In the Service of Blood by Michel Houellebecq

I no longer go on trips, really,
Because I know the place
And I know my rights,
And I’ve lived through rage.

In the service of humanity,
In the middle of the estate,
I know my bedroom well
And feel the night descend.

Angels take flight
In the glory of heaven
They will find God;
And the women have fun.

Tied to the table,
Sat in the estate,
The slow intensity
Of the relentless night.

At night in the estate
The slow immensity,
The cruel vision
Torn off from the sky
Of a shape that moves
Pulsating and red.

In the service of blood
The sleepy disgust,
The cruel ends of love
The blown-up bits of the real;
And all that for what?
The idea of a vision
The end of a song
Men losing hope

Waiting for rage
For exploding bodies,
Squatting, wounded,
Hoping for carnage.

I bring the ingredient
Of the final hatred,
My teeth are grinding,
Evil seeps in.

I know the tricks
Of a crushed flesh
I overdo it, I’m told
But I feel exonerated

By human suffering,
By hopes dissatisfied
By the dense crushing
Of superfluous days.

I am not serene
But I am at home,
Angels are holding my hand
I can feel the night falling.

Another literary obsession. Having read all his other novels I am now reading Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory. Here is a review. I don't mind that his plots are always a bit tenuous, it's his always controversial ideas and jaundiced philosophy that keep drawing me back time and again. On a side note I wonder if Barbara Kruger designed the English paperback cover?

"Woke up this morning feeling like the hapless victim of an elaborate self-defeating plot that I have unwittingly perpetrated against myself." ~ John Tottenham

Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, 1488

Happiness and Beauty by John Tottenham

Beauty depresses me,
Knowing that it’s temporary.
Positivity requires too much energy.
And even if I were happy,
I wouldn’t admit it,
For that would be insulting
To those who are not ,
And those who pretend to be.

"It’s a fallacy to believe that dispensing more information more quickly will, in itself, raise the general level of public awareness. To be informed, a person has to want to be informed, and the percentage of Americans demonstrating such motivation seems to have remained pretty stable, and pretty abysmal, throughout our vaunted information age." ~ Nicholas Carr

Quantum Cloud, Antony Gormley, 1999

Happiness by Carl Sandburg

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
    me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
    thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
    I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
    the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
    their women and children and a keg of beer and an
    accordion.

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed." ~ Ernest Hemingway

One of my literary obsessions. I don't understand why Magnus Mill isn't huge as he is surely one of the most unique and distinctive voices in contemporary fiction. Every single one of his books is worthy. The only reason I don't own Screwtop Thompson, yet, is that I heard most of the stories appear in his other two, out of print, collections (which are available for ridiculously low prices on Amazon's 2nd hand store). Recommended.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Woman with a Black Feather Boa, 1864

Tamara de Lempicka

Classic Penguin Science Fiction covers done by illustrator Adrian Chesterman.