Sterquilinium

The last breath warmed

2011-08-19T23:25:00.004-04:00

We waited with him all the night
She in her blanket
Me in my coat and boots
Like the watchers of the tower
Thinking that sometime that night
The sappers mines would be sprung
And we would tumble among the falling stones
Crushed and bruised among the ruins
And so we did not sleep
And at dawn, breathing still came

She rose to boil water for my tea
And I looked at the profile of her face
Long the shadow of her eyes
"It was the doctor" I said
"Bad enough that he killed him
but he made us all poor in the bargain."
But she said nothing though her lips
sang silently psalms as tired as her face.

"What should I care for all of that."
I said. "It is not even a single spark."
As the sun rose over the hill light burst in.
The gray room became a cold furnace of color.

Just then the dying man coughed,
his blue eyes opened
Every whisker of his beard stood out
around his dry gray lips.

She dropped the kettle and fell down at his side.
I remained standing in terror
Never had I seen...
"He," the lips said. "He."
The eyes stared down the long nose
And met mine.

We three silently exchanged accusations.
And I wished him dead.
But the eyes kept staring
long after the last breath ended.

---

Thus it is I conclude my contributions to the sterquilinium with this final inspection of mortality. I think it, perhaps, my best as it contains all my thoughts on the matter.

Quod Erat Demonstratum

Late Night - An Experimental Poem

2011-07-24T03:15:00.003-04:00

No dreams this night:
The silver portent - cold, bright
Hides behind her curtain
-Sophia-
Looks down
Sees my lit window
and searches somewhere else
for another soul
to give her dreams to.

No dreams tonight:
The moral question - wrong, right
Echos around the chamber
-Raphael-
Bends down
Fingers his gold trumpet
but considers another time
for another soul
to give his message to.

The earth is uprooted
And the cauldron is empty.

Linus

2011-05-24T23:39:00.001-04:00

The sun rises over the hills
her luminescence shattered into beams
by the towers and blocks of a
World, in its middle age,
with sins not excusable by sincerity,
but planned and scheduled like virtues.

Feeling has returned to my limbs
that had been numbed by the cold bed
of stones with the cold air
The old sweet stench inside the jail
becomes new and bitter in the sunlight
My jailer's breath dampens
all the teeth under his crushed eye are gone
he is here because he can not fight only swear
and he knows the captain

Lead me than, my friend, to the torture
To the place of martyrdom
Take me to the place of preparation
Where you will mock my old flesh with a shield and spear
And hang a bronze breast plate from my shoulders

I have comforted the others throughout the night
while we heard you and the captain laughing
at dice and women but you did not have your way
for your lust is hollow like your eyeless socket

While the bright sunlight burns the morning frost
the old women stir the embers and bow three times
boys throw stones at us from the alley
and laugh as they run away
You drag your feet at this duty
which brings you neither satisfaction nor discomfort
I shall only be remembered by you as an old man who
went to his death like a stupid beast
in blank confusion
and you shall spend today's wage
the total sum of all that I am to you
on sour wine and stale bread

And I shall pray for you

Reflections on the Death of Bin Laden

2011-05-02T21:10:00.002-04:00

Watching the reactions of people to the death of Osama Bin Laden has been fascinating. From the aftermath of the initial report, while the ABC newsmen waited for the President, and filled up the empty time with queer speculations, the element of politics was present. Held at bay for a moment while the newsmen felt a passing twinge of shame ("it's inappropriate right now to talk of politics, but one must imagine that this will give the President a much needed political boost").

The jubilation and triumphalism followed - a kumbaya moment in which the glory of accomplishment outweighed all. But this was ephemeral, and over before it begun, quickly followed by crowds in the street chanting "USA USA USA".

And before the dust could settle on the neo-jingoism, a wave of contrition struck, with Martin Luther King cited again and again on Facebook, contemporaneous with a certain left-wing glee that the killing of Osama by Obama was spit in the face of George Bush.

Among the more idiotic reactions was that of Michael Savage, who gave Obama credit for offing Osama, but then questioned the timing. Savage even suggested that Obama timed the killing of Osama so that it would take the Royal Wedding off of the front page (Obama supposedly feeling snubbed for the lack of an invitation, and the Brits supposedly snubbing him because he sent a bust of Winston Churchill back with a return to sender note).

