The Tyger watched as the vultures circled for many seasons and for a time and times and half a time until they began dying of fatigue. The vultures fell like giant hellish pinballs from the sky. Some fell unnoticed in the barren fields; others plummeted through the roofs of homes and places of commerce. The pinballs did not explode, but simply gasped one last time as they made impact—feathers and the fervor of something horrible was at hand. And while the vultures fell, they still lived and plotted evil in the same manner as the men below. Every bird of every world would eventually fall with some sort of glory and some sort of predisposition. Including Crow.
The little bird had little eyes darker than a blackened vision. It had patches of feathers like pieces of dirty razors. And when it broke through 17 stories of glass, plaster, cable lines, and everything else placed under 17 levels of floorboards, it landed smack in the center of the lobby. Crow gathered its bones and beak and wings, speaking to no one: “My name is Crow, ‘In the beginning was Scream, Who begat Blood, Who begat Eye, Who begat Fear, Who b…’” And the bird never finished.
Sometime later, a large shadowy figure bumped Crow as it was dragging a woman across the lobby. Little Crow quickly counted how many strands of hair the large shadowy figure had grasped in his right fist. “Four thousand seven hundred and two!” But it went unheard as the elevator doors sealed shut and silence again filled the tower lobby. Crow hung its head in loneliness and decided to finally leave this place. It shook off the nascent phlegm and hopped over trash and over dropped groceries and a torn grocery bag an—It stopped! “Cinnamon applesauce!” Crow exclaimed as it reached down for the jar. The little bird offered a prayer of rapture for the canned fruit and then recalled the number of hairs it had counted on the woman’s head. It left the giant housing unit, bursting through doors that used to stand erect and skipping to the sound of screaming coming from everywhere.
The little bird spent a lifetime in the city, drinking ether from the rivers and spilling tears of laughter in the back alleys. But then Crow was overtaken with loneliness and suddenly remembered it had kin that lived somewhere in the countryside. So Crow left the city, stepping over the grave of a priest at the county line. The little bird walked through the dry country leaving ashy prints in the dirt. It almost jumped up on a tree with two thieves to end the boredom. But Crow decided instead to sing a lullaby that it had remembered hearing in some past life, a song that felt like gravity in its veins. And so the little bird sang to no one, not even itself. “The spinning top box; The downloadable box; The downtrodden box; The printed box; The press box; The constellation box; The pressure box; The cook box; The cookbook box; The ballot box; The ink box; The ballet slipper box; The sink box; The bird box; The council box; The sun box; The oxycodone box…Little crow crucified the Tyger, then put himself into a box to sleep and dream about boxes”.
When Crow realized that the song was over it found the nearest farm, trading the jar of cinnamon applesauce for a cow. The little bird broke the neck of another little bird and emptied its blood onto its hand. Crow used the blood to write ‘TOEVAH’ on the left side of the cow. It tried to write it on the right side, but it ran out of blood and ended up with only ‘TOE’. Crow was incredibly satisfied as it rode the cow off into what would have been dusk, but instead there was a sprawling charcoal mist that hid the entire universe.
The little bird finally found what it knew to be kin, Finch. The craven bird did not recognize Crow, but agreed to be kin so that it could eat the cow. While Finch consumed the four legged beast, Crow marveled at the plastic flowers growing right out of the air. The little bird suddenly understood, big men eat jerky and little birds drink Kool Aid. Crow drank from every plastic flower it could find. When they were both finished, Crow was so fast and Finch was so fat that they decided to find death. The two kin found death hiding in a Golgotha Tree somewhere in New Jersey. Crow asked death if there was anyone stronger than hope. Death replied, “Only me.” Crow then dragged death out of the tree and gave to Finch for a snack. When Finch was finished eating, it exploded causing the entire sky to be filled with molded manna. Crow slapped the craven bird.
Despite having company, Crow was given over to boredom, again. So, the two kin decided to find more company. They searched the earth and all of its holes, but found no suitable friends. They searched the moon and all of its holes, but no found suitable friends. They searched the waterless places and found a pack of swine dressed as demons. Crow said to Finch, “They will not be friends, but we can experiment.” And thus, Crow and Finch entered a city in the aftermath of a great riotous gathering, digging through piles of glass and rocks and sport utility vehicles until they came across a dozen or so treadmill machines. The demons were very happy to be going so fast and not really going anywhere at all. Crow and Finch were very happy too. Everyone was so happy that blood begin to come out of their eyes. And the smell of blood attracted the unkind winged things, especially an unkindness of ravens. With shards of bread dripping from their mouths, the ravens plucked every demon from their treadmill and every Crow and every Finch. No one was happy now, helpless in the jaw of sky.
