How to Swallow a Pig

by Robert Priest

  Pursuing this unusual course, the wise man found a way of writing which would absolutely destroy his thoughts. Next he discovered a way of singing which was a worse fate for a song than absolute silence. Wiser and wiser he grew as he forgot. Finally, the wise man devised a method for communicating which destroyed all telepathy and understanding. It was a very clever and necessary device that he hoped would do away altogether with the dangers of talking.

  When the populace finally discovered the antics of this wise man they were at first frightened and then outraged. Gathered into a mob and stirred by their leaders, they went to get him, a cold autumn of hands falling on his naked flesh. What a torment it was for him to be touched and turned upright at last. Chanting hosannas, they carried this colossal wise man up to the mountain peak. They held him aloft for seven days on a pole as he mumbled and chattered, destroying his feelings with poetry, ruining his desperate prayers with speech. At last they shoved him into a rocket, laughing cruelly as the vehicle blasted off.

  Helplessly he wept in the dark as the rocket dug deeper and deeper into the darkness of the sky, further and further from the mighty tug of his earth-star. Just before he went mad his hands floated up over his head in the weightlessness and he began to scream in the language no one understands.

  POINTS

  A man had a job putting the points back on old arguments. When, for instance, a particularly aged theory had been rather obviously blunted by some more modern, more aptly pointed enemy, he could, in a brew of well-steeped opinions, philosophies, religions, apostrophes, and semantics, restore the point somewhat. Knowing this I took him my old ragged love, the one whose piercing had ceased to move even me. I showed him this poor, blunted, unlucky love of mine and he said, “O this one is easy,” and began to mix up a batch of old poetry and high romance. When he had steeped it to a froth, he thrust my old utterly pointless love into it and waited. Finding on withdrawal that it was still blunt, he held it for a while, puzzled, over a fire made from the desires of many thirsty men in deserts. Then he hammered it with a metal made of loneliness. With a knife of empty nights he hacked. But still it remained intolerably, impenetrably dull and blunted, so he returned it to me. “A man’s love,” he said, “must be as pointed as his tongue. It must have the same direction as his hands and mouth. It must pierce all distances and agonies, overcome all enemies. Yours obviously is of an inferior quality. It hasn’t even stood the ardours of your poor little life. Pity humanity if this is the one strong thing that comes from it.” Thus chided, I went outside jingling the cash in my pockets. “At last!” I said to myself. “At last I am ready for business.”

  THE MAN WHO THOUGHT A WOMAN WAS GOD

  There was a man who saw a woman walking in front of him and he had a very intense “feeling” that she was God, come to walk on earth, this time as a woman. “I am God, God, God!” she seemed to say with her walk, all the power of Yahweh in her supple limbs, her confident stride. Foolishly the man began following her, unable for the moment to figure out anything else to do. He wanted to look in her eyes. Just to make sure. He would know Yahweh if he looked him in the eyes, but how would he do it? Perhaps he could suddenly accelerate, walk right past her without looking and then somewhere up ahead, stop, stare for a while in a shop window and then, turning, catch her eye as she caught up and passed. No, that was too obvious. And what if it was God? Yahweh would know just what he was up to and quite possibly crush him forever in the mighty fists of his beauty — lay waste to his spirit with a stare of such naked sensuality and power that even the immortal soul-bit would be melted, dazzled out of existence. Then again if he didn’t look, he would never know, and he had never had such a strong feeling before.

  With the equivalent of a herd of butterflies flapping away in this man’s feathery breast, the thought-shots of sunlight broke through him. Aaaaah, a world that had lately seemed so dull and lifeless, bloated by cruelty and submission — now there was possibility in everything. God had come again — this time as a beautiful woman. Well, it was worth dying for then. It was worth having the spirit go up like so much star-stuff and be forever beamed out across the time-space. He must look. Immediately he deked over on a side street and dashed up a parallel road, hardly able to stop a great leap from overcoming him, galloping like a horse, like a ballet dancer. Zoom, he shot past the next intersection with a most incredible intensity, his face pointed unconsciously toward the least stress in the atmosphere, jet-like. Faster and faster he sprinted past the next intersection too, his face like an Aztec airplane. God! He was gonna look God in the eyes and explode! Completely in focus, hardly out of breath, he came to the next corner, stopped, and then slowly sauntered back over to the street God was on, his heart flapping like a rag in the wind. His blood like burning dust.

