How to Swallow a Pig

by Robert Priest

  When the steaks are cut, roll them, while they are still puffy, in bread crumbs, then cook for 30 seconds in boiling honey.

  One angel serves a banquet of 20.

  SECRETS OF PAPER

  At night when you’re weary and you want to forget, simply stick your head up through a piece of paper. Sleep in a sheet of paper and pull it up over you so that you cease to exist. Paper can be opened up like shale and a thin layer of pain can slide in dark and deep like a sliver. If your body is full of pain, if your heart is full of anguish, simply wrap yourself in clean paper and pray. Paper is a blotter to such things. Paper absorbs psychoses and silent screams. It is an endless realm and each sheet is a portable window into further eternities — white unwritten eternities, waiting for limbs, hats, heads to pop up. Look, there is a body in the milk! A great whale arising, an ancient civilization. Look deep into the milky lens of paper and realize why you can’t just lie down and die. Because there is a trick alphabet at the bottom of paper that explodes — a deep electricity, thin filaments of feeling running out of sight to a white pool you can dive into from the heights. A forbidden milk. A detonator.

  PAPER

  I have found a mad way of throwing bits of paper in the air — old newspapers, notes, and ticket stubs — so that when they come down, the reeds in them blow hideous melodies, unbearable vows, and long, lyrical strands of divine information. Paper is a whole orchestra, a symphony of milk. Just hold a piece up to the wind and listen. Shrill poems blow off its first layer like dust. There are synthesizer notes stuck in it like gulls. Now take a single golden hair, draw it across paper and listen to the depths of resonance you uncover in it — snowy canyons of bassoon talk, thunderous up-swellings of awe and wonder. We unfasten paper from its place in the wind and let it fall, hearing quite shrill, like a thin layer of pain, oil burning off in the cries of multitudes, piccolo shrieks of jet planes harmonizing on high.

  Let us fill up the white balloons of paper. Let us all slash the paper like mad swords in the air and listen. We don’t play enough with the music in paper. Our children struggle with tight pianos. They jinx their fingers on violins. Let them play trumpets made of paper. Aaaaah, while others toil at unwieldy instruments, let there always be this mad running about the house with a piece of paper on the end of a string.

  THE SCHOOL BEHIND THE SCHOOL

  Certain people feel that there is much to be gained in life from an ability to sit together in neat little rows of about ten — five rows side by side. To this end, they have built large walled buildings and therein train their children from an early age to resist all the temptations there are to rise up and go outside and play. Initially there is an adjustment period during which they do not unduly aggravate the young ones, but very soon they begin to test the children’s willpower with shrill chalk screams, cackling old ladies, and nasty men in square hats. If they can sit in these neat rows and learn to memorize facts for a period averaging 17 years, then upon passing a certain prescribed examination they are deemed to be graduates of the school itself and thereafter fit to be playground instructors, ministers of recreation, or revolutionaries. The entire education is not complete, however, unless they have passed the awful truth test. At some point during their endurance of the long training process, somewhere among history lessons, seminars on mathematics, and spelling bees, somewhere in the midst of all this the awful truth becomes visible to them for one searing second. If the child can maintain his or her composure when this happens and not rush from the room holding his or her head with both hands and screaming, the child will have passed the most important test there is, and shall then be considered a graduate of the school behind the school.

  SUBSTITUTE TAG: AN IDEA FOR A CHILDREN’S GAME

  To be played upon a fairly large field of green grass. The one who is “it,” whenever he or she catches and touches another player, shouts substitutions such as “rocks for honey and sing of bees.”* The person so designated then, while effusing extempore** on doctored bee rhythms, shall attempt to touch and force a further substitution on someone else, such as “honey for alabaster and sing of ancient Egypt”*** or “alabaster for poverty and sing of her neck her neck.”**** At the end of the game, when the last person has been touched, all the children, having stopped their initial composing with the touching of someone, shall begin again their effusions singing together faster and faster till they meet in the middle of the field, join hands, raise them up together, steeple-like and shout, “Hail, hail the dictionary.”

