On The Raspberry of Gilgamesh

11/20/2006 6:55 AM – 7:36 AM

The first man that looked into the smoke and claimed to see a shape in order to get a leg of antelope that he had no claim to, he is the enemy. The problem being, I am not a shaman, I am an honest man and seeing shapes in smoke, I cannot tell if what I see is a message from beyond or an active imagination. One is damned for being honest, apparently. I can say the words that describe the fear, but the words are not the fear. The words are words. The fear is fear.

Do not inquire, oh Gilgamesh, into the affairs of gods. They do not concern you. Drink until your thoughts leave you. Make love until your senses desert you. Work until you cannot help but sleep a sleep that has no dreams and wake the next day with an untouched canvas. May death come quickly and catch you unawares; least you learn the fear of it. Do not find questions that cannot be answered, for you have learned to prepare for the worst, and there is no way to prepare for this. Let it go. The dead will bury the dead and the rocks will mourn their passing more eloquently than you. You are alive and your business is the business of living.

Up then. Be alive in the descriptive. There are things to do, all of them more worth your time than morbid worrying. No such thing as a blank wall. Up then, twelve feet tall and rising. Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. We’ve got this and that’s the limit of the thing. So the story goes and so we go. There’s a story in it somewhere. The validity of the claim is the joy inherent. Float the current down, the monsters, a weak man’s claim to your food. Let ‘em starve or get a job or do an honest job of stealing. Not an ounce of it. Not a whit. So there’s this and this is what’s here and this is enough. So up again and out and running fast enough to catch the thief. Ten and eleven, you’ll be where you’ll be finding a better dream than this sad sack of tasteless religion. There’s the snow and it falls down on the roof tiles, the dividing lines become more evident. Jesus is bigger than Christianity and his grace abounds. This will do and we can tell the tales of bad men laughing at their title. We’re bigger than this. The touch of gray adds class to the sky. Up then and Mr. Id take ‘em down a peg or two. Pirate bastards and a story to tell. Closed fists and running roughshod over the polite hip. Better the beard, better the sneer before the leaving. Laugh and forget. There is a shape in the smoke and with Charlie Brown, I say it’s a ducky.