INTO THE ABYSS
INTO THE ABYSS
Michael Sigismond von Orloch gazed at the Giant Gherkin, a proclamation like a Modernist ebony ziggurat useful only for human sacrifice, hanging like an omen over the squalid abyss that is the East End of London. Moloch, the great god of industrial uselessness, set in motion then stopped. The giant ziggurats, infested with skulls, skeletons, glaring red-eyed monkey men in ten piece suits, all the crawling filthy life of the abyss, the devouring jaws of Moloch, the machine god, ebony ziggurats, smoke, filth hung everywhere.
Von Orloch observed in every face signs of woe, but also big dollar signs, big money rats crawling over neon-lit urban synapses meaning men’s minds. (Men’s minds, what a useless Blakean conundrop.)
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
Everyday von Orloch greeted his boss, a man sitting neck-deep in his own rancidness, all covered up by his purple pink white blue regulation shirt, his ten piece suit. He looked up, nodded. A terrible scar between his eyes like a gunshot wound.
Near Whitechapel there was sex for sale. O good, but because all such transactions necessarily got in the way of the unbelievable life force he felt himself to be implicated in. Only fifteen quid, usual 60 yr old Polish ex-lapdancer, bald, toothless, horrible. The idea of his own palpable naivety clung to him like a grey cloud, for it dawned on him suddenly that there was a whole, invisible, furtive world of sexual transactions being made all around him of which he knew absolutely nothing.
Back at work he shooed away a courting couple who had taken up temporary residence in the hall of the college, locked the door, set off for Liverpool Street Tube Station. Gazing upwards at the Giant Gherkin, the heads of city directors rolling down from the summit, globules of blood be-smattering the faces of a delighted, cheering crowd. Skulls inset with jade-blue coloured encrusted stones set on pike shafts at the entrance to Liverpool Street, tiny monkeys nibbling at noses and ears as if they were carrots.
Carrots, he thought, carrots! All the mis-fired executive decisions surely poured into the gutter along with those bloated, distended heads.
This was the god Moloch, he ruminated, the god Moloch and no mistake. As he bought his tube ticket the dark ebony god Moloch leered at him in the guise of a becoming nubile young graduate ticket seller, who then metamorphosed into a wizened old tart with a rattling cough, her bad breath bearing the odour of old fart. She smiled a toothless grin, grabbed him by the tie:
“I’m the god Moloch, know what I mean?”
"Get off me", he screamed, "or I’ll call the police!"
Moloch grabbed his head, rubbing his face into her ample bosom.
FLEAS ON A THIN DOG
A street vendor barked:
“Something for the weekend Sir?”
“O fuck off…”
“Listen my Austro-Viennese everseefleasonathindog friend…Freud, no ipod, no laptop, no worldwide web, just a…..”
“Whopper!”
“I was going to say ‘big brain’ actually. My youmustrememberweareanimals pre-Jungian disciple of former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Freud, no ipod, no applemac, just perspiration, the perspiration of an advantaged…”
“An advantaged what?”
“Here put this in yer skyrocket.”
“It’s a copy of ‘Nietzsche and Laughter’ by Ruprecht von Humdinger. Don’t you think…”
“I do.”
pAUL mURPHY
Michael Sigismond von Orloch gazed at the Giant Gherkin, a proclamation like a Modernist ebony ziggurat useful only for human sacrifice, hanging like an omen over the squalid abyss that is the East End of London. Moloch, the great god of industrial uselessness, set in motion then stopped. The giant ziggurats, infested with skulls, skeletons, glaring red-eyed monkey men in ten piece suits, all the crawling filthy life of the abyss, the devouring jaws of Moloch, the machine god, ebony ziggurats, smoke, filth hung everywhere.
Von Orloch observed in every face signs of woe, but also big dollar signs, big money rats crawling over neon-lit urban synapses meaning men’s minds. (Men’s minds, what a useless Blakean conundrop.)
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
Everyday von Orloch greeted his boss, a man sitting neck-deep in his own rancidness, all covered up by his purple pink white blue regulation shirt, his ten piece suit. He looked up, nodded. A terrible scar between his eyes like a gunshot wound.
Near Whitechapel there was sex for sale. O good, but because all such transactions necessarily got in the way of the unbelievable life force he felt himself to be implicated in. Only fifteen quid, usual 60 yr old Polish ex-lapdancer, bald, toothless, horrible. The idea of his own palpable naivety clung to him like a grey cloud, for it dawned on him suddenly that there was a whole, invisible, furtive world of sexual transactions being made all around him of which he knew absolutely nothing.
Back at work he shooed away a courting couple who had taken up temporary residence in the hall of the college, locked the door, set off for Liverpool Street Tube Station. Gazing upwards at the Giant Gherkin, the heads of city directors rolling down from the summit, globules of blood be-smattering the faces of a delighted, cheering crowd. Skulls inset with jade-blue coloured encrusted stones set on pike shafts at the entrance to Liverpool Street, tiny monkeys nibbling at noses and ears as if they were carrots.
Carrots, he thought, carrots! All the mis-fired executive decisions surely poured into the gutter along with those bloated, distended heads.
This was the god Moloch, he ruminated, the god Moloch and no mistake. As he bought his tube ticket the dark ebony god Moloch leered at him in the guise of a becoming nubile young graduate ticket seller, who then metamorphosed into a wizened old tart with a rattling cough, her bad breath bearing the odour of old fart. She smiled a toothless grin, grabbed him by the tie:
“I’m the god Moloch, know what I mean?”
"Get off me", he screamed, "or I’ll call the police!"
Moloch grabbed his head, rubbing his face into her ample bosom.
FLEAS ON A THIN DOG
A street vendor barked:
“Something for the weekend Sir?”
“O fuck off…”
“Listen my Austro-Viennese everseefleasonathindog friend…Freud, no ipod, no laptop, no worldwide web, just a…..”
“Whopper!”
“I was going to say ‘big brain’ actually. My youmustrememberweareanimals pre-Jungian disciple of former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Freud, no ipod, no applemac, just perspiration, the perspiration of an advantaged…”
“An advantaged what?”
“Here put this in yer skyrocket.”
“It’s a copy of ‘Nietzsche and Laughter’ by Ruprecht von Humdinger. Don’t you think…”
“I do.”
pAUL mURPHY
posted by Paul Murphy at
September 10, 2008
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