  EGGSHELL CHILDREN

  Eggshell children are our most fragile and precious resource. They can grow into great diviners, discoverers of fabulous new lyrical machines. If they can grow into human reeds there will be a white kind of moonlit magic again. But with even the most tolerant of parents, an eggshell child is in constant danger. You see, eggshell children want to last forever. They want to be free and always have their own way. They scream and cry at amazing volumes and cannot be dissuaded from expressing rage, terror, and despair, and though they also excel at having fun, at bringing delight, there are times when their parents feel like handling them roughly. Usually much violence has been done to the parents in their own childhoods — but they are big, meaty, solid people, not delicate instruments of music like the eggshell child. One fist could cave an eggshell child in completely and it would lie dying, broken into fine blue shards.

  This has led to a proliferation of forums on the care of eggshell children.

  Here are some of the basic rules:

  When they are born do not hold them upside down by the feet and smack their bottoms as this will ruin their little eggshell arses. Do not deliberately put them in rocking cradles on window sills in the breeze. Watch your subconscious urges with them; don’t suddenly forget and clap them on the back. Don’t throw them a rock, a hard ball, a spoon. Don’t grab their hands when they try to run away from you. Don’t pull their teeth out with strings and doorknobs. And, finally, do not slap eggshell children’s faces in anger — this can not only completely ruin their cheeks, but also crush leagues and leagues of delicate diamonds in their eyes.

  HOW TO VISIT ME ON MY CLIFF TOP

  I have placed several obstacles on the stairs. They are there to weed out the poor climbers. I wouldn’t want anybody unsteadfast to knock on my door. So ignore the twenty dollar bill you will see on the bottom. Bending over will cause you to somersault ceaselessly in the air. It will always be exactly three feet from your hand. And afterwards don’t whisper anything in the little ear. I put it there to listen to people’s secrets — to report any unheard flatteries someone might have mumbled. But it hears only desperation, anguishes. Even the most heroic people have said “I hurt” to it. I guess it is one of my failures — a magnet for all your insecurities. On the next step I have left a completely random decoding device. Most people are stopped here. They can’t resist putting their money into it. “What does it mean? What does it mean?” they ask. In return, obscenities are hurled at them — recipes from chili cans, old detergents, and chromosomes unaltered. (So I lost my best friend the Fuller brush salesman.) In the middle of the stair there is a totem pole with a star on top. Don’t slash it. Everybody slashes. Especially the ones who got their crew cuts examined in the concentric circle unraveller. What happens if you slash it, is that quicksilver drips from it, and suddenly the weather changes. If you arrive in a flurry you will go home in a hurricane. Or a limousine. It makes no difference to the totem pole. It was carved from the blood of many dead pigs. The star is a very vain star. Attracted by the small uselessness of telescopes and then tied down. Most who pass by this step don’t make it to the mirror. Don’t stare in the mirror, whatever you do. For the mirror is also a telescope. All those shames — all those tiny zits and blemishes you thought were so far away from you — there they are, big as asteroids, fat, buck-toothed moons of you discharging and discharging. It is possible that having heard this you will tie your hands behind your back and look at it anyway just in pas
sing, but the thing is, then you won’t be able to carry the pyramid. And I insist that you bring a pyramid because then if there’s a rather annoyed-looking blonde with me when you arrive you could just say, “O, I can’t stay long, I just dropped in to drop off the pyramid,” and throw it over the cliff and leave.

