two poems
Excerpt from the upcoming poetry collection Sloughing the Shroud from Anxiety Press
by Julian Thumm
Decanting the homunculus
“Does confidence in your birth fill you so?”
Virgil, The Aeneid
i.
Of intentional if not natural birth,
I, homunculus,
subhuman error
conceived in the vain delusions of Paracelsus,
ancient father of toxicity.
Cursed is the heart that has the heart to create
this scion of the strictures of dubious alchemy.
For 40 days the vile semen of lowly man
in a steaming womb of venter equinus
is left to putrefy
then nourished with caution
on honey & milk
& the arcanum of human blood.
Mandragore I am,
the little man of the gallows
born of the convulsive spasms
of the hanged man’s seed
& from the earth below the gibbet
sprouts the mandrake root in human form,
filamentous & slightly narcotic:
“With thy sword
Trace three circles ‘round the root,
dance as though possessed,
& speak words lewd and vile.
Cut the root while facing west
& feed the form on earthworms
& the seed of lavender.”
Born of the alchemist’s
Faustian addiction,
arcane & anomalous,
I, homunculus,
the perversion of pure spirit
corrupted into mortal form,
umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin,
slime of the earth,
man as rough sketch
etched on ambition
& trusted to the vagaries
of the sextant & astrolabe,
inauspiciously identified
will-o’-the-wisp
lightning & shooting stars
reluctantly divine the celestial configurations
under which the wretch was drained
from his fecal vessel.
Decanted from the potent elixir
of my septic suspension
to degradation anew.
Methanol transmuted
to formaldehyde & formic acid.
My first deadly breath,
the tingling kiss of ants, nettles & the Roman asp.
Blessed the broken homunculus
sainted & cursed in equal measure
by his own feeble reckoning,
baseness of birth
& the great disparagement.
ii.
I, homunculus,
born of the narcotic root
& intoxicating swill,
gently decanted to
soften the fibrous tannins
& lift the bitter sediment
that lingers from
the hanged man’s
earthy ejaculate.
Alive, perhaps,
with heart & liver
—the Aristotelian seats of
feeling & thought
or mimicry if nothing else—
Through dubious art I'm born
& so art is embodied within
but bloody is my art,
& bloody will be my end.
Uprooted & drained
to a life of delusive potential,
a cavalcade of cryptic choice
& vacuous apologies.
My deformities no cloak
for apathy or wickedness
—Oh the minds of malformed men:
princes, kings, & emperors,
philosophers & orators—
castrated, blind, & barely breathing,
foul without, but fair within
…all the better to contemplate
the whims of the well-formed man.
Nymphs, sylphs, pygmies & salamanders,
my elemental place
in deluded cosmology
allows me to sing the poem
of the subhuman
in spite of the stunted tongue
that stutters my speech.
Conceived as the alraun doll,
imprisoned & displayed,
my mythic dress
provocative & ludicrous.
Protection I provide,
good fortune, bounty
& the gift of foresight
that grasping masters
so desperately desire.
But Drak to some,
the money dragon
vestigial tail aflame,
I am owned
& serving rapacious men.
I query, perhaps reluctantly,
the potential
of my deformities.
iii.
I, homunculus,
born without gestation,
but with my lords’
vain attempts
to humanise the root
& nurture it
on superstition,
religious fervour,
& ignorant biology.
But even bathed in wine
& arcane nourishment,
reports of my foresight
unfortunately
have been too much
exaggerated.
Rumours of prognostication,
legerdemain & protection
of the plentiful harvest
…all imagined, delusory.
The grapes they wither on the vine,
the wrath becomes too palpable
& finally I’m seen,
a corroded link in the chain of being
only good for shameful crimes
& brutal, barren
deformities.
Paracelsus
& men of his ilk
chair my symposium of sickness
& picking through my defecation,
malignant but enlightening,
the ruins of their ziggurat
cannot be denied.
The saintly visions of Zosima,
the gleeful torment of Job
& the humbled father of toxicity,
some mangled anthroparion
in lockstep with the manikins
who lurk unseen amid shadows & gloom
& finally exposed, the homunculi logic:
I, homunculus
am born of hubris
without explanation
& ultimately, purpose.
Morbid erotic
In thrall to the floral shroud of death
that dazzles the mind
& swells the lizard loins,
the fecund fleshy blooms
& lovingly crafted botanicals,
the perils of the Alnwick Garden
—belladonna, oleander, & foxglove—
impart their death’s-head narcotic
under the sensual intellect
& play of decomposition.
Why fight the flaccid attempt to retain
our feeble humanity when offered
the taste of transcendence?
Libidinous view of the living corpse
& fingertips that trace the erotic ink of morbidity,
agony & disdain give way to submission
beneath the leather boot, painted hip,
metal sceptre—the enticement of dark.
Idioglossic praises sung to the monarch of the void,
a moth deluded in lemming frenzy
raging towards the event horizon
& desperately willing to embrace the horrors,
to pursue the whispers of the underworld
the untold tales of a heart-shaped lock
& rumours of a sacred key
some 10,000 miles distant.
Photo of Julian Thumm
BIO: Julian is a poet from Melbourne, Australia. He studied literature and professional writing and now works as a corporate shill, selling his corrupted pen to the highest bidder. His poetry is an attempt to make sense of a lifetime of bad choices. His work has been published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Rye Whiskey Review, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, Spillwords, and Fixator Press. His debut chapbook Gutter Stew is available through Alien Buddha Press.