  
          
          
        Limitations on the Magus. 
        Hold it firmly between two pre-heated hands. 
          The heavy drapes, jet black, draw back  
          To reveal to the breathless Initiate 
  Five Glimpses of the Beloved. 
        Just as in,  
          said the Curator Emeritus,  
          from behind his hand  
  One Hundred Views of Hokkaido 
  Ten Glimpses of Eternity 
          And The Four Faces of the Moon 
        He was in dead earnest 
          as you didn't monkey about with Doctor Dee 
          nor his Opsidian Mirror.  
          It did for Horace Walpole who choked on Pie 
          And was struck with a palsey overwhelming 
          When taking the piss at a haut ton soiree. 
        He stood guard as I held and wished 
          For you to appear through the dull sharp glassy haze 
        
          - The Beloved over Heaven’s Bar does deep protrude
 
          - The Beloved bends her downy neck to your trembling lobe
 
          - The Beloved hints with flickering tongue the root of all Goodness
 
          - The Beloved (bust length) gives you the Mesmeric sign of Fusion
 
          - The Beloved sated with Fusion signals surrender with semaphores unknown
 
         
          
        In the monstrous deep,  a curtain advanced 
          Or did I just lurch closer? 
          The hem turned up  
          or did it just reflect my rigid thumb? 
          but no, at last - thumbs up - 
          the thick plank planes parted  
          on a dark wood’s inner mystery 
          which I took to be Heaven’s Bar. 
          A thin veiled vestige seemed to shimmer 
          then congeal. 
        Hand to mouth  
          He urged me on 
  “Tell me what you see 
          From extrusion comes protrusion..” 
          He claimed on the very nature of Obsidian. 
  “See her rear her tongue to lobe? Did you?” 
  “Not yet” , my hands were raw with damp heat . 
          Soot mists billow over Cloud Samples. 
  “Choice of three shades” oddly on the label 
          Dank tundra tinted red as hidden hands 
          Struggle with a briefly glimpsed genuflexion  
          or was a sign of confusion? 
          It was difficult to decide which. 
          
        Faint chants from well beneath 
          Elysian mantras that sounded more like hissy fits. 
        Yes yes, the sight of the beloved  
          By a single night light. 
          Hum. 
          Off screen hands attempting a thunder roll 
          On the corrugated tin. upset a basket of walnuts. 
          
        Yes yes, Five Glimpses 
        
          - Moonfaced dude with slack jaw and monocle peers back;
 
          - Hairless arm with yellow yoyo jammed;
 
          - Hands jerk away as the dummy moustache inflates;
 
          - Fighting clearly at stage left as pulleys slip;
 
          - Nothing at all. With some more moustache.
 
         
          
        “Did you see her, the Beloved?  
          Did she come through for you?” 
        “Did she just, over the Bar of Heaven, my wildest dreams” 
        “Fulfilled by semaphores unknown!” 
    
          And its myths sustained 
          the Obsidian Mirror slid back into its velvet bag 
          And the drawstrings closed on its cosmic secrets. 
        When the inhabitants of Mortlake burnt Dr.Dee’s Library 
          Perhaps they knew something we didn’t. 
          Fearing not superstition but mere disappointment. 
          
          
          
          
          
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