Antonin Artaud

And love? We must cleanse ourselves
of this hereditary filth
where our stellar vermin
continue to prowl

The organ, the organ that grinds the wind
the tides of the raging sea
are like the hollow melody
of this disturbing dream

Of her, of us, or of this soul
sitting with us at the banquet
tell us who is deceived,
inspirer of the infamous

She who sleeps in my bed
and shares the air of my room,
can play dice on the table
of the ceiling of my mind

Ah, give us burning skulls
Skulls burned by lightning from the sky
Clean skulls, real skulls,
Cleansed by your presence

Deliver us unto the inner skies
Where chasms are filled by showers
And where vertigo fills us
With your incandescent power

Feed us – give us this day our daily
Sacrament of confusion,
Ah, share with us stars and lava,
Instead of your blood

Free us. Divide us into tribes
With your hands of eternal fire
And send us along burning roads,
Where we go to die beyond death

Make our brains distort and twist
At knowing our own godliness,
And delight in our intelligence,
As we’re pulled into each new hurricane

Sex Street suddenly comes alive
with unwelcome faces;
cafes, all full of whispering
criminals, line the avenues.

Sex-starved hands burn in pockets,
hot loins boil beneath bellies;
and when desires collide,
heads cost less than holes.

It has been lost, that archaic ship
On seas that drench my fevered dreams,
Its tall masts hidden in the mist
Of a biblical and psalm-filled sky.

It will not be pastoral Greeks
Who gently play among bare trees;
And the holy ship will never sell
Its rare cargo in foreign lands.

It knows no warm ports of the earth,
Eternally alone, it knows only God,
As it plows through glorious, infinite waves.

The pointed bow plunges into mystery;
At night, the tips of its masts gleam
With the mystic silver of the polar star.

With me is god-the-dog, and its tongue,
which like a garrotte cuts through
the skin of the double vaulted cap
of the itching earth.

And here is the triangle of water
that crawls with a bug’s gait,
but which under the burning bud
turns around to stab.

Beneath the breasts of the hideous earth
god-the-bitch has hidden
the earth’s breasts and the frozen milk
that will rot her hollow tongue.

And here is the virgin-with-a-hammer,
eager to pound the caves of earth
in which the skull of the dog star
begins to hideously arise.