Table Of ContentGOODBYE, HOMUNCULUS!
And other astounding stories
Jonathan Bowden
First Edition
Published October 2009
Printed in Great Britain
Copyright © Jonathan Bowden
All Rights Reserved
Cover design and layout by Daniel Smalley
Cover painting ‘Behaviourism’ by Jonathan Bowden
ISBN 978-0-9557402-9-9
The Spinning Top Club
BM Refine
London
WC1N 3XX
www.jonathanbowden.co.uk
Caravaggio’s Giuditta che taglia la teste a Oloferne (1597-1600)
A head – severed at the root – but posted by a lectern
Hammering to grief
As an old crone stares
Avidly, greedily, circumspectly with silk:
Did Herodias’ daughter dance for this?
Dedicated to Dorothy Bowden (1931-1978)
The Bowden Coat-of-Arms courtesy of Jill Wadley
CONTENTS
Goodbye, Homunculus! 6
Iron Breath 51
Armageddon’s Village 81
Noughts Are Crosses 128
GOODBYE, HOMUNCULUS!
a novella
PROLOGUE:~
FIRST SPECTRUM OF INDETERMINACY: (1)
In Hell, per se, a scrimmage has formed this side of desolation; it
exists in front of a goal which served as a gibbet. A blackened
waste lay in the rear – and it already tempted its greyness; if only
to lie awake before this aperture. It took after one of those nets in
Gaelic football; an area or zone that has an ice-cream salesman
next to it. A bleary or incontinent cranium is seen; one which
sends rivulets beyond an expectant spine. The game has
momentarily paused… yet it will soon recommence without his
observations. A wanton head looks up at the camera; and it feels
dishevelled, broken off, toothsome or possessed of a withering
brain. One eyelet is out while the other feeds off a prism; when
taken together with the convulsions of a lobotomy. His molars
also wax irregular; they peel back in an action reminiscent of a
scrivener, if not some daemonic bait. In truth, could this be
everything that’s left from the life of Gregory Fawcett
Greensleeve?
A FORTUNE-TELLER READS A SIEVE: (2)
In a previous existence, now, a man on a horse approaches a pile;
it conjures up one of those martello towers. These were a set of
fortifications – many of them down on the English coast – built
in order to withstand Napoleon’s invasion. A large number of
them exist in Kent… whether next to or accosting various pebble
beaches. Greensleeve proves to be wearing an ornate cape; it
sweeps behind as he moves slowly towards this folly. He has
come for an express purpose – namely, to consult the sorceress
he will find within.
6
A THIRD VORTEX IN THE TREES: (3)
Gregory Fawcett Greensleeve – in a different incarnation –
rambles through a series of conifers. This arbour stretches out so
as to fill a screen with emerald… a situation in which each stalk
bursts from the ground in lieu of a monster. Now dressed as
Frankenstein, (sic), he capers between such bushes with a
Wiccan doll held above his head. Could it be aught of a witch’s
familiar? As to his size, the body is bulky around the shoulders,
but it tapers away in the direction of some spindly legs. These
delve down towards twigs… and yet the upper torso rears
massively amid fur. It limits two border-lines above the flesh; no
matter how molten or rotten.
THIS FOURTH QUARTET OWES ELIOT NOTHING: (4)
Our sibyl exists before the polarity of a northern star or lilt, and
her chair consists of darkened teak. Its back spirals into a
jaguar’s cranium – the latter forced open in a snarl – although a
ram’s head looks on. Aries-like, it adorns the throne’s other chair
or pitcher, in a way that rises from its closure. Somewhat
sepulchrally, a sword runs down her thigh and through a skull’s
ambit. Whereas our Goat of Mendes – shorn at the wrist – took
the light of a brazen discharge. It was fluffy at the chin and ears,
but also chose to look on (darkly) under heavily trammelled
horns. They lie across his presence laterally rather like horizontal
tusks. The sorceress or mistress of prophesy has a name: it’s
Minx Raven III. Might T.S. Eliot’s dirge or entry not provide a
meaning herein (?):
Who is that walking beside you?
When I count anon, there are only us two together
It glides, comes hooded, and is wrapped in a brown mantle
But who pads on your outermost side?
“The Wasteland” (1922)
7
WE ARE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES: (5)
Greensleeve – rendered hideous by a transformation – sees the
poachers running on the estate’s edge. Once they were hale and
hearty like him… but no more. The two trusty peasants skip
through the fronds; both of them carry rifles as well as small
pouches on straps. A stick-doll (representing a child) lies over his
shoulder. His gestures to them and angrily waves his fist; yet it
has no effect in terms of the youngsters who veer into the trees.
‘Poachers!’, he bellows at a lung’s uppermost gasp. No noise
really emerges at all – save a rasping or glutinous squelch. It
refuses to intervene in these proceedings… in that the two
desperadoes, contrary to the Black Acts, are speeding towards a
mine field. Its warning architecture – a skull on a wooden post –
had long since paid for their disregard.
