Luigi Coppola
Francis Finds Himself in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
After a particularly stressful afternoon at Howard1 & Philips2 Solicitors, Francis felt that the best way to relax would be to summon Baphomet3 , for a chinwag.
Leaving the drab grey of the office block for the putrid illuminations of the local Co-op4, Francis began with stealthily obtaining the ancient prerequisites for the invocations5, though each item reminded him of various distasteful elements found in his life (Francis was self-loathingly unaware that the emotional weighting of the ingredients was the fundamental element6 needed for the summoning but as most corporeal entities, defined by their somewhat self-imposed 3-and-a-half dimensional7 existence, will not understand; all he really understood was the concrete):
1) salt8, which triggered a flashback to the morning collection of the twisted, jovial faces of his colleagues, jostling for the best view of Francis’ face when he tasted the sodium-spiked Earl Grey tea he had made for himself and only left for 10 seconds to go find a spoon — enough time for the pack to gather,
2) candles9 , which evoked the stench of the cleaners’ aftershave that mingled with bleach and polish and urine and faeces,
3) matches10, short and re-tipped, painfully and insecurely phallic in their accurate length and breadth.
The checkout clerk tapped at the till, scanned the 3 items and frowned at Francis, who added him to the list (which at last count was up to 4242 – a difficult amount of bodies to dispose of no matter how you cut it).
Once home, Francis fed Henry his dinner (who sleepily but happily poked his head from his shell to nibble on the lettuce), shut the blinds11, that seemed to groan down the drop of the window, and dragged the sofa to the side of the room, rubber feet screeching on warped floorboards. He then proceeded to arrange the 10 candles12, a pentagram13 of wax and wick, measured against the splintered edges of the floorboards. The salt was poured into the lines, joining the candles as carefully as a mother, as exact as an undertaker. The matches14 were struck (his groin tensing involuntarily at every flick), each lighting a different candle, each accompanied with an incantation15.
As the final light erupted in its microcosmic splendour16, Francis sat cross-legged in the centre of the pentagram, whispering and waiting.
From out of a shimmering and pulsating ejaculation of energy and mass and light17, Baphomet appeared18: horned and hoofed, crowned and curvaceous, translucent and tentacled. Triangles, circles and crescents all danced on, around, within her: a hypnotic display of power and persuasion19. Those buck horns with those nannie eyes and doe ears and billy chin all spun. A mist of formaldehyde surrounded her and filled the room, while a double helix of serpents caressed her chest, licking the breasts20 that hung like sacks of molten gold and promises.
And Baphomet waited, waited in the centre of the pentagram; she waited and pondered and hovered above a pool of blood that bubbled and boiled and seeped through the cracks of Francis’ cheap, swollen floorboards21.
__________
1 Yes, the duck, but in the grand traditions of J.R.R, T.S, J.K.,
2 Yes, -head screwdriver, but combine with 1 to have the full effect
3 Say her name three times and maybe she’ll appear for you
4 Company that provides, completely unrelatedly, funeral and food services
5 Who you gonna call?
6 ‘I weighed her heart and found it wanting/ She loved, she lost, her panting wasted’ ― Louis Cooper
7 Space-time invariable influences the level of control we have over those dimensions, ranging from complete to illusionary;
consider the effects of relativity and time dilation on astronauts and their earth-bound twins
8 ‘I shivered in those/ solitudes/ when I heard/ the voice/ of/ the salt/ in the desert.’ ― Pablo Neruda
9 If planning a summoning, avoid blood-red candles as it confuses Cerberus
10 'It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches… (see 14)
42 The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything
11 for quality blinds at reasonable prices, please visit www.slumdogmillionairesurgery.com
12 If planning a summoning, avoid vanilla candles as if confuses Saint Paul
13 Activity for all the family: try using uncooked spaghetti to make your own demon summoning pentagram! Kids will love
using their hands to make and create and then shake their dark lord’s soul-devouring palms!
14 ‘…but only takes one match to burn a thousand trees' — the back of a box of England's Glory matches
15 talk is cheap but can cost a soul
16 imagine those white blood cells you see in your eyelashes when you squint or stare at a blue sky, imagine every single one
of them dancing across your retina, stilettoes stabbing into the cornea, sweat pouring in through the pupil
17 e=mc2
18 Face front, true believer!
19 cut alliterative qualities: pedantry, primness, prestige, peaches
20 Double D
21 and so Francis found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time
Sorry We Missed You
I press play again – the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as I start at the door knock, press pause and wait.
Luigi Coppola is a teacher in London and a graduate of English & Creative Writing from Warwick University. He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize twice, appeared in ‘The Tree Line’ anthology by Worple Press and his poems have/are due to appear in a number of journals. Poems, recordings and information can be found at: www.luigicoppolapoetry.blogspot.co.uk.
