Cave Painter

No less than fifty-five ((shamanic)) figures .. have been identified among the teeming herds and grazing beasts of the various
caves. These make it practically certain that in that remote period of our species the arts of the wizard, shaman or magician were already well developed, in fact, the paintings themselves clearly were an adjunct of those arts, perhaps even the central sacrament; for it is certain that they were associated with the magic of the hunt, and that, in the spirit of that principle of mythic participation ... their appearance on the walls amounted to a conjuration of the timeless principle, essence, noumenal
image, or idea of the herd into the sanctuary, where it might be acted upon by a rite.

-- Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology

CAVE PAINTER

We enter here at nothing --
-- a blank page at 4:05 a.m.,
the night outside dazing back
into a chill, the darkness
dozing so stilly as if entranced,
dreaming, or dead. I wind
down line for line
through a daily catelogue
of thrills ‘n’ thralls,
descending hall for hall
of a history darkening
into Yours, each room
a depth only words
can fancy, the next
womb of the dream
until we’re here, in the
most ancient counting-
room of all, where kills
and quests are written
down as bulls and foxes
with me there too, the
prone man dreaming
with his drawing-stick,
dowsing heavens with
an engendering spark
of procreation and appetite,
shouting all their praises
loud. Again and again I
travel down the page to
get to here, to this conjugal
bed of stone no longer
preterit of starry motions,
all limbs and labias slathered
in the limbo organum
of oceans, age-old hosannahs
unhosiered to their
spent ‘n’ dribbly amens.
I started this work long
ago -- or You began it in me --
when, back home after
a day in my first-grade
school, I pulled a secret
page from beneath my bed
and crayoned in the next
butt and pussy that I’d
seen playing I’ll Show
You Mine if You Show Me
Yours at recess -- bigs O’s
for asses, small ones for cunts,
each bisected with a line
which signified a goodly
crack through which
to peer deeper into
the cavern of my thrall.
The house was drawn
simple and with clear
intent, divided into
two big rooms; into each
I’d daily stack my coins
-- one room for remembered
asses, the other for cunts,
nickels and dimes banked
back to their origin.
After adding my coups,
I’d stare at the emerging
work in something close
to reverence, but savager,
more like the pride of
a hunter in his hall
of kills, antlers hung in
the rafters and furs piled
everywhere. Is that pride
and joy like incense to
You, wafting between the
worlds on a breeze which
I call lust and You deem
swell? No one taught
me to draw that house --
sure, I learned the craft of
crayoning in class, but
there I drew the outsides
of houses, beamed by a
yellow or blue sun.
Someone else instructed
me to draw the vulgar
insides of that day,
and make of it a shrine.
Lascaux, if I may call you
that old Father, was Your
hand inside my own
as I piled my trophies
high? That tremble of
delight, of equal parts
desire and shame -- Were
You fusing them in
me those furtive afternoons
Were You welling the
pure dark heat of passions
which so enthralled me
and would not let me go?
So who sent into the
drama that kid who
ratted to the Teacher
on my in-the-bushes game?
She called me to the front
of class and, in a hoarse
and raging whisper, told
me if she ever heard of
my shenanagnas again
she would tell (pause eternally
here and ring the bell of
doom) my mother.
Yikes! Throw the votives
in the shaft and seal the
cover tight! Caught
in flagrante delectio by
the day I did as every
mama’s boy would do
and closed down the magic
show, tearing up the
evidence and going back
to crayonning pretty days
with blue or purplish suns.
When I hit puberty eight
years later the fuse was
torched sgain inside the dark
with Your wild candlepower.
The sight of some
12-year-old’s girls budding
nubs in class would return
into my mind at night
as I lay in bed before sleep;
and there I painted that
sight but large inside
a black cathedral of desire
with one hand in my
shorts, stroking in that
magic rhythm that swirled
those nubile nubs in
Vistavision across my
teeming brain, lavishing
upon that day’s sight
a godlike magnitude,
filling my dark bedroom
with blue watery moonlight,
blacklit from starry balls,
til I burst in one held groan
drowning said nub in
a collapsing surf of foam.
Who needed actual girls
with consolations bluer
than their blue-eyed demure?
Oh I’d try and try again
to angle every one
I found into the welcome
of a kiss, but my wanker’s
mojo was the more sustaining
bliss, gilding the day’s
small truths into fancied
conquests, carrying
booty forward beyond
what never happened
toward ends I could only
imagine. Sex was one
thing, its thrall another:
fantasies were always
so much more satisfying
in their terribly removed
ways than whatever
actually transpired, the
actual clench so quickly
disappearing from view,
whatever magic that it
promised dispelled by
logistics and compromise,
the stony difference of
another’s desire always
looking over my shoulder.
It was as if the sex
I imagined was something
darker and deeper than
real sex, a faint
similitude which always
made me wonder if
my problem was one of
reach: Right ocean, wrong
beach. In my eventual
settling down to something
like adulthood I’ve written
down my dreams, at least
the wilder ones, those
which beacon frucatives
my dayside eyes glom over.
The other night I visited
a house I hadn’t seen
for 30 years, the one
I had lived in just off
my college campus
in Spokane, a place long
condemned for its bum
roof and hard use by
so many extracurricular
yahoos like me.
In my dream some woman
lived there with her cult,
a queen of old disease.
She warned me to avoid
those rooms where the
chance of getting sick
was worst -- a 20 percent
syphilis in one, 36 percent
of AIDS in that. Were those rooms
the ones I filled up long ago,
their cargo of cracked butts
and cunts devolving all
the way to here? She and
her crew were wary
of us, having survived so
much exposure and criticism
in the press for being
criminal and rebellious
and nigh-infernal in their
dark experiments,
squatting in hippie squalor
over the vents of
magic time. I said to her
that history has darks
and depths worth
writing down and she
agreed, muse of my
own, perhaps, the softly
sighing voice ahead
which so deftly squeezes
all the ink from my winging
penis pen. Saul Bellow
once said that a writer
is a writer moved to emulation,
but to me that’s far too
pat. A writer is a painter
of Your blueblack bestiary
on the depths of paper
walls, writing down what
You sound inside the conch
shells of the world, with
their whorls of pucker-
pink abyss. It’s raining
softly now outside at
this 5 a.m., a sign from
the dark to blow the
candle on this matin-
hour and return back
to the world, leaving behind
for only God to read
all I’ve seen of Him
in pussies and asses,
the whole beastly crew
summed in one view.