the importance of magic in the void

8/14/2019 The Importance Of Magic In The Void

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John TogherTHEIMPORTANCE OF MAGIC IN THE VOID


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John Togher

Illustrations By Anna F.C Smith

THE IMPORTANCEOF MAGICINTHE VOID


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Copyright (c) John Togher 2009

Illustrations by Anna FC Smith

Illustration copyright Anna FC Smith 2009

Book design by Anna FC Smith & Sean Doherty

Published by The Mental Virus, UK


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6. Te Synesthetic Hour Starts With7. You Say

8. Sunday Aternoon9. Fall10. A Man In Te World11. Daves Bird12. Learning Te Blues13. Piccadilly14. Te Libido Works Fine On Weekdays15. What Salvador Dali Said One ime

16. A Chance Meeting Ater A en Year Absence17. o A Lover Overcome18. ill Death Do Us20. A Finely Placed Freckle21. Pink Elephants On Parade22. Te Point23. Look Mummy! Tat Man24. On A Blank Morning

25. How Great It Was o Make Love o Aretha Franklin Circa 197026. Watching You Masturbate In Te Style O Te Old estament *28. Home & Away30. Scoring Te Oak31. A ribute o Te Stray32. Stop Te Clocks33. Dj Vu34. Te Importance o Magic in Te Void

36. Te Fool Who Ate Te Gruel38. Ungalet40. Te I O oday

43. A Small Collection o Illustrations rom Te Mental Virus

Contents

*based on the Film Big Breaths by Anna FC Smith (2006)


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Learning the alphabet again,but this time with Richard o York.Smelling the onion in your name,seeing the personalityin your hair, with its dense wave o chestnut.

Static rom the vinyl throws ahundred tiny stars in my eyes.

Overwhelming, the white ashestaste a little like resh monk shand I drown in the noise o our new start.

You say to take a minute butas I sit and count to sixtyI hear a symphony start upand I cant sit still so I take

your hand in mine and we dancetill noons song.

Te Synesthetic Hour Starts With


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Reading JD Salinger is like eatingmashed potatoes. Tat vodka is the greatestkick in the teeth and whiskey holds the tasteo the soul in its aterbreath.

You skip through the radio screeningthe white noise o your thoughts.Mercury. Ingrained. Amplied.

You ask promptly: Was it Yeats who said that?as windows, eyes grown on walls,look out continual, and back perpetual.

You see the crushed light o Agnes,seventy-nine, who plays ootball withgrandchildren in the park, Woodbine hangingrom grey lips.

You hear my call, dimmed by the waxin your ear and you turn, you circleyou ace up and see,or the rst time, what it is to be ree.

You Say


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Sunday Aternoon

A radio plays orgotten people to lost people.Grandpa sits and chews his pipe.

Sister chews and sits her hair.I watch rom the corner, my mouth closed.Mothers in the kitchen cackling with Auntie.Football on the V inspires and deates Dad.Overcooked chicken lls the air o the houseand paints a hole in my stomach.I stand or attention but get in the way.

Te sun is out and were inside.Wheres Grandma? Shes in thebathroom,dont disturb. Knock knock.Pauls come round.Outside now, I bounce in the yardplaying wall-y.Pauls no good and I win easily

hitting the last shot at an angle,alling over and scraping myknees.Mum wont be happy.Ill have concrete scabs ordays.


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Fall

Te rusty leaves all and crunch.All part o the cycle. Once more

the trees twitter, some break in the wind.A twig tumbles into your hairas Lie laughs again.

Te drips reign begins shortly.As time slows, the days end sooner

and we all eel the weight o Fallon our shoulders, wet noses and cheeks

while Lie laughs again.

Te shape o things to comeappears in the puddles. Splash.

Another slip, a new break, one more Fall.Soggy papers discarded in streets.

Lie laughs again.

A young girl sings in redwhile her mother avoids the blues.A splatter o wet on an old setteesees one more year ade into rain.

Again, again, Lie laughs.


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Ce Monde Est Plein de Fous

Redthoughts swim round my head,

ants jump in lines to a beat.She stares at the craze painted on my mouth.

Its the papers that tell me what to do.So I ll the crates one by one but my enemy

empties them two by two. I and shelook on with hands on headsand shake hips to a beat. Will I ever learn?Only she can help and answer that. I exist

everywhere rom dump to disco but withouther Im nothing but a man in the world.

