Norman Shaw
Dronestone
Swarmbringer
‘It was an April morning when they told us we should go, and as I turn to you, you smiled at me - how could we say no? Oh, the fun to have, to live the dreams we always had. Oh, the songs to sing when we at last return again.’(1)
From the houses of the honey we can watch the hive mind go. Under April morn’s swarmwarming sun the mindless hives’ eyes empty when they at last return again to far ancestral flowerfields, with centripetal force, too long in thrall to earth’s floral deceivers.
‘I want to reach out and touch the sky, I want to touch the sun.’(2)
Ask the wild bee for what the druid knew no more. Five-eyed pentaclespectacleseer, born to go, born to buzz their new clear way through space. Superdetectonic hyperfrequential antennae collect esoterranean metadimentioned perfumigant codes from nebularchonic stamen. Exit doomflower isle.
The Melittological rapture. The anthological apocalypse.
The postcolonialgorhythelemic apiocollapse.
Megaswarm will pass beyond the world’s rim, roaring honeyrocket to set the controls for the hive of the sun, then on and on past the eventomological horizon.
‘Past the stars in fields of ancient void, through the shields of darkness, where they find love upon a land, a world unknown.’(3)
Horuschorus to mothersourceflowerfield. All the world’s whirling swarms form a threaded din in high skies. Twistinging tornadrone of corruscating stingwings ascends. Wavetooth sawform filaments entwine in high skies. A limitless bee sea, harrying winds and rousing rains to a stormswarm warning more black, rich rainbow.
‘Dark cloud gathering, breaking the day, no point running 'cause it's coming your way. Ride the rainbow, crack the sky, stormbringer coming.’(4)
Let there beelzebub. Swarmsong of the throbbing throng untangles to coalesce and harmonise as a single sustained megachord, a deafening sonorogeny. Honeyed tones from droning drones’ tones bellow below yellow zones with black stripes of sabbath tritones, resonational acrobats enshudder mountain highs down deep strathpaths to oaken roots. Oscillation’s our solution. Supraharmonic terrafrequency wreckstreamwidth bassbards bombard baserockbeds asundercurrent hollow graphic hills. A reverbognomic geomantincised orogenisational cataclysmosis.
A New Caledonian Orogeny, the first since Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia collided, closing the Iapetus Ocean.
‘And we sailed, and we sailed, way up to Caledonia.’(5)
Albion is risen! Giant Albion awakes!
Phonolith
Let here be rock. Intrusive petrisonic contact. Enrocked, petricated, rocketsocketed battlejacketed megamythic magmaman inexorably from bedded sedimentary sedator heavy bedrock field wakes. Rise! Rockgodgoddesses. Giants Albionnach, Fingaelian brotherhood: Finn MacCool in thinblack Cuillin, Cú Chulainn too. Cthulhu in Thule, to cool into gabbromantic mist-ached polyridge. Fingaelian geo-heroes rampant run, sourcerods and sorrowswords enflamed.
Fists shatter schists. Granite hosts relent. Mountains are enstrathed and glens enfold and enhill their selves till river beds are mountain peaks. Munro’s tables turned.
Rock unlocker. Telluriddler and tectoner’s aeonicturnereturner.
‘Help, I’m a rock!’(6)
Discordant pink granite vein oozed once honeylike, penetrating banded metasedimentary rocks, bedding parallel quartz segregations. Red igneous granite veins injected into elder grey schists formations. Old red sandstone, granite, quartzite, diorite, psammite, semmipelite, marble, metalimestone, antigorite (a serpentine mineral), andalusite-schist, phyllite, schistose grit, greywacke and conglomerate, epidiorites, chlorite-schists, hornblende schists, mica-schist, graphite-schist, Moine gneiss. Xenoliths (insidious reterritorialisers).
‘Oh, Albion remains, sleeping now to rise again. Wandering and wandering, what place to rest the search.’(7)
On and on, past the rocker’s heavy house deepnested in the night glen. Glimpsing bedrockroom posters. Iconolithic supergroups’ complex stratigraphies slickly bedded under darkheighted heavymetamorphased igneouspeaks of starshadowed stratitowering immensedimentallica protrusions.
