NORMAN DUBIE | The Book of the Crying
Kanglings
TWO
OM
BEKANZE BEKANZE MAHA BEKANZE
RADZA
SMUDGATE SOHA
VII.
— in
poor lading.
Dear L'urze Ei Ekajati: we
know enough
about your mysterious uncle,
Paul Ekajati, to want to speak with you here,
in New Philadelphia. We value your experience
as a 'talker & shifter.' There have been
disturbances beyond Jupiter
which we wish to describe fully.
However, now it is my sad duty to tell you
that your ward, Kirsna Camille Ekajati,
has disappeared from Old Union Seminary
along with two of his little friends,
Kaya Engström and Samuel Havens. These two issues,
the Jupiter perturbation and the errant children
are related. For your convenience
by early morning, we will have dispatched
a Cyclone to spirit pond #4, Ladakh.
You should sleep with your sonors
for several hours tonight in preparation for the Capital's
electrical cells, or brillo.
Could you possibly cable us some method for contacting
your uncle, Professor Ekajati?
Yours sincerely.
Commander
Charles 'Kaling-Cross.
Post Script: — Erratum
Argon 1 —
L'urze, it's Nagarjuna Watts here,
and praise to you
for the champagne combustions
and all those black-lacquered boats
leaving our Kosmos. It must have been some party —
platters of minced reindeer meat from Stockholm,
the sperm casing of a giant squid with a mustard glazing
and all those old double bonds of scotch.
The Nepalese, in retreat, at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra
saw the fires all the way from the mountain.
That whole painting community in Woodstock
is doing well, and their patron, the woman Marjahn,
is still healing lepers. I think
you proably guessed, L'urze, that as I boy I suffered
all of the Shint's medical leafs and procedures.
There were moles on my back
that mixed the Striker's brain grid with a victory vase.
When my heart chakra stabilized,
they placed eleven of those gold nancy-gyroscopes
in the canal of my right ear.
There was a full year of migraines and nausea,
and shingles. Within two years of this procedure
and those early vows for the sleep-stage mahamudra,
I was able to begin channeling the bardo
with a full back-latch to one hundred and eleven dimensions.
So I am tacking all this very predictably
along the Ekajati's old intercessions,
but the damn latch continuously
brings the audio back to Alaska? You know that
with the collapse of a poor state bubble,
such as Argon, there're distortions
and a local phaxx might actually arrive
from the future as in a dream,
or, merely, as a surmise of indigestion.
K. has visions of you there, in Alaska,
harvesting birch sap
that is later boiled to syrup. He thinks
you've not contacted us for our own protection?
Or perhaps, there are some things you have forgotten
since walking out of those hell-drafts
in Manhattan. If this is it —
then I am your 'broken wharf!' Ha. Remember?
We did chöd practice together for a whole
summer
and I brought you the box turtle.
I painted him in turquoise and coral!
One whole night we walked
along the Indus and you sang for me
the lyrics of the red Chöd apologia . . .
We made love that night
in the dilapidated Balkans' Icehouse. You changed
all the rats into white rabbits, and this rusted
water that dripped on us from above
became a delicious green elixir
which left me with my most unforgiving headache
of this lifetime. K.
misses you, of course, and is such a beautiful child.
The worst I can say of him
is that when he's sometimes charged
with housecleaning, and I am traveling, I do believe
he mobilizes dead untouchables
to scour, to sweep, and to sing
while he levitates at the sink, washing meticulously
all the porcelains I brought him from New Ceylon.
But he is a good kid.
I caught him smoking a green cigarette
in the late Spring. He was a bit sick
so I left it alone.
He's genuinely confused by all of this!
Watching the news yesterday,
a live transmission from Tel Aviv, we saw you
for a second. A Palestinian woman
with long, elaborately tattooed fingers; hair
dyed white, was lunging at the prime minister
with a great knife. Cataracts
of rainbow-colored water
in moving, lucid hinges came between them. Then,
the girl's hair stood on end, changing
to flames. All her sinew dried and withered.
She made an empty scream. Period.