A Man In Te World


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Daves Bird

She seemed to hold the weighto a hummingbird

and had the uttero an owlin her eyes.

Carrying ragile armslike sparrows wings,

she reached outand touched my lips.

She told me,not with a squawk

but in a whisper,that the Devil

is an optimisti he thinks

he can make peopleworse than they are.


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Te things you have to say you must repeat. Say it twice.A reminder that when youre sat at the crossroads,

guitar in hand and dusty boots on your eet,the devil wont be up or playing nice

But i you sing sotly into his ear with the help o a band,hell pass on the secrets o his own dark places.Hell tell you o tormented souls and mystical con-notationsAnd lead you there by his blood red hand.

Youll pass through the circles o hell,see a dizzying array o depravity and torture.Itll be a journey o hard truths and alse hopeswhere hell make you promise, through song, to tell

the stories o the lost ones, the lonely soulswho scratch out their eyes,

leaving sockets o torment, gaping black holes.Sing! Hell demand, o those who are mad tolive and mad to die,Mad to create, to eel, to love and to hate.

So join us, riends, join us oes,on this voyage, this dark and deathlycruise,

as we search the backstreet Utopia withthe devilFor this thing they call the blues.

Learning Te Blues


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I meet youat the statueon the hourand think o

the drowning gripI have on your ace.

Your onion seedeyes are ablaze.

I sigh, watchthe eathered clouds

disconnect above us.You give a tugon my sleeve,

Were a clumsy versiono a good idea,

like pterodactyls.I reeze-rame,

see you entwinedin bringing deeat,

dea to my melancholy.

I stare at the chipin your ront tooth.

Piccadilly


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Te Libido Works Fine On Weekdays

welve years this has built up.A non-stop aair o the mind, her blouse

tickling my brow as she leans over and licksthe sweat rom my skin. Salty,she says, as I eel or her waistbut grasp only thin air.

I rst saw her next door, a girlwith sand in her hair and brown in her eye.She smiles and wateralls surge inside me.

Boy, Id love to take those littleelbows in my hands and eel the bumpo her unny bone appear, disappear.

Within breathing distance to this girlId like to explore her circles and hal circles,nd out how her body worksand lie in bed eating strawberries,

wilting like owers wrapped up inblankets.

She walks past me in the morn-ings,a wat o her scent is overbearing.


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Beauty will be edible or there will be no such thing at all.

Ok, so yes, I do reer to you as that Welsh girlin the pink dress with the catcurl eyes and the Elvis lip.

But what have you got against the Welsh my dear?

I call you pig nosed too but you dont seem to careabout all that when I stroke your back,

tickle your nape and ick my tongue.Tat silent glitter on your cheek does wonders.

Everyday you overtake me.Hazelnuts weave through your hair.

Caramel thighs drip.I kiss the vanilla swarms o your lips.

Feel the velvet layer o skin,smooth over lean meat.

Illicit apples, burning res.

Panting until breath is lost.

I remember that time at your Mothers housewhen I bit your lip; the blood

zzed on my buds as I swallowed.

I was tempted to your heart,that st o a pear that you held back.

I waited till you slept then snuck out my blade.

What Salvador Dali Said One ime


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A Chance Meeting Ater A en Year Absence

She holds a rosary in her handyet keeps the devil up her skirt.She picks the hours o least interruptionto dip her eet in the colours o the earth.

He thought himsel a king,holding a secret royalty in his chest;with the depth o his heart a kingdomand the curls on his head a crown.

She sees him walking towards her one day,and a aint recognition ignites.He hasnt a clue but is drawn to hereyes.

She calls out, I you are whoI think you are,Ive always wanted to makelove to you.

Well, who do you think Iam? he replies,remembering his socialchameleon tendencies.


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o a lover, overcome with panic and lust,think back to that summer and that rst song.

Sinew inside the mind, a singing black slug, snug,leaving lines in the cortex, a tune o dementia.

Te ticks, tremors and sounds o envious children.A wilting, sad cluster o owers, dropped.

Motion hal-thoughts into action as the song endsand steer vitriol through the violent seas o desire.

But Im shushed to the corner where the bagpipes howla hundred notes o solitude, hunger and ear.

Tose whispered lies told when the day gave us up.Because that day ended without the slow sludge o thought.

o A Lover, Overcome


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Te moon lit-dimly his path.He nds her in the alleywith her shouldersunder another mans hands.Te guy grows a conscience and runs.She swallows, then zips.

