Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft by Don Webb Page B

mouth tastes like an ashtray. Last night we smoked salvia, grass, and clove cigarettes, and watched The Dunwich Horror . And we planned to do something today . . .
    My apartment has been destroyed by a tornado summoned by a Djinni pasha. Oh, that sucked—passive voice. I hate the cheap gray and green carpet, I am not too keen on living in Amarillo, and the cable will be cut off this month because of non-payment. I can’t believe this is my “real” life. Affiliated Foods fired me for stealing a few candy bars. Even my foreman thought I was pathetic. Maybe I can go work for Iowa Beef or help them store plutonium at Pantex. I am losing my hair, why not accept my Homer Simpson destiny?
    Two bottles of bacanora gone—homemade tequila from Jerry’s family. Half a bag of grass also offered to some drunken god. Probably Moloch. “Eater of Children.” Certainly anything childlike in Our Gang has been eaten away. Last month I took that Creative Writing course at ACC. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, this month I will creatively write some checks.
    Here’s an interesting artifact, a yellow sticky note to myself. Remember to be ready by 10! What am I supposed to do? Goddamn! A picnic at Palo Duro Canyon. Well, at least it will be their gas money.
    Later in the jeep:
    Jerry and Connie arrived to fetch me at 11:30. My hangover had in no way subsided, despite the Excedrin(r), and I was unable to greet their battered blue four-wheeler with any enthusiasm. They were disgustingly bright-eyed and cheerful. I was Bela Lugosi—not the younger Bela, the Bela of Plan 9 from Outer Space.
    Jerry is perhaps able to withstand the cheap Mexican poisons so dear to us all because of his Mexican ancestry. Geraldo Mendoza is half Mazatec Indian, born in some haunted little village in Oaxaca. Blonde Connie, Jerry’s “wife,” avoids alcohol and sticks with grass and salvia and mushrooms when we can get them. As we now speed down Washington Street toward the Canyon, she once again explains to me how my hangover is my body’s way of telling me to avoid metabolic poisons. We pass the giant Affiliated Foods warehouse and she stares at me as if the architecture has somehow made her point.
    2:00
    I am sitting on the hood of the jeep while J & C explore the wonders of the Goodnight Trading Post. I have visited the Trading Post before and duly marveled at the cockleburs in plastic domes labeled “Porcupine eggs,” the machine that flattens pennies and makes them into oblong souvenirs of America’s second deepest canyon, and the dehydrated Resurrection Plants, whose movement from death to life provides a vegetable retelling of the Christ story. They are an ancient plant between mosses and ferns, who learned how to die and live again. And after strange aeons even death may die . . .
    The canyon is beautiful as always. A small yellow lizard is stalking an umber beetle on the red soil in front of me. A leap, a snap of carapace, and the beetle becomes dinner. I am going to try and make that into a haiku when I get home. How does Bashô do it?
    Old dark sleepy pool
    quick unexpected frog
    goes plop! Watersplash.
    The lizard will become food for the red-tailed hawks or turkey vultures who circle around and around in the shimmering air. J & C are taking much longer than I had expected. Good. It’ll let the sun bake all the nastiness out of me. If I had money I’d buy some B12. My mind is slow today. It is the old pond that Bashô dreamed of.
    4:00
    Connie is sketching a magnificent canyon wall. It is a talus slope sculptured by many rains. Its oxidized soil layers—white, lavender, yellow, red, yellow, and brown—caused Coronado to name these features the Spanish Skirts. The slight haze in the air somehow intensifies the colors; for one weird moment I thought I saw a color that I could not name. I think I may have fried too many brain cells last night.
    Connie points it out to us. High on the slope is a small cave opening probably no more than a yard in diameter.