Leftovers

Leftovers

Robert Hughes

Leftovers

A Compendium

of

Fiction, Poetry, Essays

by

Robert Hughes

published 2018

ISBN 978-1-9995208-1-6

Copyright © Robert Hughes 2018

Makete House Publishing

www.bodywisdom.press

pogonipmyn@outlook.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the Author.

CONTENTS

Fiction

-  from faces

-  from1/f² nɔiz

-  from Words *

-  from Satchel

Poetry *†

Pulp Fiction

-  from Sin

NonFiction *

-  from Revolt !

-  from Ydentityk Art

-  from The Theory of Being, from Subatomic Particles to God

Plays

-  from Composition 7 *

-  from TT

Lyrics

-  from 1/f² nɔiz

-  from Sin

-  from Satchel

Prosody

-  from TT

* previously unpublished

† The poem ‘Pogonotrophia’ has previously appeared in substantially altered form. Picassoes Commute was published 2014.

Introduction

Eighty percent of this anthology has not previously been published. I have included introductory notes before selections where warranted.

FICTION

I wrote faces in 2006. It was my first serious attempt at authorship. The writing of faces was difficult, painstaking, and prolonged. I originally conceived it as an amalgam of quotations and allusions, without any original words of my own: postmodern, if you like. I would be the arranger rather than the originator. That approach did not prove feasible; nevertheless, faces is replete with hundreds of examples of such literary thefts. The varorium edition of faces detailing these references remains unpublished until electronic conversion can produce footnotes (upon which I insist) as opposed to endnotes (which I abhor). It is not merely a matter of personal preference, however, for the so-called footnotes actually form an alter-text to the main text, such that an ongoing ‘discussion’ between the two texts runs throughout the manuscript. Between 2006 and 2012 I produced various alternate formats for faces, sometimes incorporating elements of the alter-text into the main text, at other times dropping the alter-text completely. For this extract, I have contented myself with supplying a minimal number of footnotes.

extract from faces, chapter Bearings

This is the story of the cat and the moose. One day, Moose stole through a covert of the wood. Cat jumped on Moose’s hump. Moose ran off into the bush. Ever since, Cat curls round asleep behind Moose’s ear.

No?

How else came cats and willows together? Moose live in alder. Everyone knows that alder and willow dip side-a-side. Thus,

No?

alders & willows, moose & cats.

(A help: surely it’s enough to mark the Old English welig for the Latin salix: why, "Oza" just leaps out! And ‘willow’, of course, is a cricket-bat. And if all that isn’t clear on its own, note the shapeshifting sea-god Glaucus, as in ‘Glaucous Willow’, whom everyone refers to as Pussy!)

We read (present tense) read: The identification of this species is complicated; and the tree of no economic importance".

Hmm. Hmm ... We remember, however, Surprise and subtle instruction come from the Useless. (thank Grrr-ry C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\scissors2.jpg C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\scissors2.jpg .)¹

THIRD:  SH LIED

Here the sum of the work of my lifetime, a journey won, a hard, and a long.

Here my life. And now ...

Affix the head. No use if it falls off!

Ficus

Picus

& Bacchus!

Who cried, Pan is dead? And why believe it? I’ve inside information to the contrary. Family secrets. Many many years past, once when I was tracking Moose in the pays d’en haut, miles & miles from where, all at once I noticed all the birds had stopped their songs. Yet in my pause ... I paused ― How to say? Neti! Neti! ― my marrow thrilled. Radii and ulnae hummed tuning-struck; my hot hands lost their clench. I stared and could not speak. But green was never so green, trees so trees, things so things. Alcheringa it seemed. I was in the syrinx. And to that song I bathed in Salmacis’ pool.

It’s marked me ever since.

Do you know the lady Cloacina?

Stercutus gets left out the oldest lists, but ’pon my word there’s the we are we are. There’s our archaearch. In the deepest dig, beneath the floods of 600,000,000 years of sand, where brood only Earth and Dark, and one would guess, Azoic, yet Eros curls in fossilized dung.

