I will go with thee - And be thy guide - In thy most need - To go by thy side:
I am a Chameleon. A Karma Karma Chameleon. A leeezard with a viiiisage. Skin rough and scaly. Eyes weird and bulging large. Here's proof: I can rotate my eyeballs independently and focus on two different objects simultaneously. Just like a Karma Chameleon I can fix one eye on the pages of Paradise Lost, whilst the other, holds a luminous thought firmly and fixedly in outer space. As if wilfully suspending a newborn star in the profoundest of abysses. It's no easy task. I assure you. I can assume hues to match the terrain of the world I am passing through. For example, in the metropolis that is LondonTown; I am leathery and swarthy and wear sunglasses down in the underground so none can see me so - for I carry secrets that trail my wake. Those dizzy Underground tunnels are best traversed whilst staring at the overhead lights rushing pass. It's a wonderful sensation. You should try it. And then there's the silence. But only when wearing Sennheiser IE8 headphones - a must for the professional London Tube user. With the IE8s it drapes about you as if a cloak - the silence. It hangs from the high-aboves to the low-belows. Leftwards, rightwards and leewards. I spin 360 degrees on my axis like a compass needle and its everywhere. I am Michelin man; padded in protective bubble-wrap silence. Encapsulated. Encased. Ensconced in silence. On the train; encrusted between passengers, I am a raisin - in a fruitcake. I look about me with one eye. The other on Paradise Lost no doubt. Lips move yet nothing comes out. Bodies nod in the thrall of conversation like crash-test dummies. I feel the air pressure on my temples before the train arrives. I sense the people darting about me in nervous kinetic energies. A hive of bees they bristle and twitch and make me itch. I see the lines of worry etched on their faces - carving deeps so profound to hold the troubles of the world, and even, the demons of Hell too.
Outside me, time is hurrying ahead. Inside me, time a-leisurely stroll. With cloud cushions for trainers I enter the tunnels below. The tunnels, those endless pointless tunnels, a metaphor for deep time. I see Trilobites and Dinosaurs and the dawn of the Cambrian. Descending the escalators feels like entering the jaws of some hideous underworld creature; Erebus, it's entrails the Piccadilly, Jubilee and Bakerloo lines. I stare at the sign that says 'Piccadilly' until the spelling looks strange and I no longer recognise it. The extinct implore me to stop, their limbs outreaching, imploring for forgiveness. I am chased by Tiktaalik Rosea doing press ups. Have I been smoking pot?
At Angel station I am on the following lines of Paradise Lost:
With thoughts inflamed the majestic Fiend
puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hell
explores his solitary flight; sometimes
he scours the right hand coast; sometimes the left,
now shaves with level wings the deep, then soars
up to the fiery concave towering high.
It takes repeated readings and supreme effort to find, grasp and then hold onto Milton's rhythm. These are not rhyming lines but oscillating. They chime in harmony with the peals of one's voice. The secret is to read the lines out aloud - to yourself. You must hear them. You must utter the words, for breath must exit your lips to give flesh to the poem. And then like the Fiend of Paradise Lost, you shall don 'swift wings and scour left and right, and then shave with level wings the deeps. Then soar up to the fiery concave' - the firmament of the deep blue endless sky! This is where dreams are born. Careful where you tread. Lest you tread on my dreams and thence I'll blaze forth scorching ruin upon you and your progeny - So says I. So says I. So I grin to myself and my lips curlew at the edges, she notices - sitting opposite; wondering things about me...I can tell, I can always tell. I am the Fiend. And nothing is sacred. And everything an uncertain adventure. We forget, and Milton reminds us always: to have seen and tasted and assayed - Ha! only then can the following not ring hollow:
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
hangs in the clouds, by monsoon winds
close sailing from Bengal, or the Isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spice drugs: they on the trading flood
through the wide Indian Ocean to the Cape
Ply stemming nightly towards the pole.
I carry such lines about my person like a gentleman's snuff box. Can you smell the plywood of the poem and the creaking bough beams of the ship as it sails the equinoctial winds? Can you espie the taut coffee-stained canvas of sail and the broad sweep of the Monsoon as it carries you aloft betwixt Javan spice islands of Nutmeg, Pepper and Cloves? Ha! What visions. And I see them on the Underground with one eye on the page and the other fixed firmly on her. She's always there. Pumping beat-box rhythms through my shallow idiots heart.
Wake me up before I die, hold me close
As I gaze upon the sky, comatose
No reason to survive, I suppose
Wake my heart baby...before I die
______
