VIII

Another night crawl, drawn in by the city’s yellow lights. Walking all night, following feline, seeing people, looking into shop windows of unwanted goods. Looking into unwelcoming bars. Thoughts about ocean voyages, mules and dusty outposts where gun runners and Negroes are the benchmark.

Are you listening? Have you made this walk? Watching bats and belfries and the fluttering people of the night, seen as though through a purple crystal ball. You return to the cobblestones of the square again, the fountain, the haunted carousel. You find it a fine place for crimes and a ballet of circus horses. Perhaps some nymphs and whores and the temporal sisterhood of the intoxicated. We can’t help falling backwards into eternity with a warm acidic feeling in my gut… Fear! Fear, a man’s best friend, his worst enemy. This is the best of times, this is a terrible nightmare of the bleakest terror. The endless nights of stars and vortexes lashing out and reeling in… The raucous crows and shouts of ages, raven jars of absinth… A sense of unbelonging and of icy distance.

And we think of the poet. The vilest scoundrel we ever loved. A sadistic, cruel and ruthless being.  A man who hacked around him with a kilij, taking no prisoners but himself. But he escaped and disappeared forever. I must learn from him. To petrify… perform complete inner solidification. To train my evil, my wonderful evil... To not become  cold and heartless, but to become fiery and alive. To tear the flesh of life and suck the blood of goodness… become the angel of depravity and learn to fly.