  TEXTUAL DIFFICULTIES

  I will teach you that it’s not enough to be infatuated with the word. You are in a textual relationship with language. It’s not just about you. You have to be sensitive to the needs of the word — then maybe it will receive you. Otherwise you are doomed to its hardened exterior. The word will not open, the word will not enter you. This is the most common form of textual difficulty. Perhaps you are rushing the language. You may have to take your time with the poem. Or maybe you’re taking too much time. You have to be like radar to the moods, textures, and shifts of the lingo. And don’t get possessive. When you’re “with” the word, you’re with every word that word has ever been with. Accept it. All words are contextual free spirits. Practise on the smaller forms at first — haiku, aphorisms. It will seem impossible that one day something the size of The Iliad could enter you, but if you are patient — if you hold the words in your mind — if you let the word touch you — energy will enter. But you must also enter the energy. Hold the word as the word holds you. You must be taken. If you just take what you want from the poem then you leave unresolved charges simmering in it. This is how textual difficulties start. It is necessary to attend to the urges of the poem and to do this you must be patient and unctuous. You must focus and receive and let go entirely into the movement and rhythms of the poem. The key is mutuality. To get to where nothing comes between you and the language. To ride naked text, tissue to tissue. Wedged into a book like there is no exit. Full textual engagement will often, and some say should always, lead to those epiphany moments when insight like white light shoots up the being with a burst of raw alphabation. But remember, as important as it is that the poem satisfy you, this will only happen when you satisfy the poem. Only then will it fill you with the glories of literature. Only then will you be on your way again to a full and happy text life.

  Of course not all your textual forays need be bound by such sweaty and arduous parameters. The lure of easy and casual text is everywhere. We’ve all experienced text in phone booths and washroom stalls, text up against the wall, or on public transit. You can’t get away from text and you don’t want to. Some people claim too much text can make you go blind, but the truth is text is legal and safe. In fact people have sacrificed their lives and freedoms for your right to experience almost any kind of text when and where you like. In general though it is good to give your words a periodic check-up. Let us compare dictionaries on a regular basis. Let us verify the language. Purify the word. Remember to exchange armadas. To do time in one another’s subs. Whether you absorb the word or the word absorbs you, every time you speak a camel treads the needle eye. This is the true traverse of the double-humped dialectic. This is true textual intercourse. I give you my word.

  HOW TO CATCH A DEITY

  Out of your eyes and hands make a hook, and of your words make a fine thread, and from your worry and secret heart make a reel. For bait, a book will do, a bit of cheese and salad. Now put out a bowl of glycerin and hang the smallest possible star over it. Perhaps the tiniest amount of cat-purr and elbow grease applied with a synthesizer. Now, before doing the God-call you must invest in a wisecrack for it to catch its tales in. When, at last, it comes to eat the salad, slip in your hook.

  THE CUP OF WORDS

  It is interesting to watch the cup of words go from mouth to mouth. When the cup is first filled it is usually the politicians who go for the first sip of the cream on top. Thereby they get the words most prone to illusion. The words most fragile, most filled up with air. Then, when their mouths are full of froth, they pass the cup on and make great speeches. These usually come out at state-funded dinner parties when the cameras are rolling. It is the businessman who next dips in. He gets all the light-weight words — the graph words and math words that float to the top. If there is any scum he gets that too — a pure thin film of high class expletive condensed. Something to ream out at the secretary in private at the office or to mumble into tape-recorded messages when no one is listening. Then he passes the cup down to his comical sidekick the adman. The adman is pleased to get in at the very brimming-over of common usage. Pleased to dip his long tongue down almost to the bottom of the glass and savour every well-used syllable, each one resonant to him of sex. The cup is almost empty when the thirsty people get it. By then it is just the dross of language — enough for them to identify their grey clothes with. On and off buttons. Enough to say “fuckin’this” and “fuckin’that.” Right at the bottom of the cup is the word “Revolt!” You have to be very thirsty to drink it in — it is a hard one to swallow. When the cup is passed back to the poet, he first looks at the bottom to see if that word’s gone. If it isn’t, he refills the cup and passes it on to the nearest Premier. Then he takes out a bottle of his own private stock, finds himself a flower or some butterflies, and proceeds to get very drunk.

