Come to me my elephant-headed child, my elephant-headed son, you with the elephant eyes, you with the elephant nose, your elephant eyebrows, your elephant forehead, you in your little shorts, come sit with me by the fire and I'll tell you of your mother, how she rests in diamond flames before me, how she wears diamonds on her ankles, how her torso has wasted away, how we flew over the Moon, and over the night of Baghdad…
Your mother all yellow, her skin made of gold, she with her black hair, and the soft white scarf about her waist, she cast no reflection in windows, in panes, she wore nothing but her own skin, all golden and soft, yet cold as metal, just like the day I found her in a cave, with a pickaxe, I freed her from beneath the stones…
Your mother washed herself in the river, and she fed all the animals there, snapped the neck of a deer and drank its blood, crimson stains around her mouth, all the birds flew away, your mother after them, and the forest grew silent, and she was the only bird left in it…
Your mother in Prague, as she walks past nice ladies, all of them blue-grey, black parasols in hand, oh! how she mocked them, their walk and their smiles, and your mother, who can not be seen, she refused to be like them, she refused to be in the papers, though she would have made the headlines, the golden woman who was seen by everyone in their dreams on October the 13th, when it rained that night; Your mother split the sky in two and she made herself a skirt from it, so ebony black it pulled in all light, and she skipped and she flew, away to India, roamed as a goddess, and terrorized children from the clouds…
Your mother was the phantom of the desert, she devoured aeroplanes and she robbed the rich and poor alike, she lay with lions, seduced and she used them, for pleasure and gain, and they ate bones and she was protected by them; she was always hungry, and there were never enough men to eat…
One day the Arabs laid a trap for her, and caught her in a bottle lie a djinn, and when they caught her they plucked out her eyes and put her on a chain made from silver-spit, around her ankle, and made her walk behind the camels -sometimes dragging her in the sand-, until they reached Addis Abababa, where they sold and auctioned her for three thousand cattle…
She was bought by the men who built sphinxes, and they made her climb their statues and work on the faces, but your mother was smarter than them, and she burrowed the sphinx' eyes out, and she wore them in her face, and she tore her chain and killed the men with stone knives, perhaps she didn't but she flew away one midday...
Your mother flew to the Moon and back, and she flew into the stars and to Mars, and she landed in my garden of marbles, where I lay watering the world with a can in my hand. I wanted to grow nothing, but it was all right to do that nonetheless, she saw the hilarity in watering sand to grow nothing, so she stayed for a thousand welcome days. Together we ate fruits of the west, in season and out of season as well, and we discussed music and poetry, and I fell in love with her smile there and then, her smile so thin and long, her breasts so round and perky, like two pears made of cloud-rubber, of soft jelly, of golden fat and goose-liver…
I fell in love with your mother, and she fell in love with me, and we flew away behind the sun, so no-one would see us fornicating, but our groans and sighs were heard on every World then, on the night of the 15th, the 27th and even tonight, the lions roared and paced angry, the Arabs prayed to sand-demons to forgive them, the sphinx' face crumbled and their builders beat each other with trowels and shovels, and Prague became a postcard memory of a place you've never been to or even seen… And for a moment the whole world turned sepia, and we flew around the sun, embraced, her long legs wrapped around my back, her arms tearing skin from my shoulders and my thighs, her teeth biting me down to the bone, but I saw the love in the blood and in her eyes, and then she flew away so fast, I never believed she was with me…
When I came back to my garden, I picked up my can and I watered the sand again, and still nothing grew, just like I planned, but I threw the can away, frustrated, ignorant and angry, where was the woman, made of gold-skin and steel, like an arrow her legs, so long and so thin, her hair ebony-black and a thousand times more lethal than the arms of any octopodes you've ever seen? Where was the woman who stayed here for a thousand years? Now she was gone…
Then you came out of the grey desert before me, parting the moon-dust with your swollen feet, with your tree-thick appendages, so sadly dangling your elephant trunk, your eyes closed tight 'neath the turban on your head; feeling your way blindly through the desert with a stick made of a thousand snakes alive, alive, alive…
My elephant-headed child, my elephant-headed only son, you brought me your mother's head on tray, it was her parting gift to me, for she was gone now, somewhere else, flying free without her forever-face, flying all soft and lonely and beautifully naked, shining and gleaming with gold on her skin, flying through space, flying past stars, flying past planets moons and objective satellites, and always so cold and always so alone because she was dead…
My elephant-headed son, I cut open your fused eyelids, and through the blood you first saw me, and since then I appear to you the crimson devil, my skin made of blood-iron and steel, but soft; together we destroyed Prague and collected all its memories, together we bought out the Sphinx and built a carpark instead, we tore and mashed Arabs we found in the desert, and whoever was left we chased into lions' dens… For the lions were the only ones who ever really knew your mother, the goddess Shiva, the Arachnid Destroyer was she, many arms, all of them lethal, and yet I wanted to fuck her everyday…
My elephant-headed son, you knew I had to burn her body, and so we sit here in the forest, and there's only her legs left, as we sit here and devour all her arms, and I need you to bring more wood, so we can burn the rest, and burn it all, and burn the rest, even her feet…
