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The Bad Magician made a rope of bones and hair and walked like a spider crab to Texas, where the sun is a powerful ember, burning the eyes. The Bad Magician had to die in a dream of Texas.
The Bad Magician began to collect the debts on the ranch: a thought here, an empty smile, a blade of withered grass, like wheat, like a blonde child. The President hid in a tree and licked his fingers. He was the boy.
Two miles from the President a goddess carries the heart of her dead son inside herself, in her womb. She is constructed daily. The wind picks her up and carries her away, but she does not move. She stands among the ancient stories but cannot be mythologized.
The President sees a tree where the goddess weeps. It won't stop growing, it comes into his life and grows backwards out of his skull. Branches and crows make idle chatter. Bark replaces his tongue. A man from Canada carries away his hands. The goddess does not smile but holds her arms out, she does not ask why but how and for what?
The Bad Magician cannot stand outside the story, and cannot get in the story. The light is bending as the moon waxes in the sky. The President turns and sees his face taken up by lizards and fashioned into parachutes. He has nothing left: his head a crown of thorns growing skyward, he towers achingly, for he cannot exist.
Two miles to go, and the tree replaces his mind with a set of graceful gestures, over and over, in the wind. The goddess releases her dead son into the tree where he lays down and sings about the shadows. The Bad Magician climbs next to the dead soldier and carves his name lamely in the wood.
The President wakes up. His arms are on fire.
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*(image of World Tree from here.)
*(The Bad Magician previously existed only as an unannounced guest at Corrente for as to relay his various and sundry Orphic and seemingly abject adventures. I decided to let him out of that box today, hence this posting, originally submitted in the comments section of Corrente)
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