We heard the horse-laughter
and then saw you there, dressed in white
beside the date palm that a storm had toppled
the night before. You waved to us,
and the boy began to cry. He senses
he will never be with you again.
He says to tell you that he believes
in all the Pakshi innocents
and in a future cornecia of a thousand years of peace.
He has dreamt of the dakinis and their canopy!
He sends full, unpardonable etceteras
of love and kisses to you, Khandro. Blessings. Nagarjuna
Watts.
VIII.
Dear L'urze Ei' Ekajati: I am the grandmother
of Kaya Engström
and I am writing to warn you
against any excursions you might be contemplating,
especially to the Capital.
The 'brillo' of the New Covenant
attacked your uncle; killed his father; and possibly
the brother Oslo. Who was your father?
I think I might persuade you
that Paul, the elder brother, was your actual
biological father.
When Ekajati was attacked in the Capital,
he merely released
through the vibration of a rainbow body,
leaving behind a mat of dark hair, the clear bone
of the septum, nails
and a gold tooth in need of polishing.
This gave the bastards something to think about!
His mother actually remains alive to this day
in an obscure convent near the East gate.
She appears to be quite crazy, but capable,
if you know what I mean.
The 'rupture' beyond Jupiter
does concern our children, for at last, the Shintling
is coming again to this universe.
After the female assemblies approved the decision,
there were sixteen months of organized rebellion
in New Philadelphia.
Now, finally, all agreements are sealed.
The seeming rupture
that began as a black geyser on the moon Io
is just the final ripening of that compact.
Preparations for this event
led to the 'brim light,' Universe Plaget,
and LXT catastrophes.
The Septaguant's Ward, Samuel Havens,
is our Chosen One.
Once, it was thought
that this personage was you, dear L'urze —
earlier in the century
I was being groomed for the same office
from the farthest assembly. I believe
I knew your uncle as a vagabond woodcutter
who had no shadow. Our two young ones
are the hatted attendants to the Haven's child.
Septaguant and your uncle
saved the tow-head Ward from the Wickle Ffee.
Your uncle choked the evil bastard
with an eleven-syllable mantra
which he loosened from his brow as a twelve-armed
white naga. It is this formula and its bank,
or visualization,
that they hope to extract from you in the Capital.
Come here to my snowfield instead. Bring your
Chöd
gown and paraphernalia . . .
We'll make a circle, daughter,
and call the Ekajati
back to the company of daughters. But
you must come immediately — there
is still
danger for Kirsna and Kaya. If you doubt my calling
I should hasten to add
that you are twice born of the Lord Hayagriva,
and a glad company
he has made of it . . . Mallus Engström.
P.S.:
I can meet you tomorrow
in your old rooms in Delhi at five.
Do wear your sonors when you sit tonight,
for my fjord is one of the original
omphali volt-locales on Earth . . .
IX.
— in
empty lading.
Darling L'urze: it is your
Tulku Arak here,
and I am in Delhi tomorrow. I'll meet you at the banisters
beside the Shrine of one hundred syllables.
You have an orange and black cat
that the yetis left you.
Put a little bell on its collar and bring her to me.
I will adore her, while you
are off in the red star snowfields
with the great Viking mother, Mallus.
My attendants, Sonam Detch and Gyurmey Tsultrim, are
translating for me so please
excuse our collaborative exuberance.
As a girl, Mallus was the broom attendant
to the Matka Boska. And she's right,
they did groom her to be the Chosen One.
Just like you, child.
Your uncle did well there, on the gravel plain,
despatching the Ffee and his sisters.
His heroic half-brother, the Septaguant,
gathering the tow-head into his vehicle . . .
The Ekajati has followed the Ffee to hell
and prays there with him for a semester
as if he were Moses. I fear
the old Dame is right about him being your father.
You were conceived there, in Laos,
in the Tiger Gardens.
It was the full moon of the Vernal Equinox.
The Yucatan was utterly destroyed that night
by hurricanes. A meteor shower over Siberia
attracted wolves to reindeer
in staggering numbers. In Moscow,
the Kremlin burned to the ground. There was a flood
in Damascus.