Shit’s the ultimate prize willed one generation to the next. Fecundity from feculence. Would lick out the serpent brain’s secrets? Be palaeoscatologist.

Stercutus’s the pons asinorum.

Yes, in these sixty revolutions of carbonated voitures, polyethylenes, frites de silicone, monoxide smogs, fibre optics, geosynchronous satellites, aerosols, megahurtz, conurbs, globose asphalt & rubber roar (I judge nothing; I accept all), it’s aleatorologist’s chance to stumble across a relic of Ancient Fame. La Cloche! In the dark, in the rain, in the foggy foggy dusk, between the ditch and the shithouse, in an out-of-the-way forgotten strand of discards and junk, a rock strikes a rock in the blackness, and a basaltic buoy bongs a note sostenuto clear as a March robin-in-woods. Sweet water flowed from Massah rock.

Behind the shacks, beyond the tracks, out-of-sight, now and then a quick across-a-road then back to nowhere-land, I’ve followed the voyageur paths. They’re still marked. I know. I marked them. (Wait a second while I get the pillar right.) Waves yet rise up from down below the vast sweet sea, all grey and dark, and surge groaning over Pointe Grondine, the moaning afternoons. I ran the gauntlet of the Petite Faucille inside the white-slashed mouth, and coursed the Rivière Creuse. There’s a swallow for you. Allumette, Calumet, Portage des Chats. Just now descended from Manitonga Soutana, the growling depths, plopped out beside Lac des Deux Mounds.

HOME:  SH BARGAINED

Are we tied?²

Everything oozes, but I get used to the muck as I go along. And you? How see you this world?

I see it feelingly. Feel, feel, feel! To think’s audacity.³

One could drink coniine with the ancient philosopher. There’s no knowing. Change places and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?⁴

It’s a fifty-fifty chance.

There’s a story that through drunken Picus, Stercutus’ offsprung, was revealed how to avert lightning. Thus the origin of that ancient invocation, these days declined into an epithet, By wine and pecker!

I’ve only my own picaresque, and a recipe of a garlic head, human hair, and a fish’s breath.⁵

Take your pick!

Conceive? Conceive me subversive. This the sole warning:

My escutcheon emblazoned tumatl rampant upon a field of rha-barbarum, hedged left by anana spears entwined in batata vine, right by gnarled nimbuka thorned with apple spines, all surmounted by mura sapientum pendulous from an entangled arch of syrah.

So.

We’ll address Ste. Anne before we sing nunc dimittis. My nature’s to propitiate all sides. It’s good insurance.

––––––––

Put it together: Shs first act was to wonderfully praise shself to a turtle-lyre tune; shs second to steal most cunningly; shs third to lie charmingly to Beauty & Rule ― What do you mean by the word ‘cow’? Google Googleoo. ― shs fourth (O here shs genius; and Old Prom’s mistake) to bargain and beguile for shs freedom (Yet Prometheios is the greater hero. The Endurer be praised!) Sh managed what even Heracles failed, and tricked favour from shs stepmother.⁶

You owe my master a hundred measures of oil?

Sit, take your bill and write fifty.

So.⁷

Is that GeeGee’s almost blunted tooth, Old Mole? I glimpse some Monticule Royal rising in the East, alone. Who cried Caca’s dead?

Psychopompos guide me. Here’s the pillar; this stick’s the phallus; and I heap up the stones. And go.

1. Gary Snyder

2. Beckett Waiting for Godot

3. Melville Moby Dick

4. Shakespeare King Lear

5. Norse myth

6. myth of Hermes ; Joyce Portait of the Artist

7. New Testament

*    *    *    *    *    *

1/f² noiz was my second serious attempt at writing, in 2014, eight years after having written faces. While its composition was quick compared to faces, its formatting has remained thorny. No electronic conversion process has yet been able to handle its complexities. Its paper-form is therefore closest to the original. Does the form matter? Yes, because the structure imitates the simultaneity of events as they occur in real-life. We cannot attend to all the various events happening about us at any one moment, and 1/f² noiz in its structure replicates that condition. The more conventional the formatting has had to become in order to facilitate its electronic conversion, the less its impact upon our neuronal apprehension of it.

