collage by David Hickman Stephen Gatling A Hyperkinetic Ode to Pantheism Everything’s a hustle, reality’s negotiable on the job and in the street in this dystopian nightmare inspiration can come from anywhere it could be the visceral ghetto poetry of Tupac Shakur the scathingly vertiginous sax solos of Coltrane or the quirky character driven films of Wes Anderson it could be anything...or everything at once In the beginning was an idea before the Universe... there was the idea of the universe if god did not exist it would become necessary to invent him and then this fantastic deity had a son… many monikers were applied, but God’s Poet Laureate seemed to be the most apt or at least the most ubiquitous… |
The story is related in non-linear, multi-perspective flashbacks; a dissolute pastiche of seemingly disparate vignettes and poetry fused together in an eclectic sprawling opus, where fiction trumps fact and cause brazenly mocks effect. Our hero, God’s Poet Laureate, enemy of the mundane, castigates a nation addicted to clichés, attempts to slay the nefarious sorcerers of the pernicious Corporate Oligarchy and champions those of us in search of profundity in our daily lives. |
Dada Circus
Surrealist acrobats drink the acrid dew Collected in the recessed navel of Ishtar She laughs blithely at their puerile folly Conjoined twins swing on a tandem trapeze The refined salt extracted from their tears Flavors the stale concession stand popcorn In the stadium seats, single faces can’t be isolated Within the lascivious buzzing human tapestry Terminally flatulent monks hunker down For an austere day of silent contemplation Except for the occasional horn like intonation A foul emanation in B flat The circus continues with a phalanx of midget ninjas Throwing stars whirl and glint in flattening light A human pyramid of salient amputees topples Leaving prosthetics ajumble in heaps Of polymer, decadence and flesh * * * * A retort
to accusations of cynicism
(allegedly written by Dance Harley in his jail cell)
I get high inhaling the narcotic essence of the
Universe. Nihilists believe in nothing, as a
pantheist i believe in everything and i have a
voracious appetite for more...i wanna cartwheel
semi-nude into the royal courtyard of Buckingham
Palace and placidly dance the Lindy Hop as the stoic
royal guards look on impassively, but in their heads
they are snapping invisible fingers, softly
intoning, “go daddy go, that’s one hepcat,
baby”...late nights, quiet and still bring on an
irrepressible urge to serenade the heavens, a black
on black Fender Stratocaster sending notes flailing
plaintively from a marshall stack amp, feedback
resonating sharply across the expansive horizon. God
gazes at me, bemused and wary. I rush forward,
brusquely taking him in my sinewy arms and give the
creator a deep kiss on his/her infinite lips. In a
dream i’m celebrated as God’s Poet Laureate, the
divine trickster...I wake up in a dank, dimly lit
cell and laugh at my tenuous plight...I turn on the
T.V. and there I am, another garish celebrity,
performing the songs of public Enemy transposed into
iambic pentameter, delivered with all the oratorical
fire of Chuck D, as one the surrealist acrobats from
the aforementioned Dada Circus punctuates every
fourth line with a raucous “yeah boy”...this time i
wake in a bottle indeterminate origin, cast off from
the shores of time into an oceanic abyss, traveling
afloat for 44 years, landing on a distant coast,
only to be found by a curious and a bright eyed
aborigine who subsequently consumes my lightly
carbonated soul in a single gulp, pauses serenely,
then belches the words, “the medium is the
message”...traversing a path from cynicism to
optimism, I’m like Benjamin Button, aging in
reverse...the walls are still here...or maybe my
cell is a concrete womb, penitence in utero, here i
sit in suspended gestation, waiting pensively for
release...
A dynamic
prophet, descended from an alien,
Proposed an ethos that was quite bacchanalian He accused the high priests of manipulation And blind faith was their major stipulation They cast aspersions at oblique angles Then dismissed heresy as all new fangled They sold their fiction for a handsome profit As they steadily lined their very deep pockets The Poet said, stop feeding their wealth Wake up and think for yourself! Thank you and goodnight. Remember to love, laugh and create. And if you can’t beat ‘em, confuse the shit out of them.”
