from The Horoi Control System
Part IV
The Blessing of the Spectral Wall — The Horoi Control System Activates?!
Outside Client’s home, at oldest bound.
Sun near set, birds settled for evening,
A tension about the air confusing all.
Surveyor: with steel tape, theodolite, Pain’s Pain, ecto-bricks
Client: In waking semi-trance, left hand (TDH 51-17) gesturing rapidly
Client (quiet):
Today no one living left yet can
Pronounce the name I’m hauling
To front of cloud-dript consciousish
Mind’s melt, call him “lunar sprite,”
For a moon’s color native to the co-
Lor hitched aurically to his form,
Not a body, not a laughingly “friend,”
But a Form’s Form, feeling I know,
A surveyor can call off to distantest
Bound’ry and never hear back
Echoing that name, this non-
Being I seem now to, as being,
Re-member piece by bit, some-
Thing sleeping in what someth-
Ing else signifies, a guide I me-
An, ecto-name-in-form, a fai-
Ry harvest horned in spree of
Goodness, that goodness which
I, and thee and all against the
Rule of Being Seen in Pain, or
Seen in any seen event, of,
You pity self and I and all, yes,
The Horoi Control System… but
That goodness to which we call
Out, in sum, to summon, much formal
Magic studied to rally all this,
But whose name, whose
Real free presence!
Only dreams’ jokes reveal…
Surveyor:
That my fetched to ’ttention
Tens of thought-to-be beings
In habit clinging to your land,
Your home and you brought
Back to foyer of your thought
This “Lunar Sprite” you make to
Know is lucky meter for this job:
Reminds my Survey’s Self of
One I met in ancient dozen
Years ago, a little fellow with
A sort of angel’s glowing illth
Who traded at a loss with me
A boundless box of ecto-bricks,
See, ghostly mortar too, of use?
None at all, to a dead man living
Such as I, a realist scientist of
Land and its proper tying up,
What good some half-ghost’s
Sticky blocks? What good I see!
In here, in space-in-space, old
Measurer’s trick, bricks enough
Of ghostly make to make private all!
Client (with Bishop print slipped from sleeve):
Noth’ ever may constitute eth’ric
Wall but ghosts’ slab and stone,
These blocks you now prod-
Uce, Surveyor, from pet-
Ite wooden magic box there,
They sun a special light,
A white that’s black, a grey
Enlisting colors each, so like
The white a crow’s lost fea-
Ther takes on in singular,
So too like Lunar Sprite,
Whose copy in my mem-
Ory arrays itself to fuller
Still authentic presence,
As here remember is to make,
Think I’ve as much to offer this bles-
Sing as you’ve, if only like thus:
Note my sly gesture, from I. Bi-
Shop-Wolff’s “Conversation,”
1931, I tuck it now behind
My anxious back, please strike post-
Ure, friend, of man on left,
As I embody man on right…
Surveyor (assuming directed pose):
So! A gesture for occasion,
So pools from I to you
All confidence in this thing,
A strong tableau on which
T’hang a sign reads “under con-
Struction,” yeah? And dim-
Ensions come to sense as
If always plain as birth:
17 foot wide, 11 foot tall,
A wall not, clearest, wall
For keeping out a scaler, but
A Wall as Charm, pure wall,
A doll, in part, a charm…
But here: a shift in air and void!
Client (breaking posture):
Yes, a change along this olden
Line we prep for phantomic ba-
Rrier, Bishop’s gesture-database
A utility as ev’r, a second pose
Now for the formal blessing:
From memory, hand at per-
Fect angle to tilted chin, left
Woman in 1948’s “Double
Date Delayed,” ha! Dark surge
Flowing forth, the inevitable,
See it come to brutal halt,
See glow bright the bricks stackt
There, see outline faint of wall
To-be, see! name of what I called
“L_ S_”! … “Liar Punster…?” No
It says…. “Pale Sir Runt?”
Surveyor:
I can read it fine: the name,
“Plat Insurer.” No, a darker
Lean: “Saturn Peril!” No…
“Raptures Nil”…
Client (smiling):
Calm, calm,
A laugh rings out!
