Jibrā’īl (Gabriel) I looked for the animator of lost souls. Author of the Rūḥ al-qudus. One priest said it was magic. A kind of Wiccan voodoo. Dark alchemy. It wasn’t. The last to see him was the Ferryman from a time beyond time - when the world was still young. No-one crosses the sea now because no-one knows how. But Jibrā’īl, split the equation. Ignited the heavens with earth and aër. Set the sun in motion. Its golden ratio cutting the stars. Illuminated. Exact. The Tao swirling in its own orbit. Animated. Loose on an ocean of devils and spells. A pantheon of whores. Buddhas stripped of titles. Gabriel saw the gods looking at themselves, struck by madness. Preaching proverbs and psalms. Hung like Zephyrs for the moon to see.

I knelt at the alter and prayed for rain. A benediction to Brahma and Baal. Rain came. Mahatma warned the world was burnt by wickedness and evil. A wave of darkness. That Heaven split’s south when Mercury comes - the silver God, thrown from the clouds - a thunderbolt from the non-earth and non-sky. Atman ruled it was inevitable. Immanent. That He would arrive on winged feet like Buddha or Odin - a messenger from the Gods shattering the black. A great invocation of light. That was the law. When I came, cycles marched on. The Sun-Gods grinding with the machinery of men. The firmament shaking under the strains of war. Adam, stripped to the flesh. Eve, naked in the rain. The flood was come. The wind whipping the waves. I knelt. And prayed for Sun.

On the fourth incantation - the Canticle of the Golden Sun - Isa foretold of the scattering of crowns. The Kali Yuga lost on an iron cycle of shadow and shade. Later, Adam said freewill was a fiction cast by Dumah and the snake. The serpent shattering the sun. An electric mass of wildfire. A monad of worlds. Yet the wasteland flowered. The Book of the Dead strewn with shining ones. Deities for the seven towers. Seven ziggurats to light the night. One to scorch a moon.

A dark Ohm is rising. Cimmerian shadows bending light. Putting away stars. I have seen the Witcher tempting Nox before dawn. Conjuring tricks while the world sleeps. I make a prayer for the dead. The Kaddish. Old Aramaic. I watch the light flicker as I invoke the Sutras. Supplications for the deceased. The Onesiphorus. The Janazah. I seek the Magus beyond the wall - find them hidden at the stones waiting for the star. They say Poseidon is on the waves - the great field - to shake the sun.

Some on the outskirts, grappled with God. Frontier folk - fiery as hell! They said they came to preach gospel. Words from way back. Sermons from the gut, you know? All brimstone. Damnation. Some reckoned, even Brother Tom feared them preachers. Wielding The Book like madmen. Hysterical. Standing on the Mount, like Yeshua. They said He could preach too. But this was different. Even the Culduggans came! And their boys did all sorts! Even Billy - Little Will - went scalping. Ma said, one time he came back with a sack-full. Wore 'em like war-paint! Said nothin' for weeks. Just sat there, staring at them grits. Smiling. But some things you jus' know, you know? Even Missy knew - And she weren't quite right neither. Maybe that's why they came. I mean, we all watched dirt back then. Trying to forget. Preacher said, its cos we left the world behind, out there! See, you can bury a man. Leave no trace of nothing, and still you know! But no Comanche never shot me. No Navaho neither. See, there was a saying back then. Never do nothing by halves. Even Billy knew that. And when we left, everything was either half murdered or half dead. And no neckerchiff, no buckskin or fancy prairie skirt's gonna change that. No prayin' neither. Least, that's what ma said. And she ain't never been wrong.