The term 1/f² noiz refers to Brownian motion, that is, random molecular motions of matter. The book is utterly inconsistent in form, and for the most part simply presents various bits of information juxtaposed together rather than providing the context of a continuous prose. The entire collection ends as abruptly as it starts. The effort is to not include any climax or denouement, or in fact any plot structure at all. The effort is only remotely successful. My main criticism of the piece is that it remains too narrative-based.

From the above, it should be clear that the following excerpt can stand on its own. Its ending, "regulate what’s said and talked but can’t touch doings indicates the aforementioned effort to avoid explanations. It also foreshadows my 2018 theory of Ydentitysm (included in this anthology) which claims our nature to be one of instantaneous action rather than one of considered communication, the latter being the conventional perspective of ourselves. Decision is immediate-electric (immediate = un-mediated); decision is not debate / consider / arrive at a conclusion. By decision" is intended action. Action indicates any thought or any muscular motion.

The λ (lambda) symbolizes gay.

Diomed is the most dominant Greek warrior in The Iliad. With Odysseus he sneaks into the city of Troy and steals the cultic image (god) upon which the city is founded, the population’s belief centres, the Trojan fortitude to fight depends, and the battle hangs.

––––––––

excerpt 1st from 1/f² nɔiz

This z the story of Crazy Toms who like Diomed was also ♀♂λ or any combination thereof or singly ♀...♂... λ and lived 3,000 solar-orbits after Diomed on a different continent. Crazy Toms is Smot EEzark backwards and doesn’t care or not-care the organic-energy-matter duzn’t seeze it. λ has colour: rode painted horses with manes a-wild was always prepared 24 / 7, slept in ♂ metaphorical armour, dauntless and imitated every bird-call – but colour doesn’t care or not care to Smot EEzark and really, z irrelevant so... They burned Crazy Toms’ village and shot ♂λs’ horses and made nasty but never noticed Crazy Toms never defended ♀♂s’ stuff. While they pillaged-ravished-slew, Crazy Toms travelled east across plains, over rivers, updown mountains, and there ♀♂λ  z at their cities. Crazy Toms’ turn. They are far away wrecking what they think is Crazy Toms’ world while ♀ is here wrecking their real world. Crazy Toms slept in the hills in ♂ metaphorical armour and otherwise raided their markets, burned their government, slew their courts, wow. So they, surprised, had to come all the way back over plains & rivers yada yada to get Crazy Toms but something got left out ... Crazy Toms’ e m o through a random genetic mutation due to random quantum particle impacts had coloured ♀s’ epidermis ultraviolet which is outside the wavelength pattern that human eyes see. Insects saw a fantastically coloured pattern when they looked at Crazy Toms but and this z where colour z relevant humans couldn’t see anything at all. They caught λ♀ eventually though, they thought, and stripped λ♀ naked which suited Crazy Toms who was a nudist and λ♀ wouldn’t put any clothes on after that even though they insisted. They raped ♂♀ and ♂♀ raped them back so that didn’t work out. They waterboarded λ♀ but it only lasted 20 seconds because λ♀ quite happily drank the water being thirsty and then drowned so contentedly that they had so much trouble reviving λ♀ that they decided not to waterboard It anymore. Then they imprisoned ♀♂λ but so quick Crazy Toms had all the prisoners doing doing that they had to put ♀♂λ into solitary confinement which really suited Crazy Toms so well being an introvert that it irritated the authorities that they irritating Crazy Toms uh-uh and then after awhile ♀♂ escaped but didn’t go back to the plains and hills becuz they had bulldozed all the land and paved it flat but colour was always irrelevant to Crazy Toms who it is said lives to this day in the skyscrapers. You’ll know if you see a condo or apartment with the front door gone – Crazy Toms always removes the front door off its hinges, and It never wears clothes which you’ll know if you see in ultraviolet, and Crazy Toms is always doing doing which wrecks the government upsets markets and disrupts courts which regulate what’s said and talked but can’t touch doings doings what so what far

