{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Found on German site via ligotti.net:  THREE THINGS THEY WILL NEVER TELL YOU  (A Series Of Poems By Thomas Ligotti)


WHAT GOOD IS YOUR HEAD?

The mysteries of a nightmare
or the ill magic of hallucinations
or even the way you are
conditioned to react
to an image of the moon
delivered straight into your eyes -
Why do they hide
what these things really are
and how they operate?
Why do they only answer
in such confused and conflicting terms?

The reason is simple.
Because who knows what might happen
if you could understand
the whining of nightmare-dogs
in your dreams
or the voices in your head
that never tell you
anything you want to hear
not to mention why you feel
a certain way
when images invade your eyes
and intrude upon the brain
that floats in the darkness
inside your head?

What would happen
if you knew what
these things really are
and how they operate -
What would happen to you
as a person who understands
what it means to have a head?

With this knowledge
you certainly might decide
to take your head right off
and just sit quietly in the dark
of your new headlessness.

© Thomas Ligotti




WHAT HAPPENS TO FACES

A tear in the face
it was as if you were dreaming
because they never said a word
and you were hiding
in a place
with no one around
when a tear in the face
and all the things
that came out
put an end to the world
that you always thought you knew.

And as if you were dreaming
a tear in the face
made you awake in a darkness
unlike any you have ever seen.

They could easily tell you
and then say you were dreaming
about a tear in the face
of a world in a mirror
where faces are glass
and are smooth
and are shining
till the glass starts to crack
all the faces are broken
and their scars are the shadows
that you always knew were there.

And as if you were dreaming
a tear in the face
was the last thing
and the worst that you ever saw.

They never will speak
even when you are dreaming
about a tear in the face
of a face that is made
of all the flesh that is grown
like a world in the body
that bursts forth from the darkness
shimmering in the darkness
or quivering for just a moment
in the face of a face
that will always be unknown.

But it was all so much dreaming
you finally see
it was just so much dreaming
you finally know -
a tear in the face
they would have to tell something
about something like that...
about a tear in the face.

© Thomas Ligotti




WHAT BECOMES OF THE BODY

A little black box
they can hide
in the darkness
where it can never be found
and opened to you eyes
not because they are kind
or because they are wise
but only because...

A little black box
they can hide
in the darkness
is just the right thing
to keep you forever guessing
what they never would tell you
not that they are really concerned
you ever might find...

That little black box
and take out like toys
what is contained inside
and unearth all their secrets
such as how they deceive you
till the death of your body
and make you believe
that there actually might be
a little black box
that they hide in the darkness.

© Thomas Ligotti

In the spirit of a textual entryway into ... the forbidden tome ..., I will be keeping track of the subtle transformations of the non-title, as in This song has no title.:

.... fearless meditations on humanity's existential helplessness ...

Yes, Silenus, we are a message board that should not be.  I am at long last a lurker at reddit, but not anything too suspect.  It's the only place in town as far as pertinent (obscure technical details) about Kiss Linux.

That list of topics for that literary journal is a poem in itself, many overlaps.  I can see why such a list would lure you toward it.  The theme seems to be, not actually to embrace the nightmare, but at the very least to come to terms with it, to get a good solid grip on it.  My street-real-life characteristics and mannerisms sometimes creep into my written "dissertation".  I've become gruff, technical, and calculating in my "transmissions."  Are we and all animals simply machines?  Without the bread, water, wheat, meat, daily feedings, the technical obsessions would reveal themselves as "the tinkerings of an appendage to the stomach."  That is, the brain's function is to find food  and shelter for the stomach-master-animal-body-Thing-in-Itself, the It.  When this organism-as-a-whole is nurtured, stable, and healthy, then it is free to explore and tinker, but it would only be a matter of days and weeks for lack of the essentials to expose the mental-life's utter dependence upon far graver matters of life and death.

Even the seemingly unrelated topic of obscure operating systems would fit beautifully into this theme.  Becoming mentally intimate with machine processes is eerie territory, me thinks.