For John Bruni and Prfoessor Kelly W. Knox
"The Opium Pilot"
He studied the sand if sand he could study for who does not know that sand is but glass waiting to be born? By human hands. The pyramids off to the left beckoned handless invading his mind and yet left nor right could he decipher. Water, water nowhere but yet a dehydrating drop to drink for when he whet his main appetite through bleeding lips he found love in the gallon of Absinthe procured from the Turk who had also sold him hash and a bucket of opium and also a small (sand) glass pipe from which to smoke.
"You're crazy," said the seller over a houka full of Hopium, a mixture of the wares the man now carried as sundries and smiling wide enough to bring blood he recalled responding that a fool is only one who dares to quest the edge of a cliff. There treasure be found and dragons as well well but not the fire-breathing kind. And the treasure, pure gold, qualified not as currenct but something more, a squarely worthless thing unless one intended to unlock the secrets of a sincerely malevolence by proxy of unlocking ethereal ciphers of malice through coathanger abortions rent from tortured suns--from violence removing the womb-yeast residing in us all.
Not a fool, no. He had ventured here intending to die to falsify rye-loving bastards who with faith deign to catch all the fallen children while knowing full well one must--one of the children must, by Law--get past the reaching hands and take the death dive for humans save nothing and never have.
He stumbled across a dried-out squid. Fancy that. The head yet intact so tear out the water within beyond the skin and drink thee a few long days of lingering life. Sickening taste. Lucky not to vomit as he supped he thanked God. If that entity would find it good--customary even--to provide a dead dromedary the man could consider himself blessed with plenty but this semi-manna would have to do.
The sun decided to to give comfort by setting in the west by exponents hiding itself behind the Great Shaitan. Falling to death behind the bat-wing of that dark vampire allowing the gorgeous woman, that crescent Luna to tear off her clothes and rise in the sky as he rose in his robes as she seduced him towards self abuse, those nasty crimes of Onanieran and he stroked and smoked thinking hemight eat his own ejaculation for therein lie nutrition, a protein sustenance for millions of spilled civilizations. Protein. Amino Acid. Buy a few more hours of sustenance and subtle sentiment holding tightly to the flesh temple.
He would find the truth.
II
Why the Arabs wore black across their bodies as they crossed the advent glass-to-be mounds no longer did he find Alien. Bubbling skin whose pain he did kill like the wailing cows in a Sinclairian slaughterhouse by taking mouth-drying tokes of Hopium and shots of Whiskey the combination so powerful that he reckoned the notion of thirst and hunger nothing but an amalgum of life once lived by ageless generations, needy fuckers needing so much. Eating and shitting and fucking. Spitting out puppies through musk and fish vaginas. This most powerful combination brought him to a the fact that Poe had been correct in assuming all we see or seem is a dream within a dream, My Annie.
He dreamed of his room in the states where forty-pound weights kept him fit as he he fought off the need of food with Norman's Special Blend. Also the White Line. Fit, he had no idea how tiresomely Herr Morgenstern would chew on his vitals and sup the strength he had worked so hard to gather from his bones, bringing him to a near-wasted visage. Some twenty-five pounds had he lost so far on this treck to find the man made of obsidian, the Ineffable, the Baphomet or Nyarlathotep, the locust-spewing storm named Bee-Lee-Al. For his steps his face aged a year, ten to twelve to double that in only half the weeks as he displaced sand by his steps and his smoking and drinking and Will not to Pause. Awake a Van Wrinkle given over to wrinkles by the sun-suck heat morphing skin into leather and soon light as a feather if he did not stumble across a miracle, or better, a town.
III
Like an oasis it came. Extremists had forced the youth into Gulag for claiming himself Gilgamesh. He and the man found each other and before dinner the man asked directions in Urdu which the boy willingly gave on the pretense the man would lead him home. The man did not break his promise but flew outside as he witnessed his hunger and dope fueled body bite into the man's neck and drink his blood and eat of his flesh crying Christ unto Nothing and he sucked up the copper taste of pennies and 9-Volt batteries while washing a supper of raw flesh down with blood and Whiskey.
