Beardism

IV. WALLHAMSTOW excerpt ‘Paradise Rex Press, Inc.’ by Andrew Wilmingot

Drugs and philosophy.

I miss you both, you bastard.

And here, the Quested Beast raises a distant head in my peripheral awareness, and the quest passes to me. Faltering on ill-made stilts, I lumber after it into the city, the country, into my delusional world-view mindscape of angry self-abuse and wise beyond my years preternatural awareness of death and entropy – I chase, but the beast just builds up steam, laughing. The ghost of Jung informs my arguments, and I glean the myth of symbolism, strengthen my ritual wish fulfilment desires with pseudo-intellectual reasoning, dancing along a bright happening of spirit and racial memory that is most likely a conjuring trick; a mirage. 
And you tell me you think I’m a genius because you love me, and because just maybe you think I am. 
We spill into the night, inventing a language for the love of it, as though a night spent making nothings into somethings would lend us unseen, unglimpsed power. Make us new beings of a new age.
 Achumnabaa! Iqu thias tutu na mombek. 
Achumnabaa! Achumnabaa! 
The night is thick and warm, and your face, sloped and old, Neanderthal, reaches me in ways no other did. I sit inside that face, part of it. I embrace your form and dance within your voice. You’re my brother, my soul space hope teacher who loved me best that wasn’t family. We’re broken together.

She roles another joint, and the smoke mixes with her own voice so posh it seems false, so broken it needs my affection. We’re crazies, and I relish the boho, the maverick, the fuck you of it. I’m free, now, dull and blunted, afraid, but growing and hearing and loving still. And I miss you crazy fucking bastards together. I miss you. The long warm comfort. Talk, now, and I’ll sleep well. Tell me about myself, you bloody lying bastard, and make me whole again. Fool philosopher, patron of a better me than I had been, or ever will be.