Sleep Fissures (ROUND 6)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Homa, by Prin
Homa (2020, Prin Lomros)—a spicy-green crotch-rot chypre that, nastier in my mind than Onthamara (although not shocking to me any longer, will be to new noses as unsettling as the Icelandic hákarl (fermented shark) that famously made Anthony Bourdain recoil (its Arsalan-level challenge quotient solidifying Prin Lomros, for better or worse, as the Chuck Palahniuk of perfumery)—
takes the Thai-cuisine framework of Chypre-Siam (airy-bright kaffir lime leaf, jasmine, pheromonal civet, benzoin, warm spices) and, swapping oakmoss for a just-as-good-if-not-better caricature (bitter-earthy galbanum and spikenard evoking forest rot, fungal-rooty myrrh and mushroom and costus conjuring damp soil), tosses in a quirky melange of ingredients that bring the composition in an unmistakable goat-curry direction that makes its leather cousin Varuek look clean:
various curry spices (cinnamon, black pepper, clove, ginger, turmeric, cardamom, cumin, nutmeg, fennel) plus various a greasy combo of costus and goat’s hair and ghee that make it hard not to think of at least some sort of wooly ruminant especially when coupled with the oud duo (Assam and Lao) that, while focused is less on the mildewy rind than on the overripe cheese itself, is quite close aroma-wise to what we get from the Cambodian-Trat oud combo in Arsalan (the scorched-earth smokiness of Laotian oud bringing acrid-mineral tones of engine grease, tar-encrusted sandalwood, sunbaked bandages, and lacquered teakwood; the barn-floor pungency of Indian oud bringing fecal-hay tones of, cumin-flecked compost, smoked leather, infected cyst cheese, and musky goat pen)—
the overall effect, for all the dry-down’s elven glow of silver (almost the same shimmering grace of Zoologist Squid, except here we get the dank-leathery loam pit in which a mentholated witch fire burns rather than the inky-aqueous brine of a sea concocted in a simulation by extraterrestrials to help us feel more at home on our Vega star system travel), amounting to a fermented and feral concoction that, while situating us in a forest scene (unwashed goats, some wandering around and others mere pelts drying in the sun) where the air of overripe pastes and bitter-aromatic herbs and warm spices and heated fats suggests a slow-simmering curry in the background, ultimately plunges the nose into charred and ashy greenery deep enough to evoke a pyre ceremony of some earthbound tribe:
an ass-sweat loincloth people not only who burn the weirdest incense bundles (herbs, pinewood, frankincense tears, myrrh resin, and tons of goat hair all tied together and lit and wafted about like Santeria rosemary-thyme-palo-santo bundles, only here after being soaked in urine and then sundried), but also who are embedded (like hoarders in their house trash) in a dense and immersive stank of carnality (cowpat hyraceum, sunbaked-piss civet, shower-due jasmine, scalp-sebum costus, dried-sweat cumin, perineum-ass musk, barn-dung Indian oud, heated-hoof Laotian oud, and rawhide castoreum).
*Worked on the middle section again. But I also added a third section.
Sleep Fissures
1
The mom—amoxicillin bottle four, baffled by what could keep doubling a toddler over
with olive discharge as foamy and fevered as her vomit—guts the home of all culprits:
scented soap, bubble bath; junk foods, synthetic panties too tight—all, save Mr. Malik.
2
Porn-pretzeled preschool self tatted below her tits (bald pussies converged, the overlap
plumb as his improv butt plug— her Gumby—and its plastic), now the real “Big Girl”
can feel—cervix pigging out on every avatar’s whimpering load—the child in the perp.
3
Inked thighs in her custody, no girthier than her wrist— she clawed them spatchcock,
purpling that spot where splay counted most, and unleashed cruelties (“Spit on her!”)
until each man got a hint, grunting degradations (“Lil’ slut ain’t never havin’ no kids!”).
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
