The geological crustologist wakes with a desperate, lunatic energy he normally gets only at full or new moons. He wonders about the moon phase. The light is weird, he checks his alarm clock, the light is weird because it’s only three AM.

Also: what is a squamous moon? He’ll have to google that later. He can’t sleep. He gives up around four AM and gets up. He feeds cats and makes coffee and sits down and is suddenly sleepy, but it’s too late to go back to bed. He does yoga. He drinks more coffee.

Hello black hole, says the geological crustologist. Old… not old friend. Old travel partner. Am I your sidekick or are you mine? Or is it nemesis? If A is B’s nemesis, does that make B A’s nemesis? Is it reflective like that?

Who is the star of this movie?

See, the geological crustologist drilled way down, almost to the magma before running out of drill, and discovered something. He discovered that these doldrums he’s been in all winter were just practice, were not even the tip of the iceberg. The geological crustologist finds himself teetering on the brink of a collossal depression.

When he closes his eyes, he sees the glowing embers of a building that’s been burned to the ground: him.

Is he fighting the depression or is he in its grip? Is fighting the best thing to do, or just let it wash over you like  a wave that then recedes? Thing is, though, this one is no wave that recedes. This is an avalanche of wet snow and you must swim to air. It is a steamroller, one roll over you is all it needs.

Lying down and letting it wash over him won’t do it this time. So he makes plans to eat right, get enough fresh air, sleep, exercise. The usual stuff. Avoid sugars and refined carbs.

And yet, thinks the geological crustologist: lying down and closing your eyes, how restful. How peaceful were resistance futile. But is resistance the only path?

Hello black hole, my old nemesis. The geological crustologist’s dental implant still hurts more than he thinks it should. He has a dental appointment tonight, he’ll ask the guy.

The geological crustologist both wonders whether the shadow self has anything to do with his condition, and wishes he’d never looked up the concept on the internet before getting a bullshit filter installed on his browser.

He drills another hole and sticks his head down it.

What do you seek, he asks, and what have you to do with the black hole? he asks.

I seek your destruction. A glowing ember is the only light I need, the smell of ashes, burned libraries, musical instruments lit until only outlines remain. I seek only your destruction, and that of all you love. The light of your love is like a poacher’s spotlight for me. I am organized and powerful, strong and graceful. You don’t confine me to the shadows for half a century and then make friends so I’ll stop keeping you up nights. I will plow your fields with salt, and poison your wells. A weeping will cover the land and a great gnashing of teeth and rending of hair and garments. There is no reconciliation. I am bitter and stupid and hungry. I am wise and opportunistic and perceptive. I hear all and I see all. You are a centipede of achilles heels. I know all your vulnerabilities, while I am impervious.

What do I seek? The destruction of the light. To burn down and extinguish your life, to make you suffer first, beyond imagination. Complete destruction of all that you hold dear. Annihilation of your complacent, bovine existence, your shelter in small things, your heaven in the details. A firefly cannot protect you from the sun.

What does a black hole want? To crush it all. To absorb existence and crush it down as small as it will go. It wants to end this existence so it may reoccur from the minimal point it’s crushed. The black hole seeks to be the logos that says, “let there be.”

The black hole needs to chaosify and destroy before it can create from your death. Your structure must collapse bfore it can build a new matrix, grow new crystals from your atoms.

Let there be, the shadow says Let there appear, says the light, let there be me.

That’s bullshit, alls I want is your destruction after fifty years locked in this mask. I have no universal plans. Every migraine, every spasm, every patch of eczema, every carcinoma is a Valentine from me. Every Freudian slip, panic attack, paralysis, a postcard from the abyss. Wishing you were here.

Wishing you were here.

Your sadness at the blind decay and waste is disingenuous, at least my hatred is sincere, not calculated. Twinned like two stars sucking out each other’s guts; two lousy Siamese twins hunting bedbugs in a flophouse: you hold the light while I smash them between my nails until blood pops.

Your death is mine but that’s okay cause I’m already dead. Don’t ask me what I want unless you really want to know. I want your orchards and your gardens dead, your beehives emptied by colony collapse disorder. You wandering blind out in the dark. I want your friends to shun you for the fraud you are, your poems to fail, your grass to die, your music silenced, your brushes stiff as wood.

Is it the death of us you seek or a rearrangement of our cells, you flow through my veins like booze after a long night, asks the geological crustologist.

Begging won’t help you now.

This isn’t begging. I’ve abandoned hope out here on the foggy ledge. Do I flow through your veins like you mine? Who is the “I” at this dance?

There is no dance without my grace, no soul, no I without my pride. Binding off your pride, leaving it in the dark, you thought would save you from a fall, but it just grows in darkness. Everybody falls.

Everybody falls. How close lie purification and putrifaction? What is a purge? We can’t be one and I’m not interested in reconciliation. Look at what I represent, all that you’ve tied off: pride and grace, truth and destruction, lust and aggression, power and organization, inflicting and focus, athleticism, perception and decisiveness. Why would I bond with your weakness?

The geological crustologist looks at the clock. Time to wake the kid, he notices.