He approaches with gritin his teeth and the Devils musicvibrating along his jawbone.She sees Vietnam in his eyes.

He strikes, deep, through her cheap nylon blouse.

She smoked the same brandas him and they both read Nietzsche,It was a atal attraction, o sorts.

But this didnt stop himurther twisting the knie.Shed ironed the soul rom his shirtand he never orgave her or that.

Brown eyes ick wide then close.

In her white room he jitters over her.Beeps orm the rhythm o her chest.He ties his breath to her heart with a knot.Ten tears himsel up inside.

ill Death Us Do


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A nely placed reckleon a beautiul young womancan send a shiver

through my middle and mind.

Imperections interrupting the smoothrun o skin. Te pinpoint precision

at the top o her thigh. Te scattering

madness o jazz on her nose in the sun.

One lying, along the jaw-line,ngered when stressed.One secret, concealed,

hidden between breasts.

o place a kiss with the warm breath

o a rose at the apex o her armwould leave a tingle, a tremor,a ervour on my lips.

A Finely Placed Freckle


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Im writhing ater spending days and nights rolling,in and out o undressed dreams,with just a white ag or companyand a hole, shot through the jeans.

I its to be like this,Ten pink elephants will parade.Bottles will pile and break.

I make sure she understands and roll coins her way.Soma, she says, like rom that book.

She asks again, Soma. Do you have any?None, sorry, a white phase just now.No more pretty rhymes or perect sins,

just molecules zzing, causing alarm

whilst this apathetic homeland chimes in unisonas the dead come in boxes.

Yes, the dead come in boxesarmed with their plastic artillery.And she knows the truth, she can squeezeit out o me like at rom a dead artery.

So, with credit lost, we cant recoverrom that period, that ull stopo hard and easy. We reach or the sheland things all, things drop.

But, orever now, orever now, orever,those pink elephants are on parade.And she just turns, circles, spins on her heel,

arms - stretched in hope; sallow, ragile,below her, I kneel.

Pink Elephants On Parade


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ry to unearth, explorethe water-clock secrets o the moths.I really, they recreate the wombor merely, they masquerade their amusement.

Like the cruellest home video

there is deadness behind the laughter,and it was Beckett whowrote that nothing is unnier thanmans unhappiness. It grows on us like moss,this search or secrets.

Unending shelves o spines,and Shakespeare olio, employed as makeshit pillow,have not so ar revealed why the viola swellsand inates the unrequited.Were let to search the rain-soaked cobbleslooking with absent eyesor the clear line,the answer,the point.

Te Point


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Tis morning, beingnot any morning

but a morning o magicians,

I wake and ndthe room a chickenneck

pink. Te child sees

no elephants dance.I turn and toss a breath

to the clock and o.

Te shadow ollows.Down the stairs, the hall

snis o synthetic strawberries.

Some new kind o air?I hurl my arms, I think o her.

Look Mummy! Tat Man


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I downpour the sugar ater the treesFelt pure in the morning o the glitter

ake o a smudge on a stream o sadnessA cold blank page by your clothes in winter

I desire imbecile things most side on toTe dark compromise o the twilight drat

I drat most on a blank morningAter a cold winter downpour

I take a page to compromiseTe trees in a aint twilight smudge

Te side-glitter o your sadness

In the dark sugar o the stream

Our clothes o by the desireTe pure elt o imbecile things

On A Blank Morning


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ravelling to meet at some motel alongRoute 66, or Highway 51.

Passing children throwing stonesat empty glass bottles,

a satisying tish every now and then.

Arriving at the deepest hour,smelling the cedar-wood oundations,

as some black cat pours itselrom a ence to a path.

Slipping in, like a delicate, dreamy sh,amberlamps glowing and leopard-skin prints.

A baroque clock on the wall melts

into the uchsia patterned paperand the throat o the wind chokes outside.

Seeing her gnaw on the wing o a chicken in bed,greasy ngers and lips; her nightdress,

corners her curves, a silken red.

Moving hands across her sand-coee skin,

kissing her rose o a smile and unolding,until we build to that moment -

the only purest present.Tat moment,that moment,

that moment -o absolute orgasm

Collapsing, with the birdswhistling outside, duped into daylight.

How Great It Was o Make Love to Aretha Franklin

Circa 1970


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I admire your capacity o lung,the way you take in a breath,slyly ondle a breastand tickle a nippleinto a nub o submission,while the blood o an ox tricklesacross your chest with theease and ow o a biblical river.

