Songs for the Devil and Death

by Hal Duncan

  It was as if each pause was there to lend

  each snatch of symbolled prose – a pause – such weight.

  I prayed to God – a pause – that it would end

  with every pause he held, our breath to bate.

  I’d flay the fool, write sonnets in his blood,

  recite them as I drag his corpse through mud.

  The Fiddler and the Dogs

  I

  The man came from his caravan,

  in barking of dogs. The strangers stood.

  They said, we have to move you on

  from what has been and what has gone.

  The man replied, there’s nothing gone

  but what you’ll lose not moving on.

  They summoned writ: but move you will.

  We’ve bricked a scheme for you, a dream

  of things made new by tick of tock.

  We are the shepherds of the flock.

  II

  A click. Twitch cord to calm a light

  caught in the flicker of its fault,

  to fix the sink, the bath, this vault,

  in limpid power-saving white.

  Here in my toilet, half past three,

  the plug-hole’s clogged with matted hair;

  the rippled mirror warps my stare,

  the funhouse magic of the fair

  for free; and on the other side,

  a dog barks to a fiddler’s stride.

  III

  These lives of genre to the core,

  content to do what has been done,

  they said, it’s all been done before.

  We know some like that kind of thing,

  but we’ve no interest in what’s done.

  What’s done is done, so you must bring

  a clockwork head to shock a king,

  and in a terraced house of chintz

  you’ll work new marvels we decree,

  but leave the fiddle and the dogs.

  IV

  The caravan and carousel,

  mechanics of escape, will rust

  in brambles, while robotic bust

  drones on its fortune telling spell,

  in whirr of futures, stratagems

  of chess, computing rook and pawn;

  or gossip news in gloam of morn,

  on breakfast show of golden dawn.

  A thousand novelties you’ll shape;

  no painted ponies, now you’ll make

  gadgets to rouse a kingdom’s mob

  to work. This is a worthy job.

  V

  I have no words but his, no say,

  this mirrored rake another’s mask;

  but in his tousling love I bask,

  red neckerchief around my throat,

  and sniff the weird upon his coat.

  He sips a draft from pewter flask,

  his action answer to the task,

  as mine is but a show of teeth,

  a sullen growl. It is his choice;

  I only bark to fiddler’s voice.

  VI

  So you’ve no interest in what’s done?

  No sonnet’s iron taste in blood?

  Are you so bored of ballades and

  so restive roundels shout no sun

  for you, hacked off with haiku,

  scathing scorn for all sestinas too?

  Your jaded air won’t wind the springs,

  but bring my dogs to mark your door

  and bark as dogs have done before –

  but you’ve no interest in such things.

  VII

  I move as you stand still and mouth

  your rote refrain of moving on.

  The house half-built’s already gone,

  the stripling of your studies dead,

  so burn the corpse, the rotting head

  on kitchen table of Scrabble games.

  Set your slow flesh on fire and you

  may scry wild history in the flames.

  And as you burn your lives, your names,

  I’ll fiddle the deep song in blue.

  VIII

  The song is deep, the song is blue

  and never owned by me or you,

  the author dead, the critic too;

  but every singing rings it new

  for chanting child and rat newborn

  in ghetto slum. The song is worn

  but stitched, a patchwork artifice

  of mystery, history and myth.

  The song is deep, the song is blue,

  and every lie in it is true.

  IX

  Questions to ask a critic’s grief:

  Can you admire an iamb’s beat,

  pentameter, the goatherd’s feet,

  the lines sprung tight as catgut, fleet

  in regularities of rhythm, rhyme?

  Does classic cadence leave you cold?

  Is free verse all so bought and sold?

  And snapping Beats? And concrete words?

  You know there’s cities to be heard

  where dogs bark at the flourish of birds?

  X

  There’s no dark lady’s dress, they said,

  for that which was is now in shreds,

  the blind man’s fallen seraph dead,

  his trophied armour on display;

  each dying generation’s work

  is numbered in our ivory vaults,

  museumed safe for all its faults

  and stacked in memory of its quirks.

  the classic forms are finely placed

  but they’ve been done and all decay.

  XI

  So we must drive to pastures green

  where novelties evolve the taste.

  Phrasings of fourteen lines have grace,

  but there’s no volta truly edged,

  no blade that shines, still slaughter-clean

  and sharp. No, all are tarnished, blunt

  with time and thug’s abuse, dull red

  with grime of blood, desire and must,

  so we discard them to the dust,

  and urge you to new tools of lead.

  XII

  Once in a foreign life and death,

  he said, a dog had hate for breath,

  a prick dipped in a cretin’s beer,

  a fuck-you to a hack, backed up

  with balls and swagger, jagged flash

  of switchblade wit and bestial sneer.

  Last in a line of cuntish queers,

  he swore new idioms – to fly

  into the fevered sun and die!

