Chapter 38 Chapter Fourteen

Anticlimactic, of course, is the way things have always been.In real life, there are very few decent endings. It took me months, maybe a year, to rewrite the kerosene-damaged poems and rewrite the burned Psalms.It's no surprise that I didn't finish my poem.Because I have no choice.My muse has escaped. The city of poets peacefully decays.I stayed there for another year or so—maybe five, I don't know, and I was pretty much insane by then.To this day, early records of the Shrike pilgrimage still refer to this haggard figure, hairy, torn, and bulging-eyed, who, screaming obscenities, dragged them out of their sleep in Gethsemane. Waking up, they watched the man shake his fist at the silent Tomb of Time, teasing the cowards within to show up.

Finally, the madness burns out—though the embers are still hot.So I started a 1,500-kilometer hike toward civilization, with nothing but manuscripts in my heavy backpack, a diet of stone eels, snow, and no water for the last ten days, but I still survived. The next two hundred and fifty years were nothing, let alone relived.The Paulson Therapy keeps the skin alive, waiting.I have made two illicit and dark voyages to the freezer, long cold slumbers that each consumed more than a century; each at the cost of brain cells and memories. Of course I am waiting.I will still wait.This poem must be finished.It will definitely be done.

At first there were words. Finally...beyond honor, beyond life, beyond humanity... There will be words at the end.