Well, my dear, it seems I am here at last.

Once I glimpsed your name, shimmering like a poisoned pistol star amid the colossal window of a fallen city.

Much time has passed since then, so that now I have become...no...am beginning to become, familiar with the little things of this desert life. The owl-harlots screeching in the streets at night.

The dried bones of servants, scattered amid shards of necklaces and pottery. The children in dark-walled nurseries dancing with tribesmen and horny-eyed demons, slapping drums and strumming clay guitars.

Saul, Nimrod, the orgies of Ahaseurus, desert Priests and Prophets...the apes, serpents, and green-tongued Hippopotami of the Garden of Eden!

Transparent sea-creatures swimming in bowls who were ancient Romans once...yes, I have grown familiar with them all...and one day, with a wave of my pistol, with a mad laugh and a shattering of crystal shards, I will destroy them, will send them crashing down around me in a purple Sabbath sea of meteoric flame!

***

The most difficult part of this desert life, my love, is firstly, that the temperature is always
changing, and secondly, that everyone lives here. Their faces pass you by in a grotesque parade of masks! It is a travesty, a hideous human farce...

Plagues are visited upon us daily: pestilence, famine, disease...the fountain spigots here spurn
waves of bombs! Radio signals and genies fall from the sky. And all because the Pharaoh refuses
to let free a few captive slaves. Even the demons, though they stab him with the ends of their
rifles, are unable to convince him...

Walls within bronze walls

One-dimensioned houses

Cities within cities within cities within cities within cities within cities within cities within cities within cities

There is no time here. Time has stopped, has been erased: it no longer exists. It has been declared obsolete. Men standing beside distantly lit highways are pointed signposts, with dunce-caps and a million extended arms. Pink grass pyramids grow and glisten. Go this way.

Yesterday they finished work on the third Pyramid. Waterfalls of flowers cascade endlessly down
it's sleek violet sides: children clamber up it's many frames like small liquid squirrels. In it's
ringed surfaces one can see reflected the revolving light faces of a prophet.

A woman standing behind me: God, it really is meaningless!

Pharaoh: Today dawns a new day. Today we are creating, singlehandedly: pyramids idols wailing stars Hell. I am all powerful. Beware Moses, his burning bushes and his flocks of sheep.

Chorus of demons: Well this is what you asked for, isn't it?

O, dear Pharaoh, your amorality is immense: you think you can create God with a few incantations and an electric ice machine. In the jungle lost prophets wander like wolves. In the cities they lurk like rats. The vultures prowl in the marketplace. Like a slab of stale meat, I will cut up, will sever and devour for a feast your ancient notions of poetry.

Here is a picture of our city:

March 28

The great inventor builds things for us, my love, builds many things, each. Yesterday he built me a great bicycle chain of healthy yellow skeletons. He builds books and museums. He builds hotels, trains, and cafés. He builds happiness: he builds children. He is a little old man with pink bright hair and clawed teeth.

Why?

Today she looked like a Cow. Sometimes like a Rabbit. Sometimes like a Grasshopper.

Everyone here is so damned ugly, and it makes me sick. I am sick of the general ugliness of things. It is so ugly, so repulsive...

Beauty too is a hunger: beauty too, is a curse. O God! save me from the white-necked glare of that beautiful animal!

My prayers have finally been answered...the people here are turning into fat, coarse, short-legged creatures who scamper across lawns.

Tragically enclosed within this swinging bell of vines

Swinging swinging swinging over crumbling city rooftops

My heart beating in tune to the rhythm of this shell

Yesterday, went down to Goshen...had great conversation with Rimbaud and Picasso. Exchanged theories of poetry and art before drowning in flames.

I must end for today: the desert steams like a bowl of ripe shit.

March 29

You should see me: I am a nightmare!

You would not believe what this desert air, what the wild air of our city, can do to one's skin: I am covered in purple green blotches, from head to toe, as they say. I am Joseph, I am wearing his coat permanently imprinted on my worthless flesh. I am turning into a moist liquid mass...I shall flood the roadways of the world! Farewell Babylonian deserts!

(bang)

Good-bye Arthur Rimbaud!

(bam)

Good Picasso, poets, artists of the world, good-bye sweet girls and all my children!

Good-bye, o good-bye, one and all!

Perhaps we shall meet again tomorrow...perhaps never...perhaps today, or someday...perhaps this letter will be read, or never...perhaps our city will dissolve in a miasma of dark laughter and the speckled beasts which scamper through the blue plate glass streets will devour us..perhaps [rest of letter lost here: words of letter ellipsed world ellipsed words of worldly letters lost]

(c) 2006 M. Rephun