  There, his head enormous, like a cracking planet in his hat, he began to walk back down the original street, just as a bus went by. But where was she? He couldn’t see her anywhere. “She’s not in any of these stores. Nor these doorways. Nor . . . No! It can’t be!” The heart squirting a cold gush up against the throat. “Break! Break! You strip of ice, you cry-keeper. Burst open O shattered breast of bells and trumpets, for she was on that bus.” And that bus was gone. He had lost her.

  THE UNCATCHABLE MAN

  There was once an uncatchable man and nothing could catch this man, not traps, not houses, not colds, not people with nets, nothing could catch him because he was free and easy and he couldn’t be nailed down. He just traveled around in search of a special jewel he was after, and would slip out of any sticky situation with a high squeal and some very fine rolling. Eventually the uncatchable man found his way to a certain pollen patch, and being very white, he decided to roll there, taking on for a while the fabulous rainbow hues of nature. While he was rolling there, rolling and laughing about how easily he had always evaded capture, the resident butterfly came by and asked him, “How are you liking the trap?” “What do you mean ‘the trap?’” he asked. “The trap you’re in,” the butterfly replied. “You are caught in a butterfly trap.” “Ah-ha-ha!” the man laughed, for he knew the butterfly was wrong and that nothing could catch him. “Well why don’t you leave then?” the butterfly asked. “I could leave if I wanted to,” the man yelled, continuing to roll — rolling, if anything, more joyfully and laughing louder and louder as he moved deeper and deeper into the pollen trap. Rolling and laughing and thinking about how much capture he had evaded and chortling with shrill glee. “Bet you can’t get away now,” the butterfly screamed above him. “Bet you like the trap now!” “O how I love the trap!” the man yelled. “I love the trap — so much fun to get away from. So much fun to roll like this, right up to the stickiest flowers themselves and then run away.” Saying this, the man pointed to the bent-down lips of a huge pollen-swollen flower which was at the very heart of the trap. “Aaaaah, what a sweet flower!” he said in a high hysterical voice, observing with great appetite the sticky climb of pollen higher up the blue and red and purple petals. Suddenly he felt a great urge to stick his face right up one of the large floral bells. “Watch this,” he said to the butterfly, and getting down on his multi-coloured knees and folding back his pollen-smeared wings he ducked his head down under, right up into the open mouth of it. “O sweet, sweet sticky colours!” the man giggled from within, letting the multi-coloured syrups ooze down onto his shoulders and draw him in. “O sweet and tasty flower!” he bellowed. And then of course, just as it looked like he had been captured, he popped out with a shriek of triumph, jumping up and down mockingly in front of the butterfly. “Well, bye-bye butterfly,” he said, turning his back on her as he ran across the pollen patch and out into the world. Bitterly, the butterfly watched the uncatchable man go running, and then she returned, weeping, to her nest at the top of the flowers. Someday her tender blossoms would be restored. Someday she would catch a mate. Sadly, sadly as the moonlight fell and the great whoops and shrieks of laughter of the uncatchable man faded into the starlight and dew, the tears of
the butterfly dripped down the stalks of her flowers and formed, for an instant, a jewel — the very jewel which the uncatchable man is, even now, frantically searching for.

  POET’S PROGRESS

  I. Thanks to a short, squat frame and an early effort at weight-lifting, this big poet is able to carry about the huge “I” which various sages have awarded him. And to his credit it should be said that even though it would often be much easier to carry it sideways, he always carries it straight up lest it be mistaken for a hyphen. It is said that this huge “I” weighs over 40 kilos and, being made of certain inferior metals, is known to give off a radiation of intense arrogance. Observing the strain and general distortion of his features which the support of this huge “I” has cost this poet, one has to marvel again at the strength and beautiful fortitude of those other poets whose task it is to carry around the entire word “Important.”

  II. What his head did made an elastic hat necessary. All day he stuffed himself with pig and potato and cow pieces and his head grew bigger and bigger. It was gigantic by the time his hat popped off with a snap at night and sent him into his “poetic” frenzy. For then, discarnate, like a demon at large, he would twist and writhe in the air, all the time mumbling and expostulating with a pompous air into a tape recorder. Afterward, when his fingers began to soften, when at last he could see what was left of his feet, he would proudly let go the last of his excess wind by saying the word “Penultimate.”