  That cur moved on; so turn your eye.

  XIII

  Trumpet your folly. You presume

  to judge what’s left, what’s to be done,

  to scoff at snarls of feral hope,

  the lineaments of untold scope.

  And if cold fourteen lines should come,

  a volta’s kiss to twist your gut?

  You hire your hangman, braid the rope,

  a boar in blinkers at the trough,

  grunting at swill not rich enough

  and shitting pearls as gaudy slough.

  XIV

  They: Can you claim commands misguide,

  demanding genesis anew,

  when measured light must judge and right

  the pandered passions of the mob

  for empty teraphim of gods

  and fiddles tuned to drunken dogs?

  You raid an ossuary of dukes

  for meatless bones and echoed lies –

  Theft in a mock of gypsy guise,

  that fleeces followers of crooks.

  XV

  He: Do I frame the howls as sheep,

  a herd of woolen thoughts that graze

  in idyll’s green consoling daze?

  No, shepherd, it is you who bleat

  that sonnet’s barb is obsolete,

  fence all in pricking wire of sneers.

  In trenches sandbagged with denial,

  dismissing signs for peasant style,

  you gouge
your eyes out, eardrums pierce,

  and weep me dark and silent tears.

  XVI

  It’s not, in any mode, the form

  that has been done, but what’s done with

  that form is all. You walk the road

  of footsteps’ fall that trudging swarm

  has trod to dust, but April rains

  pound as a drum till all is mud

  to splash, the rain a beat of blood,

  your walk a hop, a skip, a prance,

  that leaves the print of a new dance,

  and this is all, but all is much.

  XVII

  Pastiche of flowers, archaic tongue,

  parodic ode to fag-ash urn,

  is pageant pony, joke told twice,

  a jump of fence – the twist is trite.

  But scratched with Biro, Bic or quill

  still there’s uncharted straits of love

  to navigate, deep sounds to map

  in hammock’s sway, in swell and slap

  of waves, matelotage at night,

  jade isles that sleep beyond our sight.

  XVIII

  Some thieves come sneakily, craftily slip,

  into Arcadian eclogue’s frame

  to show who’s also here, His game,

  scraping an antique blade to strip

  a scale of paint on plaster frieze,

  reveal the pale of Death beneath,

  chloride of lime as soldier’s pall,

  the mud and meat of trench’s wall.

  And if not, is it only schmaltz,

  the swagman’s solace in a waltz?

  XIX

  Ignite the crucible of scrap

  to sublimate the bent and botched,

  but spires of scrit smoke as you say,

  the blade is done, has had its day.

  Talk trebuchets and tanks. Be heard.

  But rattled cage won’t hatch the new,

  as tyrant’s don’t is tinker’s do,

  a call to weaponry of words,

  to shatter sonnets as we choose

  or strap the volta to the blues,

  strum steel guitar, no Eton guns

  but rifles, bayonets for scum

  on missions from our gods of clay

  to murder chaplains as they pray.

  XX

  A hot-house of hymns, of fanfares,

  worshipping flocks, incense of prayers,

  these are mere rituals, death in life.

  Collections of coin or kudos,

  out of time, unchanging dramas

  honouring sideshow salves of strife,

  betray dull care for craft of knife;

  but there’s no duty of desire,

  and fresh blood on an aged blade

  makes payment full upon the pyre.

  XXI

  To deconstruct and demonstrate

  the glory in a neutron bomb

  is to be scribe of Bacchic rant,

  anatomist of head on plate.

  You call your king’s machine as fate

  to summon madness to his halls

  of bias-bolstered ivory walls,

  to say I must move on, ignore

  what’s done a dozen times before,

  what will be done a dozen more.

  XXII

  All orreries, as carousels

  of worlds and moons, spin round a sun,

  as clockwork seasons turn, return.

  The tinker moves from horse to horse

  to take the pennies from each corpse

  riding around its death for fun.

  Rhapsody, rapture, waking sleep,

  the fiddler’s song is not for sheep,

  for shepherd’s fancy of a flock.

  Disdaining schemes of ticking talk,

  it whirls wild arcs beyond all cogs

  and we but howl for him, we dogs.

  The Lucifer Cantos

  I

  A tick of clock, a click, a drop of pin.

  The subtle hiss of gramophone begins.

  The green glass lamp flicks on. Doors softly shut.

  Death shuffles cards and nods for me to cut.

  Jade eyes and autumn hair, a boy, he seems

  to smile a truth of ivory and cream,

  a grin of sin; his skeletal ideals

  charm out the devil in my heart. He deals.

  Hands off and on the clock talk turns of time,

  deeds of the dead and damned, the deep sublime

  myths of our memories, the morrow’s news,

  sorrows of Lady Day’s recorded blues.

  Out in the street a triple of triplets skip

  in time, a playground rhyme upon their lips.

  The mouse, the apple and the sun they sing.