Te lungs o a sacricial ox liemangled, entwined with your body,oered up to some God o Fetish.Your red lipstick puckers as a

nger slips into a dark pubic place.Plenty, the juices o pleasurethat drip into the void o barrendreamscapes, as the urban nightterrors chase you to a placeyou nd a guilty comort.

I watch as you writhein blood, sinew and esh,twisting your eaturesthrough the ecstasy o a wicked soul,lost in a antasy, alone,orever hiding your lovein a desolate sanguine room o lustand perversion.

Watching You MasturbateIn Te Style O Te Old estament


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Home is the dimple I kiss on your cheek.

Te smile that greets day ater day, week ater week.Home is the nook and cranny o our amiliar love,the sot space between your thighstoes touching toesthe smell at your napethe tangle o your hair in my hands.

Home is known,

that recognisable shape groped in the dark.Te quarterly strike o our Grandmother clock.Home is the citric scent o your piss.Sometimes, I want to give home a miss,

to get away rom it all,away, away, away, away.Away is the girl with the sot copper hair

twirling through the night in her charity shop dress.Away is the bulge o her breast as she moves,the temptation o those unknown bumps and grooves.

Home & Away


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o explore the landscape o her bodysends me away, away rom home.

o a land o alse expectation

where I dance to that French jazzin the Bande A Part Ca

with those two cool and riendlyCats bopping by my side.

As the copper-haired girlstarts to stare with those evil

green eyes, her gypsy cotton ears

twitch in anticipation.

But the excitement o away soon adesand the pull o home plays

a sot inviting tune in my headand I return,

back to our comortable habit,back to our comortable bed.


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Scoring Te Oak

Stumbling with blood shot eyeMumbling to the lea in palmPanic at the all loomingCall to empty space blooming

Stoic bird-chatter blends amid bluebellsScant o breath up the moor, on the ellsTe Oak, calm, wise and aloneOld, like the loop o the wind

Carve with penknie and score the barkPreserve a name in the lie o the tree

Return at the sundown o yearsIn a morning o Spring as the Winter clears


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It was just beginning to hit mehow lonely everybody is

when a woman with extraordinarilytweezed eyebrows, like birds seen in ightrom miles away,bumped into me and told me Iresembled a riend o hers rom high school.

She reminded me o my Mother,who struck up conversationswith strangers on luminousSpring evenings when the cloudssmudged the sky.

Te woman with the two birdswinged away and I staredat the onion owers spangledout across the grass and breathed in.Te air was resh and tight,

like rain.Sounds o laughter blew down

the street showing the distancebetween them and me.

A ribute o Te Stray

I pictured the only time I saw my Father cry.It was ugly and limp.

I ran to him and put my handon his and guided the phone back to its

cradle. His voice soundedthe way it gets when he hears a song he lovessung perectly.

I placed him in his sad bedand told him not to worry.

But I orgot all that and movedmy thoughts to another town.

One where I rage againstthe heated winds and actlike the son they wanted.


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ime, by now, surely needs a rest,to deservedly put up its eet.ater working long, hard and ast,without relative pomposity or rown,

its due some sort o treat.

A sugary, savouring pause,while the rest o us stopand give much praise and applauseor imes endless countdown.

its tick-tock clip-clop

that has completed our daysso ar. It wont be, or long, much missed.Well all just live in a perpetual haze,while ime goes out, on the town,

and gets pissed.

Stop Te Clocks


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As we walk by candyoss trees,

I catch the slant o perume in her hair.She smiles with those bee-sting lips

and takes ower petal steps unaware.

onight, I anticipate her returnto the cradle o my armpit,

the nook and cranny o our new ound love,back to our comortable habit.

Dj Vu


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Te Importance O Magic In Te Void

Te ironblack eyebrow o Hughesraises an inch as I arrive

and like a sad A Minor ChordKundera sits in his corneras I walk through this place, the void.

Im oered a whiskey tumbler;taste my soul in its aterbreath.Virginia Wool, the curve o herintelligent nose running through

her prose, gives a toasts to the void.

JD Salinger pours red wine,so that men, women and Gods canline their parallel hearts again.But the gloom continues, persists.I ear Ill be lost in the void.

I try to orget the zzingcortex o regret, o the holesin our memory that are randomand guilty, o the journey Ihave taken to reach here, the void.

In this room ull o drunk writerswe wait or the magic, that spark

o inspiration, whether romabsinthe or lovers, the devilor God, we need to leave the void.

