All debts were settled on Christmas Eve, Fail to do so, and there’d be no reprieve, In the dying flame of a guttering candle, Monies got paid, and cash got handled.
When the last customer left to journey home, Quinn, the shop owner, found himself alone, He stared at pooling shadows, no one there, Told himself to hurry, be with those who care.
As he closed up, something screamed out, A figure from out of the dark began to shout, A man with no eyes begged alms for the dead, Or any old soup with a thick slice of bread.
Quinn said he was a business, not a charity, The man’s eyes opened with some clarity, “Very well,” the man said, “Nothing’s free,” “I’ll drag your soul to Hell, come with me!”
The sacked castle casts smoke on the lake, Cinders’ glow distinguishes it from the mist, The only gallows the noble knights adorned, Were ones lowering them onto their steeds.
Thundering warhorses charged the enemy, Storming across such a gallant battlefield, Mortal combat with axe, blade and sword, For king, country and all of Heaven’s glory.
Intruders rush over a downed drawbridge, Rotten and riddled in darkness incarnate, To a peregrinating, riderless throne room, A neophyte sovereign in gold leaf crown.
Lightning-scorched gravestones, Leave and follow infinity’s call, Spring off the edge of Flat Earth, Know not what lies there and fall.
Silence licks and speaks in tongues, Darkness the ferryman leading on, Fingers caress, scraping skin curses, Talisman whispers the way is gone.
Hit the bottom and scream out for air, Fill the lungs with each noxious gas, Decide to rest some in poisoned sleep, Nourish yourself in an extended fast.
“Look out!” the crowd shouted to me, “There’s a Sniper Bird in those trees!” A whooshing sound shot past my ears, Making me duck down to my knees.
He must have gone rogue, I reckoned, Someone cheated him over birdseed, Then he took a squirrel as his hostage, Get a negotiator quickly up those trees.
He threw up his wings and surrendered, They brought him down in a gilded cage, Never again sniping at innocent people, He studies elocution with a parrot sage.
Let me pluck you from the quarrel, Resplendent in that emblazoned ire, How those weighty bosoms heave so, Ocular infernos fade to stilled vision.
Now cooled lava from a molten flow, This Chimera, caged within frail bars, Claws retracted, a threat contained, Primed to lash out in snarling attacks.
Perforce, the maritime Kraken rages, In incendiary spray and tentacled fury, Devouring anyone in her watery path, Dragging prey down to Hadean depths.
Winter’s eagle talons swoop, Scratching sweet faces raw, As battering waves file back, The coast’s jagged teeth further.
Concerts of hedgerow angels, Storm the dreaded demon field, Dispensing ancient retribution, Righting wrongs along the way.
Gladiatorial combat in the Heavens, Lightning’s fiery net crashes against, Thunder’s convulsing cloaking shield, And the rainstorm’s flogging garlands.
When Freddie Mercury passed away, Where did his spirit go to play? Zanzibar, Feltham, or Wembley? Or did he go and visit Brian May?
Did he stand at the mic in Montreux? De Lane Lea, Trident, or to Tokyo? Did he party in Munich, NY, or Rio? Did his purring cats watch him go?
Did he take a last look at Garden Lodge? Or whisper a final joke to his old pal Rog? Waves of affection were hard to dodge, His superstar status will never dislodge.
In a mirror, admirably still call yourself sister? Of festering, viperine plot and scaling threat, Cast your brother out as a street mongrel, Then counted coins from his dwelling’s sale.
If this is a blood relative, yours is now poison, And tears his, for none shall believe his truth, That family acted so cruelly in his innocence, What made his loved ones mortal enemies?
No apology will ever pass those lips, not one, Explanations merely justify the unforgivable, Sober fact imparts the brazen cuckoo nests, With ignominy’s profits in bricks and mortar.
Salvation swallowed in a bleak abyss, Of impossibly lost and betrayed souls, Swarming screams of frantic contrition, Clawing collisions in a drowning grip.
Drops of reason cascade down the vortex, Falling infinitely through the fallen infamy, Snaking doubt constructing every delusion, Of false idols, prophets, and graven images.
Scaling its putrescent and lacerating walls, Is a repentant struggle beyond endurance, Then distant dawn appears, growing nearer, Darkness fades and a basking reign forms.
Nightcrawler leaves their dirt bed, Seeking an essential blood supper, Cloaked in regal Stygian armour, Bar one chink in the left chest area.
All the experience of centuries used, Lives lived long before their victims, Stalking stacked in a predator’s favour, Shock overwhelms when blindsided.
The infected victim then becomes one, With their undead attacker, connected, Sharing their contagion and obsessions, In a parasitic void betwixt life and death.
Monies lent with warm smiles of trust, Are debts collected at a dagger thrust, Gold shipped home from battles worst, Are taxes paid to the mermaid’s purse.
Whoever seeks to locate buried treasure, Digs their own grave by merest measure, Wealth bequeathed, deceased’s pleasure, Forfeited by greed, a dead countermeasure.
Cupidity looms outside a counting house, Alimony spat out to a prenup-free spouse, Bankruptcy declared by a profligate louse, Dermatitis creams for itchy hands do douse.
