JOHN CARTER CASH ART

And Pato, oh Pato! I remember his face. We met in a dusty bar in Juarez below a hunter's moon, our back sore from work in the sun. Our thirst is unquenchable with every dusty, dry beer.

The Mantis knows me and like all true and wise teachers, I only know of him what he shows me through his sight. We students march below him, his wolf guards the cave leading into his belly. The Ashoken Giant, long dead, lays at his feet, his lip as a bird. I am protected.

We have always been painting. Since when enough blood could trace out the shape of a moon.
Yours are not yours and mine are not mine. Multiplication cannot reduce our tired warriors, raven bearers, tails and dogs.

A boy to become a priest dreamed of the devil, several more masked and the devil was born. When we offer a chair to the gods and ghosts and guides kept secret then shadowed, we father them all as they fathered us.

All are waiting to be swallowed then sat in the sun by their master. The saints, the sinners, the matchstick-half-doll, all want to be called home. Out of the newly darkened yard. Into the light from inside. You and I to check each of their faces, deformed and angelic, for scuffs.

In this shadowless roll-call, we narrate nothing, the collective undead where we have always been painting.