mm-hmm

*    *    *    *    *    *

excerpt 2nd from 1/f² nɔiz

And now a Break for a Love Story

Romance No 1

An It once loved an It – or perhaps (muses It now in retrospect) perhaps It but believed It loved,

[♪♪♪ piano Larghissimo ≡ so Satie pensive ♪♪♪]

(pause)

[cue sigh]

oh-h-h!

[~ softly forth some limbic-lobe secretions]

oh! not now not then or now It didn’t really know what It felt or thought! – but then another It appeared and FEEL felt – oh so FELT It very VERY they two Its

[Allegro in the strings – piano arpeggios ♫]

FELT the FEELINGS felt!!

but the It who once was loved – or perhaps maybe never was loved at all – then felt It bereft so VERY very It would kill the It or Other or Itself ... and all that had been dreamed and yearned was naught so felt It and It and all three FELT Affettuoso

[sweeping chords crescendo rising pitch]

but it could not be (the contraction couldn’t could not express how NOT not wasn’t) it could not be C:\Users\Robert\Pictures\pop.jpg

It fizzled. It was but memory ...

[Larghissimo ♪♪♪♫ piano so Satie ♪♪♪]

And the FEELINGS feel even stronger feeling FEELINGS feel their feeling. Oh you-who-don’t-feel (feel FEELINGS) don’t [strike that] do not KNOW, FEEL, LIVE, YEARN, MOURN yada yada.

[blaring notes crescendo in the brass]

[vivid colors diagonally slash canvas]

G-bssh! Out of gas

*    *    *    *    *    *

extract from Words

Fellow-Travellers

I didn’t know what I was doing; I still don’t know what I’m doing, but now I know what I didn’t know, which was what I did. Don’t I know what I’m saying? asks Kim.

(Ha!)

Wait! Let me think, says Kim.

My name is Jamie. (psst! Jamie prefers Jamey but not enough to be consistent. (Why mm I whispering?)) I’m inconsistent. Inconsistently. Sometimes.

I’ve got it, Kim recovers. You don’t know what you were doing. I did know, but Jamie’s forgotten.

Do you like popping? I do, Jamey says to the air on the subway. pop pop Jamie smacks lips apart surdly.

Surdly is not a word, says Kim. You’ve never met Jamey but Kim and Jamie happen to be sitting next each other, and for some reason you say, Surdly is not a word, even though there’s a fair chance that Jamey’s half-loon when chə speaks aloud to no one on a subway-train.

But, you add, Jamey didn’t say « surdly » out loud, so how did Kim hear it? Then Kim goes, pop pop

that is, YOU : go pop pop

Surd is a word, replies Jamey, and then goes, "f – t – sss" out loud. I’m not telling anybody that f is not eff and t is not tee, because I, Just add -ly to adverb it.

Kim goes "f – t – sss pop pop"

It’s raining, says Chris, Kris, or Kit sitting across from us.

We’re in the subway, you whisper to me, not to offend Kris.

We’re in the subway, I say aloud to Kris because I don’t know what I’m doing.

It – is – rai – ning, Kris repeats, and adds surdly.

Yes, agrees Jamey. I can’t hear it. Can you not hear it?

Kim says, That explains what I stand on. ə sounds like the short i in yet: y-e-t. So ch’, chə, or che are degendered. Kim adds, "Kim’s gotcha now." (The a in gotcha is ə.)

pop pop p-pop goes Kit.

Sss goes the subway-train

Have you ever?

Uh-huh, says

But WHY (sorry that’s between "_"s) "... WHY write ess-ee-en-tee-ee-en-see-ee-ess when no one?"