Where it leads tomorrow, I cannot predict. Probably into an endless discussion of the political ramifications, vote projections, political capital, and the feelings of the American Street.

But here's what I know:

Osama Bin Laden had fallen into evil. The world of man is better off without him. But, while the loss of his life is no cause for sorrow, we should (those of us who are Christians) still mourn the loss of his immortal soul - which in all likelihood, is lost forever in the gravity of the utter rejection of God. Where there is life, there is hope, no matter how thin, for repentance, conversion, contrition and purpose of amendment.

Those who killed Bin Laden (the CIA and Navy SEALs et al who participated in the mission) were acting in the just defense of both innocence and civilization. Their heroism is above reproach. You and I owe our lives and freedom to men and women such as these.

As for Obama, May 1, 2011 was the day that Barack Obama became an American President. Now, he has been for some time, the President of the United States, in that he was duly elected, and held the office and powers of that position. But prior to May 1, Obama was, like Jimmy Carter before him, an aberration, a misfit. Wielding the power, but both unsuited and unaccustomed to what that meant. He was President of a Party. Earlier that evening, at the White House Correspondents dinner, Obama was nothing more than the Comedian-in-Chief. Playing to that modern liberal doctrine that places a punchline ahead of policy. The world-view that places Jon Stewart at the pinnacle of politics. In essence, up to May 1, even through the assault on Bin Laden, Obama was so much like Jimmy Carter that only the failure of the helicopters to crash separated the two men. Much will be made of Obama's "gutsy" decision to send in the troops rather than to, ala Bill Clinton, just fire off some missiles. But Carter, too, chose to send fighting men on a daring mission into enemy territory. Had the helicopters all crashed, had the mission been a failure...?

Even in the wake of the success of the mission, Obama could have remained Carter. A buffoon whose hamfisted handling of the economy, whose twisted idealism, and whose ineffectual grandstanding led America deeper into a morass forged in the socialist policies of his predecessors. But that all changed with Obama's speech to the nation. Rather than cite Bush's failures in Tora Bora, rather than repeat his puerile pandering in the Cairo speech; rather than issue a tepid apology, Obama for the first time raised the flag of American Exceptionalism. Obama recognized that there was something different about America. He cited our Values, our Character, our Resolve, whether these things still exist or not. From the childish anti-colonialism that typified his foreign policy before, Obama changed course, placing himself at the head of the columns, and for the first time publicly, was unashamed to be an American.

Now, I cannot predict where Obama will go from here. In all likelihood, he will return to form, bowing to foreign Powers, descending into partisan wrangling and petty pandering. But at the moment of his speech, he joined the ranks of American Presidents - a leader of OUR nation, a champion for the good that is in US; not a condemnation and reproach. No matter where he goes from here, he has definitively joined the club. He has been branded with having both perceived and acted upon the most basic and inherent duty of his office: that of the Defender.

And, of course, in his speech to the nation, Obama tried to separate the actions taken against Bin Laden from actions taken against Islam. And, he recognized in his speech that George Bush did the same. Islam, he said, is a religion of peace and Bin Laden cannot be laid at its feet.

He had to say this. As did Bush. Perhaps Obama believes this, having much more experience than Bush in the nature of Islam. But, again, he HAD to say this. Could any President, Obama, or Bush, stand before the world and accuse Islam of being a religion of blood & destruction? What end would that serve?

But Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is to peace what Christopher Hitchens is to sobriety. That is, Islam and peace are occasional but uncomfortable bedfellows. But, then, Christianity is neither a religion of peace. Oh, certainly, we are lulled into picturing the sandal-wearing, hippie-Christ dispensing platitudes, but we forget that Christ said "I come not to bring peace, but a sword," and promised to set father against son, and brother against brother. The reality is that secularism, the religion of both Bush and Obama, desperately wants the religions of Abraham, to ultimately reach a passive syncretism that leaves faith as a tepid coloration that does not interfere with the ultimate secular goals of power.

