star and Garter Ballroom, Empyrean Building, Holy Mother Public Relations. The party planning committee including Saints Martha, Agatha, Patricia, Augustine, Genevieve, Wenburgh, Cecilia, and the Holy Mother herself, Blessed Virgin, Queen of the Heavens, CEO Holy Mother Public Relations, etc. are preparing for the imminent arrival of what will be possibly most likely perhaps God willing a new saint: Saint (maybe) Ahasuerus.]

Mary [Frazzled] Jesus H Christ, where are Anne and Margaret? They were supposed to be here a half hour ago with the welcome banners!

Jesus [Appearing suddenly as if from nowhere]: Mom?

Mary: Holy Christ you scared the bejesus out of me! What did I tell you about popping in unannounced like that? I completely forgot what I was doing! What do you want?

Jesus: Sorry Mom, I thought I heard you calling me.

Mary: Well, you didn’t. Go back to your father, it’s his week to have you. Oh, but first, I need you to make some wine. God I need a drink. I tried to get some beer out of Amand, but it’s too late in the day to catch him sober. Best I can hope is he doesn’t vomit on the guest of honor.

Jesus: Who is it this time?

Mary: Ahasuerus.

Jesus: That guy? I thought he was supposed to wander the earth until I returned.

Mary: Well, there’s a chance he’s coming today, dead or not, unless it’s some sort of mistake. He’s got some tunnel visioned meat head after him who’s getting ready to crack his head open with a biscuit tin, but that’s if he has the depth perception for it. Personally I don’t want him here, I could do without yet another one of these enormous parties. I’ve got Agatha and Patricia fighting over command of the kitchen and that sour bitch Martha complaining about both of them. Look, here she comes.

Jesus: Speak of the devil.

Martha: Hey Jesus. Mary, I could really use some help in there. Why am I always the one stuck in the kitchen doing everything? Patricia is beyond useless and I’d give my left breast to get Agatha to shut up about the Glencree dinner already.

Mary: What are Margaret and Anne doing? Aren’t they in there with you?

Martha: Mina Purefoy went into labor and called on both of them. They’ll be with her for days.

Mary: Both? Well get Aquinas then, where the hell is he?

Martha: That fat ass? He’s in the kitchen, but he’s eating everything in sight: loaves, hogs, stags’ horns, hawks, eyes on a dish, unicorns. I have Wenburgh in there resurrecting what she can, but I still have to cook it all over again. And how do you resurrect a seed cake?

Jesus: Yeah, that’s not easy.

Mary: Well, Genevieve is working on the look of the room, I’ve got Fiacre on flowers and Cecilia is handling music. You can have Amand, but he’s shitfaced drunk.

Martha: Yeah, great. Thanks. Might as well give me a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs for all the good he’ll do me.

Jesus: Maybe we can delay Ahasaures’ arrival somehow? You don’t want him here anyway, do you Mom?

Mary: Oh Christ no.

Martha: Really? Oh that would be great. I hear he’s bad news anyway. Uses his wife to help him cheat at cards. Son of a grifter too, who defrauded a bunch of people with unsecured loans before he killed himself.

Fiacre: [Carrying an enormous bunch of aconite] Oooh, who are we talking about, Ahasuerus? I heard that he won buckets of money on a horse race, and then refused to buy a round at the bar. What a cheap ass. Cute as a shit house rat too.

Mary: All right, think. What do we do to buy some time?

Jesus: Who’s the one going to throw the biscuit tin? We can mess with his aim.

Martha: Good idea. Maybe we can blind him?

Mary: Well I can’t spare Genevieve, she’s up to her tits in work getting this place decorated.

Jesus: What about Nicholas and Anthony? Nick can steal his glasses and Anthony can hide them.

Mary: That might do it. Jesus, you find them and get them on it asap. Martha, get your ass back into the kitchen. I’ll see if your sister can help.

Martha: Fat chance.

Jesus: No. She doesn’t need to be here.

Martha: See.

Mary: And Jesus, get back to your father after you find Tony and Nick. I can’t have him bitching to the lawyers again about me violating his visitation rights. Costs me a fortune every time.

Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast.

