Bathers: Asa + Sybilla Painting

canvas is 10x14" framed dimensions 12x16" The American Mythos copperhead and water moccasin and the long bamboo hook with the loop to catch them contain fang and venom in a barrel filled with scorpion and spider such were the objects of our desire the scorpion stings the spider the snake eats the scorpion I laugh even though I do not think it was ever funny then some little kid kicks the can over suddenly and the world is screaming and on fire everyone running to the river not forgetting no Lethe no Leman no sticks or stones skipping over the black mercurial flow of our summer god that summer the Trinity River our own fertile tributary of the Ganges reading our names written long ago in sandy riverbed composed of ashes of the dead the alligator gar comes crossing the seam spreading behind prehistoric eyes moving like music rising up in morning fog hung over the water like a faceless shroud of the man who refused to die turned upside down lamb's blood threads whirlpools beyond the gate of horn there we were so perfectly young and knocking knocking and waiting not knowing waiting for it to be opened pounding upon the rock fearing not beating upon my chest like Tarzan and all my companions silent in the canoe Old Man Johnson crazy legged cannibal lived in the yellow house up the river under beards of moss and spider web wasp nested bug infested an abandoned place the lost temple of the Trinity broken dusted windows watching me climbing upon the rotting stairs on a board creaking dare the others fixed in the canoe in the electric midnight air seeing those strange deflated balloons slithering slow around the room grey white maggots odor of ozone in an ooze ammonia and the wet chasm chthonic water womb mysteries in whispered fables told with no morals in the licking light of last night's campfire under a prurient moon up there in the vacant living room I descended avoiding brown syringes rusted blood bent broken gradations of furious desire and dark brown bottles cooing like owls in the tarnished boughs as a fur white cocoons crack open underneath my standing releasing spilling light blue crystalline vaporine tendrils that tenderly performed strange alchemy upon the soft pink neural caves of my innocent virgin brain the gar awakening in black water from a dream a long snake moans uncoiling from my spine as I am finally before the door again knocking thinking not hoping that no one will really answer as if I am praying to the dead god knocking then the heavy footsteps from the other side Old Man Johnson thump and slide one leg missing broken stride heavy thundering hammering coming from the other side here's your prayer's answering he coming to get me fear igniting stumbling falling then the icy kiss of the needle this medical metallic penetration injecting rusty burning under the skin the violent rattle of the door the thundering of the floor up and stumbling tripping collapsing in the bottom of the canoe go go go and my tribe pounding the ancient waters of the Trinity like those others from so long ago questions questions then the silent staring at the needle hanging wasp bent into my hand I see it now again and I begin again understand tumbling down that Trinity with epiphanic explosions celebrating headless prophets wandering the concrete rivers in Augustine's Lost City of God preaching poetry to the whores in wild mad howling cries Babylonian babblings sung as we cut through the water under empty skies ageless paddling into gargoyle mocking winds before me I see the bone white barge floating in the flesh and furnace of the Congo a thousand cannibals danced in files the skull faced lean witch doctors mumbo jumbo mumbo jumbo what do I remember of that skeletal tale squalor and sad trumpet elephantine ivory barges drifting overloaded with bones oozing luminescent slime from the moon crocodiles chasing little black sambo grows a tail turns into a tadpole shakes down in the mud like a topless dancer primordial sludge I am now forever buried in the deep down darkness of things crucified women sing from crosses lining the banks there hung she distant dreamer of days in an all-american trance suffering sarcastically with twilight truth unrequited love and this misspent youth falling faintly faintly calling the archangel furious over missed annunciations priest torn vestments that no longer cover obscene statues of pagan masturbations pounding pounding pounding upon the dead god's drum until I saw her yes she floated in a pretense of magnificent mammalian abandon licking her pink nails with a serpent's tongue my life now lost in her endless life line lying in her palm tree oasis as she slipped up soft inside of me and caressed my spine yes she asked as if I was now compelled and under oath and yes I replied the boys still dive into the Trinity from sun splattered cliffs arcing super heroes into quietly desperate destinies as the alligator garr glides beneath them hungrily Crazy Leg Johnson is still coming to get me we are all of us bound together at the bone perhaps these are all too much with me too much and never enough because my wound is always aching this dark spinal scar upon the American Mythos forged in those interior fires of the long lost summer fables we had no idea we spoke as oracles hoping for dead god's voices to wake us before we drowned -Scot Casey .html?m=1