* * * * Editor's
Note
The book titled Everything at Once(EAO) has appeared in various forms over the last twenty three years. Authenticity and authorship have been questioned since the first bootleg copies hit the market circa 2001. The first “official copy” was published in 2023. Subsequent editions have varied as to the text included, though the bulk of the work seems consistent. Also many bootlegs have surfaced with little or no similarity to what is considered by scholars to be the original, most of which claim to be the real, unabridged, unadulterated, uncensored, undiluted version. Authorship itself seems to be even more tenuously elusive.The book is usually attributed to Elijah X, an obvious pseudonym. The main character is alternately referred to as God’s Poet laureate,The Prophet and Elijah, among other eponyms, but never as Elijah X, nor is he ever purported to be a muslim. Some of the more literal minded of readers claim that the whole of this work is true and that the author is time traveling bardic son of God(or step son as some have claimed), but most scholars have dismissed this claim as being batshit crazy to use the popular vernacular. The consensus of the “experts” is that it’s a tale handed down by various authors overs a period time, eventually resulting in the eclectic compendium familiar to most readers today. Though some argue the single author theory, adding that the author may not have been born Elijah X or been divine, but in a sense been Elijah X when writing this sprawling narrative, using the same arts of conjuring and transformation as Robert Zimmerman channeling Bob Dylan, Archibald Leach siring that Cary Grant or Edward de Vere donning the mask of Shakespeare. It seems apropos, and hopefully not too trite, to quote the great bard himself at this point,"what's in a name?" Or as Buckminster Fuller said, "there are no nouns in the experiential Universe". Yet another rumor is that Thomas Pynchon banged it on an antique Olivetti typewriter in a single weekend otherwise lost to Wild Turkey and psilocybin. Although some passages are obviously imitative and derivative of Pynchon's turgidly opaque style, even allowing for the possibility of self parody on Pynchon's part, experts agree that it is extremely unlikely that he would pen a work with such crass commercialization and an overtly didactic message at it's core. The most remote and obscure candidate for authorship is an ex-con nobody's ever heard of (outside the walls of silence) named Christopher Stephens apparently writing under the nom de plume of Dance Harley(or vice versa). The story goes (and this is almost certainly an urban legend) that this underachieving, drug abusing, petty hustler and con artist had some sort or major epiphany while incarcerated and inked the entire work in 23 days, straight through with no corrections and furthermore he claimed that no editing or revision was necessary, because the text was dictated to him from the from a divine source, namely the Greek god Proteus, who in the book EAO has twenty three incarnations. The number twenty three is purported to have mystical qualities and syncronistic historical correlations as most readers are probably aware. The whole truth may never be known, but to quote the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, "the truth is overrated", also translated as “chickens are chickens, except when they’re not.” The turgidly effusive verbosity of this piece must be excused as what this author deemed as the most effective way to penetrate the labyrinthine web of mendacity,disinformation and myth occluding the origins of the megalithic uber-epic assembled under the catchall rubric; Everything at Once(EAO for short) and gleaning it’s opaque idiom vis-a-vis it’s questionable authorship. For additional information, consult the website, Everything you always wanted to know about Everything at Once; A Hyperkinetic Ode to Pantheism, but were somewhat trepidatious about inquiring.com or for more lethargic typists, simply Google EAO.
* * * *
Dance Harley is a figure shrouded in controversy, mystery, hype and probably quite a bit of grandiose self promotion. He entered jail in his late twenties or early thirties for fraud, robbery, assault, etc. He was a semiliterate hustler, a ward of the streets, who (so the tale goes) in his seven years of incarceration taught himself to read and write, devouring classics along the way; Shakespeare, Joyce, Proust, Pynchon. Then moving on from fiction to filling in other gaps in his education; science, history,psychology.Then he started writing. At first a lot of politically driven poetry and autobiographical tales from his time on the streets. Then, considering himself quite the raconteur, he began regaling his fellow inmates with his deftly crafted prose and proclaiming himself to be God’s Poet Laureate and in the process offending and intriguing inmates, guards and counselors alike. Then came his jazz poetry phase, "I can improvise the same poem a hundred times, each time it comes out a little different. I'm Ornette Coleman with a pen, muthafucka. Everything's a hustle, a negotiation. On the streets and in the joint. The truth is overrated. Stop bowing to Gods and Buddhas and create your own mythology.” * * * *
Everything at
Once
by Dance Harley Everything's a hustle, a negotiation In jail and on the street Reality is malleable in the hands Of the Empire’s Machiavellian sorcerers In spite of authority’s monotony Magick rituals can break their monopoly Psycho cycles incessantly run The High Priestess spins into being From a moonlight drenched sea Isis to Ishtar...she spawns a fertile gnosis In the beginning...a stateless state Chaos...with no maintenance required I ching throws a hexagram’s weight The dusk looms as Venus rises over Black and white pillars...duality of man The river flows betwixt the Danube’s shores Right here, right now...humans just being A joyous note of rapture’s warmth That which can’t be given or taken Who writes the tune...the Grand Composer? The elusive man behind the curtain Shakespeare's signifying monkeys are still furtively typing A tale told by an onion, full of sand and f#*\, sanctifying muffins A sled pulled by a team of Abe’s rabid salukis passes by As pop culture swallows it’s own insipid head In a nation addicted to clichés A come-on overheard at a real estate seminar “Hey baby, what’s your brand?” On Wall street occupiers moon the corporate vampires In protest of a malevolent hegemony As the Tao Jones levels karmic balances And human commodities earn hefty profits A corpus delicti points to the culprit Then suddenly rises in spontaneous glossolalia “Sure locks at home, wot’s in a name wie geht es, mein schwartzenmenschen” Osiris rising...into mapped territory Man’s trinity takes the stage Unbroken lines of the inflexible state The lion’s fiery mane...the sun’s thorny halo Obsequious serfs pay tribute to their rulers Fear operates as the currency of control The balance has gone askew Hodge-podge moves off the surging grid A tale told three times Becomes part of our lore Magick, marketing, conditioning What’s the difference? Brace for vitriolic ruptures of seismic impact As Shamans scatter words upon the soil Chaos grows between ordered rows Weeds insidiously creep into unsuspecting minds Step lightly from one path to the next Shim and Sham run askance In a burst of Joycean revelry “Riverrun river flow” The Tao speaks of a process unspoken Knowledge unlearned, methods untaught Primal screams adorn Egyptian tombs An echo of man’s inauspicious dawn Quadrupeds fight for pack dominance And now we stand erect… In a political ritual handed down Our memories play as reruns Fantasies restaged in cerebral Technicolor Nostalgia junkies stuck in time We forget about now As we dream of the future What about right here, right now? Life...comprised of small details Colorless atoms dance a cosmic jig We Impose meaning as we see fit A composite artwork emerges Lines of verse spilled in jest A parody of a parody In the beginning was an idea Something from nothing One phallic spark of life Fertilized that zero A binary genetic code From duality to multiplicity The divine could be in anything… Or everything at once |