vajrasana

PRESENT TIME

Ilyn is rocking violently in a bed of dry peony blossoms at the bottom of his square-wheeled cart. On his back, he watches clouds morph into amazing new ways to tell the same story. Then he becomes aware of burbling waters on the open ground beyond the walls of the cart.

Dare i? I want a drink from this crick. Shab, stop. 

Shab, a very large dog with red eyes and an empty saddle, has been twiddling his legs just above the surface of the otherwise wasted land beneath them. When Shab hears an order to stop, he stops. 

Shab, drink.

Ilyn pulls a lever buried in the flowers. It releases Shab's yoke. Shab walks around to the side of the cart and pulls a rope with his teeth. The side panel falls open, and Ilyn is able to roll down its slope and into the creek, face down. He can lift his head enough not to drown between sips of water, but barely enough to speak.

Shabubbab, dobne. Pbleabse.

Shab takes a few more sips of his own from the creek, then ambles over to Ilyn. Ilyn grabs a bar in the side panel of the cart while Shab lifts with his nose until Ilyn can roll back into the cart. His face sparkles with wet sunshine. Shab dips back under the yoke and waits for Ilyn to pull a cord buried in the flowers. The yoke clicks into place over Shab's empty saddle. 

Shab, take me to Mthyuh. 

10 YEARS EARLIER

Rocking violently back and forth in a bed of marigold chains strung with hemp, Ilyn allows some noises to come out from his throat. From his back, the clouds are telling a familiar story in a new way. 

Kuh. Geh. 

Ilyn can form words, but none are appropriate. Finally, he is thirsty. 

Shab, drink.

PRESENT TIME

Shab is pulling the square-wheeled wooden cart uphill, with the peak of Mthyuh becoming clearer above the clouds. Gravity causes Ilyn to slide all the way back in the cart to an almost sitting position. Now what he sees is Shab's empty saddle and the backs of Shab's furry ears, always twisting on their axes, scoping for any danger or pilgrims. The path ahead is lit only by slivers of moon and the reddish cast of Shab's eyes. 

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

Ilyn is sucking on a shred of ginger root, and Shab is chewing his like a cud. 

Shab, think. Where were we grng to stop crming back thrs way?

Shab has either been forbidden to speak or refused to speak ever since the fabled incident with the Monster Poinsettia and during which the only and last rider of his empty saddle, the Begging Raja, lost both of his hands, and painfully so. 

If you could speak, i think you might tell me there's no point in remembering anything. Or perhaps now, suddenly, you decide to speak, and tell me that i couldn't be more wrong about your view of remembering, how i've underestimated your character not to mention your mood. 

Shab: ...

PRESENT DAY

It's nearly just noon and the violent rocking of the cart makes fiery trails appear in the sky. Ilyn tries to focus on the clouds, which are at the moment just a palimpsest overrun by the side effects of technology. Soon it will be time to stop and ask some woodcutters to hew a new set of wheels for the cart, which are starting to lose their traditionally square silhouette. 

Shab, listen.  I think I can feel my strength returning. I realize you would have started to notice. But we must not let on, must not share any mention of a recovery, not to any pilgrim, not to the MPS, not even to La Chama. At least not for now.

500 YEARS LATER

Ilyn sits up in a deep bed of star jasmine and mint greens. He assumes a vajrasana pose, for greeting pilgrims and children who follow behind. Actually, their normal walking speed would carry them past and well beyond the cart, but they slow down as a sign of respect and humoring to the deities. 

Crowd: We wish you a bountiful banquet of many assorted vittles and then to be eaten first by the sacred birds! May Mthyuh swallow you up before you barely reach her lips! May your rice be soiled in a highway tavern by the survivors of Fire Shore...!

Ilyn tosses swollen, bluish roses from the back of the cart. They are gradually passing a sign for Kareer Kesh. The diving board has hopefully been repaired after a small molten avalanche. Ilyn's hair is soft, long, and flaming copper. 

 

 

 

Phyllis [trans]

Ilyn on Shab/ Shab Under Ilyn

Dire Cricket

Lloyd has been awake for a just few moments without moving from the tangle of sleeping bags a Scouts of Mthyuh brigade had donated to the clothing drive bin that the beast had lifted from its cement moorings and dumped here in its cliff nest. 