  INK

  In the beginning there is a huge canister of ink — ink that will find its way, by industry, to great fields of pens and be injected into them so that they are tall and ready and full. This is the ink before it is drawn out in delicate strands, in fine loops, in blots and stains. This is the ink cleaving unto the inkiness of itself, imperturbably blue, deep, and resonant. What desperations it will represent, every undulation of its being woven into finely worded anguishes, crude notes, and desperate letters. It will be neat rows of mathematics or strung out like paper dolls in signature — a thousand times the same name till one more column has run from its reed like water. Ink is almost like human promise in its untainted depths — it is a haze of possibility, a genetic ocean that all the rivers in letters run to and from — the blue loops of nonsense, the exact demands of separated husbands. Ink will stain the poet’s chequebook and the eager ledgers of business with its azure abandon, running into preset forms, filling them with meaning and loss. I envy ink the transformations it will undergo — all the things it may be or represent — yet I wonder sometimes if all its curlicue adventures are terrors to it — long circuitous days that will waste it away with drudgery, leaching its life into meaningless syllables and useless words. Perhaps in such a state ink remembers and longs for its origins in the canisters of industry just as we, separate and adventurous, remember sometimes our unity in light, before we were bodies, souls, and egos. The days when we were all of a piece, caught up in each other like mutual bodies — the days when we were dark and thick and full and didn’t mean a thing.

  BOOK 2 FROM THE INTERSTELLAR LIBRARY ON ARCTURUS

  THE EARLY EDUCATION OF THE NUM-NUMS

  Their word for love is impossible to pronounce. It has every letter in our alphabet in it at least twice. Their first and greatest art is to learn how to say it. And even then it requires a truthfulness and vulnerability beyond the scope of mere art. It becomes a way of being — at first just a ritual scrawl, then a riot of passions, a jangling of every ancient syllable in the loins. Even the crude phonemes of rocks and amoebas. Timelessly then, as they grow, it all comes together, this sound from this thing, this sound from that. Fatal wisdoms are acquired and then imparted, slightly lessened, with the drinking of them at them. Finally they acquire immunities. They need no clothes then. No appetites or lies. They show only the ugliest things they have in order to be cleansed of every vanity. Then, when they are entirely beautiful, they mutter that first important word, the first twenty-three letters of which translate as “I think I am ready.” After that it is all a senseless cry, a reverberation of wild lyrical sounds into the night. Then the other one will appear. Just like that — the other one on the planet who has also just grown into the tongue. He or she will be there and they will wrap tentacles about one another, ready now for mathematics.

  FALLING IN HATE
r />   In Xenophs, true romantics fall in hate with one another — often “at first sight.” Peaceful, sober citizens will usually try to resist the overpowering tug of such mutual hatred but they yearn to be at each other’s throats. They want to kick each other’s heads in. Their loathing is long, unreasonable, and obsessive. They can’t stop thinking of clawing each other’s eyes out, stomping on each other’s intestines. Hate letters bring no relief. Vile poisonous poetry exudes but never drains the green heart, the gritted tooth. Strong mutual hate can at first mildly distract but, ultimately, it debilitates. Interest fades in anything but the activities of malice. No matter how hard they try to deny their hate they can’t keep away from one another. They are black mutually drawn compasses. They fall to each other like dark angels, astronauts of stone. Eventually, when they can no longer resist one another, they petition for an arrangement. They make mutual covenants before the law. Only then are they allowed unchaperoned into a dark room. There they finally have a go at one another. Until death do them part.

  THE ARMS RACE OF OBBAGGA

  In Obbagga they have an arms race of a quite different kind. Obbaggans spend most of the year exercising their arms and fingers on treadmills and in galloping gloves so that on December the 19th, at the ringing of a bell, these arms can be chopped off and allowed in the shudder of their death throes, to gallop insensibly as far as they can. This is the famous Arms Race of Obbagga and it is watched by increasing numbers all around that planet. You can easily recognize the contestants, though. As the old saying in Obbagga goes, “They’re the ones who aren’t clapping.”