Let us open all the doors
And invite the ghosts in.
Let us empty the cupboards,
Dig up all the bones
And lay them out: let there be war.

Let the wheels turn;
Enough of this stagnant peace
That is no peace at all.
The thundering lie torments me;
I am disgusted by the deceits that
Underpin it.
Better the honesty of war
Than the deceptions of a false peace.

Line up my enemies;
I will cut them down
And bow to their deaths.
I will honour them like brothers
Who meet me on the battlefield,
But for the cowards of this war
I bring only your burning house,
Your ruined fields,
Your broken family.
Be brave and die well;
Hell has a place for the coward
But the noble dead line the halls
Of Heaven, rejoicing.
Now, come, let my sword feast
On your nobility.

War on falsehood;
War on the idiots;
War on greed;
War on all that divides me
From you and
Myself.

Let all my enemies perish.
Let the dark and the light alike
Be equalised in victory or defeat.
But let there be war.

I will cut the wings from angels,
Pull the horns from demons’ heads;
I will wade through the blood of
Good and bad alike,
Because the war is endless.

Constantly arising,
Falsehood blemishes the page.
There is always the Foe,
Always the battle raging all around me.
For others, peace and the green field.
For me, the slice of sword
On shield
On skull
And bone.

(And now we sit here,
The silence growing vines
About our tongues.
Poisoned water in the well
And the list of crimes
Between us.
Let there be war.
Let the land burn.
Let the forests fall,
The mountains echo with
Blade on bone
Steel on stoney face
And all the armies of us
Exhaust themselves in a tide.
Let there be war.
Let the rivers run red
For a season;
Let the borders close
And all the songs be of
The bloody fight.

Kiss and make up?
Let there be war.
Turn the other cheek?
Let there be war.

The air is thick with lies.
The forests are tangled with briers.
The mountains are full of thieves
And the rivers are choked with weeds.
Let there be war
And purging
And the redemptive fire
Of death and glory.)

Fight me.
I said, ‘Fight me.’
Do not be understanding.
Do not yield for the peace.
Do not bend yourself
Any more
From the shape you were born to.
Who are you?
WHO ARE YOU?
Show yourself, truly, or not at all.
Stand on the dusty battleground
And fight me, as you are.

Screw politics.
We are warriors,
Or could be.
I cannot sit yet on the porch
And rock myself to senility
Telling tales of former glory
And the comrades I once knew.
The war goes on
All around us.

Fight me,
Then we can turn together
Towards the innumerable foes.

How can I know your strength
If you will not show me?
I do not yet trust your sword
Beside mine.
Those who have not fought,
Do not know one another’s shape.

How can I love a man I have not fought?
How can I love a woman who fears me?
Fight me.
Let me feel your strength;
Let me measure you,
That I may then love you,
Knowing who you are.

Let the heavens open
and arrows rain down;
Let Hell burst on the Earth.
So long as I have a sword in my hand
and an enemy before me,
I will never be displaced.

Do not curse me with peace.
I would fade like the captured tiger
Or the dark, cut flower.
Fence me around with Peace
And I will make War with it.

Bring me a war!
There must be a war, somewhere!
(For how can I know who I am without battle?
Though I have seen boys become Men,
Become corpses
In an hour,
I have seen such a flowering of life
Before Death
As I have never seen
In all the village halls
And householders’ days
I have ever known.)

Come here!
You!
Come to me!
I am not afraid to die in front of you,
Only afraid to die without living.
(And if I should die by your sword
Or your powerful word
Or your look at me askance,
I will die happy
And real
And full of blood and laughter and fire.)

Oh, do not let me die in bed!
Unless I was fighting there
A battle worthy of my death.

I know.
You think I am a thug
To speak thus of War.
Admit it!
Speak true words!
You see a brute, a warmonger.
An iron fool.
Listen to me.
I am playing my part.
I am playing my part.
Play yours!
Without fear.
At least I know what mine is.

Are you a child to cower in deception?
Be a man! Be a woman!
Ach.
Bring me someone real
To spar with,
I am sick of your foolish illusions,
Your pretensions of mortality.

I have nothing to hide.
Do you understand?
I have nothing to hide.
Nothing.
And so I am
A God.
Now fight me.

I thought my CV was looking pretty good. I had attached one of my favourite sparkling OM stickers to the front page, just below where it said ‘I AM GOD; WHO ARE YOU?’ and arranged my employment history in such a way that the first letters formed an acrostic that read ‘THE ONLY WORK IS LOVE’ if you looked carefully. Upon reflection, I highlighted the acrostic with glitter glue in case it was missed in an employer’s hurry to get to the really good bits, then began shading in my picture of how I viewed the nature of employment in relation to the impending earth changes of 2012. That was on page 8, of 13, to reflect the sacredness of the number in the 13-day cycle of the Mayans and I was agonising over whether to include a short guide to the sacred calendar as an appendix, or if that would render the 13-page symmetry of the thing unstable.