Yes Kim doesn’t, Kim shakes chə head. What?

Which is why chə che cha ch’ is both possessive and Kris does say

I say, You’re reading my thoug

You don’t know what you’re doing! exclaims Kit.

ch ch ch ch you go rapidly

I say, I’m saying, I do say. You do, you are doing, you do do.

Nice to meet Chris does say.

k – t – sss goes the subway-train

Chris doesn’t know either?! Jamey half-asks half

Jamey does clarify here what precisely Chris does not know:

I know, interrupts Kim (note: this is you interrupting). You = reader. The reader is Kim. Do you know that you are the reader? You interrupt me saying, "Jamey is the omniscient narrator. Chris can’t know until Jamey does Chris."

"I, says Jamey in boldface signifying indignation, I am an omnignorant narrator." (the extra I is a literary thing. I didn’t actually say I twice. Now I’m feeling guilty for being a trickster, a liar, a deceiver, a ... No, I am ceasing feeling such because I am just realizing that I did say I twice, only I was not realizing when I was saying that I didn’t actually say I twice that I had said I twice.)

Let’s dispense with the continuous, Kim does say because Kim knows what I do do.

You too!! do exclaim Jamey and Kit simultaneously, spontaneously, in voiced sounds, which without the t sound like:

‘Yəoo ooo’

They are not primates squatting on their haunches on subway-benches ejaculating, Yəoo ooo.

Does that clear what you stand on?

ch ch ch pop pop sss the subway-train does go

When you say go you do mean stop, you remark as we sit unmoving in College Street Station.

Logically, go and not-go must be the same, Drew does say. Drew does sit to our right which is left to Kris across from us.

Pee ar sizely! Kris punctuates it.

Do you know what I’m thinking? you ask me.

"You’re you, Kim, and I’m me, Jamey, and I don’t know what I do do," I reply.

Do I know what you’re thinking? you rephrase it.

You don’t know what you do think.

Ah, says Kim. That explains what Kim stands on.

Unclear antecedents, says Kit.

What? ask Jamey and Kim.

It, says Kit.

f – t – k – pop – ch – tssss is the subway-train do do

"It it IT!! affirms Drew. Of course, I’m a philosopher."

I’m a naturalist, says Kris.

What gender is Kim? asks Kim.

That’s for you to think, says Jamey.

I don’t know what I think, says Kim.

I don’t know what I do, says Jamey.

THAT is progress, says Drew sincerely.

It does rain, says Kris the naturalist. "What else does it do?"

I talk out loud on the subway because I don’t know what I do do, and sometimes others who are not primates not sitting on their haunches answer me.

Why, poses Drew to Jamey, does Jamey get off at King Street Station to go work in an office?

I don’t know, I say. pensive (« pensive » is an expressive direction for you, Kim, to imagine)

Suppose, Drew supposes, that working in an office results in Jamey receiving money. Now, why does Jamey go work in an office?

I don’t know, says Jamey. agony

Suppose Jamey gives money to smone as rent for an apartment, says Drew.

I say, I don’t know. agony in extremis

Drew continues proposing suppositions. "Suppose Jamey grows no fur, feathers, or blubber, and so gets cold in the

It’s raining, says Kris.

I know. I don’t hear rain, says Kim.

and the apartment keeps Jamey warm. Why does Jamey get off the subway at King Street Station and go to an office to work?

Jamey answers, I don’t know. bored

Suppose, Drew persists, if Jamey gets cold to X degree Jamey enters hypothermia which could lead to digit amputation, delirium, and death. Why does Jamey go to work in an office?

I don’t know. inquiring

"Suppose

At this point in this narrative, Jamey does lose interest in inventing adverbial directions for expression and does decide to list some here all at once so that Kim can fill them in A piacere i.e. « as Kim pleases ». (You’re Kim.) delighted, appalled, indifferent, awed, distracted, curious, confused, belligerent, philosophic, commanding, terrified, depressed

"that Jamey has a feeling when the thought of Jamey’s digit amputation, delirium, and death occurs to Jamey. Why does Jamey go to an office near King Street Station to work?"

