… wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner … Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
He was drunk. Just like he had been for weeks. Months. How long he didn’t know.
He had journeyed well beyond sanity. It wasn’t just the booze but that must have been a factor.
He had everything. Money, fame, even success of the sort he used to crave.
In prior times he woke up at four to the soundless dark.
Now he stayed awake all through the night and drank during the day.
The last before he blacked out was the glare of the lights in the Zocalo.
Someone (something) guided him along a dark street to a blue house.
He looked at the house with its misty blue walls as though he were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle. The dead person paints the house from the inside without a brush.
If he could have lived differently …
Such thoughts fed this little life of dried tubers.
A third of life: advertisements for false wants created by the other two-thirds.
Something will turn up.
Not to dwell on the mystery. Not to dwell on the misery.
The church bells rang in the distance.
This made him oddly happy.
He danced out of the house with renewed resolve.
Recklessly he ran down the trail alongside a ravine.
The bars would open again but he would not be there.
This much was true.
He tripped and tumbled into the barranca.
A dog discovered the body
Torn by sharp rocks
Buried in the mud and refuse of another time.