But Islam, like Christianity, like Judaism, and like Secularism itself, cannot be a religion of peace. Islam lays claim to the Truth. A Truth that is incompatible with the Truth followed by Christianity. Truths that are mutually exclusive. Certainly, Obama, Bush, and the secularists like them have been lulled into quiescence in the face of Christianity in which common Christians barter their birthrights in the marketplace of Mammon. But the innate submission of western Christians to the enlightenment only has a weak analog within Islam. Certainly, the muslims of the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan are lusty, ignorant savages, but they are more human than you and I, with our sterilized, plastic existences. I do not for a moment cede Islam Truth. But I respect that muslims have, more than Christians, resisted the secular goal of reducing humanity to efficient cogs in a materialist machine.

Like the crusaders, admiring the Saracens for their vigor and devotion (if not for their reputed civilization and tolerance - a 19th century invention by self-despising westerners), we must recognize that, as St. Augustine opined, the City of Man and the City of God are incompatible, and that more separates the pious from the efficient than separates the Christian from the muslim. We can strive for the just ordering of society, but the Christian can never be at home in this world. This is the world of man. To be at peace in this world is to bare one's throat to that very beast that can destroy the body but cannot touch the soul. In that relatively endless struggle, the Christian must deplore the death of Osama Bin Laden, adore the devotion of the soldiers who sacrifice all for the safety of their countrymen, admire the men who, like Obama, shoulder the burden of protecting the sheepfold, and cling stubbornly to their faith, remembering the promise that the gates of Hell shall never prevail against us.

Carrot World

2011-03-24T23:06:00.002-04:00

Carrot World,

Soundlessly swaying, slow slow steps,
one after another, make the carrot swing
Swing, swing, count the seconds
Plodding, plodding, up the long road

Lead us, fool, we follow
the orange stick at the end of the rope.
I have long lashes and watery eyes
but my eyes can not see what lies straight ahead.

Too slow, feel the sting
Senseless Braying,
A quicker step
Brings the carrot closer

Not sweet the tasteless reward
Ever promised and never given
Taste instead the sweet hay
Drink instead the cool water

What lies ahead I cannot see
Nor do I really care
It is ever the same in
the carrot world.

A short play in the style of Yeats (2)

2011-01-02T00:37:00.005-05:00

Lady: Aye and the cherries have pebbles and when those pebbles are planted grow in Irish ground and become English trees.
Old Man: Says ye that now. I could not agree more. Everything that stands may be commanded
Lady: And ye in the woods with the boy's axe?
Old Man: I reckon I plan to be planted to, and then I be as English as any other dead man.
Lady: He'll not dig your grave with his axe.
Old Man: There's some that make two grave's with an axe, but I am not such a man.
Boy: And I am not such a one neither!
Lady: No you're a good child and never made a mother weep.
Boy: It would have been hard since I have not a mother.
Lady: Not so, all men even him who had no earthly father have a mother. But it was her who made your eyes water... (laying her hand on his shoulder)
Boy: Not so! (striking her hand)
Lady: What's this?
Old Man: Aye, the boy knows his case and does not want pity. He is ready to learn his lot. Come along with me.
Boy: (Shaken) Only if the lady commands.
Lady: Do as ye like.
Old Man: Come along.
Boy: What am I to do?
Old Man: Come along.
Lady: You know where your home is, but I have seen you pawing the earth and see now your inclinations (touching her own stricken hand).
Boy:(hesitantly) ma'am. I am sorry.
Lady: Away with ye then, ye seem to wish it. Take your axe and follow the old man. You all follow the same road, tarrying here and there for a while. And some never rise but sleep.

A short play in the style of Yeats (1)

2010-12-30T23:44:00.003-05:00

Scene: A cottage as you might find in any county, far from the sea. A road, a stone wall behind which are hills webbed with stone walls and dotted with cottages. AGainst the stone wall lies various farming implements, picks, shovels, etc. A young boy is using a hoe in the garden.

A man comes on stage. He is old but walks with long strides.

Old Man: Go grab your axe, boy and come with me!
Boy: Where are we going?
Old Man: To the forest that lies underneath the stone house.