A DEVILINA UNSHEATHES HER COMB: (6)
The sorceress, Minx Raven, continues to lie across her ebon dais.
Her feet were bare, after the fashion of a ‘sixties hippy, and three
phallic candles gutter and splutter amid this pitch. They are made
of the most solid white wax. For her part, the minx sprawls in a
bikini under subdued lids; these come tinted or otherwise
sporting kolbe’s gestures. Such a shadow hints at lintel in its
mascara – after the fashion of L.S. Lowry’s nymphs. Nor is it a
matter of the head-dress above her tresses; or co-determinous
with their extent. A necklace stretches down past the breasts by
way of beads… they prove to be light, foxy, Camden-town like
and stringy: but not redolent of string-theory. No. Around her
wrists and feet, no matter how dinky, some ormolu tablets shine:
these hint at false Monopoly counters. All in all, our prophetess
indicates a beatnik reading Erich Segal’s Love Story – albeit
naked from the waist down. A craziness enters here; at once
percussive over its forgetfulness, or hinting at Manson’s Helter-
Skelter. That’s Charles, not Marion, in the Mansonesque stakes!
8
MAGPIES IN THE PIE (CUT HERE): (7)
Meanwhile, in another or parallel dimension, Boris Karloff’s
Frankenstein’s monster lopes along. It flails about with its stick-
like arms; the former rotating like a spindly wind-mill on acid.
Moreover, this mugwump moves with a longitudinal face – one
that’s rectangular to its gasp – and its fur hangs around it like a
shroud. In the background to our game of chance, three ashen
trees rear up towards the heavens: each one looks lonely… Is it
consistent with some golden threads?
A SKELETON AMIDST THE CARDS: (8)
Our hippie goddess sits cross-legged before a globe; it illumines
the scene by dint of a hazarding shutter. Could it actually be a
disability in the light (?); wherein a shimmering cascade reveals a
pulsation… it occurs against her flesh. ‘Gregory Fawcett
Greensleeve, you wish to procure a dose of the future from a
graven stone. It courses through one builder’s yard. I can merely
lift a veil on future events. A green flare – here – is thrown upon
the fire; it summons up the valency of these very walls. Aplenty
now, a shimmer enters through the distance of these distaff days.
Behold (!), a temperature of steel melts such visions as these.
They punctuate the luridness of a forgotten throne. It exists on
sleep’s nethermost side; together with an orbital arrangement of
astrology lifting the stone. Let me describe your fortune unto
you---’.
NUMBER 13; A HIPPOGRIFF LAUGHS: (9)
Simultaneously, at ten degrees to midnight, our Boris Karloff
clears his throat of mucous. (It occurs with or without the
intervention of James Whale). His brow seems coruscated,
furrowed and pleased at his own resource: and it passes into
oblivion next to an oblong’s black square. One eye-piece, zig-
zagging like forked lightning, indicates a disparity between balls:
in that one cornea outbids the other. It lends a disjunction to the
scene; itself a mere parallax view atop one’s tomb. His
screeching gets louder – but no meaningful sound comes from
9
between these lips. They are cracked as to salt-petre – with the
tonsils of a new engagement spluttering afore such molars. Each
one of them has bitten into a moon made from stilton; yet our
patchwork-man’s warning falls sheer. It cannot extirpate an
explosion which rips through the trees: TTTHWUMPH! Isn’t it
so, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto?
A CLOWN TWISTS HIS SMILE: (10)
We are back with Gregory Fawcett Greensleeve and his sibyl.
During the course of which, young Gregory gazes on. He comes
across as a rather priggish man of about twenty-nine years of age.
He has travelled many miles in order to consult this seer…
particularly over a future inheritance. Nonetheless, his features
give an impression of ripe putty; at once sweetened to its task or
hinting at Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise… a volume
dealing with Eton’s public school. The light continuously reflects
across his face – it indulges no entreaty, smokes a cigarette in
peace, and dwells upon nethermost time. In reality, young
Greensleeve comes close to a bourgeois Byron – unfortunately
without a hint of poetry. Don’t you remember, albeit in a
previous text by this author, that poesy ennobles and silence
defames…? (In parenthesis, this refers to the Stirnerean and
nihilist text, Mad).
RHINO, RHINO EVERYWHERE: SUCK ON THIS
PEACH: (11)
In parallel to a given aporia, Greensleeve’s monstrous bulk
remembers a forgotten word… It delivers the inter-textuality of a
known fraud. For, in a previous incarnation before monstrosity,
his adult vista looks on amidst the trees. Their tops spin like
wooden toys against an Alpine glare. Whereas a younger and
fitter Greensleeve, maundering in Vaughan Williams’ thicket,
realises that he’s chased these poachers into a mine-field. He’s
done so inadvertently – in no way did he mean to, but the
damage’s apparent. His daughter, much resembling Minx Raven
at nine years of age, straddles his neck. A brief thunder-flash
10