It settles, it settles.
See words form writ
On shape what will the spec-
Tral barr’ be: “Neural Trips”
Shifts slow to “Pulsar Inert”
See now these fade, no name
Exempt from shuffled punning,
A lunarific play on endless shifting,
Like I said, no mouth pronounces
Quiet, guiding quiet, no statement
But to say the human life
Is a system of cycles…
Surveyor:
Systems of cycles of met-
Rical bundles, yes, your
Trance-memory idol, brought
At final stand to ghostly
Light, lacks all name, all sen-
Sation its language, as
Distance and line are
Mine, gesture yours, so
Clear as transparent, it
Lives in its own absence|
And its blessing here
Seals our wall and will.
Client (realizing a plain fact):
I an owner-debtor to
The credit of that light.
Surveyor:
We build now then
A horos-wall of specter’s
Skin and marrow, an
Apport’d announcement
Of an old ownership of land:
Thee and thy moonish
Friend, osmosing credit-
Debt dyad, spirit to body,
This wall a boundary aga-
Inst the seeing-in of other
Binding lines, bound’s
Bound that is, a wraith-horos
Construction emitting pul-
Sing mass song of “nothing
Here,” do you, then, take
This hypno-figment savi-
Or as thy lawfully conj-
Oined spirit for sake
Of this ritual erection?
Client:
A satyr seed sows so
As to later satis reap,
Et dream-self cong-
Eals the slime of exp-
Erience into form for
Light to silhouette a
Sprite of lunar aspect,
If not of lunar rock,
Nor rock of any sphere,
But stuff of no material,
This same matter best
Fit for baking into bricks,
I guess, the components
Of this wall. Arising there.
Surveyor:
Arising here.
And right in time, as
That great Survey’s God,
Sol! does set in stone’s
Drop moment, here, it rests
Its lower edge on yonder moun-
Tain, as ever ’flecting it moon
Does rise to see the HCS awake,
Minding all with smile’s mask.
Client:
Lay then first brick in out-
Line of talisman wall.
And second brick. And on.
Surveyor (laying ghostly bricks, applying mortar):
I hear a tune,
Survey’s fade-hum gives warning of
A song strict non-unrepeatable,
The loop of song to govern mind
As eye of all lines ’bserves body,
Client:
I hear it too.
Choreographie instructed just
Under ear’s horizon, keys to
A posture subtle HCS asks us
Assume, it means it comes on.
What whispers. Well. Oh. The
Wistful lilt of that nymphe-horos
Head blends in with song, hear it?
Unison mech-voice calls in too.
They’re saying: “I hold the head
Above my head in triumph like
Winners do, recall earlier’s war-
Ning, the future upon which’s
Nipple sux the present pivot’s
Lips, a place-based past dug
Up from earth, cemented unna-
Tural to world gate as gargoyle,
Artemisian virgin Dianic pan-
Ic churning the cream of vo-
Yeur big-mind! The arrow a tra-
Veling property line strikes
That hearty space of secrets!
What lust fumes steam-power
The looping song of all time
Watched in passive malice?—”
Surveyor (still at work, cutting off Client’s channeling):
Let thy hand fall from ear, client, cut
That transmission’s current out
Of notice, is but our Control Sy-
Stem feeding back the light
We fed in in digging up round
Noon that bulge in plot’s flat,
HCS is all a ghost of all to come,
And in to come, what was, the
Hair-strands of past found on
Tomorrow’s pillows, look!
I’ve exceeded my height
In stacking these nothing bricks,
We’ll need your ladder, now.
Client (having fetched tall ladder from home):
Climb, Surveyor, and at top edge ins-
Cribe in bleeding chisel-path word,
After Hipparkhos, whose herms’ mut-
Ilation broke distance wide open,
Whose herm-erection made all equi-
Nox sing the axial precession of doors
Of season’s hour, the land’s light’s wobble,
And in whose name mystery resides,
Write, yes, “I AM AN EMPTY ACRE”
Surveyor:
Didn’t take you for a student
Of statue and its geographic
Dosage, though your apotr-
Opaic compulsions lend a
Kinder light to your study
Of the herm and its inno-
Vator— yes, a wise greeting
Or luck-sentence for thy wall!
