Her Last Shift at the Bar

by John Rocco

Aleister Crowley had an Ozzy song named after him
and while alive was called the “wickedest man in the world.”
He called himself the Beast of the Apocalypse, 666
and invented a religion based upon the principle of
“Do What Thou Wilt” no matter what that will was.

A born sadist, he treated everyone like shit
even W. B. Yeats who had to call the law on him
and especially servants, whom he routinely
abused and tormented. He was heavily into
mescaline by 1910 and practiced magic with it.
He fucked anything that moved!
He opened a Satanic Temple in London and
soon took up the practice of “sexual magic,”
public orgy spectacles to bring down the powers.

He filed his teeth down to points and always
bit beautiful women on the wrist or neck
when meeting them. He believed the
only way to defeat the power of drugs
was to do all of them to excess
and he did.

He was an avid mountain climber
and there is a famous description of him
in the mountain-climbing classic
ON TOP OF THE WORLD:

“Crowley was perhaps the most
extraordinary character who ever
took to the mountain sport. He
was ostentatiously careless and
inhuman in all he did… and
practiced Black Magic and Satanism.”

He led a climb up Kanchenjunga
(in the Himalayas, 3rd tallest in the world)
but the entire party rebelled
against him because he
treated the porters with
“sadistically cruel treatment.”

The entire party left him
to climb down to a lower
camp but an avalanche
occurred, burying them all.

They screamed for help from Crowley
but he stayed in his tent and the next
day he carefully climbed around the
scene where bodies were still being
pulled from the ice and snow.

All the porters perished.

The snow and the bodies came to me
in a blast when I read about her last
shift at the bar. I had been there for
her first shift but I was bound never
to see her last shift
only to hear about it
hear the avalanche, uncaring
like everyone else
on the killer mountain called Facebook:

“Drunken assholes pulling out knifes
and smashing poolstix over echothers
heads finally drove me to walk out on
my job today. This sux but im fucking fed up!”

I didn’t get off the mountain to help
it’s just been too long
the climb was too hard
I lost too much climbing
counting the days weeks months
without talking to her
a year
and I just don’t care anymore
her voice too far away in time.

And all the porters perished.