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Francis Finds Himself in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Based on original art by Mark Shuttleworth
Leaving the drab grey of the office block for the putrid illuminations of the local Co-op4, Francis began with stealthily obtaining the ancient prerequisites for the invocations5, though each item reminded him of various distasteful elements found in his life (Francis was self-loathingly unaware that the emotional weighting of the ingredients was the fundamental element6 needed for the summoning but as most corporeal entities, defined by their somewhat self-imposed 3-and-a-half dimensional7 existence, will not understand; all he really understood was the concrete):
1) salt8, which triggered a flashback to the morning collection of the twisted, jovial faces of his colleagues, jostling for the best view of Francis’ face when he tasted the sodium-spiked Earl Grey tea he had made for himself and only left for 10 seconds to go find a spoon — enough time for the pack to gather,
2) candles9 , which evoked the stench of the cleaners’ aftershave that mingled with bleach and polish and urine and faeces,
3) matches10, short and re-tipped, painfully and insecurely phallic in their accurate length and breadth.
The checkout clerk tapped at the till, scanned the 3 items and frowned at Francis, who added him to the list (which at last count was up to 4242 – a difficult amount of bodies to dispose of no matter how you cut it).
Once home, Francis fed Henry his dinner (who sleepily but happily poked his head from his shell to nibble on the lettuce), shut the blinds11, that seemed to groan down the drop of the window, and dragged the sofa to the side of the room, rubber feet screeching on warped floorboards. He then proceeded to arrange the 10 candles12, a pentagram13 of wax and wick, measured against the splintered edges of the floorboards. The salt was poured into the lines, joining the candles as carefully as a mother, as exact as an undertaker. The matches14 were struck (his groin tensing involuntarily at every flick), each lighting a different candle, each accompanied with an incantation15.
As the final light erupted in its microcosmic splendour16, Francis sat cross-legged in the centre of the pentagram, whispering and waiting.
From out of a shimmering and pulsating ejaculation of energy and mass and light17, Baphomet appeared18: horned and hoofed, crowned and curvaceous, translucent and tentacled. Triangles, circles and crescents all danced on, around, within her: a hypnotic display of power and persuasion19. Those buck horns with those nannie eyes and doe ears and billy chin all spun. A mist of formaldehyde surrounded her and filled the room, while a double helix of serpents caressed her chest, licking the breasts20 that hung like sacks of molten gold and promises.
And Baphomet waited, waited in the centre of the pentagram; she waited and pondered and hovered above a pool of blood that bubbled and boiled and seeped through the cracks of Francis’ cheap, swollen floorboards21.
__________
1 Yes, the duck, but in the grand traditions of J.R.R, T.S, J.K.,
2 Yes, -head screwdriver, but combine with 1 to have the full effect
3 Say her name three times and maybe she’ll appear for you
4 Company that provides, completely unrelatedly, funeral and food services
5 Who you gonna call?
6 ‘I weighed her heart and found it wanting/ She loved, she lost, her panting wasted’ ― Louis Cooper
7 Space-time invariable influences the level of control we have over those dimensions, ranging from complete to illusionary;
consider the effects of relativity and time dilation on astronauts and their earth-bound twins
8 ‘I shivered in those/ solitudes/ when I heard/ the voice/ of/ the salt/ in the desert.’ ― Pablo Neruda
9 If planning a summoning, avoid blood-red candles as it confuses Cerberus
10 'It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches… (see 14)
42 The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything
11 for quality blinds at reasonable prices, please visit www.slumdogmillionairesurgery.com
12 If planning a summoning, avoid vanilla candles as if confuses Saint Paul
13 Activity for all the family: try using uncooked spaghetti to make your own demon summoning pentagram! Kids will love
using their hands to make and create and then shake their dark lord’s soul-devouring palms!
14 ‘…but only takes one match to burn a thousand trees' — the back of a box of England's Glory matches
15 talk is cheap but can cost a soul
16 imagine those white blood cells you see in your eyelashes when you squint or stare at a blue sky, imagine every single one
of them dancing across your retina, stilettoes stabbing into the cornea, sweat pouring in through the pupil
17 e=mc2
18 Face front, true believer!
19 cut alliterative qualities: pedantry, primness, prestige, peaches
20 Double D
21 and so Francis found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time
Sorry We Missed You
I press play again – the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as the record repeats, skips bits and beats, dips along the groove, nudges the needle to and fro, dittos the decibels, recounts and recalls reverb, reproduces the production, backtracks, retreads the chorus, forces extra scratch struck verses, teases and twists, manipulates and reciprocates the middle eight, separates the same sonics, quotes itself, reaps a repeat of the reprise, routing back to the start as I start at the door knock, press pause and wait.
Luigi Coppola is a teacher in London and a graduate of English & Creative Writing from Warwick University. He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize twice, appeared in ‘The Tree Line’ anthology by Worple Press and his poems have/are due to appear in a number of journals. Poems, recordings and information can be found at: www.luigicoppolapoetry.blogspot.co.uk.
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