IV
Sated, he knew the time was ripe to go to town. For an alm and prize he brought with him the young man's head. As an addendum to to the alm he had removed the youth's wedge-penis and stuffed it into the skull's mouth to testify agreement with the extremists as per the youth's blaspheming. Walking, carrying the skull, he smoked with one hand.
V
With ambrosia and lillies they welcomed him. His alm proved a prize of genius devised with a dash of macabre whim. Feasting and fucking and rutting and glutting he knew he had finally found a piece of the truth he had sought.
Nothing but sacramental death laid naked the truth of the pyramids.
He drank his fill of feminine musk and sewed an overabundance of seed to the envy of Nephilim and obtained the invitation to return at fancy. The God-Kings of the Crescent Moon had fallen under a sort of puppy-love spell with this wanderer, this nomad from nowhere, appearing from the desert with a treasure of punishment they themselves decided not to dole out. For a moment, he felt as Mohammed must have. With a breath he pushed it away and walked off likewise, knowing he was not to return lest he face knowledge and with it, certain doom.
Fame; An unlasting perk.
His journey; everlasting quirk.
Seeking to find what lie time out of mind a land he ken'd too vivid for fiction. After the most dire of excess when skeleton and crumbs alone remained of his supply the Pitch Man would, must, MUST, reveal Himself. He MUST--
Lead the man to Heaven. After all. He was bored to tears with hell.
He ached to climb the tentacle beanstalk.
VI
Standing now before the Sphinx, he smoked.
Raised his knobby hands
"The answer to your riddle is cunt and a womb and fallopian tubes and my cock you would play as a fiddle!"
The noseless Chimera did not answer.
"Loser, fake, thou vomitous piss-take!"
The Lion of Limestone remained silent.
"Well, then," the man said. He removed his penis from beneath his robes and urinated on this great monument to mystery. Grown turgid and angered with failure he jerked his meat until emptying his testicles into the sand. He mixed the mash into clay and whipped the Lion's eyes.
"Have my seed-ridden mud, you farce!"
Having tantrumed, he climbed.
VII
Going by way of the ass the impossible this pilot this junky did ascend until impressed beyong any shadw at all found himself the beast of lock and key. A shadow he did not appear as the Many had guessed him but as another thing of frightful fancy unfathomed by ape, goat, or glamour of a thousand forms.
Truth.
Only truth suited the climber. All else this pilot disdained. Stretching to the Heavens, he spoke, unimpressed that the pilot was equally unimpressed.
"Killer cannibal dope-fiend, antithesis of moral being, for as you have come and outdone Crowley who lied where you did not and spewed bullshit where you did not I must laugh quite heartily if the sound not split your head. I see before me a different monkey--more."
"Huh?" The man said. The wind spoke. Laughter. Uproar. The wind knocking him from his perch where he fell endless meters unto the no-ground. Falling, he lit his pipe.
"You made the climb. I let you. You came far. Did unspeakable deeds. This close to goal no ape dares to blaspheme but you used blasphemy to your advantage and I respect that and hence I wonder will you now throw shit at your God?"
Another held-puff of Hopium smoke left the man's no-lips as he fell degenerating into nothing but lung and bone and brain and cock, still listing in the wind like a fat beanpole. "I've come far to see Heaven," he called.
"And see it you shall," the God-King said.
VIII
With an aching head and tired hands and a half-pint of rum he craved a cigarette. He took a drink and cracked his knuckles, wondering how long this fucking mess may take to type up and if it was even worth the goddamn trouble. Well, what did it matter. He tossed the pen to the right for right is right and left is death and he wrote--writes left-handed which means he may be a harbinger of penultimate death.
Who gives a shit.
He took a drink, grabbed a menthol cigarette and his lighter, and headed to the garage.
END
