from ‘The Runiad’ book 11

A Fortnightly Serial.

By ANTHONY HOWELL.

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ANTHONY HOWELL writes: My own romantic notion of myself has encouraged me to attempt an epic. It will have 24 books and be the same length as the Odyssey. Each book will be approximately 24 pages long, with three seven-line verses per page. I have completed a clean draft of books 1 to 11, which I publish with Heyzine here, and to this file I will add each new book as it is completed.

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from Book 11

Riches condition the affluent more than their crumbs do the poor.
Delusional, each treats Versailles as if it were a pigsty,
Imagining some higher Versailles to which they should aspire.
But what is their madness compared to the madness of God?
Their meagre manipulations have done nothing but
Wake that jealous Kraken up. The Crocodile who ate the sole of Adidas,
Ground beneath His heel the sacred specs of Sunglass Hut.

Disconcerted by Copernicus, globalists
Abandon geocentric spatial systems only with reluctance.
Sick and demented people come in all denominations
As do gods. The Capital Letter God of all the capitalists
Who wish to run the world is one who permits no other to exist:
One who is prone to a long pent-up negative reaction,
As can frequently be observed in those who strive for perfection;

Perfect in terms of success, justification, righteousness!
Theirs is a chronic need to emphasise their virtuous intent
Which generates its shadow. This being the endemic
Accompaniment to the God-concept: artifacted archetype!
Absolute notion of the Nous brought to us from space
By aliens on a far-flung orbit that comes near our own
Only at the end of aeons. Mithraic fiction of some master-race:

The monotheistic Magus of monogamy, monotony
And doom; the love of whom keeps getting overcome
By an awed incitement to be orthodox and loathe the Nicolaitans
With their free-use households and interdicts on jealousy.
Placing a ban on Dionysus, Pan, Leto, Krishna, Brahma, Seeta,
Durga et al, this is the angry arsehole who would screw
My Runiad, replacing spirit houses with a smart-metre.

Metaphysics undermines the wealth of folklore’s pantheon
While each pundit traps us in his verbal web of relationships,
From Jung’s notion of God as the unconscious of man
To Lacan’s unconscious structured like a language —
All of which we’ll shuffle around so that God can be structured
Like a language, language perceived as the unconscious
Of man, man held up as the unconscious of God.

Yahweh at His worst seems pretty much of a warthog. Evermore
Should Chudwar be His name, for after all it is God Himself
Who darkens His own counsel and who exhibits no insight.
God turns the tables on Job and blames him for His own delusion.
Man is not permitted to have an opinion about Him, and,
In particular, is to have no insight which God Himself does not
Possess. Hast thou an arm like God? Or canst thou thunder

With a voice like Him? For verse after verse He proclaims
His world-creating power to his miserable victim, who sits
In ashes and scratches sores with potsherds. This unfortunate
Has had a bellyful of superhuman wrath. God’s thunderings
At Job so completely miss the point that one cannot
Help but see how much God is occupied with Himself.
The emphasis He lays on his omnipotence and greatness

Makes no sense in relation to Job, who certainly needs
No convincing. It only becomes intelligible when aimed at an
Ear that doubts it. This “doubting ear” is Satan’s, Jung supposes.
Altogether, Yahweh pays so little attention to Job’s
Actual situation that one suspects Him of having an ulterior
Motive which is more important and devotive: Job is no more
Than the outward prod for an inward process of dialectic in God.

Hats off to Jung, for taking Yahweh down almost as
Effectively as Wittgenstein. With God restive on the couch,
The analyst points out that however desirable a relationship
Of trust between man and God, one of the more astounding features
Of Yahweh is His vindictiveness towards His humble creatures.
From a God who purports to be a father, one who is the breath
Of love itself, we would expect understanding and forgiveness.

So it comes as a shock when this supposedly supremely
Good God only allows the purchase of any such act of grace
Through a human sacrifice, and, what is worse, through the death
Of His own son (reversing any compact vouchsafed unto Abraham).
So I have had enough of Him. Ripple after ripple of delicious
Laughter wells up from the studio on the floor below here
Where Indian girls are practicing their footwork to the tabla.