  HIT SONGS FROM HEAVEN

  It is snowing the freedom pamphlets of heaven. Sheet music from the angel factories. Hit songs are flying by in the breeze, each one written on a giant snowflake. Hit songs from heaven and if the pianists can only catch one on a music stand cold enough, we shall hear at last the wildest tinkles of angelic composers. What a list, what a reel the high music of heaven has! Such snaps, such snags, such hooks! It is snowing the divine anthems of heaven and to hear but the few choice phrases my magnificent instrument can utter before I go wild myself will send you all into reveries, passions, fuckeries, and adorations. You will want to leap and dance in the streets, burning great characters of the alphabet in joyous exaltation. Come and hear my crazy Chopin — nine bars of your angelic attitude — before these great overtures are lost upon my body heat, ravished of their writings as surely as pages in a furnace.

  SULTAN OF THE SNOWFLAKES

  Because his footprints are constantly changed by gimmickry and magic, a particularly unique beast is hired by the snow-makers to run on the spot all day, while sheaves of snow are rapidly stamped and moved on by industry beneath him. He is something like a creative elephant — a heavenly pachyderm whose divine bel-lowings of joy are sometimes used to puff out a great flag in that place. Stomp, stomp he goes and the snowflakes, with the thrust he gives them, fall from the firmament, filling up the kennels and the dreams and the beggar’s cup full of snow, so that all might be cast down together on designated days. He regards the snowflake as propaganda for Utopia — each one, if you could read it, would tell of swamps he walked in singing, of prehistoric moons and governments of love. Stomp, stomp he goes — the immortal pamphleteer whom children read on fingertips with wonder. “I will change the world,” he says, “just before the melt.” Summertimes he goes on holiday, is called “Sultan of the Snowflakes,” and for a hobby spends days and days designing the faces of beautiful women.

  EGO-ANGELS

  Ego-angels live on in bandshells long after their legal time on earth. There, if they like, they can conduct again any fanfare or all the fanfares. And so they grow bigger and bigger in their bandshells until the music is too small for them and they must float up at last to their redemption. When ego-angels come at last into Paradise, they are welcomed by a legion of a billion crazed ego-angels blowing the titanic fanfares of all the religions. Then they get the bad news — no, they cannot immediately begin conducting the fanfares of Paradise. They must wait their turn. And so it is said that the grip of ego-angels upon bandshells becomes more and more desperate and the earthly fanfares closer and closer to those of heaven.

  QUIET CAPS

  Across the nation our wizards wear quiet caps and learn in silence: geographies, histories, and tales of old. So fragile are these pointed caps that one single trumpet blast could shatter them. A pin dropping would ravish them utterly, and like destarched flowers they would wither and fall about their eyes. And so the wizards keep their babies in exquisite nurseries below and above the ground, for imagine what libraries the screech of a baby might consume. Imagine what mathematics, medicine, and poetries might be lost if the children were allowed to frolic. So, wise in the ways of sedimentary rock, full of famous dates and high gibberish, our wizards bring their children up from underground at night for lullabies. For a brief time, as our wizards sing, those delicate hats glow in the dusk. Then, as the moon rises and the children sleep, being used up, they are consumed into dust.

  WANT THE WATER!

  All those stones you threw when you were in school — they come back to you when you are drowning. That is when they hang around your neck like the lards of the rich. But I have dispensed with my advice about water. People will not hoard it as they do gold. Nor when they are unnaturally hungry will they drink it excessively. Perhaps they do not want the rainbows coalescing in their blood. They run to something like food or a fuck and then complain about dissatisfaction. Long for the water, I warned. Want nothing else more badly than the big silver thing or it will be your undoing. But they walked by me, fat with albatross and tank passes. There was nothing I could do; even I had the corpse slippers. Soon the water was everywhere wasted. It lapped in hungrily, obsessively, shore to shore like a tongue at teeth. There wasn’t a single place it didn’t want to get into. It knocked even on the door of the invisible air, but at last all the palaces were locked to it and it had only those terrible systems of sewers — the cities and the souls — the incredible veins of everything human to dance in. And that is when it remembered again the idea of rain. Now again all those crowns I threw away, the great robes of water, the swirling aqua-diem in the fish bowl — they all come back to me. I who am not satisfied with the oceans and oceans of it. I who am still thirsty in the torrent, screaming more and more. I sing to you one last time about the heaviness of gold for astral travelers, and that gravity persists even underground.

