Frog Spawn and Fire Lion

i

Frog Spawn and Fire Lion were brothers.

Fire Lion was a being of glory and Frog Spawn looked like a glob of spattered shit.

When people saw Fire Lion their hearts were in their throats. They said “oh!”. They said “If I only lived to see Him my life would have been enough.” Fire Lion beamed to bring such joy to their lives, although he didn’t need their acknowledgment. He shone like the sun.

Frog Spawn could forget that he looked like a pile of gobs of shit — sometimes. But when he saw the broad beaming smiles and tear-damp eyes on the faces of those who saw the beautiful face of Fire Lion, and heard the gasps when they looked up in the sky and saw the flaming trails of his letters — when he wrote “Believe!” and “Joy!” and “Magic!” and “Sexy Man” — he remembered that he looked like shit, that he smelled like shit, that he was cowardly and jealous and afraid.

Their father died. Their mother died. They were alone.

Fire Lion looked at Frog Spawn and Frog Spawn felt condemned in his eyes. Frog Spawn looked at Fire Lion and Fire Lion didn’t even notice that he was looking at him.

They heard the voice from the Endless Pit.

ii

They crept to the edge of the endless pit and fell down and it felt like they would fall forever. In fact they did fall forever. They burned up in the atmosphere and then they fell past the edge of Space Time. They had fallen forever but forever ended — how can that be? They passed beyond the world of form and the world of sense. They entered into the world of jewels.

Fire Lion was a jewel of light. Frog Spawn was trillions and trillions of dark crystals that sucked up every droplet every photon every tiny piece of light from Fire Lion’s jewel.

They were in darkness.

They were both very afraid.

iii

It was morning. The meadow had grass, and crab grass, and purple-stemmed goose grass, and dandelions and galan soga, and buttercups, and each leaf and each stem had a droplet of water condensed on it, at least one, sometimes many, and the phallic mushrooms had pushed their way up in the night. Frog Spawn was a serpent. Fire Lion was a beautiful woman.

A dark blight spread through the meadow.

A rabbit was lying on its side breathing hoarsely, gasping for breath — ants were crawling into its nostrils, and biting its eyes. A broken dragon fly was dragging itself by its forelimbs. A toad snapped it up with its tongue.

A cold wind blew, hail started to fall. The sun went out.

Darkness, darkness, darkness, for so many years — of course they weren’t years because there was no sun.

iv

A chiming or vibration in empty space.

v

A black ocean with the surface vibrating in time to the vibration of air.

vi

Air and water mixed together.

vii

The face of a man in agony giving birth.