There Comets Cry

So, the blood and flesh that rose from the desert ground returns to it, and with the stygian product of chain violence does none save man’s heart from the evil of his father and brother. The now Mojave sand runs with brittle bush and silver cholla as vultures stuck in flight trail the desperado’s odor; his stead paces with wooden steps as the bounty’s diaphragm cycles on the equestrian meat. The predawn lights only the pikes before him, trodden with buffalo chips and split axles, and the three souls that ride as one unit ride with peripheral darkness travel to another terminal. In the shapeless lee of towering rocks do wizened cougars grab at angles to look over this newly beast; the scorpions soundlessly skitter in rapid blobs of the antilight; diurnal and nocturnal birthed in the she-devil’s unkind womb as they be viviparous hounds and thieves that do not tire. The rolling cumuli strung with metallic yellow, and its amalgam the light that shines on the life from which it was sourced, only on the tight ellipse of the humanoid bundle. Bodies of onyx flowers confuse for hellish eyes and beavertail cacti for serpentine bowels. The ravening warps of darkness die in the heavenly shine that protects the three souls now.

Only forward does the stead move, for the rolling clouds advance slowly and stave off with fleeting light. The hands of Pandemonium outstretch and reach for frail legs and delicate minds; a nakedness of flesh stripping from the body in frenzy, with the mind first rendered insensate through man’s teachings. The clouds multiply in staunch luminosity and ocotillo changes from supplicant hand to desert fan; the rank grip of sulfur heavies the air and aphotic stays the underworld they tour. Green snakes lap in loops from shine to dark, their bulbous pleats oscillate from sight.

They all stay on their road, cognizant that their failure will have this realm their home. Rose and mauve began to bleed orange and the clouds blast new light as though a retracted curtain call, peeling the darkness from stage. No animals and no spirits—the world has become theirs again and now they search, still, for their next end.