So, child, it was a confused
but robust beginning for you. We can well understand
how Paul and Marie
found this night so agreeable. This whole intrigue
is also a small, contributing karmic-patch
that visits the Ekajati now in the shadows
of Colchis.
He'll work it out, and the killing of the Ffee
somewhere within the next forty weeks.
I would love to meet your new friend, Mother Mallus.
You'll have a nosebleed tonight when you sit.
Please wear the sonors.
Do not sleep in the shack —
leave for Delhi at sunset. Butterlamps of etceteras. Tulku
Arak.
Post Script:
Listen carefully to the snow witch, for Marie's
karmic debt is loose here
with the little Kirsna, and the death of his parents
did not cover it. There is more danger for him
than for the other two children. When you first see him,
make your connection with him, and do not
be distracted.
Not by the dead whales, not by the aurora borealis . . .
I should conclude by confiding to you
that the Haven's boy
is acually a girl child of unusual experience,
and wisdom. Again,
a blue star kachina . . .
X.
Dear Mother Engström: I have sent a stockgram to the Commander
'Kaling-Cross and declined his kind invitation
to our capital in New Philadelphia.
I will be in my apartments in Delhi tomorrow afternoon,
and a dear friend, Tulku Arak,
will accompany me. Do you own a red and black kitten
by any chance? If yes, bring it.
I salute you, mother.
The
Khandro of Sumstek.
XI.
(.5/.9
kibes.)
Sister: I have no such
cat. I once met
Tulku Arak in Egypt. Kaya said that the lama asked
for a horse once from your family.
Now it is a checkered kitten?
These Tibetans are strange men,
very pleasing and friendly. I care deeply
for their sacred music. They are a brave people.
Their buttered tea is awful.
Tomorrow. The Mallus.
XII.
Dear Rinpoche: I
hope this cable
finds you well in Bhutan. So you're going to live there
with Canadians for a year. I am alone
here at Mallus's icehouse. It is very strange.
The whole place is built of blocks of ice,
the inside walls covered
with white furs, occasional
elaborate knots around a fat coral
or turquoise carbuncle.
There is a mosaic of skins across the floor
and it is red, then clear, like ice. I dream of cats.
Sometimes there's tremendous smoke in here.
It took me three nights to realize
this Grandmother Mallus was an impostor.
Why didn't you say something in Delhi?
You even remembered her
as a girl, in Cairo:
that postcard of men basket-fishing in the river
for the white-bellied alewives
and all your anxieties about some lost kitten.
And there I was
being introduced to this evil woman
who is no doubt involved
in the disappearance of my son.
On the second night, unable to sleep,
I walked out across the ice floes
under a burnt-amber moon
that looked like a rusted scythe.
There were tremors in the earth. Norse scribbling
chalked across the sky.
There were strange frozen creatures
walking about — naked girls
who when they moved, sighed
in the high registry of a music
I have never heard before —
also,
with movement,
their long dark hair would break off,
falling to the ground
like chandeliers all around me.
On the small of their backs
just above the buttocks
there were the tiniest red swastikas,
like the Hopi burial lattice . . . .
They had a kind of heat
that I know would have increased if I had been a man,
a sort of basic phenomenon like dry ice.
I took them for the very unhappy dead?
Am I wrong?
I threw my Chöd apron to the ground, which
I wear here
for the warmth if nothing else. And I began
the red and black offerings of my body,
making a virtual tea ceremony of my breasts,
that seemed to fascinate them.
It was at this moment that they fled?
Here above the fjord, you appear as Otrul Chak,
warning me that this snow witch, this Mallus,
is a sister of the dead Ffee — an impostor
who has come here
to make the dark emergence of the geyser
acceptable to the local culture
of unsworn dakinis.
The actual Mallus is completing a year's retreat
at the Keet Sleet tannery on Mars.
She has succeeded
in protecting her granddaughter, Kaya.
But the Septaguant's ward,
this girl child they call Samuel,
is another impostor. What? Rinpoche? What
if this was some evil draft talking to me,
and not your emanation
rising from the hen yard of the Potala.