June 11th • Cyclops

I thought that I saw the most wonderous tree extending into the air, enveloped in light. All that beacon was covered with gold.

Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does.

June 1st • Cyclops

Then they all got blind dhrunk - which complated their bliss, And we keep up the practice from that day to this. Seventeen o’clock

On the first day of June it was some people say,

That old Bloom got a check for some work it was pay.

He bought for dear Molly garters violet and fair

But that fat heap he married hrumphed “why just one pair?!”

Well now Bloom he does try, and mistakes will be made,

But do we blame poor old Poldy for plans poorly laid?

My dear Mrs. Marion, ’tis only too true

Your man is in peril, mocked, scorned, and he’s blue!

You don’t grasp my point, what I’m meaning is thus:

While Molly’s post-coital, Bloom’s making a fuss.

He’s stirring up trouble, poking giants in eyes

Will it end well for Poldy? There’ll be no surprise.

While he longs for his Molly (though soon visits another)

Foes want to harm him, beat, hang, maim, and smother!

They’ll string him from tree limbs! They’ll maul him I swear!

They’ll brain him with biscuit tins flying through air!

Now please don’t be fightin’ for this or for thine,

Don’t be so dividin’, come on let’s combine!

Molly, he gave you lone garters ’tis true,

But he brought you face lotion and four handkerchiefs too

He’ll bring you more lotion if he remembers besides

But poor Poldy’s hit bottom and downward he slides.

Treat him gently, with kindness, bring him breakfast and treats.

And for Christ’s sake, Madam Molly, at least wash the sheets!

Never speaking

March 30th • Lestrygonians

1:50 pm

[Scene: Immortal lovely Venus, Juno, and Galatea, shapely goddesses with curves the world admires, stand naked together. All to see. They don’t care what man looks.]

Venus: Mortal!

Galatea: Quick, be statues.

Juno: Stop breathing Galatea. Why can’t you stop breathing?

Galatea: Hey, that’s not my fault. Blame Venus.

Venus: Mortal coming! Whisper!_{Try to look like the three graces.}

[A man and ready on his way to the yard pauses, drops something, bends down to look. See if she. He stands and before walking on he makes swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. Obviously in the craft.]

Venus: _{Is he gone?}

Juno: Yes. Why do they always look?

Galatea: Attention defecate disorder. They think we have no.

Venus: I’d like to surprise the next one. Give myself to him, a man with manly conscious. Lay with men lovers occasionally.

Juno: I’ll bet you would.

Galatea: I prefer mortals. But they do reek of food. And shit. Disgusting things they eat too, how did they ever think to eat things like snails, or oysters? Unsightly things like clots of phlegm. Stuff them in one hole and out the other behind. Like stoking an engine.

Venus: Oysters have an effect on the sexual.

Galatea: But how would they know that? The first one to say yum, that looks like I could eat it. Imagine! Disgusting.

St. Leger: Waugh! Waugh! Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!

Juno: What is he saying?

Galatea: I think he is calling us whores again. Shut up you two dimensional freak! I can’t stand the sight of him hanging there day after day. Eyes gouged out, no lips.

Venus: No tongue, lucky for us. Can you imagine having no tongue. How would you?

Juno: Stop. Please no vivid accounts Venus, you’ll get Leger even more agitated and then there will be no end to the howling.

Venus: He needs to get laid. And not by me.

Galatea: Me either.

Juno: Oh Gods no.

They like buttering themselves in and out.

March 19th • Lestrygonians

How chimant in effect! Alla tingaling pealabells! So a many of churches one cannot pray own's prayers. 'Tis holyyear's day! Juin jully we may! Agithetta and Tranquilla shall demure umclaused but Marlborough-the-Less, Greatchrist and Holy Protector shall have open virgilances. 1:13 pm

[Scene: The kitchen of Tranquilla convent, well appointed with red Dockrell’s wallpaper and decorated with daguerreotypes from the studio of Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. The room smells of American elderflower soap and of winds that blow from the south.]

Saint Patricia: Great Christ and Holy Protector we are running out of everything! And even more curious, table twelve has used up their pillar of salt, do we have another? Oh! Oh! Oh dear God you are bleeding! What is that on your plate, bread loaves, bells?

