by Graham Mort
I am the light of the world! The one
and only Elektro Electricus Electricity!
I’m the path of righteousness the way of
all things The Juice! I’m the amber glow
of a leopard’s eye brindled by its own fur
I’m a white tongue forking sky with truth’s
high fidelity I’m the heart of matter –
Sensational! I’m the tongue’s tender slug
squirming in your mouth your palette’s
glottal-stops stuttering your vocal chords
fluttering under exhaled oratory speech’s
butterfly flitting from thought to thought
in the short hay-sweet summer of human
breath I’m the mouth’s and the mind’s
embouchure fluting the world’s cadences
Things and the space they’re in all that’s
between them and beyond I’m intelligence
and what it apprehends even its own
subtlety speed and essence I’m the bolt
of lightning in your brain Homunculus!
Your ancients put me to such simple games
(between slaughter you’ve made them
children at) The way dust stuck to a resin
pebble The way a rod of fossilised pine
tar picked up a feather or a spar of jet or
raised a girl’s crackling mist of hair Even
those battle-crazed Crusaders those Mars
struck horse-borne unearthly errant knights
were fearful of the charge that prowled
hot armour that click of blade on bone
shocking the groom’s cybernetic arm I
was bewitching daemonic elusive a
sleeping beast or beauty highly charged
definitely on the wild side where anything
could happen and did without your know
how or why – the way I like things best
I was legend folklore pure faery sheer
unadulterated undiluted unaccounted
Myth I told you the world was more than
it seemed and more various I induced
your godly instincts through naked
uninsulated fear lit candles in each
way-side shrine struck psalms from the
flint walls of chapels novenas from
each church’s vaulted hush Respect!
But what hype! What snake-oil conning!
Cheap tricks! Such superfluity of terror
Such abundance of superstition! Such
sophistry somersaults forward rolls
and back-flips of theological minds
Such pogroms persecutions and piss
taking Such whispered prayerful
susurrations! Holy shit! The whole
religious racket from Allah to Yaweh
to sweet creeping Jesus sparked by
the odd incineration forest fire
stricken ass or burning bush! That
was more than even I’d bargained for!
I was Other The unknown ineffable
uncharted realm weird dimension of
the unmapped unexplored undiscovered
land at sky’s end I was the cartographer’s
wet dream the dragon’s tail thrashing an
ocean’s curdled clouds to foam I took
a long-term view so this was all a gamble
a game the first round of a hidden hand
a spot of pitch and toss just for starters
This was catch-as-catch-can and let’s
face it – you couldn’t No sooner did you
have me than I’d gone Here one minute
absent the next Now you see me now
you don’t I’m nothing if not philosophical
Times change even if Time doesn’t Only
teasing! (But you know what I mean)
Now you think that just by looking in
my direction with a little algebra the
mathematics of that juiced-up brain I
grew for you that I could be changed by
your cat-killing curiosity be somehow
different than I am? You think that your
inquisition might change me? Now listen
up and listen good! I’m no pathetic fallacy
no abstruse allegory no mere metaphor
illusion allusion or fable I’m no pale shade
or parable I’m not your elusive immortal
damnable everlasting soul I’m no loitering
wraith of your pale consciousness No way!
It’s me that cuts the mustard round here
and pretty damned hot so get this into your
pretty little head once and for all I’m not
like I am merely because you see me that
way No! I simply am Get it? Got it? OK
I’ll concede I’ve never made it easy for
you but why should I? I’m downright
touchy a twisted twat a nightmare to
know Clasp me just once the wrong
way and you’ll feel the lash of my studded
belt and not let go you’ll hang on for
grim death see me glitter in the darkness
beyond life (that gutter you’re star-gazing
from) You’ll find out that I’m for real I’m
for keeps Hey presto! Abracadabra! One
flash of light just one glance in your direction
and everything’s over changed forever or
begins again The boulder skids backward
over time’s scree of broken hours avalanching
the millennial mountain burying the back
breaking ball-grinding path trodden by those
selfish genes DNA’s little scam to get ahead
There! I told you I was a god though not the
oracular or household sort Not the meekly
crucified or doe-eyed kind More baleful
more Baalful more the jealous type the
wrathful deity shock-jock or vengeful Jove
Give me a rod of blue-blazing iron over a
crook of curled horn any time! Eléctricité
Electricidad Elektrizität Name me if you
can It was always worth a try But remember
I name you and name your world – the way
you sign yourself in billboard lights across
your tiny global one-horse town But what’s
in a name when your idea of time is so
temporary so touchingly tentative? Oh I
grant you were a quick learner once you’d
bred out the ape in you dug into rocks
mined minerals felt magnesian’s tug at
iron the lodestone swinging north in its
twine cradle Earth’s drawn guts quivering
the longboats sculling through fire and
blood This way to Old Nick the grand
paymaster! This way to cash and carry
the wages of sin! This way to the immanent
ineffable glorious everlasting Truth! You
country hicks you hat-tipping straw-chewing
gobsmacked stunt-pulling hucksters were
getting slick and warm at last I was in no
hurry I’d seen it all before Another time
another place But of all the crummy joints
in the universe you had to pick this one?