He fears that if he moves he will lose the beautiful light scent of jasmine? Monster poinsettia? It's very early in spring yet, and how would flowers grow this high up against a rock? He even imagines he can  follow light, pensive plucking on a mandolin. 

Then young Jan, sweet Jan, is walking toward him in gentle rays of light, with the massive and hideous silhouette of her mother resting behind her against the moon and clouds. The beast's subsiding breaths after flight create the lilting music as her lungs contract with a melodic metal popping perhaps more similar to a steel guitar.

In this new place, with his confidence dashed for once, Lloyd sees Jan's daughter Jan anew. He is prostrate and broken; she represents a future, a woman who can change his life for once, powerful in a sleeveless chintz chrysanthemum-print frock, even while barefoot and picking her way toward him through the soft debris.

He waits until she has climbed up beside him in the heap of torn, shiny viscose lining, fluffy polyfill and plastic zippers, her red-dark face only inches from his own. 

How

Shush. [She places a finger across his lips.] Just listen. And breathe. 

He draws in another chestful of her cologne, which is Dire Cricket, by Pharmsupply.

I'm here to take you away. It's... you know that's my mother, right? 

Lloyd nods, slack-mouthed.

Well she never wanted to hurt you. Only that you'd understand. To stop being such a shit.

Lloyd stares up into Jan's shadowed eyes, at the impossible sparkling there. 

She wants... and it's not really up for discussion, you know? She wants to take us through The Crack.

Exostosis

They said I'd have to harden up going this way as if going any way wouldn't be hard though they weren't sure if I was human. My exostosis protects the vital joints and organs but not skin.

As I rise up like a row of corn, I'm lucky for a shaggy loam rebirth medium or granite decomposed. They tried an exorcist but he said it was just a physical deformity coupled with the supernatural.

Shab is always at my side, the dog with an empty saddle, glowing red eyes. He will drag me to the Monster Poinsettia in a square-wheeled barrow for a ritual enactment of the day it bit off my hands.


Illyn
"Begging Raja"

Retrograde echo: Monster Poinsettia

In this forest we give fear, alms to the Begging
Rajah, who straddles a red-eyed dog named
Shab. M' lord, your palms once carried, gave
Vajras as gifts, cupped milk curd and batteries.
Once, riding home to the Moist Pinkish Cave
From a tour of generosities, which were your
Fetish, you came upon a poinsettia as high as
The Fordamal Chank, at Chukka. Its star-shape
Mouths bobbed in thickets of plaited wondry;
It's hunger smelt rough and good and buttry;
But as your fingers slid thru the crinkled folds
In bliss, there was a neuro-chemical stab,
Your eyes rolled, and the Monster Poinsettia's
Incisors chopped your hands off at the wrists.

Let's not

Let's not
take this any further
or end it either

wild poinsettias bobbing in circles is their race up the mountaintop
and while we're someone who'd never say no to a splash of color
we're stuck with the translucency of skin as a crude odometer


Ken

Yogi Mazuh

I rise up flat-back springing from the waist, Acupuncture needles hanging from my face. Because you touched me where I’m still a man You forfeit the illusion of a guru’s upper hand. Some chakras open up like evil boxes, Kundalini peaking like the equinoxes. Ayurvedic powders scatter in the wind; I doubt you know what chapter of the Gita you are in. I got my cult as an adult and I am rolling with it; We going to a place where Buddha never been. yogi mazuh [the Mp3]

Air Serum

road fires, 1000 nights in a cab: your stink cave, married man. proven air serum, meter rigged, but you carry me in a new-moon lonely-body seatcover steam. I am Hoolie

Monster Poinsettia

In this forest we give fear, alms to the Begging Rajah, who straddles a red-eyed dog named Shab. M' lord, your palms once carried, gave Vajras as gifts, cupped milk curd and batteries. Once, riding home to the Moist Pinkish Cave From a tour of generosities, which were your Fetish, you came upon a poinsettia as high as The Fordamal Chank, at Chukka. Its star-shape Mouths bobbed in thickets of plaited wondry; It's hunger smelt rough and good and buttry; But as your fingers slid thru the crinkled folds In bliss, there was a neuro-chemical stab, Your eyes rolled, and the Monster Poinsettia's Incisors chopped your hands off at the wrists.