I Tonight, we bear witness to Rapture. Alchemy, religion of moonlight. For the first dance, I shall embody the words of Jim Morrison. Stand on the great stage and pick at the bones of An American Prayer. Take out your Bible and burn your songs, for the notes are incanted. Incubated in a window of fire where Gods awaken the flame. A voodoo of angels. Decomposing flowers of sex and life. Watch. One man plays the blues like it’s the last night of his life. Lost in a fog of liquor and booze. He says “hey man, where are you sneaking off to?”. I am a priest in a silent prayer worshipping at the temple of anima. Transfixed in a haze of music and madness. II This is not Texas radio. This is not the Big Beat. This is a small town. A gasolined mess of shadows fighting for life. Ruptured. Illuminated. This is my tribe of men and women adorning a cave. Animated scriptures piercing stars. She is a painted monster wrestling death. Enchantress. Muse of the forest dancing to the beat of the ancient ones. Tonight, we embody the ghosts and become life. I am Shaman dissolving the night. We have seen the streets. Lived it’s sorcery of mechanical dreams. A homeless charade of souls combusting in a fusion of atom and despair. This is not Texas Radio. This is not the Big Beat. This is a small town. III A Lord’s vision of Hell where songbirds sing of death. We are sleeping dogs lost on a soma of spirit. Watch. The town is burning. Can you hear the ancient drums rising with the moon? Clouds moving like thunder? Divine moments driven by the Gods? Worshipped by men? I am a monk looking for a moon! You are Eos, Goddess of the Dawn! Soon the chariot shall steal our light. We are the lost. The wolves are at the door, salivating. Snarling their own magic. One is smoking crack. It’s white embers chasing away his soul. Watch. His eyes are vanishing like birds falling from trees. Wingless beasts burning in a vision of madness. Shiva is screaming death. I am afraid. Darkness is tearing light from his eyes. IV Do you believe in astrology? The hell-bound fuckery of nature? The atomic infernos of death? The great copulations of light? I know who witched the Burning Man. Who set the world in motion tending creation - dark perversions of alchemy scattered on the high plains. American grifters selling snake-oil while the world burns. Listen. Do you hear the city creaking in it’s own dirt? An orgy of lowlife’s turning tricks? Empty vessels cursed on a riot of black dawns? Mercury is rising on a dead planet. Witness the day! The last revolution of the sun. The last photon fired from her shores. Witness the night! The eternal decay of tormented men - martyred at the alters of their future. Burning pyres of violence and fornicated sin. For the Gods of War shall come while the world sleeps.

LETHE One Guru handed out visions. Proselytised madness. Taught me to sit in the flame. Another preached pain at the House of El - said three stars arrive in the black. Burning bolides. Fireballs of sundog and hailstone. For men shall appear at the first House and the last. Drink from the vestal waters of the Naïf and the soiled shores of the Styx. Watch them, standing like Wiccan Gods. A voodoo of shadow robed in pall. Burying themselves at the knell. Eulogising kings and queens. Valedictory parlours. A black cortège imbibing lethe. No souls are weighed here. Just ferried across the river, lost in a blaze of arrows fired for the gods.

In the name of El Shamayim and the Seven suns, I see the Ziggurat moving in the black, rotating psalms. A Raqiya of moons. In the name of Brahma and the bowl of stars, I see Shiva shattering worlds. Fire sparking like flint. Vishnu and a firmament of stars. In the name of Ar-Rahmān, Ar-Rahīm, I see the Rasul cleaving moons. Ibrahim - father of words - preaching thunder at the first house. In the name of The Christ, I see the Logos illuminated on the wind. YHWA exorcising demons at the house of the Seventh Sun. In the name of Krita, I see the butchered landscape of men strewn with pilgrims. In the name of El, the progeny of Adamah, I invoke the name.

In the West, a sea is lapping against the dawn. The Earth and Moon wrestling a Sun. In my dreams, Stanzas of the Graves are beset with jewels. Chieftains adorned with robes and riches of the forest. At night, Gwydion works on flowers, constructing form. Somewhere Blodeuwedd is being born to broom, meadowsweet and oak. Gronw’s Stone stands on the river as time turns to dust. The World is moving. Taliesin burns offerings at the Court of Kings. The Chief of Bards raining songs and scattering dewdrops to Heaven. Sonnets move like thunder - the light cracking the dark. Y Gododdin is elevating men to Aër and Water.

And hearing the hymn - The Gospel of the Seven Suns - Zephaniah took the moon-god and sang to him on the river. A canticle to the Injil of Isa. The heavens heard the birdsong. The sweet lament of udumbaras flowering in the sun. Flaming petals falling like raindrops and panicles in the sand. When the song ended, the seraphs wept an ocean of stars. Burning strawflowers to enchant the heavens and cherubs to adorn the earth.

Everywhere was young once. A Mohammedan Light springing eternal. All the fires of the Earth making man. Shaman said the great snake came from the hills. Laid down in the sun. Breathed life into the sand. The early ones said it was Creation the Great One saw - then breathed out. That everything felt His breath, then was. The Watchmen, burning in the black, navigated the night. Phoenicians sailing the sun. Norsemen on the wilds of war. They watched the World get old. Their eyes - like marbles rattling in skulls - saw the first embers. The first feet dance in the flames. Zarathustra came once - saw Christ - long before the iron-men nailed Him to the Cross. The night tried taking Him too. The demonic tendencies summoning the darkness - The Great Rainmaker - and the wind. But light begets light. Not death. Neither man nor beast escapes the Void. Everyone is born to the Abyss. And to the Abyss they shall return. Christ was the doorway through the madness. From the fireballs ripping the sky. And the Moon swallowing the Sun.