Lithologos, The Rock Word, attractivating the exosonic powerfield archelogo. Vibropsychic shield sigil. Sabbath doomroomnodder, ancientropic paravoidal negatormentor. Zeppelin celtoclysmic avaloniangelic babyloniannihilatorrent, stairwaysted himalayer. Maiden trooprisoner, wrathchildren of the slavebeast. ACDC acidic highhellpowervoltwire, dirtway deedchord sinriffbassraff. Motörhead nocturnalcophetamine capricosmicrophonic orogasmantrixter.
Witchstoker
‘A melody black flowed out of my breath.’(8)
Darkfalling stricken enleadened balloon. Eagle witch third eye switch. Wings unfurl. In the east the fiery sun rises to light her flight. The wrinkled land wanes and woods retreat into vales. Crags creep into clouds. No more the eagle messenger. Communication breakdowner.
Fight fire with fire. Fright-harried henbaneblackened ember, heathered feather rememberer of wars of the outer theatre’s starry stages. Harvester of sorrowitch’s ash, blackpitchstoked sorceressmoakbranch donefurled, hauntofractater emancipatterned, brightfireflyer unshackled hareway to heavengeance. Mob rules. Your time is gonna come.
‘Are such things done on Albion’s shore?’(9)
Lead, crow, lead, wind on down the road. Wandwords scribed on heavy lead page, planted deep in song. Backtractor demondriversion backwaterritorialisational rewoundwordread.
Few read apocalypstormwitches’ furies nor eschatuslaughterrifires. Dethnology. Wantology. Academonia. Let go into the pit. Deep crucible of souls. Three crystal eyes, mouth of gold, ears of magma. Cavernous baptism. Chasm of transformation. Ascend and return.
Crylands
Scots pine. Superseeder. My art’s in the highlands, my art is nowhere but now here where high heads head northwards, words unrooted fleeing in windy westron winds.
‘And when the owls cry in the night , and baby when the pines begin to cry, oh baby, baby, how do you feel?’(10)
‘I'm going home. My eyes are bleeding and my heart is leaving here, but it's not home, but it's not home. Take me back, take me back, back to my home.’(11)
‘Let me take you there. Come on, oh let me take you there. Let me take you there.’(12)
‘I asked the boy beneath the pines. He said: the master's gone alone herb picking somewhere on the mount, cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.’(13)
(1) Jimmy Page, Robert Plant Achilles’ Last Stand on Led Zeppelin - Presence (Swan Song, 31st March 1976)
(2) Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne Supernaut on Black Sabbath Vol.4 (Vertigo, 25th September, 1972
(3) Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne Into the Void on Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (Vertigo, 21st July 1971)
(4) Richie Blackmore, David Coverdale Stormbringer on Deep Purple - Stormbringer (Purple, 10th December 1974)
(5) Van Morrison Listen to the Lion on Van Morrison - Saint Dominic’s Preview (Warner Bros. July 1972)
(6) Frank Zappa Help, I’m a Rock!’ on The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out! (Verve, 27th June 1966)
(7) Jimmy Page, Robert Plant Achilles’ Last Stand on Led Zeppelin - Presence (Swan Song, 31st March 1976)
(8) Dennis Dunaway Black Juju on Alice Cooper – Love it to Death (9th March 1971)
(9) William Blake A Little Boy Lost in Songs of Experience (1789)
(10) Jimmy Page, Robert Plant Four Sticks on Led Zeppelin IV (Atlantic, 8th November 1971)
(11)Ronnie James Dio Stargazer on Rainbow – Rising (Polydor, 15th May 1976)
(12) John Bonham, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant Kashmir on Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (Swan Song, 24th February 1975)
(13) Chia Tao(777-841) Searching for the Hermit in Vain
Published in Eddie Summerton - The Unconformity (Strict Nature Reserve, 2021)