Before I was born you had already left on a journey for someplace far off.
And I thought I would meet you on an open field, a refreshing place of light and green pasture, when your pain, sorrow, and mourning had finally left you.
I awaited that day in this restless shifting place and I was unlike others full of dreams and visions. No cold mechanisms moved us there, and there were no immutable laws of history; the only want was my want.
An overpowering urge filled me. I still young full of hope set sail with a thousand ships to look for you.
We travelled far and the journey was light but as in all progresses the momentum died and the last great effort was as onerous and rough at the whole of the earlier journey. That is an immutable law even I know.
In the beginning there was no knowledge and every wave crested gently nearby and we passed every island safely. But once I learned of the size of the sea, every promontory homed a siren, every swell a monster. At night darkness hid the horrors of awareness and showed us instead the fireworks of beautiful fat moths, flitting in the rigging. Their wings were covered in sigils and shapes: some brandished skulls, some bore bulls on their backs, some carried the twist and the scent of verdant grapevines and shaded ferns. A scent of spice accompanied these moths. They came from the east every night in whistling wind and surrounded us on the decks of the ship, and succoured us with their silent stories.
Random, chaotic, the giant furry moths clustered on the lanterns and by the fires and fought for space to deliver something, but nobody was sure what they could possibly have for us.
~
Off plane welcome lounge taxi the future bright neon light in the rear window as it’s all the same here and a complete confusion of ins and outs not that there are outs there are only diversions and slow curves as the city fills the universe and bright neon lights the collapsing stars newspapermen in little black hats on street corners brush with death the caricature artist drawing the big chin and the Hawaiian shirt ten minutes left now get to the opening grand announcement all-new brand-new timeless revelation trumpets blow launching the hot new thing and the journalists come to judge get a copy now right now limited edition gold plus advertise to me come on I’ll buy whatever you have you poor sincere bus station busker a saxophonist scaling every ladder scale in the teeth that’ll be a good payola won’t it there are no outskirts here only short skirts and the delights who wear them in the floating red-light world or perhaps you’re partial to drawings you know these are original Tezukas I have many more if you’d like or maybe listen don’t fall for him he’s a snake a boomslang skin in a Polyjuice drink from the roadside canteen have you lost your tour guide you want to read every placard buy every t-shirt Alan Watts stood here once what a genius understood the need to slow down to meditate like these idiots don’t and he made a pile of money off it too we like that in a person since they make the lines go up and it brings life puts something in the papers don’t go there rebels live there fuck you I’m a real gangster and I don’t care who I hit or hit on I’m the kingpin here you’re no bowling ball
~
Sunset over the cliffs by the sea. The world was wide and orange. They were taking her to a high cliff, an old place where a hundred Allfathers had swayed, speared naked in the howling wind. We were all Spartaci back then…and this is what we got.
I waited in the crowd watching the procession with the King at the front, wise old head buried in his bloodstained hands. She was at the very end of the line, despite being the reason we were all here – they’d forced the girl to the back as though they were ashamed of what they’d decreed.
As well they should be!
She handed me the thing she’d stitched in her cell, a square of silk, like gossamer, of such fragility that I could hardly believe it wouldn’t crumble into dust in my hands.
All this, accomplished for an icon.
I stood at the bottom of the final hill, being too old to climb any further. And the girl passed me, and now her journey slowed, the hill being so steep. And the world was wide and orange, gold, the colour of hair on the pillow once; the vertical distance was nearly nothing…but then, I looked as if from on high above, from the throne of God, and from the real perspective I knew – the warm, throbbing earth – it was a hard climb.
What legions of tremendous waste! The King had gathered all the world here on the cliffs to watch his daughter die.
All this, done for an icon. Someplace far away. A square of wood that left of its own will. Why did we always have to kill and journey and die to retrieve such things? They could be replaced. We could have so much more of them if we just stayed put.
verso folio 