The God of Djinn

I.

Himalayan ecstasy sung through
The notes of a cassette player that
Sat on the table between us,
And I decided, on a moment’s hesitance
To bid Far East along the Orient.

Backpacking on silver trips
The icy skippers treading water
Nightly borealis bother
Tombs of British cannon fodder
Never did tribes sing sadder sorrow.

And each tomorrow and tomorrow
Brought me closer to that high steep
Below the brow of the mountain’s peak
Speechless squalls of ice rolled deep
Lulling doomed men off to sleep.

At length, a staircase, after many feet
Whose sides were bare of any rails
Steps slick with sweat, cloying and stale
Morning sunshine, perspiring gale
And my eyeballs began to thaw.

II.

Last rites follow tradition
Like a procession against a mountain’s
Recession that, cut in abstract convex-ions
Upwards like a winded fountain
Depositing its various incisions.

My body was carried on one such vein
By an assembly of men in orange cloaks
I did not speak the language that they spoke
But it was to note, to write and be bold
That they did not abhor the cold.

Emerging on the precipice
Figures clad in ritual dress
Cleansing the abscess of the soul with
Ancient, ritual artifice
Heat and pulsing, arterial mist.

Pumped like the clenching of a fist
And this feeling still persists
This feeling still persists.
In my dead heart, stoppered blood and lifeless skin
I heard the word of Djinn

III.

Spastic turning on a soiled mattress
The mess of a squatters hovel
Images of mountain gospel
In payphone booths and on
Floors in hostels dreaming dead.

And that echoing voice wracks my head
With an eternal, internally awful dread
That there is no escape from this
To insist otherwise in statements wise and
Cistern-sold and deadly serious.

Oh, Djinn, the many-armed and mammoth
Djinn, whose hundred heads breath impassioned fire
The naked, flushing orgasms of raw desire
Pubic bearded Djinn, tusked Djinn
You masturbate the universe out of nothingness.

There are no monks to mend my cysts
Djinn, there are none, and you raise
A hand to your numb chin and another
To my mouth, inhaling herb and sin
Eyes glowing red as the ember within.

I am far away, where I have been
Places the trespassing world cannot bother me
In seas of curiosity and old possibility
Sated now, the beggar’s bowl
Contented now, the hedonistic soul.

I have made it to the Himalayan peak
I relay what the religious seek
Lying in wait of the perfect apostle
Djinn’s descendants on floors
In hostels dreaming dead.