Whether this He be Judaic, Christian or Mahomedan,
His phallic singularity is not to be the subject for my Runiad.
We may share the prophets and the prophetesses still.
We may praise the Saints, explore their hagiography,
Enjoy all Allah’s angels, and the gargoyles on Notre Dame,
But admit of no monopoly of worship or of origin.
Monogods seem steeped in blame and keen on original sin.

Practicing intricate stampings, weaving words like birdsong
Out of their hands. The dancing girls below show us that the numinous
Is born of dance, that ritual is subject to the seasons of the year.
Herostratus chose to burn down the Artemis temple at Ephesus
In order to be known for all eternity, and any wrath
That burns is not divine but born of human hubris such as his.
Instead let us worship the moon, simply because she is luminous.

Searching for the absolute, you step inside a tower
And climb up step by step, pretty sure you’re getting somewhere
Simply because you feel yourself ascending ever higher.
But at the top of its winding stair there’s nothing but a sound
Roof of stone above your head, and a wall encircling
That roof and you below it. All you can do is turn around,
Descend the spiral and get back to where you were before.

Search instead for Vagha the tiger, striped with the runes of the trees,
Who weaves the jungle, hid from sight; discover Daphne in the leaves,
Take your name from your song bull, follow the elephant roads
And let your dancing feet explore complexities of syncopation
When it’s time to dance, and when it’s time to be still be still
As your energy reloads, and know it’s Shiva who has ordained
That light be opposed by shadow so that balance is maintained.

Shiva is happy to fuck with Parvati and to be male and female
At once. He accepts diversity, polytheistic
Variety, pipes and timbrels in a rout inspired by Dionysus
Or some charivari rudely prepared for anyone else.
However I have to admit to myself that the Hindu can be
As brutal as the Muslim on jihad or the Christian
Setting forth on some crusade or the Buddhist on a rampage —

Or indeed the atheist enforcing some agenda.
Organised in any way, humanity tends to surrender
To its need to intimidate and summon up some monster
In its image. Paradox of the wrathful lamb, the vengeful Christ
Created when the imitation of His love establishes a corresponding
Shadow of apocalypse. Therefore we do wrong but always
For the right reasons. Justify assassination, escalation, heist

Of rights and freedoms, just as if promotion of our globalist
Notion of divinity, whatsoever that might be, sufficed
To build a pyramid from the bottom up. A work of unnecessary
Labour with some mystic capstone at the top;
For the powerful among us are aware that their most potent
Weapon is our fear. Fear of the unfathomable, as if
One swam alone above the Mariana Trench, not a sail

In sight. Fear one can no longer trust the evidence
Supplied by one’s own senses as they gaslight every scrap,
Or, as if a shark had arisen from that trench’s depths,
Suddenly attacked by someone’s fit of righteousness
And warned off attempting ever to walk through walls
In the style of Henry Flynt. Paranoia takes the place of policy.
Legitimate leaders rot in jail or have to flee for their lives.

♦
—This is the eighth installment of The Runiad. —
See previously
Extracts from Books 1 & 2
Extracts from Books 3 & 4
Extracts from Books 5 & 6
Extract from Book 7
Extract from Book 8
Extract from Book 9
Extract from Book 10

ANTHONY HOWELL, a former dancer with the Royal Ballet, was founder of The Theatre of Mistakes and performed solo at the Hayward Gallery and at the Sydney Biennale. His articles on visual art, dance, performance, and poetry have appeared in many publications including Art Monthly, The London Magazine, Harpers & Queen, The Times Literary Supplement. He is a contributing editor of The Fortnightly Review. In 2001 he received a LADA bursary to study the tango in Buenos Aires and now teaches the dance at his studio/gallery The Room in Tottenham Hale. He is the author of a seminal textbook, The Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to Its Theory and Practice. Details about his collaborative project, Grey Suit Editions, are here. In 2019, his exploration of psychic chaos, Consciousness (with Multilation ), was published by the Fortnightly’s imprint, Odd Volumes. His latest collection is From Inside (The High Window).