Saint Agatha: Don’t touch me! I want to coagulate and your touch will just liquify everything. It’s my breasts, I think we should fry them in butter.

Saint Patricia: We fry everything in butter.

Saint Agatha: No lard for us! I’m hard pressed to think of anything else to give these albatrosses. We already ran out of the rabbit pie, the port soup, the lap of mutton with chutney sauce is gone, and that base barreltoned man Ben Dollard ate the barons of beef.

Saint Patricia: He drank all the Bass number one too.

Saint Agatha: What, two?

Saint Patricia: Too. We still have some of the mulled rum. This is a crowd to rival the Glencree dinner! Remember? For that one we had to bring out bread with drippings to satisfy them all.

[A priestylooking chap name of Pen something (Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen . . .?) opens the kitchen door and squints in with weak eyes.]

Saint Agatha: Where are they all coming from? Like flies to a picnic. Perhaps we should start the entertainment now, then serve the sticky stuff.

Saint Patricia: Good idea. Where is old Goodwin? Lucky we have him, I understand this will be his last performance.

Saint Agatha: They always are. Look behind you, we have lots of Plumtree’s in the cupboard, let’s send it out now. After that we won’t have much left to offer.

Saint Patricia: Not if that woman in the elephantgrey dress keeps sticking her fingers into every pie. She can be rude. Did you see her? And after the band plays, we have.

Saint Agatha: We have sugarloaves with caramel. Our staple food. And once that’s gone that’s it. We’ll have to barricade our doors with barbed wire.

Saint Patricia: Well, I am glad to communicate with the outside world, but today I have suffered!

Saint Agatha: I agree. Just think back to our morning devotions. Happy. Happier then. Here, let me straighten your brown scapular. There you go.

Saint Patricia: Thank you. I’d better get back out there. Some of them, Masons I think, are making noise about some lottery tickets. Some scandal or other. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night.

Saint Agatha: Yes. But it is all part of the stream of life, no?

Saint Patricia: Yes, the stream of life.

Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

March 12th • Aeolus

12:46 pm

[Scene: Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, two men gaze to the west and the southwest and reminisce.]

Manetho: This view transfigures the soul. Do you have a light?

Moses: Use the bush. Yes, soultransfiguring. I never lived there you know. I came this close.

Manetho: Frustrating.

Moses: Yup.

Manetho: [bends over the flames, his unglazed linen collar appears behind his bent head soiled by his withering hair. He rises and the men smoke together, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flower with their speech] Handy, that. Yes, so close. And for what dear Moses? Why did you Jews not accept our culture, our religion, our language. We were the greatest, the biggest, the baddest of them all. What were you? Not much. No wealth, no country, no nothing. Primitives. Babies. We had ages of history, polity, priesthoods, literature. It boggles, your choice, it boggles the mind.

Moses: I died here. No I didn’t enter the land I was promised. I died instead, a sudden-at-the-moment-though-from-lingering-illness-often-previously-expectorated-demise.

Manetho: And with a great future behind you. You must feel such regret. All this way, intoxicated by an obscure idol. And just one, imagine! We had Isis! We had Ammon Ra! Not to mention Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Seth, Nut, Thoth. I could go on. As above so below. How can you Jews create a civilization with just one deity? And we had more. We were strong with armies and with ships. We had trade. You were weak, plagued with daylabourers. The world trembled at our name; they heard your name and said who?

Moses: And then what? As much as you rose you were destroyed, over and again. You rose and you decayed. We could have stayed and bowed our will and our spirit, and we could have prayed to your armies and deities. Yes we might have stayed by the fleshpots tasting the salt bread. And then? And then?

Manetho: [belches] Then assimilation into Egyptian life. You realize that even those things which are subject to decay are good. Nothing can be corrupted if it were not in some way good. And yet that which is corrupt is still good, for if a thing were deprived of all good, it would not exist at all.

