Listening to The Crutch Gil Scott-Heron sang
Call
Yama
which grabbed his attention yanking his head around like a handful of hair pulled
he
had to look that up
earlier that evening over dinner he
and his grrlfriend were talking about the roasted seasoned jicama and Brussels
sprouts they had prepared as sides to their barbecued ribeyes
jicama
is also called a yam bean
which without failhe pronounced yambean singular as
determined and willful as when he flipped eggplant onto its nom de plume aubergine
yambean and aubergine
so fucking esoteric
theyd eat anything that sounded strange or was
and had
Yama is the Vedic god of death
a wicked dark three-eyed cat
surrounded by curling red flames gilded by gold riding either a dead man or a slick
green serpent whose googly eyes appeared to wish the fat man would get off his
back but without arms to heave Yama
headlong it followed his headdress
decorated with grinning skulls into the void swirling like discontented
smoke beyond the harshetched fire it submitted
and writhed under Yamas formidable weight
a fearsome god
if one bought into goddie things
relics and coopted sacredness
he had a place in his heart for
the Sacred
a place big enough to hold a cave
the Chauvet Cave discovered in the late 90s in Ardèche valley of southern France
Chauvet is prehistoric 32,000 to 30,000 BP(years Before the
Present when radiocarbon dating methods
are used and distinctly refuse to pander to Christianitys BC AD BCE and CE which can obviously get in the way of Sacred
Oh
yes please dont forget to provide your
Holy tithe at the door before you leave)
there was nothing more sacred in
his mind than the Chauvet Cave inhabited by Man and cave bears
its wall are painted depicting
lions mammoths rhinoceroses bison reindeer horses red deer ibex Megaceros deer aurochs
musk-oxen panther and owl
scientific testing has determined
that the cave was frequented at two different periods five thousand years apart
the human beings who returned in the second
period left torch marks and charcoal on the ground
fire
Sacred
he counted his lucky stars
they
had the bittersweet fortune to witness and realeyes several Native Indian
sites of pictographs across California
all had been defaced defiled
by Johnny-Come-Lately lily-white men as is their habit
Chauvets only apparent despoiling is a prehistoric childs footprints across its
floor
he wondered if Yama inveighed might have stayed those big strong pioneers hands
which feebly in retrospect werent
and were more like raping and pillaging hands of pirates
Vedic nothing
no god needs wings to appear and slain
1444, Thursday,
16 7. 15
0024, Friday,
17 7. 15