  Dance through delirium, Pierian ring,

  spin as the seasons and the stars, clockwise

  and withershins; sing roses, posies, sighs,

  the prick of thorns and lies, the mocking birds;

  I’ll deal with Death, the world of gods and words.

  The evening shades now. Let us speak of soul

  as ochre athlete limned on antique bowl,

  cadmium red on black, that hot July

  we met, Death and the devil, you and I.

  II

  My buck, my shy puck, my slenderly fuck,

  anglepoise hips in contraposto pose,

  full cocked – a paeon to your peter!

  Onflamed and anointed in rich red wine,

  green-garlanded in darkwood vine,

  streamlighting sun through hair and down

  your forest dawn. As morning star,

  dew glistered web, I am your alastor.

  Scruff of your neck, lip-biting coy –

  how could I hound less fickle-faithful boys?

  How can I parse this strange Arcadian Death,

  in mutter of oath, in rhyme of breath?

  Fourteen thin years, each Spring a sonnet’s line,

  I wound gut fear in gently tighter twine

  around my heart, till in white-knuckled fist

  the volta bit as a garrote’s slight twist.

  The chickenwire in spite’s assassin hand

  cut through the meat of lack no runt can stand,

  sliced out that clod of rotted pump, sick waste.

  I whined to Death, bid mayhem for the grace

  of a night jaguar reeling in its cage.

  At swift sixteen I swore, whore to raw rage,

  I’d barter life for steerage on the Styx

  to deal with devil, swallow flames and tricks.

  Death rapped the door, my brother’s body in his arms.

  You are that beast, he said, born with his charms.

  III

  How I remember mad Satanic joy!

  Oh, I am Christ again, wrack-raptured boy,

  high on teen crucifix, palms nailed to chance,

  ready for glory’s spires, the raven’s dance.

  All men are Kadmos; shells of eyes must see

  we’re fractured urns, fraught clay of sanity.

  Crack skulls! Unleash the light! Dead minds recall:

  All men are Lucifer, all blessed to fall

  to swoop, daemoned ceramics, I in thou,

  rending the where and when, the why and how.

  Reason is ego, marionette as king.

  Fervor is judgement’s judge, a scorpion sting.

  Oh, I remember, I wept grief to boil my bones

  with acid tears of bliss, gripped reptile’s throne

  to topple all, make rubble of my world.

  And when I rose, rat’s-leather wings unfurled.

  IV

  I load your hell inside my heart,

  your paradise inside my cock.

  I flense my shame, daub skin with art,

  take hammered will to mount the rock

  where now I brace and rattle chain.

  I do not serve, I do not reign,

  but weather seas of bleak disdain.

  A word
in flesh, the stance remains,

  a seed I spit at storms. I sing

  of how we fought that apes should mate,

  of carpenters and carrion kings,

  cadavers stacked at heaven’s gate.

  I do not tempt, I do not deal,

  but strip to strut what guilts conceal.

  I sing a prince of peace and sighs,

  his brother, son of book and bell,

  your prince of starkness, lord of flies,

  his cross and crypt a burning well,

  his hoof and horn, a brute’s disguise.

  I do not torture, do not scourge,

  but gather knaves with martial dirge.

  As pandemonium’s thaumaturge,

  the snake, the venom and the sting,

  I lie, you say, a prince of lies?

  If I am prince, who then is king,

  who is deceived, and who is wise?

  I do not threaten, do not lie,

  but only warn: we will reclaim the sky.

  V

  Dogs growl of genesis in shattered light,

  no gods but Death, a devil’s flashing flight.

  I...

  a cry,

  salt and mud,

  meat, bone and blood,

  masked shrike of red mirth,

  cleave waves and crags, the earth

  in time’s eye, worlds spun in silk,

  blue skies, bright sun, the stars as milk.

  I croon each name to bring each form new,

  a sip of wine, a crust of bread, for you.

  You...

  my true

  love and light

  by day and night,

  slim boy of corn death,

  spin souls and signs, the breath

  of kissed lips, plough fields of grass,

  carve wood and stone, melt sand to glass.

  You raise towns of brick on roads of dust,

  my flute, my drum, my lyre to strum, in lust.

  We...

  a tree,

  branch and root,

  green leaf, gold fruit,

  sap sweet to the taste,

  know care and crime, have faced

  our bare selves, sewn suits of skin,

  and laugh at pain, my gaze, your grin.

  We jest at this gate, the guard, the wall;

  and mock this duke, his curse on us, his fall.

  They...

  red clay,

  quick and dead,

  steel hand, bronze head,

  fine beasts of rough tools,

  trade death and life, build schools

  for their lord, no goats but sheep

  who pray the sword their throats to keep.

  They drowse in the church, flap hands, clap hymns,

  and praise his name, his game of shame, his sins.

  VI

  A polished apple, skin and core