Weightless ecto-bricklaying
Makes for quick labor, here,
Our last few blocks whisp
Into place, allow a wall to be.
Client:
At distant mountain’s foot,
From up on ladder’s top step,
Surveyor, see a quilt of dusk
Begin its mute stomping march
Along the land to us, publicizing
Advent dire and our altar wall
Just this minute standing done?
Surveyor (grimly, though not without humor):
A test of my dead-masonhood, this—
Let’s behind this new wall sit on stones
And listen for the voice of HCS pron-
Ounce its dark debut to all who live
And me, too.
Client:
I call out now, to what’s that
Name? Your name? I use
No word for, uh, Selenic Gnome!
For lack of your name!
That Guide-Poem face! Urn,
Moon, ghost, crow, mint, slug,
Dream, grail, card, disc, stone,
Stone, stone, stone, stone,
Bless this slab with gen-
Ius of light! I ask with ut-
Ter humble friendship here
As false god-infused devil mind
Lymphs through all edges
And their sleeping guards the
Soft nodes of world’s corpse,
Bless this spectral wall, I beg.
Surveyor:
A light, you see, ensues
In innermost gut of wall,
My spirits’-bricks alive
Like living death so healthy,
Here, the sundown settles
On the world, Horoi Con-
Trol system cracks an eye
On every object’s every angle.
Client (bracing self now against that wall, yearning, childlike):
The blessing of the spectral wall
Has taken full effect on all
Within the land I own or keep,
And douses lines of bound
With light and calm and sleep
To bend all HCS detection ’round
Us.
Surveyor:
The Horoi Control System is active.
I see with my plain pierc’d eye your
Nameless Lunar Sprite at at-
Tention sitting on our wall, keeping
Watch of watchful waking all.
We’re unseen.
Client:
Matter’s matter becomes the joke
Played on its own recitation, like a come-
Dy that ends in frozen laugh: it
Dies where it descends to punchline,
Reaching, like a Bishop etching,
The cold smile of not knowing
The laugh exhales a final breath.
Or put otherwise: see the jowl
Of the old man call itself to notice
By his bad feelings on it, so our
New watcher is its own keeper,
An irony which fuels rather
Than combusts the mind of HCS.
The snake which not eats but
Is and studies its own tail’s scales.
Surveyor:
Last breaths laughed out strain
The air with the stiffness of the
Planetary humor of a new vampire.
I’ve eaten last laughs and cried.
And of snakes, circles, body’s
Jowling and age: I’m but the
Unaging Surveyor whose plane
Lies flat and whose points must
At the grand middle of all converge.
Client:
May have been a misspeech.
But to plumb the depths of metap-
Hor in hour of our ever-broadcast
Feels, to my private heart, an eye
Worth goggling for protection.
Your eye, your special eye,
Which Pain’s Pain plays in,
What, around the bend, sees that?
Surveyor (preparing Pain’s Pain for insertion into left eye):
Small talk in the face of it.
How small, too, our zone
Of tentative safety. Here. (plunging knife in)
Let us peek out from behind
The blessed spectral wall,
Now pierced orb is full,
Expanding sight of Survey’s Eye.
Client:
What’s seen? All eyes?
Surveyor:
An element-elf of nature is
Embodied there in crook
Of eldest tree in view,
An elemental fairy form
Spies a distant fence
Which now, HCS alive,
Discerns and transmits all.
The living representatives
Which I mentioned flock
To figments of our minds
And to which each thing in
All creation corresponds,
Are all about, all out in
Gangs and lonely pairs,
Startled by commotion
Of new and dark attention.
My subtle eye has rare been
So full of these quiet lights.
Client:
Off there, on hill
At some peak’s shoulder,
A boundary stone long
Meaningless cracks a rough
Eye, notes us not here,
For this wall a nothing makes
Of all this land I tend and am.
