blackmail press 34
Paul Hardacre
Australia

spirits of the forest  Vanya Taule'alo
index
Paul Hardacre is a poet, editor, publisher, and student of the perennial philosophy. He is the author of three poetry collections: The Year Nothing (HeadworX, New Zealand, 2003), Love in the place of rats (Transit Lounge, Melbourne, 2007) and liber xix: differentia liber (Puncher and Wattmann, Sydney, 2011). His publishing ventures include boutique arts publishers papertiger media, with its soi 3 modern poets and soi 3 gold imprints; and esoteric, occult and arcane book publishers Salamander and Sons, publishers of the Alchemy Journal and the Modern Magister and Unearthed Arcana imprints. Paul has travelled extensively and currently resides with his wife and son in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
as black, as dark

“An eternal dream, full of the sweetest surfeit of life – restless –
with fearful pains inside, in the soul.”
– Egon Schiele

“Out of fear of her fire burns; out of fear the sun shines.”
– Katha Upanisad 2.3.3

under world or walls her giving hand &
clad in space she flowers woods & wound
with ‘curling growths’ the skulls that carried
life or left behind in tree or drain / collected
teeth or nails the town its tawny bronze-dark
music (dead) outside the hills & sea beyond
the heart / to dance or lose the way to laugh
in tunnels fog or eyes or veiled by pain & free
like marigolds or tea her dusty train imagined
snow & skin all white as age or hell / her milk
a complex fashion from the north & born of fire
(or pictures of fire / the five-wicked pop of ants &
sound of bells) the uncooked food & fruits she lifts
marmotic futures higher than people grass or star –
a desolation skin of curves her diadem of bones to
have or draw some kind of silver horn or minaret in
red a devil (maybe french it’s monday made from heads
a plate of doves & sugar / water ghosts the river wears a
tongue & round the hips her peeling ichor birds & bloom







born from his dead father’s arm

“The trees are speaking on the far shore
we’ll never get there in time…”
– Robert Adamson, Black Water

“Like the swan which drinks milk only from milk-water
so should the substance of the world be drunk.”
– Kanhupada, Raga Indratala


go-round swings he hangs the orange
sky collides with shadows / people
haunt the thinning trees the punctured
eye & hair like lightning dust or bubbles /
years (abandoned houses stars she gives
her beaming light & tongue & vital airs
eclipse his head a light or vapour finds
her powdered breasts her lotus sword &
studied skull a southern-fire (delight or
wishing cow) & rubbed by sages in the
night his faces unclean peel a blackened
may: white-flock carpet heart & rain –
‘the fine grey nature’ of earth in mouth a
moonbeam’s grubby thread she sinks in
rags & callow youngsters folded back his
arms (the gallows bird the upward moving
other self he steals & rides a mouse through
time his face a rusty frying-pan or pearly tusk
& hatched the waters gold / the peacock sky







forbidden kiss

“Love is the law, love under will.”
– The priest of the princes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu

“This being-of-darkness spreads everywhere like unconscious sleep,
shapeless, ineffable, undefinable.”
– Manu Smrti 1.5


of person & nature he cradles her tit
& sounds like jaws upstairs in place of
feet or knobs of bone his nerve-wrack
sinews / seeds in pods or cold time iron
box her monster lump of quickness stone
& secret dresses (untouched, headless
gift of unseen rivers plants & rags her
breasts adorned with lotus jewelled with
teeth & horns a pair of wings a siam path
to sunlight edge of sea she calls the waves
to bathe or love to baphomet ‘all curious
looking’ covered in sores & balls like nandi
(fine & shiny mangled boobs & skulls / this
beast a hollow head with bag of bile he slips &
falls is dark & wants to bite her lips her thumb
like early gleeson / bloody tubes & sperm all made
of bricks & upside down in spring he dangles /
worms that end in mouths that end in crushing births
or 666 (caves with hermits, sex before used shadows







storm bones, sea

“Sleep is an unripe fruit of death.  A dream is an unripe
fruit of prophecy.  The globe of the sun is an unripe fruit
of the supernal light.”
– Bereshit Rabbah 17:5

“Go round the world and roar like a lion!”
– Sage Yogaswami (to Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami)


whitesnake hair he sits in one more
sun & furs all black into the hills his cave
& to the sea the guest of men takes rice &
curds he speeds & is perfected as a corpse
concealing grace or into sparks to splinter
days & rise his ancient thread-thin ray of love
he drives a donkey timbrels flutes & harps a
road a sky-gauge span & messengers of winds
of man is old or is a serpent close to sunset
stands his mouth as earth or white & ruddy
tree & joined to days like flame to burning
coal to blue-green beryl eyes he bakes on
stones as light all dark from shining black &
summer opened blue to rise like cakes of oil
& wheat he kissed of oil & words of (don’t
look!) chaos: quickening / his sandal waters
leavings of his food & no place empty of it – 
help for dead or thin like slice of ruby egg he
follows bones of storms & poisons morning