The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

from Parchment, Scalpel, Rock: Howling

 

a wolf is a tunnel into the earth …… full of teeth
(and what should I call a sideways stalag mmm-/t-ite?)

not just the wind howling through the steppes’ hollow torso?
a zero-sum game? an eremophage without organs?

the little bumps ‘become’ horns……the horns become penises
the penises teeth …… the teeth : skeletons …… the skeletons : wolves!

 

*

 

The Wolf-man sends you a postcard of a Herakleian child
gripping wolves with the teeth in his anus

then swallows the trees the lakes and all the valleys
the investments and counterinvestments of earth’s petrified libido

you think hard about the difference between wolf and love;
wolf and human….wolf and oil….wolf and empty

 

*

 

I watch with my popcorn what coarse chimera
slanting toward apocalypse to be unmade

“Does not the child, on the periphery, hold
onto the wolves by his anus?” says Wolfie.

flying anusesspeeding vaginaschalcopyritesmithsonite
excavations for…..a set of brass balls…..this big!

 

*

 

The Wolf-Man holds court: “You will eat all the bodies
without organs, a horde of wolves in somebody’s throat… ”

“and the wolf inside is a constant : a void
with infinite capacityfor holding love…”

“… I live behind a quartz wall made of wolves hunting for a door
made of wolves in the shape of a wolf—a Zero Sum Wolf.”

 

*

 

screaming the wild into existence on a Scottish granite tor :
Mon dieu! Who will save us?—No wait! I meant: Mon-bio-t!

the scale of the problem: energy is a kind of mythology
mythology the death-drive of our histology

You ask if there’s a silent ‘T’ in the name of our saviour. “No,”
the Wolf-man replies, “there’s a silent free, as in : petroleum ~.”

 

*

 

Knots the time, Mr. Wolf-Man?
fear past diplos / hair past pimples / death parts hypnos

a field of flowering anuses, just like a pack of wolves :
no matter you pray for freedom, they’ll kill you—

the silent consistency….a wide expanse…….of polar caps
but what can’t be done to stop a new sound from becoming?

 

*

 

needs be, the apocalypse will be televised, following
heavy script revisions and 400 hours of advertising

but I could never believe the mad particles of coal were made
by anything but the gigantic cyclotron of humanity

the long-clawed Wolf Man shreds the winding cloth
where your life reels out to an empty cinema

 

*

 

the Wolf Man says, “You think my ass isn’t a wolf?”
but you need a better mirror for that kind of self-reflection

if only I could rewrite all those childhood narratives:
we’re putting the band wild back together

White quartz crusts my inner wasteland’s unvaluables:
the giants’ teeth are crags inhabited by most becoming wolves

 

*

 

tucked into a copy of Larousse’s dictionary of mythology
I find the lyrics to a song the Wolf-man wrote during his teens:

♪ Oh, when Fenris goes for groceries, he parks in handicapped spaces,
and hums to himself while wheelchair users make O’Leary faces ♫

a military man does a wolf; a military man does a dog
“Hey Gilles….where you going…..with that anus in your hand?”

 
 

The Learned Pig

 
 

Source texts:
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, ‘1914: One or Several Wolves’
Gojira, ‘Wolf Down the Earth’
Lt. Callahan, Police Academy 3: Back in Training
Denis Leary, ‘Asshole’

 
 

Part of The Learned Pig’s Wolf Crossing editorial season, spring/summer 2017.

Cover image: Gordon Cheung, A Thousand Plateaus, 2016. Financial newspaper, archival inkjet, acrylic, sand and pumice on canvas and aluminium

 
 

The Learned Pig