Time is a cycle, you see, and the things you’ve lost you can’t have back again.

He remembered, tin cup banging as an idle counterpoint on the broken cement all around him. Knew what people saw when they glanced his way, a vagrant, a wastrel, a broken man squatting amid a broken life. Mutters of ‘get a life’ and ‘get a job’ as the happy people scurried past him. They had cars to wash and email to read, checkbooks to balance and groceries to buy. Difference was, he knew it was all just one long loop and nothing you did made any fucking difference.

He remembered.

As he sat banging his tin cup, he mumbled:

“Primary chief poet am I to Elphin and my native country is the place of the Summer Stars. John the Divine called me Merlin, but all future kings shall call me Taliesin. I was with my king in the heavens when Lucifer fell into deepest hell. I carried the banner before Alexander and I know the names of the stars from the North to the South.

"I have gone hungry for the Righteous One. I was at the White Mount in the court of Cynfelyn in stocks and in fetters for a year and a day. I was in the larder in the land of the Trinity and no one knows whether my body is flesh or fish. I was instructor to the whole universe. I shall be until the judgment. I shall continue to revolve between the three elements. There is a marvel in the world which I cannot reveal.”

“Christ,” said a capitalist, walking by. “Can’t they do something about him?”

“Christ,” said the bum, “was the son of a whore and married a whore, and history disowned his children. You worship him on Sunday mornings and fuck your secretary on Tuesday night and buy your wife pearls she will never wear.”

The businessman shuddered, eyes wide, before hurrying on. And the other man smiled, a thing of parched lips and nicotine-teeth, rictus amid white whiskers. He banged his cup and sometimes someone stopped. Dropped a coin. Occasionally people tried to converse, usually Christians who wanted to dry him out and turn him onto God instead of drink, but they didn’t understand.

“The Wandering Jew,” he told the latest proselytizer, “is Joseph of Arimathea. He lives in Queens and he sells shoes. He’ll give you a good deal on wing tips. Tell him I sent you.” And he gave the woman his awful smile, holes where his eyes should be, except his eyes were there, cumulus cloud-white, and staring, seeing, knowing--his daughter has his eyes--until she shuddered, and clutched her New Testament in suddenly sweaty palms. She walked away on the verge of tears without knowing why.

He laughed and laughed until his voice broke on a cough that should’ve meant he was dying except

No.

Not for him: I shall be until the judgment.

He mumbled:

“Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man again.”

He had been Christ once and hadn’t liked it much. The holes hurt, palms, soles, skull, and it was very hot. The wood burnt his back and the moans of other men dying made it worse, stench of flesh and jeers. It was a sad way to end for a man who really wanted to build tables and drink wine and fuck his wife. Such a strange story they’d made of it.

Magic.

The world wept, a thing devoid of joy. Mechanized, efficient, soulless, heartless. “Give me your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” he muttered. “And I will set them on fire inside dying cities.”

With sightless eyes that somehow saw, he glanced around, a crow, a carrion bird that heard the sounds, the sobbing groan of earth-flesh, the giant humanity tormented in its sleep. “Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said to the street. “You’ll see. You’ll see.”

He remembered her. Green eyes like springtime and he loved her with Taliesin’s echo. All told, he liked being a bard best, though he had been fish and fowl and seafoam and starlight, and all things named and unnamed. Still, there was a blessing in divine madness; it always came on him like a fit, like a rage that built in his soul and had no egress unless he set pen to paper, and let it come. Plus, poetry was a great way to get laid.

The Light-bearer, Son of the Morning, though he only came at night. Horns, yes, but crystalline, elegant, not born of hellfire but ice, the cold searing of the soul. He remembered him. They spoke in whitely winter woods; a deal was struck. Yes, dance with the devil, two steps forward, four steps back, do-si-do, and now you’re fucked.

Stolen, stolen, stolen. Glee. The green-eyed woman in his arms again. And then a dinner, while he stared, uncomprehending, listening to words that made no sense: “I tried so hard, but…you’re not the man I love. Ever since the baby died…well, I know it’s been years, but I can't get over it. You...seemed as if you didn’t care. I don’t know who you are anymore.”

Well, he was everyone he’d ever been, of course, but he couldn’t remember that man’s name because it hurt. And he didn’t have a soul to sell but he’d sold his only Son; did that make him God? He thought it might.

That was yet to happen, but it would. Soon, a man would come to the payphone and start shouting. And that was his cue, sending him to find things that were lost. He shuffled forward with the brochure. Passed it off. It would happen again tomorrow and yesterday and the half-broken tick-tocks in between. The weird sisters would sip claret and remember nice Mr. Shakespeare, and Beelzebub, who was lately calling himself Mr. McGaa would continue to do what he did for reasons that didn’t need to be explained. On and on and on, world without end, birth and death, except for those who want it most.

Time is a cycle, you see, and the things you’ve lost you can’t have back again.

• Three Bullets
• Nothing Left but Floor
• The McGaa
• Blue Room Blues