"the night plummets on us through us our bodies like pikes down down the chrysolite lake of stars"
Serge Neptune, 'Mother Night'
Winter on the mountain seems to swallow things. As the darkness increases to utter dark and no sun touches us here, as old, old ancestors swallow up newer ancestors, until only the most ancient of mothers remain, I find myself within The Mother Nights. This time of recognition of the Mothers does not feel joyous, as such, it feels inevitable like a weight around your feet. It draws things to the surface. I fiddle around with words, not my own but the miasma of words, left behind by others, like beach litter. I find myself in review mode, picking through the matter the sea leaves behind - as Sappho warned against.
There are few enough poets that warrant full, entirely awake attention, and there are fewer still among the ranks of the sorcerous and the witched. Not to say that many of us aren't touched by a poetic style, its hard to deal in Witch Fire and not at least end up fondled by inspiration. But I will contend that true poets who are recognised, the ones who can interest people outside our ranks, are few. Serge Neptune's work does not favour only witchcraft practitioners. Like a lot of great art, it sort of imbibes its fill from sorcery and mythos but keeps popping open with images from the progeny of modernity, the mess of our current world. Take for instance when Serge discusses the origin of mermen, who are used as a metaphor for queerness, and maybe somewhat more besides for those of us who have the eyes to see and ears to hear:
"Likely intercourse between a land woman and some god of the sea
who may have manifested himself in human or fish form
Likely bubbles, clots of song clothed in air
Likely the sun, some spell or a scam
Likely a genetic error from a government’s secret project
Likely an avant-garde installation
Likely a whim, the trick of a laughing deity
Likely a miracle, some alchemy of gorgeousness, the moment
when water starts boiling and every living thing inside the sea is watching,
waiting anxiously for something great to happen."
'Clots of song clothed in air' is enough on its own to recommend picking up his word crumbs and following their trail in the forest. His voice has matured by the time I find myself in his seasonally appropriate Mother Night, his use of words is a visceral shake down. At its essence verbal surprises of this sort are the backbone of poetry.
...graffiti from the sides
of houses leave the walls, join
the parade of the reckless. night is a bag
of marbles dropped – each one rolling
over cars & people. i succumb
to their pace & weight, their love-tight gripe,
brace & crumble under the pressure
of the encounter. maybe this city
indulges us because it needs to – mother
swan devouring her cygnets – to keep
its foot on us, to cook us slowly.
gravity trips me, i fall. night drips red-hot
on the brain, lifts visions from its marshes."
The sorcerous mind, one who is used to experiencing visions and trances can feel into that, feel night dripping red hot upon the brain, until visions rise from its marshes', but the feeling of vertigo is still there for others, I'd warrant. There is enough of queerness, of the underbelly of London, of abuse, loneliness and strange longing in Serge Neptune's work to make it accessible to a great many. It is strange, it is also reaching out long, eloquent fingers to many.