Christopher WunderLee - Moore's Mythopoeia

There are faces weeping. They are circling me, their faces dripping with their anger, their fear, their demands for life. Skin’s falling down off of meaty skulls, jaws that opened to scream have fallen from heads, they’re littering the bony ground. They are standing on the graves of the marching band. They are standing on their own dismembered bodies.

Wet. A coldness collecting in my chest. My feet are cold, each toe squeezed by the teeth of an animal. I am being fed upon. They’ve found my body and scavenged my heart.

There is hair on my forehead. I heard the animals breathing, coming closer. Wolves, badgers, rats, all sitting at the banquet table with napkins tucked below their chins and utensils in ready position, to be served. I’m under the tablecloth. The buzzards swoop in, take each corner in their beaks and upset the table. Candles, plates, cups, flowers, it all spills over. I am revealed to them. Say grace, wolverine and let the feast begin.

My fingers are hidden below my cheek. They’ll remain to identify me. No animal can eat a man’s identity. I have a wallet, I can feel it lying against my pants. It’s disposable, why will none of you take a bite? They’ll have dancers for entertainment. Once they’re finished with me, there will be entertainment and coffee. The forest will come alive in merriment, all in my honor.

I am still in the river. The current pushes at my legs. My chest is against a rock. My arm is under my head. The growls are the river combating the gorge.

It is morning. I can move my arm, it is 5:23, my watch still works. Just an hour and a half before I need to leave for work. My eyes are open, there is a sky heavy with rain clouds, pressing down on the land, a new weight that compresses the day. The sun is just peeking its pearly head over the horizon. There are lights in the buildings.

Good morning, my gorge, my ill-fated, docile gorge. You could not kill me, I am Fate’s jester.

There is nothing but the wild of the bottom of the gorge. Only battered logs, pebbles, boulder shards, contemptible shrubs and acrobatic trees. There is no one else.

Has she gone further down river? Has her jump been successful? Shall I find her body, chase away the diner guests, and feel her neck? She has candle skin. She has the moon’s face. She is the moonlight remaining, she is the trespasser of the day. She is a corpse with bloody veins and animated eyes. She has been carved from a moon rock and had a candle placed inside her chest. Flower, spreading open her pedals, stretching her stamen, awaiting pollination from the discriminating satellite. Flower. Is your death an arrangement with fate? Are you my battering chip? I am released, then. There is refuge in this, I am no longer a mercenary…

WHAT THE THUNDER WOULD NOT SAY

That it had to follow a drowning.

That a hermit was hiding on the shore of the storm.

That it could never show its face at the theatre again.

That the mountain has no fear (save that of the stonecutter)

That he could only resign.

QUIS EST HOMO?

A God without faithful

An animal without instincts

An artist who does not understand his craft

A slave with an absentee master

THE LESTRYGONIANS’ TOILET PAPER SCRIPTURE

Music is the sedative of the people.

The hungry fish for more than food.

The traveler is the world’s poet.

THE FIRST THING TRANSLATED BY THE ROSSETTA STONE

Two pounds of fish, some fig leaves, a bottle of booza, four pounds of maize

None of it was checked off.

THE CASE AGAINST WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1. He could not sign his own name

2. He had no higher education

3. He knew no other languages

4. He had never traveled

5. His family were considered dumb and his family name vulgar

6. “Venus & Adonis” includes no patois

7. He bought his family seal as a usurer, not a playwright

8. His life is a mystery while all other writers, before and after, are easily recorded

9. He died in 1616

10. All originals have been destroyed

11. He never copyrighted any of his works

12. The first folio did not have all his writings, it was published after his death

13. The Quarto of 1608 is different than the Folio of 1623

14. He was not a lawyer

THE LAST WORDS OF MR. JOSEPH MOORE

I must confess that there are no things in this Republic that I wish or expect to see come to any good.

THE MIRAGE

A play is a lie. The actors are liars. The stage is a charade. The costumes are simple pretense. The acts are fictions. The emotions expressed are invented. She does not love him, she is married to a man in the audience.

Hamlet is an extension of the great lie of the theatre. The play is a lie. Hamlet lies to the other characters, who are lying to the audience. He pretends madness. He pretends friendship. He pretends love. He lies to Ophelia.

Hamlet orchestrates a play to reveal his knowledge of the truth, but this truth is confined to the stage. The audience believes the truth, the actors on the stage watch a play. They react to the play; it is filtered to the audience. The lie is lied to.

* * *

There are some truths to this world, although not many. For one, his name is Graham Greene, that is indisputable (in all of its Kristeraian glory). No one can change that, save himself. But he would never do that, not in a million millennia. For being who he is, the truth be told, is his sole asset.

Graham Greene was finishing his shave. That is a fact, no one would ever disagree with it, although it would be true to say he was doing other things as well. He was humming a 20 thcentury pop-song that was recently re-recorded by a currently fashionable female dance group. They did not play instruments, they had never written a word of the lyrics they sang, they were young, could follow the choreographed maneuvers with the agility of a child’s toy and were willing to don whatever atrocious, caparison costumes they were asked to wear. They were the most popular music group in the nation. They would win all the awards at that year’s ceremonies. Graham loved them, he simply adored their sound, he enjoyed with an endless fascination watching them move on stage, the glimpses of their heaving chests, the line that was always visible of a long slender thigh, their perfect, surgical faces, their mouths that formed the words, their faces that seemed so passionate about another person’s words.

Beside the tune he absently mimicked and the fleeting images of the young women, Graham was considering other things. Very important things, things that he would forget within the week but that were, for now, his entire existence. In Graham, it must be said, was an almost mithridatized and bovaristic psychology, he was incredibly adept at the object of his focus, but a miserable failure at balancing anything else. He was not complex, to explain it curtly, in a clinic sense. But he was uncannily talented in the one subject he was currently interested in; he was the best at the one thing he was doing at a given moment. Should you watch him playing a game, he would appear to be a master. Should you catch him in negotiations with a potential client, you would believe him to be an expert. Graham Greene was the perfect control element in any experiment; he was like a fixture of a landscape that gave the area its character, a feature that would never, ever change. He was the perfect product of his environment, a Protagorasian archetype as yet unidentified by the golden bough of society’s ever-reaching family tree.

Graham Greene was an A-lister, he was thirty-eight and Senior Vice President of the sixth largest advertising agency in the world, Hidiger, Popov, & Schlesinger. He was tall, muscular, handsome, and confident. Graham was just the right man, he was six-foot-six, one hundred and eighty pounds, with a thirty-four inch waist and size ten shoes. His hair was dark brown, his complexion was olive, without being oily, his eyes were brown, his teeth were white, his nose was the perfect complement to his stern profile, he had a strong jaw, a rigid, but pleasant mouth, thin, pink lips, and well-groomed eyebrows. He was not too tall, but maintained a commanding presence; he was not too good looking, but attractive enough for people to turn to look at him. He always scored above average on every test he ever took, from his bi-monthly mental health exams, to his intelligence tests. His physical examinations were always perfect, he’d never been sick, he’d never injured any part of his body, he’d never grown tired, sad, or angry. Graham was an A-lister man if ever there was one.