A window in the cottage opens up

Lady: Boy! Who is that calling?
Boy: It is the old man.
Lady: Old man! Why are you waking the dead?
Old Man: It is not I who wake the dead but you who do not let them sleep.
Lady: Phaw.
Old Man: Now grab your axe.
Lady: Boy! Keep your hands to the hoe and your eyes to the praties.
Old Man: She will be telling you that boy until you can't see moon or sun even if you did look for them.
Lady: Shut your gab, if we have words it will be nose to nose and eye to eye.
Old Man: Fist to fist suits me better.
Lady: Have you no respect?
Old Man: Aye ma'am. I have respect for the young one here and his axe.
Lady: I am coming out and we'll see whose boot is sharper.

[Window shuts]

Old Man: Listen here boy, get your axe and come away now. We'll have so many words you will eat no dinner tonight 'less you come right now.
Boy: I must not upset the lady.
Old Man: What does she ever do for you?
Boy: She gives me praties.
Old Man: It's you that give them to her you young fool.
Boy: But it's her garden.
Old Man: Does she plant it? Does she turn it? Does she pull all the brown stones out and make herself a wall?
Boy: No, she but she boils the cabbage in her pot and sweeps the table and mends my socks.
Old Man: You could do all that for yourself. Now come away.

Lady: What is this? Why are you stealing my boy? Are your ears long now and your coat green?
Old Man: I ain't stealing nothing but what can't be stolen 'cause it can't be owned.
Lady: Boy, is he talking of the sweet wild cherries?
Old Man: Aye, that I am talking of the cherries is certain.
Lady: Go inside boy and you can eat now.
Old Man: Go on in and eat the fruit of your labor boy, but first listen to what I will say after she has it out.
Lady: Well enough for him to hear.
Old Man: Aye well enough.
Lady: Let him hear of this work he will do with the axe.
Old Man: He will make a clearing in the wood beneath the stone house.
Lady: Near the creek?
Old Man: Aye, where the cherries grow and where there are harts.
Lady: And build you a hut?
Old Man: Of dry wood and he can live there too.
Lady: Until the Lord of the Stone House comes back.
Old Man: There is no more Lord there. He himself is stone and wood now.
Lady: I will not hear of it.
Old Man: Boy, I am an old man, and I know it is true. There is no lord in that stone house but a lord in england who says that is tenant land. But there are no tenants, the last one died and I know he was so poor that he never paid and he never owned and yet he had his hut.
Lady: You tell me you old fool what pebble in Ireland is not loaned back to us? What silver we have that is not from the English and goes back to London?
Old Man: Aye, the Irish Pebbles are English and rightly so. The english may have them all for all I care of them. But there is no beast in Ireland save those on the pinion that is not Irish. And no Irish cherry in the mouth of a lark is the property of the man in a bowler hat.

Before

2010-07-17T23:36:00.002-04:00

Before

Kiss my lips while they are still warm
And the breath you gave me
Still dwells in my breast
Before the last sigh
While I still have time.
Before.

Who named me such a name,
To bear before the world,
A constant accusation,
Of all the pagan gods?
To remember for all,
That our days are counted,
And every sin is weighed.

Open my lips, so that I may confess
Through suffering and pain,
But before torment.

The empty

2009-10-12T22:58:00.003-04:00

Don't you know he can fly?

Willow, willow, wailing
We will wisp about the baby
With a nonny-nonny-nonny
And a nonny-nonny-noo

With a nonny-nonny-nonny
And a wisp-o-will-o wailing
Wisp-o-wispy whisper, whisper
Willy-Chilly-whispy-whisper

A nonny-nonny

Empty all about the shadow
Nothing about, nothing about
Steady, steady, hand is shaking
Breathless giggles, giggles quaking
Laughing, smirking.

Colder lips, lips upon my cold lips,
Breath taking, breath stealing,
Dull dead air lifeless air
Stirless, black, and silent air:
Sharp as flint, hard as stone,
Shiny and black against the dull, dull, shadow

Eyes winking, eyes twinkling,
Starry, splintery, glintery,
Nonny, nonny, whisteley
Prickly, prickly, bristeley

A sudden Crack

A snap, a snap, a mighty snap!
A snap a snap, it made me clap!
Twig, twig, dance a jig!
Dance a jig, with mister pig!