I don’t know, Jamey answers blank

"Suppose that Jamey pays attention to whatever feeling

Jamey is asking Kim whether Kim is filling in the blank for adverbial expression direction from the list that Jamey has provided.

You say, Those are adjectives not adverbs.

"that Jamey feels when

Just add -ly to adverb them OR consider them copular, Jamey suggests.

"the thought of – exactly!!!" Drew exclaims blank

Of course, says Kris blank

What? asks Kim blank

Oh! Jamey ejaculates blank Like why write sentences when no one?

Pee ar sizely! Kris punctuates it blank

I’ve lost interest in selected adverbial expressions for direction, you complain. blank "And

You mean directions for expression, Kris corrects.

I don’t want the name Kim.

For 140$ you can legally change your name to whatever name you want, I tell Kim. pop pop

f – t – sss ch ch

the subway-train stops at Dundas Street Station

I don’t know what I’m doing but I know now what I have been doing which was writing science fiction: strangers sitting in Toronto Transit Commission subway-trains don’t talk to each other!!

cliffhanger: tune in again to discover why Drew exclaimed "exactly!!" and to find the answer to Kim’s question What ?

––––––––

intermissio

during which Drew invites me to debark

at Dundas Street Station instead of King Street Station

which I do I don’t know why.

We all four proceed to the surface

where we feel rain falling.

––––––––

Narrative

Aboard the Earth spacecraft Eroico there rampages a probiotic non-terrestrial microbial entity killing the crew one-by-one. Three out of seven have already died, leaving x number alive (the malfunctioning computer can’t calculate the number).

I told you we shouldn’t have departed the plane of the ecliptic into this blank spatial sector 0.000000006 parsecs from Earth, you exclaim. "Now an unknown black-matter probiotic microbe has morphed into a 408 kilo jellyfish – a slime-dribbling 408 kilo jellyfish – leaving only x number of us alive. And, you add, I don’t want the name Kim!"

DON’T PANIC!!! I screamblank. Did you pay the 140$ ?

Meanwhile, Lexa Salacia, the Eroico’s beautiful spacecraft engineer, has been frenziedly calculating with pencil and paper. Now cha sits back from the effort, tearing abstractedly at chə long grizzled beard, then running a hand over che freckled bald pate. – Chə, che, ch’, cha are degendered pronouns. –  I figure, says Lexa Salacia, for the sake of British researchers who might peruse these records in the future, that 408 kilos are 64 stone.

We can smudge the fucker out! says Blotusblank while applying rouge and mascara to the exfoliated dermis of cha face. Smear the turd up its gangrenous inguinal till green-black pus secretes out its raped earholes!

We might dissolve it in an oxygenized solution of gas, muses Cornchops, hiccoughing nervously.

Let’s lasso, saddle, and ride it! enthuses Gregorovitchskaya von Bartholomé de Muesli.

"NO MATTER WHAT WE CAN’T LET IT GET TO EARTH. HUMAN KIND WILL BE ERADICATED. WE MUST STOP IT HERE OR DIE. EITHER WE KILL IT OR WE BLAST BOTH OURSELVES AND IT OFF INTO DEEP SPACE!" Commander Kolon shrieked placidly.

We can’t act as long as we have mixed verb tenses, observes the Editor.

I told you I’m inconsistent, Jamey defends chself. Sometimes. And by the way, my real name is Brom with an H.

How many of the crew are still alive? asks Cornchops.

And an S, adds Jamey.

7 minus 3. The computer can’t calculate it, answers Kolon. It’s wrecked.

Bromsh? Kim queries.

Sure, replies Bsromh.

"It, it, IT!!" says Drewblank.

"Drew is not aboard the Eroico," the Editor reminds Jamey. I mean,