Surveyor (quietly, to himself):
Though against the pay
Of my good trade, I know
That no man can be more
Than a drift fixture on land,
And this Control System H,
So sure of land’s mal-
Leability, and too Client’s,
And all’s, assumption of
Private property’s reality,
The secret shadow of
Survey, that all earth
When cut against grain
Will its spirits spew
To make right the offense.
It rallies so sudden.
Client:
What’s that? Land leaks?
It leaks some presence?
I feel a crowd gather all over.
I misheard, or heard else. Must have.
Surveyor:
So you’ve not got
The eye, but have some sense.
Yes, some things inhere for-
Ever in a place, a plain or
Wood or hill, some things
Awake when changes come
And you feel them now, I see
Them, cousins to the forms
You summon with a mind,
Ancienter, and less of friendship
Made, more deeply writ by
Knife of matter’s illusion, its
Depth of other-than-seeming,
So matter is a mask of meter?
Yes, the meter of the animation
Of it all, all life, HCS app-
Roximates this in bad faith,
A mechsuit worn by earth
In monster battle with itself’s
Own god of terrain and situs.
Client:
Who is the god of the forest, of the land?
Pan’s Pan?
Surveyor:
The earth wears an armor.
Gaia’s meat blue and green
Softer than space under shell
Of man’s compulsing waves
Of self mistrust, self control,
HCS the body’s body, which
Cancels and clips off Pan’s
Matted fur, to horror of dad,
Frozen haste now recycled
Like his staff to mark estates.
Client:
I feel a great crowd beyond,
Must puncture, gnaw that
Armor-of-watch now roused,
And disemboweling douse
The world with its celebrated
Death. What luck! Luck’s son.
Surveyor (without Client’s excitement):
Course’s curse corrects the upheave.
Control suggests to spirit freedom system,
Talks ’em into comfort’s castle, locks
The door. I’m watching it happen, smooth
Speech from lips of false-all to ears of
All-is-alive totem gnomes, how dark it is.
Client:
Now I see it, a vision sitting
Up on wall, my Moonlit
Figment real, but some-
Thing must’ve cracked in
Nature’s diviner-bowl for
One without a vision hitting
Upon all that hidden always.
Now I see it looking down
At me, with quiet simple face.
Surveyor:
It knows what I know,
The quick exchange now
Cutting up the floor of
Night, all of earth at it,
Those elemental to it
In tiny war with the built
Dark mirror’s swirling wo-
Ven eye mesh mind-cloth,
It’s plain as heart’s beat
Back’d by beat’s lack,
The Horoi Control System
Lib’ral in its lab’ling “bound-
Ary” encrusts all human ter-
Rain, falling over life with
Heartless scrying, mocking stare.
Client (understanding the situation):
That animate force
Native to the dust
And all the dust com-
Poses poses in defense,
A choir of action in
Struggle with its pr-
Ying twin, a clanging
Dread all on earth,
What will local see?
Unveiled flickers at
Us all an army implied
By HCS undoing veins
In time’s body, spirits
Ever present quiet start
In every voice to shout,
Though lunarsprite silent
Keeps. No word from that.
Surveyor:
HCS in practice,
Past its theory,
See time’s limping
Gait in total public,
Needed some space
To give it its path,
Now time’s just now,
Not never sure what
Was to be will be done.
Client (panicking):
We’re here a long now,
Knelt at foot of Spectral
Wall, that Sprite above us,
Sentry sitting, a scene
Unseen by HCS and in
This privacy not in the game,
We’re out of time, in boundary
Of boundary, in the wall,
Stuck in the wall, paved in,
All time paved into us carved out.
Surveyor (resolutely):
I hear a new eye open,
Soft scuff of boot behind
Us, I know what’s sure
To happen next, the rose
Which is the Survey’s Flower
Doubles as the wick of candle
When inverted, don’t turn
Around to see who trips
Toward us, client, he holds
That rose and is the light
Of land’s dederangement.
Client (turning around):
That familiar figure.
I’ll pose A Question.
What luck
END
7/17 – 11/17 ’23
∩
Ben Roylance owns and operates Apport Used Books. His books include A Talking Skull (the holon project, 2022), AQ Saga (Hiding Press, 2024), and The Horoi Control System (Apport Editions, forthcoming).