Worse o worse to think of things,
Things with featherless, leathery wings,
Wings that beat upon that air,
Shrunken, twisted, clawed or fisted.

Nonny-nonny, will-o-whispery
Empty, O God it's so empty!
Nothing at all about it,
Nothing there, there's nothing there,

Empty-hempty-shmempty
So giggly, so wiggly-jiggly
All about, so empity-jempity
Giggaly, wiggaly, let's all be giggaly

What is that sound
In the distance
That dull thudding?

To the up-and-coming...

2009-08-09T11:53:00.000-04:00

"To know the soul of another, one must know the soul that resides within. To come to know that soul, one must seek to know God, and in so doing come to know the soul-source of humanity itself."

if and when

2009-07-13T13:36:00.002-04:00

Young man says:
I want folks to treat me with respect,
I want folks to know what I got inside,
know that what I got can't be bought,
and I ain't sellin'

Young man says:
People are going to look at me and they gonna say:
Look where he's been!
Look what he's done!
Look who that fella knows!

Young man says:
Ain't no place gonna kick me out,
My skin be black as coal,
and people still gonna let me in,
If somethin' ain't right,
I'm gonna tell 'em,
and they're gonna listen.

Young man says:
What's nasty is nasty,
Ain't no use lyin' to people to make them feel good.
I know what's right and I know what ain't,
People are gonna listen.

Young man says:
The world is on fire,
It's burnin' down and goin' to hell,
And if I go with it, I don't care,
because I did what I wanted.

Young man says:
If and when I die,
I'm gonna die knowin'
I didn't take nothin'
That I didn't want.

Old man says:
Let me breathe...
... one more time ...
... without no more pain ...
... breathe ...
... one more time ...

There once was...

2009-04-11T23:19:00.002-04:00

There once was a quaggle of bearstrich (a peculiar creature, it bore a striking resemblance to a bear, with a bear's head, and four bear claws, but the body and tail feathers of an Osterich).

Like the Osterich, the creature ran on its back two legs, which were quite spindly for a bear, but all it had to support were these two massive (think "Popeye") bear arms and an unusual, large and stinky, bear's head.

This quaggle (about a half-a-quag more than a meeka and three-and-a-half times less than a terugala) of bearstrichs would spend the entire day standing on these two, spindly hind legs of a bear and drink manhattans in the blazing heat of the Death Valley sun (for they lived here to avoid the interruption of men).

They would drink and discuss politics.

Like Englishmen, they did this, all-the-while, in the heat of the sun.

Bearstrichs loved the sun.

And manhattans.

It was most peculiar, for they never became intoxicated.

Their speech never slurred.

All day, they would drink and tarry, drink and tarry, drink, and tarry.

They tarry about the situation in Miler's Bluff, (for everyone knows those sofu (a Bearstrich expletive) Miler's are a bunch of corrupt ninny-poos), or about some sort of nothing that was usually going on in Pigpoodle holler.

The pigpoodles HATED bearstrichs, and the bearstrichs didn't care much for the pigpoodles either.

It all went back to the great war that transpired one half terugayar before the great migration to the Easterlunds.

A couple of the

Sparkplug Soul

2009-01-09T10:57:00.002-05:00

Ok, so "Motorhead" does not really have a song entitled "Sparkplug Soul"; they should have. It fits them.

If they did, I think it would go something like this;

"I wish I had a sparkplug soul,
to go along with my rocker-armed mind.

I wish I had a sparkplug soul,
to lay down some tread on some weary bones.

With a sparkplug soul,
I'd fire every piston.

I'd slam them into my rocker-armed mind.

Electric blast feeling the gaseous sqeeze
in my spark-chamber brain.

With my sparkplug soul,
synapse they fire,
and my crankshaft legs,
they fly, baby, they fly.

Oh how I loves my sparkplug soul.

Sizzle spark.

Sizzle spark.

Sizzle spark.

Ram it home, baby.

Fire me up another spark.

My sparkplug soul.

Drunken Reverie on the loss of a true, blue, friend

2008-10-15T23:53:00.003-04:00

My hat is off, to you, my pal.