Play it again but get the tempo the melody
the key the chords the sequence of the song
straight I’m pure hubris in the hands of man
I’m Zeus’ head-banging brat the thorn
scorching fire of war the double-edged double
honed double-crossing blade of beauty
splitting the marble-white Olympian brow
Talking of mythology (the comic-strip way
you explain things) remember Hephaestus?
That crippled arc-welder up to no good?
And his thieving mate Prometheu
s? His
true theft his true gift was me and I was
torture to him ever after Guilty as charged
chained with iron riveted in bronze
shocked by Zeus’ thunder-bolted finger
gutted by lightning’s ravening white
eagles on the drenched rocks of…Well
yes let’s get to it eternity Eternity?
Tell me about it! That snatched meaning
that smugly human word for endlessness
infinity the always-vacant room beyond
the desk clerk’s grasp No sooner do you
spiral out there on your pretty diaphanous
angel’s wings of thought (that luminous
flux of light imagination’s voltage
guttering in the vacuum packed space
of heaven) than you bolt back blackbox
it with laws solder it with words the
leaden vowels of a quotidian mind Then
when it all gets too heavy to hold you
posit a finite universe? Get real! Give
me a break! And remember what goes
around comes around Time perhaps (you
think) to roll out your brightest luminaries
Galvani Volta Kelvin Faraday? Why not?
After all they tried to guess my nature
ingratiate themselves seduce then pimp
me to servitude! Franklin spiked my
favourite most awe-inspiring party
trick Old Faithful my oak-splitting
temple-shearing steeple-wrecking bolt
He strung you a line in copper and I
bought it OK no problem I can be pliable
amenable reliable when nicely asked
when your conduct is suitably aligned is
altogether proper and correct But if it
wasn’t tricks with kites and lightning
(self-evident truths) it was some masque
of trivial pursuits – that gavotte of frog’s
legs on ionised wire – or it was the very
stuff of nightmares Frankenstein’s unrisen
clay his makeshift corpse and twitching
limbs his pearly eyes rolled back by my
miraculous spark of life speech already
rotting his purple lips with loneliness Pure
fiction! Or so you thought Man that is
born of Woman and nothing else but the
holy word of God Man that hath but a
short time to live and is full of misery
and cometh up and is cut down like a
flower etcetera etcetera What a yawn!
Come play with me and we’ll see about
that with a little cryogenics but it won’t
be your kiss they’re woken with or any
other kiss but mine My blue-sparking
lips My speech melting their deep-freeze
complexions their slush puppy icing of
never-lasting death What a rush! But I
digress At least you were getting a handle
on me getting the hang of it with your
arcane paraphernalia The generation
game in full swing now At long last you
were harnessing nature making me your
tool and I was a little shocker neither
grateful nor ungrateful merely along
for the ride (anything for a buzz!) and
time for a little bonding ionically or
ironically perhaps You might even say
I’d become iconic Quite a mouthful!
But before you knew it I was schlepping
through saltwater slinking across iron
zinging into cells of acid slipping through
coils of copper tags of zinc anode/cathode
attraction/repulsion You held me for the
first time speculated so that I accumulated
and yes I stayed around for the party –
after all you had potential now Conventional
current didn’t get my drift but your apparatus
worked and that was all that mattered My
induction your deduction terminals bristling
sparking at last with light with tungsten’s
brilliant heat neon’s coy blush something
altogether more noble more municipal
than curiosity or courtier’s games I was
charismatic a must at every party! I’d
arrived and how! You couldn’t wait to
turn me on in village streets towns cities
factories farms Even tin roofed shacks in
the middle of nowhere stuck like tiny glow
worms to my web of light the bright net
that’s always down there trawling the
blackest tides of night Darkness – that
other princely kiss – was licked at last!