Lightning’s eye flickers through the fog, As thunder’s blasting baritone backs, The keening lost souls on Pendle Hill, Executed in the wrong for witchcraft.
Killed on the say-so of a nine-year-old, In 1612, yet the accusations echo still, Pardon requests have gone unanswered, Still, no justice for The Pendle “Witches.”
Give them peace so they may rest finally, Though no one knows their burial place, Silence the cawing crow of false witness, Cleanse the stain of wickedness from them.
O to dwell in the skeletal palace, Of the spider’s ceiling cobweb and, Spy on all as none can spy on you, An arachnid deity astride the world.
Even with many eyes to see things, It’s blind to those monstrous features, Nimble, lean legs, as wicked fingers, Weave a webbed masterpiece home.
Outdone by his garden cousin’s web, With backlit, bejewelled beads of dew, Undulating in a tepid, animating breeze, The house spider is a satisfied squatter.
Like Orson Welles, another great film director, Stanley Kubrick was not prolific in his career, making less than a dozen feature films and a few documentaries. Kubrick’s movie projects were always meticulously chosen. (His secretary remembers jumping whenever Kubrick rejected novels as movie projects by hurling them at his office wall one after another.)
Whether he was aware of it or not, Stanley Kubrick did seem to have a preoccupation with violence and its origins. The obvious starting point are the ape-men sequences at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where we seem to witness one of the first murders in history. Kubrick’s 1951 documentary, The Big Fight, is about a boxing match. Then we come to depictions of violent crime in The Killing (1956) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). There is also the sexual violence of the rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange and what would today be called paedophilia and toxic masculinity in Lolita (1962). The violence of war in Paths of Glory (!957), Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964), Barry Lyndon (1975), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). And the violence of relationships in The Shining (1980) (physical, psychological and emotional) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) (emotional). Even HAL, the spaceship’s computer in 2001, has homicidal tendencies.
Kubrick was also interested in exploring how violence affects the mind. We see that more in his later films like A Clockwork Orange, where we almost feel sympathy for the amoral thug Alex when he gets mentally and physically tortured by the future state he lives in to recondition him to be “normal.” “I was cured all right!” Alex quips sarcastically at the end of it all.
Then there is the descent into madness of Jack Torrance in The Shining and Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. When all three characters are at their most evil, they do the infamous Kubrick Gaze or Stare.
Press play above.
I also have a theory that Kubrick was doing his versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Spartacus being his Henry V (featuring the star and director of the 1944 Henry V movie, Laurence Olivier), A Clockwork Orange his Richard III, and The Shining his Macbeth. You could also argue that Eyes Wide Shut and its themes of marital jealousy and perceived female infidelity echo Othello and The Winter’s Tale. (Let’s not forget that Shakespeare was another artist interested in exploring violence as evidenced in the bloodbath of Titus Andronicus and the putting out of the old man Gloucester’s eyes in King Lear: “Out, vile jelly!”) It’s such a pity we never got to see an actual Kubrick adaptation of Shakespeare. What would have resulted from this meeting of great minds? We’ll never know, and it probably wouldn’t have interested Kubrick to go over such well-trodden ground as The Bard’s plays.
In another similarity with Orson Welles, he and Kubrick died at 70. By being spartan in their output, they never gave us a chance to get bored with them. They always left us wanting more (in the grand showbiz tradition). I think of them smoking cigars and watching and critiquing films together in the Great Movie Theatre in the sky.
Though these dulled cobblestones, Be my dumb conspirators, nevertheless, Their horrified objections shall be as muted, As their stunned pauses upon my victories.
I shall be as the predators that strike, In forests, jungles, oceans, and skies, Inflicting myself on others as I please, Without warning or crawling expiation.
Then the disdainful dogs that cocked their legs, Shall kiss the boots that soaked up their mess, And curse where they relieved themselves, For relief shall be their banished sensation.
The Great Carouser approaches, His belly as stacked cheddar rolls, Used as a springboard for lust, And a battering ram for tavern doors.
Shrieks of terror and welcome, Greet his arrival with ale demands, Tankards clank and merriment begins, Lewd ditties and jokes by the bar.
Balancing acts on tables, With tongues held hostage, By braggadocio squatters, In an intoxicated stranglehold.
Slurred speech and equilibrium loss, Signal festivities end for the gang, Staggering out into the starlit street, Partners on each arm for shady exertions.
Then waking as if mauled by a bear, A quick drink and a greasy feast initiated, For the strange girls snoring in his bed, The Great Carouser has struck again.
Before you pick up your knife, To run your enemy through, Know the entry wound bleeds red, And the exit thrust bleeds blue.
Not because they are of noble birth, But they are protected by a mighty hand, Not just of those moneyed and influential, But the mightiest hands in all the land.
So stab with caution, I urge you, For the blade jabs back in your gut, Swallow the bile that fuels you so, Lest it be your throat you cut.
A kiss, that beauteous wound, Struck by love’s yielding blade, Feel the arrow’s welcome strike, As we roam in life’s ecstatic glade.
Memories momentarily wiped, As the lover’s lips become parted, Then at sea again in sensory squalls, Where passion’s spark first started.
A stranger interrupts adoration’s swell, Desire’s mask of reality swiftly donned, Vows to reunify in night’s pleasure veil, Longing looks, and the flames are gone.