Long days, and drunken nights...together we spent!

What a ride it was, this "l'enfant terribleee".

She was a great, old gal, a grand dame, in deed!

And what a grand ol' flag above her did once waive (and now, no men, together, can save).

But now, she is daid...and all that we have before us, and before us is mourn, mourn, mourn.

For the life of a gal, who was once...so grand ! God love her soul.

God, love her soul !

A Grande Dame was she (Vespuci will vouch). A Grande Dame, a grand gal, and the

love

of the South.

Young scouts they did pledge, an honor so deep.

But now, she is gone, all piled up in a heap.

Oh now, she is gone, and what have we left? A memory of her, and a life, now bereft.

But here's the grand deal (and a grand deal 'tis indeed)...

A man once commented to me, as I sat in the East, that "our thang" was on wane, that "she", like her, was dying, slow death.

And to him I did reply from my seat way on high "if she lives in one heart, she lives without 'part' ".

And so it must go; "virtus junxit mors, non separabit" !

Grand dreams, grand schemes (and even grandier idears) - they too, they will live, if only they live in one heart (that beats true. That, beats true).

And so I must go, and so I must do, as those who before me, brave bastards knew too.

True dinkem, true dinkem, true dinkem 'til dee.

So drink 'til you drop, mon frere and mon ace!

Together we live, if (in secret) our hearts - they do keep pace, keep pace, keep pace - until end of long race...

And onward, and upward, together we will trudge, and an eagle one day, us both, she will judge.

From this pit we will fly, and rise from crevace, and above lousey fray, cherub raptors we will boss.

And order she will come, to a chaos that is high, and at talon-swords that we weild, she-devils they will die!

We will rip, we will tear, ripping flesh until bone - she will bear.

Uncovering truth from she-devil's dark, dank, deep lair.

And forsooth, God will reign, and we upon knee, upon knee we shall bear - a burden so light, hard burden, but no care.

Insomnia

2008-09-25T01:23:00.003-04:00

At night my mind devolves upon
a rising tide of pain
that quells the echoes of God's voice
and spreads the mortal stain

And sleepless, facing fears unknown
to the clarity of day
One paranoia climbs another;
thoughts surmount and fray

How to subdue an unchecked mind
put down this madding fission?
Tame this beast of consciousness
and regain sober vision?

Till gears are stripped and bearings lock
and shafts both burn and freeze
Abed I'll lay tormented just
a madman at his ease

Click, click, click

2008-09-13T20:29:00.001-04:00

http://mbshepherd.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/click-click-click/

One from our sister site

2008-08-08T22:47:00.000-04:00

http://mbshepherd.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/and-only-god-prevails/

Twightlight Fell on Forest Hill

2008-08-08T21:29:00.003-04:00

An old man enslaved. Chained, to his will. He champed the cigar, and considered the till.

He chewed that old stogy, and his mind melded in a falling, twilight sky.

An unbelievable shade of blue it was; and it is true, there can be no doubt, absolute. He'd never seen nothin' like it, in all his years beneath them mountains he always held, so dear and close to his still beating (thank God), heart.

It was such a pale blue. It mimicked his eyes, and a tear almost came, but then came to subside.

Fireflies flickered against this pale, beaten sky, and his lantern, it shimmered, in rhythm to an oncoming, dark sky.

He knew there'd be stars, later that night, and they too would flicker, and rule the dark sky. They surely would live longer than these seasonal flies, but somehow they were kin, and their existence...in line?

But in that moment between, when it's neither darkness or light, the old man took repose, and considered his plight.

He was abandoning, in sort, but grasping in another. While his life had been through changes, he'd never quite given up - even through changes there was not a quitting, but only a shifting; like a chain on a sprocket to a tearing, new high.

This change was no doubt of monumental import; but somehow he took refuge in knowing the sort.

On Forest Hill he did love, he built and he toiled. He had his own place, and he sewed fertile soil.

One thing was for certain in his dubious mind; here he would live, and here he would die.

This circle of life, what a grand scheme it is...it yields perfect habit, of that, there can be no pretense.

So the old man did puff another deep drag, and ponder his existence in this fairytale wag.