  BOOK 5 COMIX

  CURLY’S REPORT

  I could never speak about it before because nothing had ever been said to make me think anything positive could come of it. So I would try to make it funny and people actually laughed. But Moe was really hitting me. He was poking me in the eyes. He was twisting my ear right ‘round in circles and everybody just watched and laughed. Is the horrifying hollow clunk of one head colliding with another funny, even if you go “wooo”? I should have let my needs be known. I should have said, “This isn’t funny, I’m hurting!” But I couldn’t speak. And Moe was kicking me hard a lot of the time — kicking me in the coccyx or tugging on my tongue. And when I wasn’t tensing up against the next onslaught, I was watching poor, sweet Larry getting his hair torn out in fistfulls that sounded like sheets of cotton ripping. The poor bastard — poked, seared, scalded, torn. Sure, I hated Moe — more than anything. And yes, it’s true, whether deliberately or not I still don’t know, ‘cause I may have just convinced myself it was an accident, but one day Moe got his head completely stuck in a stovepipe and me and Larry decided we were gonna “help” him. So, well, we put our feet on his shoulders and pulled at the stovepipe as hard as we both could. After a while, when he stopped screaming in there, all you heard were these “pingy” sounds of his neck bones popping and we knew we could just tug his head right off if we wanted. But we stopped and tried to twist the stovepipe off instead. Once again he gasped and cried out, but we just went right on with both hands, turning that stovepipe ‘round and ‘round till his nose bone crunched and steam shot out. But those day are gone now. People thought it was funny, so we went along with it. Now we pay. And that’s j
ust the way it is.

  WITNESS REPORT

  Well the little one — Moe, the nasty one — when he found out what had happened, he got so enraged, he deliberately poked two fingers right into Curly’s eyes. I’ve never seen a man poked in the eyes before and I was quite shocked. Curly, in agony, pulled both palms down over his face to his chin, one hand after the other, in rapid succession, all the while emitting an agonized kind of “wub-wub-wub-wub” sound, high in register, dog-like in intensity. I watched helplessly as the same arm which had so cruelly poked the fingers into Curly’s eyes shot back, the elbow high, right onto the bridge of Larry’s nose. This caused Larry to do something which deeply disturbed me. Taking the huge monkey wrench he had been holding, he somehow managed to spike its grips up Moe’s nostrils, and with some quick turns, to tighten it to grip the septum. To my horror, while Curly inscribed a heel-driven circle on the floor and continued his heart rending “wub-wub-wubs,” Larry proceeded to twist Moe’s nose completely around on his face until the cartilage yielded a sharp “pop.” Unable to move, Moe began to run on the spot, going “Nya-aaa-aaaa!” in agony.

  WITNESS REPORT II

  Perhaps the most horrifying part of it all, though, is the terrible and unexpected sounds human body parts make as they are yanked, disconnected, and pierced. For, unlike the muffled under-flesh retorts we would expect from snapping femurs and popping joints, we get highly oscillating “Proing!”-type sounds, more reminiscent of the mechanical world: springs, gaskets, etc. Human flesh, when whacked, sounds much more like wood than water, for instance, and there are apparently notches in the neck that creak in precise increments when corkscrewed: “Nok! Nok! Nok!” till the face comes right back ‘round again, ready to be let go. And these are only a few of the many violent and repetitively brutal, even handicapping acts which I saw these three men perform during my three-week stay. The surprising thing to me, though, was the speed at which they reconciled. After repeated brutal assaults they could apparently, without ceremony or apology, completely forgive, forget, and get along with one another. (If only to perform one more foolish, useless task.) More than their own violence, however, was called into play. They had an enormous propensity for attracting and eliciting aggression from those around them. Perhaps the most humiliating thing that can be done to a human being is to shove a cream pie in his or her face. When such an attack occurs in a room full of people and pies, these three men have a strange catalytic, chain reaction effect on even the most distinguished guests. One can barely watch when all, finally, give way — the good and the bad, the handsome and the sad — to this profoundly humiliating urge to throw a pie. To see heads jerked back by pies, heads shoved down, suffocatingly deep into pies. To see pies splat two, three people at a time. To see people shoved headfirst into wedding cakes, and vast vats of icing dumped on heaps of rioting people. To watch helplessly as faces, nostril-flared, are forced into foam and cherry, and sense the almost ecstatic quality of these actions is a profoundly disturbing and ultimately unsettling experience, which ought not to be witnessed by the faint of heart.