Moses: Ah, curse you! That’s Saint Augustine. And he is talking about the creations of the obscure idol we chose instead of your life, your will. And that God of obscurity, that soultransfiguring God led us in a pillar of smoke, like these we create together, but singular and beautiful, swirling and undulating shapeless shapes. We followed that pillar of cloud by day and left our house of bondage. I spoke with the ineffable. Have you any idea of that? The eternal spoke to me on mountaintops. On this one, here. This very place.

Manetho: You Jews became outlaws.

Moses: We were given the law, and we shine even now with the light of inspiration. Had we stayed we would have been enslaved. You did us evil, you Egyptians, and you tortured us, saddling us with punishing work. Our God, the Pure One who dwells on high, raised up a community, a people beyond counting. And let me ask you this, Manetho, whose name is more remembered: mine, or any in your lists of kings?

Manetho: Ok. Ok. Next year in Jerusalem.

Moses: You’d better believe it.

Manetho: I do take exception to your last point. What has ever been greater than Egyptian civilization or lasted so long? And what people today are so kind, so beautiful. But Moses, remember please, all things that rise must fall and then must rise and then must fall and then rise again and fall again. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today. We all have our day.

Moses: We all have our day.

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks

February 23rd • Proteus

11:50 am

Better get this job over quick. Side by side with the serpent plants and milkoozing fruits. Pain is far. And no more turn aside and brood. Brood on my boots. His boots. I am a Buck’s castoff. Brother soul, Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. His arm, Cranley’s arm. He will leave me. אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎. I will be what I will be. All or not at all. I shall wait. No. Chafing against the low rocks. Swirling. Passing. Listen: vehement breath. Wavespeech of waters. Seesoo, amid seasnakes. Hrss rearing horses. Rsseeiss rocks. Ooos. In cups of rocks it slops. Flop slop slap. Bounded in barrels. Slopped and churned. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

Whispering weeds: _{Shhh. Lift your skirts, we are flooded. Let fall. Ahhh we are weary. Lift. Shhh. Flooded. We await fullness. Day by day and night by night. Shhh. Pray to St Ambrose for us. He loves virgins. Shhh. He knows how to hide. Lift. Shhh. Let fall. He will hide us. Shhh. Gather up forthflowing. We are flooded. Shhh. Wending back. We are weary. Help us St. Ambrose. Shhh. Help us.}

Delectatio Morosa

February 20th • Proteus

I was a lamb among the holy flock that Dominic leads on the path where one may fatten well if one does not stray off. 11:40 am

No, not morose as in gloomy or sullen. Morose from moror, a delay in time. Not up on your Latin? Keep in mind that one of my usual attributes is that of angels beating people about the head with my books. Study up, you don’t want a particularly large copy of Summa Theologica crashing down on your skull. And those copies the angels use — they are illuminated! Heavy. So is pleasure subject to time? This is what I was getting at and the answer is yes and no. It is and it isn’t. You see? Because The Philosopher says delight is a kind of movement, and all movement is in time, pleasure is subject to time. But he also says that no one takes pleasure in time, so it is not subject to time. Both. How can this be you ask? Careful, the angels are hovering. I see a particularly weak armed one too struggling with an oversized edition of The Summa Contra Gentiles. Pleasure of itself is not in time, because it not a movement, but if this pleasure be subject to change, then it will be in time accidentally. So what delights you? That will be the thing to make the difference. If it is a good obtained, it will not be in time, but if there is movement of the imperfect in your pleasure, then, well, it is subject to time. And there we get into sin. The more morose, the more mortal the sin. Does that help? Do you need a good whack in the head with a book? Would you enjoy a whackin the head with a book? Careful with your answer, the angels are listening. Ay me. I’m hungry. You know, delectation denotes a movement of the appetitive power. Could use a little wine too. I am a touch purple now from wine, did you know that? They boiled me in it to render my fat from my bones. They had to, I was too corpulent to be moved, so they transformed me into a more portable form. I hope they drank some wine themselves, after the job they had trying to get me down the stairs and then the more difficult job of dislodging me from the staircase. Hard to accomplish that with proper dignity. Ultimately they broke open a window and dropped me down. Did no harm to my bones, my flesh was ample enough to break the fall. I wonder what they did with my rendered fat? Light a candle, will you, it’s dark in here.