What a beautiful life it is, against this deep, blue-green hue; another day just shy of heaven on this forested hill, this shelter from life's cruel skew, with an explosively simple, and monumentally incredulous, serene, sweet view!

He gasped one last evening gasp as his soul's eyes did peer, upon the heart of the Lord in a splendor he so deeply revered.

And with that, he turned in, awaiting the fray, for the changes that come in yet another, new day.

The Chattering Tale

2008-07-31T01:27:00.006-04:00

This is the tale of a cutty-sark sail,
of a winch's lip
and a Dragon's tail.

Of Dragon Beast' foal
running down Dragon Beast' spine
with sprocketed chain
chattering metered time.

Humming in unison
they soar, head to tail
the beast clad in iron,
they run as on rail.

"And what is there mission,"
quips curious, young lad
"for they run and they run,
turn 'round back up, it's sad!"

Answered, old man:
"The mighty Mother, Dragon Beast,
she calls out her lads,
she sends them a' scurry
for the dreams that she'd had...

From points farther East,
her breath doth return
as mist from the sea,
cooling belly fires that burn.

And her children have riders,
like Wraiths, they hold on
through the spine's knotty curves,
Man, maiden and sons.

Young girls they line up,
for rides on the beasts,
their hair like the pony,
leather clad for the feast.

Mortal food's not their object,
on this ride through curved hell.
To be seen by the subjects
those Demons 'neath scales.

'Tis a long ride down'
cries bloggers from sides,
"and over edge you will tumble
for the Demon's dark prize".

But onward and onward they travel
they travel, they do
their purpose, you ask?
like their piston's, redeux.

They clamor and clank
they hum, and they purr
but kitty's not timid
wire rifled, her fur.

"But where will they end up,"
questioned young son
"since their mission like piston
see-saws backwards and yon?"

"Ah, their's is no mission,
on that you can bet
to ride Dragon's tail
is all they have left."

"But what of the wraiths
holding on to their backs?"

"Ah, they will keep going
long as God sets their tracks".

And the winds blew the fog
from far out at sea
the sails like chains chatter
a Pirate's ship carries "she".

The winch, she is coming,
like a whore on a breeze
she comes to take mountain,
Dragon's lair at it's knee.

And what will be left of stout spine
and it's brood?

The foals, they will gallop
and wraiths run for good.

And Dragon, she'll stay
and lick at her wounds,
until another day
engineer's and their children
and eggs hatch new brood.

And so they will run
and race through those curves
Until winch and ship come take them
and send souls beyond Earth.

-Sir S.E. Visum, esq.
on being brought back to life

Agape

2008-06-09T09:24:00.002-04:00

No one loves God as Jesus.
And for Christ, none could love Him as God.
From the wilderness we cry "Jesu, Jesu, Jesu",
and from home, only, "My Dearest Dear Lord".
But alas, we must all and always merely, pitifully and meagerly try, try, try.

For grace, it is, good enough?

For the Dashing Racontour of Haberdashery

2008-05-13T22:57:00.001-04:00

The Spinning Song

2008-05-10T10:46:00.004-04:00

It's stuck in my head, really.

Has been, all my life.

A catchy ditty, it's about spinning.

Not auguring, or falling out of the sky in a tail-spin; not political either - it's plain, old-fashioned spinning, on a spinning wheel.

No, not like the song from the 60's (let the spinnin' wheel spin) - yarn (and not "talking a yarn" either, actual, bona fide yarn (of the kind used to make afghans, and funky capes that old women and hippies wear).

It's actually a song, composition, really. Played on the piano. It's a catchy tune.

But, isn't that the way of spin. Spin is contagious...it sticks with you.

It binds, and it magically takes small fibers and through some mystical quirk of nature it forms them into this structure that does not unravel but yet clings in a manner that can not be fully explained (or at least, not to satisfaction - why does it not simply unwind?).

How is it that this song, this piece, this composition is so like the yarn it tries, through cadence and tonality, through rhythm and vibe, to mimic?

Da, da, da, da, da, da...da DA.

Over and over and bloody over, clickety-clack, just like that damned wheel...spinning, pumping with their feet, spinning, spinning, spinning.