And you in the company of nuns? Since December?
I went in, and with the great chipped blade
of a matchet
I opened her chest, lobbed off the head,
removed the hands . . .
I placed that fat garuda ruby
stolen from the rice shrine in Laos
inside the canal of her right ear, all of this
just as you had instructed.
I screamed like horses over her corpse.
Later that night I dreamt that Ffee was feeding
giant cakes of soap
to the black geyser on Io. Are geysers
actually primed like this? Why didn't you
say more to me in Delhi?
When I killed the impostor-Mallus
I saw three hags standing in a great bronze tub
cutting a thick black snake
that had seamlessly joined itself to a small baby.
The whole figure of the baby and the snake
reminded me of that Mayan knot
representing fifty-two years
in their secret rain calendar.
The knives flashed. The baby was cleansed.
The old women dancing about
in some very primitive kitchen. Why do I believe
my Kirsna is this cat that you must locate,
this Italian tablecloth you keep asking me about?
Has my son passed?
Old man, you owe me an explanation.
In my apartments
you were talking about how Hannibal
had a lead bull elephant
that wore at its throat an enormous dzi
the yellow of citrine and the red
of rubies. You said, Carthage is in your past,
daughter of the arime 'thea. Placing in my hand
these very wet and long yellowing grasses
with a small dead turtle
painted in the manner of early Greek barbarians.
The actual grandmother of Kirsna's little friend
placed jewel worms
in the eaves of this big house, and they came alive
like rainbows, shooting
everywhere through the walls,
at the very moment that the impostor's
canal was blocked with your ruby.
The family of the Ffee
have put a lot of blood on our hands. And Rinpoche,
I don't like it. If you can stand beside me
at the shrine of the banisters
and put the badge of the drowned pilgrim in my hand,
then you are completing prophecy.
You anointed me, there and then,
the Chosen One.
You are now accountable, even in your sleep,
to this citizen dakini. You will have a single day
to make this accounting
or I will find you there, which will certainly
scare off your Canadian bodhisattvas
and their money.
I have been patient. I cannot
leave this snowfield
without the appropriate ritual and blessing
of the root guru. There's a dark drifting in my mind.
The airs of the Bardo . . . .
Be kind and speak to me. Further, have you ever heard
of a Nagarjuna Watts?
I woke this morning and you said,
There are eleven years of diversion at your feet
and then years of peace.
That is not enough. This mystery exhausts us. L'urze.
XIII.
— in
blanc, keyboard.
Dear Ekajati: I am weirding
this along the old worm holes
you used in approaches
with the Khandro. If you are my true father,
why didn't Marie say something. She was
always angry with you, I could tell.
Listen, if Kirsna is in the Bardo
will you please go to him. There is a swelling in the ice
in this snowfield where I've been
for three months now. I nearly
lost my mind. This morning in the wind
I was out naked on the nearest hill
juggling nine pomegranates
with a yellow Shambhalical arrow
straight through the center of the earth
to the other side . . .
I do believe this prevented an earthquake
in New Zealand. A fiery line of Maoris
ran before my eyes,
and then black waves of water rose against us.
Now all the ice here is rotten
as if with some sun-abraxas. I think
I am a half a mile from land, so I must be leaving
with leap-striding . . . dammit, that was
an entire holographic column
collapsing
and there are a thousand birds outside?
Where are you bastards . . .
There are giant krakens dead over the water?
oh son of noble family, do not be afraid
of what is all about you. nothing happens.
these are the poor manifestations
of your own luminous mind.
your life in this existence
is over. do not be afraid
and please continue on.
now is not the time for regrets.
your friends and family have said goodbye.
do not cling to the memory of this life.
look for that which is complete
and which has always been your basic nature.
do not cling to these illusions.
nothing is ever lost.
we will meet again, we pray,
in other circumstances.
say goodbye to this world.
what surrounds you is just the play of emptiness.
without looking back, enter into the light.
it is just the luminosity of your own mind . . .
— Otrul Chak, the state of one taste,
The
Bardo Thodal. 
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