Ten it happens, Herman Hesse,steering his canoe oers anescape through the canyon o dreamsand we ride, ride on those raters

thinking through it all othe importance o magic in the void.


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Last night I slept like a log.Like a log taken rom the arseo the corpse o Marilyn Monroe,and kept on a satin pillowin a shiny glass display casein a museum o Fetish Bazaars.

Tis morning I awoke and elt like a dog.I elt like the Greek dog Cerberus,with three swaying heads,a serpents tail o menace,a lions claw o words,and a mangled mane o snakes.I elt like Cerberus, guardingthe Haides Gate to normality.o say the least I was a little conused.

But ater a drink or three I sang like a rog.

I sang like a rog in the great McCartney Choir,then drowned my sorrows in a puddle o spawn,singing all the whileIm just a pawn

Te Fool Who Ate Te Gruel


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Im just a pawnIm just a pawn

Im just a tiny pretty manipulated pawn.

Every part o me has its own little door.Id love to let you in,

but Im araid you wouldnt likethe holes I keep in my socksor the alse name I stitched

in my underwear.But, at least a man on a passing horse

wouldnt look twice my way.

Nevertheless, at the end o the paradeIll be the one in the wooden clogs

dancing amongst the pigeons,dodging the marching Mariachi bands

orever to be acknowledgedas the ool who ate the gruel.


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Lashings o rain. We see a oetal beggar outside,orehead touching the rain-soaked cobbles o Prague,

his bald patch tipping a copper plate,humble to the chink-chink o pennies.

More lashings. We use yesterdays imesas an umbrella o inormation.

Golem underoot chases us to Unglet.Stumbling, we enter with ink, black ink

stained on our hands and sodden paper on our shoulders.A og hits our eyes and we squint at little res

held, in warm ngers, glowing, lightingaceless shapes. We blink and we blink.

Ten the noise, seemingly chaotic,renzied shakes, tinkles and toots, the pull o a long trombone,

a skipping beat, looseness in the wrists, the gravitydeying notes willing us to think and to think.

Were oered dark roth in glassesand dumplings on plates, so we sit in scotch-red seating.

An electric-haired enthusiast

in the ront row takes a drink, takes a drink.

His partner yawns, black caterpillarsraming her eyes, as he nods

and applauds hypnotically, robotically. I stareat the kink, that maddening kink

Ungalet


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In the eyes o the players.

A bearded man approaches in an almost-cleanwhite shirt, tells us, You two should have been

here an hour and ve minutes ago.

We look at each other, eyebrows raised.Te trumpets pipe down, the piano plays

Morse code, and the lights, the hue,glows pink, glows pink.


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Gill Scott Heron said our avourite letter o the alphabet is I.

I as in me.

Te satisaction o sel, o the Id, o I.

I, in the seat I dont give up

I, in the places I dont kneel

I, in the stomach I ll

I, in the stomachs I leave empty

I, in the paint on my walls

I, in the walls I leave unpainted

I, as in habit

I, in the uel I burnI, as in the car I drive

I, as in war

I, as in hate

I, the ace in the clouds o explosions

I, in the burning o esh

I, swimming in the rivers o blood o a hundred Holy wars.

I, standing idly by.

Te I O oday


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Ten I turn to you.

You, whose insides are stone.

You, whose heart is just a grey pebble the world has let behind.

You, whose memories are random and guilty.

You, the dust collects on your soul

Ready or the next generation to blow it away.

You think you can organise reedom.

You, whose secret hideout with yoursel conceals

Te stolen ruits o Eden.

You and your primal temptations.

You stare up at twilight; see a thousand unsightly scars gathered on the moon,

Tese are the wounds transcended rom your warAnd one day, the creature that is yesteryear will reach

With its hands o truth and grasp at your throat

And choke you till your last breath,

Your last gulp o air

Your last satisaction o sel

Your last afrmation o I.

Gill Scott Heron said our avourite letter o the alphabet is I.

I think he is right.


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A Small Collection o Illustrations rom

Te Mental Virus


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Issue 3


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Issue 3


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Issue 4


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Issue 6


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John Togher is editor of The Mental Virus Magazine. He a Creative

Writing & English tutor and is currently writing his frst novel. He

runs several arts based events in the North West.

www.thementalvirus.com

Anna FC Smith is an Artist, Illustrator and Festival Organiser.

www.annafcsmith.co.uk


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the importance of magic in the void

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