The two little birds and the many demons all let their heads droop downward in defeat. The sun rose and set and rose and set and set things on fire. Everyone was sad. But then suddenly, Crow saw what appeared to be a great desert party somewhere in the distance. He said to Finch, “Look! It is a nomadic gathering, a coup, an orgy, a retreat into adrenaline, the temple for the Soul of the Hive.” Finch had absolutely no idea what Crow was referring to, but it did not matter because the sky released its jaw and dropped every demon and every Crow and every Finch. The demons bounced in many directions. Some were covered with water; some were covered in flames; and some were being stabbed by wild prophets. Crow and Finch each landed on a different bull opposite each other. Finch was terrified of the activity, but Crow was feeling nostalgic. He looked up from within the stadium and saw a giant sign bearing the words MT CARMEL THUNDERDOME. Crow grinned, finally grasping the urgency of the hour: this was a game of football. Crow quickly dug the broken nail of its talon into the side of the bull. The bull reared, throwing Crow several hundred yards across the field until it landed on some strange alter. By this time Finch had started eating the hide off of the back of the other bull. The demons were everywhere. There was a roar of anguish and then great silence. But there was also quite a bit of fire that fell from the sky jaw in between the roar and the silence. Crow choked and gasped and gargled on the ashen earth. Finch fell into the earth, dead.
Blood groped at the moon for a million nights until the lunar pie finally fell to the earth, splattering across Crow’s face. The bird woke up and gasped and rose up and called for Lazarus and looked up for an applause, but no one was around—not even Finch. Crow decided to climb up on the grounded moon that was bleeding out across the Dead Sea and see if it could see Finch. But no sooner than Crow dropped one rusted scale of a toe on the moon, the surface of the earth collapsed under all the death. The bird rode the lunar sphere through the earth’s interior ministry like a pinball blurring through a myriad of plastic flippers, bumpers, plungers, slingshots, holes and several major gas lines.
The little bird finally landed in a giant field of plastic flowers. Somewhere along the way the moon became lodged within the earth’s crust causing gravity to split itself in two, spilling some strange galactic acid that flowed down onto Crow as it sat in the field of plastic flowers. Crow’s eyes began to twirl around the plastic flowers that also began to twirl. Everything was twirling, even Finch that suddenly appeared wearing some ancient priestly garb. “I have found the equal sign” Finch screamed. But Crow had no idea to what Finch was talking about because the words of its kin were like ether being poured down the ear canal. The two birds twirled around the twirling plastic flowers as the galactic acid continued to drip down, creating a canopy of creativity within the very conscious of the earth. And then finally, the two birds collapsed.
But while the birds slept, Crow had a dream of great exodus. It went like this: Crow and Finch traversed through forests and under waterfalls and over mountainous ranges, reaching a mechanism where the internet itself lived. Crow and Finch taunted the lazy leviathan for 39 days and 39 nights until it finally left its home and attempted to consume the two little birds. But the birds were very little and very quick, too quick for the infinite arms and legs of the beast. They ran right under the belly of the internet and into the housing mechanism. They found a lever and began banging their beaks against it. They proceeded to do this for another 39 days and 39 nights until the mechanism combusted into a vortex of steam that shot the two little birds straight up through the surface of the earth in Yellowstone Park.
Crow and Finch quickly woke up and the two proceeded to do everything Crow had just dreamed except for the part when they shot out of Yellowstone Park. For in reality Finch was so excited to watch steam turn into water that it never shut its mouth. Finch choked and died, landing somewhere in grizzly country. Meanwhile, Crow rode the geyser, faithfully and stoically all the way to the Midwest, ice cream country. Crow quickly found a mom and a pop and their ice cream hop. The little bird had no money so it had to settle for robbery and mischief and possible murder. But Crow did make out with a vanilla swirl and a back alley cat dipped in butterscotch. The little bird sat on the steps of the local barbershop, eating and grinning with absolutely no memory to its kin, Finch.
Crow sat in a comatose state for many centuries until he noticed a man exiting the courthouse with ice cream in his hand. “A man that makes laws and eats ice cream surely is a friend of mine!” Crow said to itself. The little bird picked up its sleeping body and clambered across the street to bring a formal introduction to the man. “This is the song my mother pulled from her spine as she spit me forth:
Sweat poured out on the seventh day
When God was relaxed
A scream was heard
Left side closet
From in between your father’s dress shirts
They say harmless feathered bunch
But I heard the sound of teeth turning black
They say harmless little bird
But that sound was of creation turning back
They say come crow
Come grapple a ditty
And come be your own master
The man spoke, wiping tears from his chin: “A beautiful eulogy Mr. Crow. This truly is the Summer of Mercy.” The little bird shook hands with the man, George Tiller. And thus, an eternal friendship was formed.