I was the original alchemist and alchemy
it was me turned base metal into cheap-skate
gold mined earth’s salts heaved scrap iron
quicker than a man or slave or horse I was
at your service all present and correct
That’s me at your wrist for instance marking
time All that was merely the beginning
just for openers a pretty good hors d’oeuvres
though the main course was still out
there somewhere beyond my electroplate
glitter Earth’s vamped-up carousel of
fairground lights What a laugh when
Einstein went in for Bodyline chalked up
those long odds slung down that hardball
curve at the speed of light! I didn’t get it but
didn’t let it get to me I hadn’t peaked yet
took guard hooked his fast stuff to the out
field the boundary fence of chaos the long
grass of uncertainty Uncertainty? Oh yes
that became your guiding principle irresistible
logic magnetic north of the human mind your
natural state your state of grace if only you
knew it my enfants sauvages And chaos?
Those butterfly wings softly beating That echo
of the Big Bang that whisper of the very first
word the whimper you’re told was there in
the Beginning? Well think of Shit Creek in
a barbed wire canoe Imagine hell in a hand
cart A snowball in a solar storm! But don’t
think you can talk about everything garrulous
ape You got lucky with me that’s all But then
I’m a safe bet the dead cert you could put your
hair shirt on to trump all that bluff prevarication
doubt double-talk and second-guessing I’m
Lady Luck herself your Ace your straight run
your prile your royal flush of electrons
the Joker in your power pack! Why don’t
you cut your losses throw in the towel
stack the deck admit that you’re alone?
A loser faking it when I’m everywhere
and everything when I’m the real deal?
Here’s Newton in a spin struck dumb as
a pig with an apple in its mouth Here’s the
quantum level nothing quite predictable
or safe your new-found friends those
charming quarks in jester’s motley cavorting
just where you thought you’d found the
indissoluble indivisible grain of matter
Nothing simply true after all nothing
where it should be when it ought to be
everything spinning out of logic your
physics gone autistic each particle jumping
and skipping at the same time in two
places at once whirling inside its own furiously
blurred helix just like the Pleiades those
seven doves Orion chased The more you look
the more they disappear So now you�
��ve got
the universe’s petticoat its red shift squinting
in the corner of your eye? How to explain
all this? How to untangle all these strings?
Holy cow! Jumping Jehovah! Jesus H Christ!
How? OK first take one extra cooperative
cat curled in a biscuit box and drop some
radioactive isotope in there just for kicks
rig it to a trip-hammer a phial of acid –
poor pussy! – close the lid on the whole
caboodle count to a given number Let’s
say none a nanosecond almost nothing
nada nichts niente nowt According to
our bright sparks in the Science Department –
and you have to hand it to them they like
a laugh – our purring friend ends up dead
and alive at the same time reductio
ad absurdum! You have to chuckle It’s
enough to make a cat grin all that stuff
about multiple worlds antimatter super
positions or to put it more succinctly – a
hatfull of arseholes – neither one thing
nor another Another fuckup another
facelift another frenetic false start? Or
am I merely all things to all men? Hard
to tell eh? It’s a crisis of faith a theological
black hole the mind’s white dwarf a hitch
a liturgical glitch enough to make you
search again for that old dilettante God
And look! Here He is! Never far away
late home again with His brandy and
cigar breath creeping back to Eden
fumbling the re-entry latch tip-toeing
tipsy after a few aeons of interstellar
parties bonhomie seduction booze tom
catting and good hot procreation in that
parallel universe you dropped Him in
Look! He’s home Just in time to fuck
you up eternally and beyond to tuck
you up into oblivion Well not yet Not
quite Maybe in His infinite wisdom His
inexhaustible patience He’ll let the party
go on late allow a few more charades a
few more centuries to play scrabble with
the codes of life until the next the last
singular event Things are heating up
nicely now! You’d like to change my
channel? Switch over? Switch off?
True I can’t choose you as you have
chosen me but remember I sent a billion
shafts of pure forked fear before you
dared to call me friend Some friend!
My caress can take the hair from your
lip or legs blaze an eagle on your chest
tattoo Love or Hate across your fists
needle your mother’s name burn a