Writing a CV is a tricky thing. How far do you bend the facts of your life to fit the mould of potential employment? How much of the nature of yourself do you include or leave out? I was unclear about such a thing – I’d never had to apply for a job, as they tended to fall on me from a great height, leaving me gasping for air, but now it seemed to be unavoidable. I had read a guide to writing a CV, but it had left me perplexed. It seemed to have been written by aliens, for other aliens, to help them submit their souls to work in the crystal mines of some dark planet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that kind of job. Still believing that I was destined for greater things, I had taken it upon myself to write the Truth About Jack. I was having difficulty with parts. Date of Birth: ‘today and every day’ seemed honest enough, but I wasn’t sure that it was clear enough. Writing ‘I AM ETERNAL and UNLIMITED by SPACE AND TIME’ beneath it certainly got the point across, but I felt it might be seen as somewhat arrogant and adding ‘Though I am Not Yet Fully Grounded in my Omnipotence, only having received the 1st attunement of Usui Reiki’ was making it cluttered. I considered erasing all the text and filling in each category simply with I AM, but last vestiges of my mortal common sense nudged the suggestion towards me that, though true, God is also in the details. Besides, I AM, yes, but also, in truth, I AM NOT. I was going to have to start adding footnotes, and that was really going to screw with the Mayan symmetries of the thing… Ach – I couldn’t believe that none of this was mentioned in the guidebook. I thumbed through it again, hoping for rescue from having to explain the truth in apparent paradoxes of AM-ness and AM-NOT-ness, but there was nothing there. I was on my own.

I didn’t even want the job. I’d thought I’d wanted it, but writing the CV was taking its toll on my enthusiasm. On the telephone, I’d suggested that I drop by and show them my slide show, but they said they’d only accept a written CV. The ‘I AM JACK’ puppet-show didn’t tickle their fancy either, and I probably should have given up there. Who wants a job, after all, where you can’t perform your history and character to an ambient psychedelic trance soundtrack with shadow-puppets? Well, I did, or had thought I did. Holding the CV in my hands, I wasn’t so sure.
Not everyone wants to work at the crematorium, of course. I figured that the competition would be thin on the ground, perhaps a few goths and the odd thin stranger who had drifted into grave-digging at an early age and was now looking to diversify his portfolio. I wanted to work with fire and ashes and meditate in the charnel grounds, but when I’d asked about them, there had been a silence on the phone.

But she remained unconvinced, even when I explained that Jo-Ab, a genuine bodhisattva, lived just around the corner and could pop in at any time to demonstrate any miracle she liked, so long as it involved dreadlocks and turning water into cider. The conversation had wilted somewhat after that and I wished, briefly, that I hadn’t given my name.

When I’d seen the advert in the paper, I had known it was the job for me. Now… Now I was unsure.

I’ve had jobs. I’ve done work, some of it honest and a little of it paid in the shiny tokens of joy that seem so popular here on Earth. I’ve done things I didn’t want to do and I understand that you’ve got to balance the element of earth in the circle of things, but ever since I sawed the caravan in half I haven’t been able to take it as seriously as other people want me to. At the job centre, they’re becoming impatient.

Petulance does not help a jobsearch, I’m told. I’ll show them petulance… Well, actually I won’t, because they’ll stop my giro. Once you’re in the system, your balls are theirs, friends. I envied Gola in his treehouse in the woods, and Jo-Ab in his van, following the leylines towards the rainbow’s end.

I resisted the urge to write I WILL NOT BE CHAINED on the CV. I have an attitude problem, I know. The best and worst of us surely do. I flicked through the photographs I was going to attach. Jack lighting a fire; Jack skilfully holding an urn. Jack comforting a bereaved relative. I was pleased with that one, though you could just about tell that the relative was made out of balloons if you looked carefully. Then, Jack covered in ash, sitting amongst the bones of the ancestors… I hadn’t seen anyone doing that at Mortonhall, but figured they probably kept the saddhus in a private area so as not to scare the children. A photo of my special saddhu blanket that I’d got from IKEA; a photo of my trident. My spirits were sinking; they all seemed empty now. I wished I’d taken a photo of Sri doing fire puja – that would have shown them I was serious. The pictures seemed pathetic, truth be told, and I understood then that the CV wasn’t about the job. It wasn’t about showing them how qualified I was or wasn’t to push a rosewood box along a conveyor belt and it wasn’t about trying to explain why I didn’t have any A levels and hadn’t been to school. It was all about the saddhu. Of course they weren’t going to talk about saddhus over the phone. That was the whole point. If I was really a saddhu, would I be trying to convince them that I was one. No. I saw the truth of it now. I took a blank piece of paper and wrote only these words on it:

I AM JACK.
I AM NOT A SADDHU.
BUT I AM KEEN.

I posted the revised CV the next morning, having peeled the stamp off a postcard from Jo-Ab that he had sent from Calanish.

I never heard from Mortonhall crematorium and I wasn’t surprised. I peeked over the wall every so often, and broke in once on the full moon to try and find the saddhus, but they weren’t there. Probably at some big Mela festival down by the mouth of the Forth that no one had told me about, bathing themselves in the sewage outflow and praising MacShiva’s ginger dreads. I sat for a while in the garden of remembrance and tried to remember what I was doing. The question came to me there and then and changed my life:

If I am not a saddhu, who am I?

The answer, of course, was Jack. I had told the truth on my final CV. I am Jack.

I gave the special saddhu blanket to a homeless man, but he gave it back to me because he was allergic to rayon.

I gave away my trident. I don’t think Shiva minded too much — it was made of plastic and briefly delighted a small child in Portobello as her parents gathered her away from me. Shiva’s got enough tridents and the children have few. I want the children to have more tridents. I am Jack. I am not a saddhu.

I got a job in an Italian deli in Newington — I just went in and asked them and they gave it to me and didn’t ask for my CV, which was good, because I fed it to the swans in Holyrood Park. One of them came up to me and said his name was Shiva, but I didn’t believe him, because you never know where you are with a swan. He tried to tell me something about the Himalayas, but I blocked my ears. I’m not going there; I’m just not doing that kind of shit.

I am not a saddhu.

I am Jack.