vision

Magazine of the Non-Monastic Traditions of Buddhism

Hiss in the Cistern Chapel - the ballad of Willen and Wolverine

by Ngak'chang Rinpoche, November 1997.

They appear to look you in the eye but their conceptual infrastructure lurks thirty yards to the rear,
Travelling the oily self-approving grooves of firm yet pliant cheese.
Riddled with pale assortment of slowly mutating menaces which say less than they say
In ways which prove directionless according to any position which might or might not be taken.

Wolverine glories in impassioned presage of gristle and grotesque gravy revelling in banal cunning
Which imagines that opening and closing one's eyes rapidly betokens honesty.
Hand-written cadaver gapes as asinine arum lilies are hoist by their own peculiar petard,
Wolverine reinvents erroneous larceny in a litany of litigious phraseology.

Willen evades his own implications, compressed and withered in circumstantial gerontophilia,
Willen purveys meat apéritif and secures undercover bouquet of bedroom bourbon.
Whilst fifty rows back in the ranks of slaves, he whispers: "I was Spartacus," but fumbles the `was'.
Anxiety dampens home-made caftan as he ponders whether he may have been heard or misheard.

Willen pretends to have dropped something as Romans round up each and every `would-be Spartacus'.
But later - Willen, at the crucifixion of 100,000 Spartacus clones and acrid reporters, declares
"I did say I was Spartacus, I did, I did, I really did - but they must have missed me in the confusion."
"It's true," says Wolverine, "Everyone's writing letters - and no one knows where they were coming from."

Willen says: "I have no objection whatsoever to being crucified, but no one made an appointment.
On advice from my attorney, I will drive a drawing pin into the strap of my rhino-hide wristwatch

To prove the point.
" And suddenly, there's no doubt about venal veracity of deceptively duplicated regalia
Burgeoning in high dudgeon under full flush of spontaneous integrity and soporifically sullen vapours.

Willen and Wolverine motion to massed choir of pre-arranged onlookers and studio guests,
Willen in his Dudley diplomat suit and tie, poses his paunch whilst signing facsimile autographs
Whilst declaring seat of adequate convenience, in hope of appreciative incomprehension.
Middle aged Black country Caliban takes a drunken academic as his god and howls at the moon.

Willen and Wolverine jibber and retch on a dozen different telephone lines in order to evade stench
Of meat masquerade, which baffles the structure of their own native tongue, no one notices
As they evacuate their bowels, and suddenly everyone truly believes that Frank Sinatra
Died to save us from our sins - and that Elvis looks down upon us all in his reckless compassion.