It's mind numbing, really.

Like the political quacks and hacks...always spinning.

I have to ask, though; with the yarn, it binds and makes something useful. Something we can wear, or keep our bodies warm in the Winter (if we are old women or hippies - although I did once see a bikini made from afghan - quite fetching until it got wet at which point it looked as though she had cocker spaniel puppies attached to all her nasty bits. Wet and nasty cocker spaniel pups. Oooo, I just keep getting a deeper state of funkiness).

What then is accomplished by the political variety of spin? Is there a double-helix array formed from the spin that binds into this form that covers our bodies not unlike the array that forms the skin that contains and manifests our bones, our brains, and even, to extent, our souls?

I think it more like the airplane, beginning its descent in a tailspin, and then like the auger binding itself into the muck of the earth. Rather than forming something of the earth, it digs into its mire.

Ironic that political spin would be of that sense of the word, you know, twisting into the dirt seeking its origin in the depths of the planet - in the hell from which it was formed rather than providing anything of noble use to man.

Oh well; I do have to get my heart right. It is, after all, an election year and it is, frankly, time to talk turkey.

Clickety, clickety....clack.

Cool Breeze

2008-05-08T22:51:00.004-04:00

A cool wind blew through town today.

It was odd for the breeze to be cool this time of year.

Oh granted, I suppose, it could still be considered early Spring (if not late, early), but still, peculiar.

Whiley wondered, what would be the outcome of it all?

With the townsfolk in such uproar, maybe this cool snap would cool the hot heads as well.

They are pretty perked up over this one. Goes deep too...down in the roots.

They're worked up over who they are...over where they come from, and more, where the outsiders are from. There can be no doubt, the town was changin', and not necessarily for the better.

Lot's of outsiders blowin' in, like the cool breeze.

The breeze is temporary, but these outsiders, seems like they're gonna stay.

Whiley wasn't sure he wanted to go back to town. Mamma brought him some chicory coffee, and they sat on the front porch swing, watching the humming birds on the tiger lily's and commentin' on the blue birds and purple martins.

Looked like a good year for them. Nothing ever changes with them.

Happy birds, they were.

Approaching the Rationalist's Idiom

2008-04-13T10:57:00.002-04:00

So, because you only have a hammer, and not a screwdriver, you advance the argument that nails are naturally preferable to screws.

A Chat with Ribeaux

2008-04-02T19:17:00.004-04:00

Ribeaux: Hello. Can you hear me? Is anyone here? Anyone at all?
Kraekun: Yes, Ribeaux, I am here. It is I, Kraekun!
Ribeaux: Hello, Kraekun.
Kraekun: Hello.
Ribeaux: Tell me, have you the time?
Kraekun: The time for what? For me, there is always time.
Ribeaux: For a chat, or a verse, or a well-turned phrase.
Kraekun: Ah...I may need the time, for all that.
Ribeaux: Well, you see, my time, it seems so...limited. I hurry here and scurry there, always after some new pursuit...always, always, always it seems, perpetually "on time", and yet, always in a hurry and never for the things I want.
Kraekun: Well, what is it that you seek? Money, fame? Perhaps a new set of threads?
Ribeaux: No, not in the least. I want for nothing. However, wouldn't it be nice to simply take a very long shower...I mean, truly long. Stay in there for days. Wouldn't that be nice?
Kraekun: Well, I would think one would become rather "crinkled" in that, wouldn't you?
Ribeaux: Oh, I should think rather shriveled...but, would it not be so very cool if you were not. Wrinkled that is.
Kraekun: Well, I suppose. Tell me, this isolation and protracted cleansing, what effect do you suppose it would have on your countenance? Do you suppose it would flatter your soul?
Ribeaux: Well, if we use the physical as example, I suppose the heated water will ultimately have a drying effect on the body...sort of robbing it of its natural emollients. I wonder if it would do the same to the mind and conscience?
Kraekun: Well, if one had a conscience, then I suppose it just might have *some* effect...I wonder what form a dry soul would take?
Ribeaux: With that much cleansing, I would think it would be most "squeeky" - very clean, I suppose.
Kraekun: Yes, but three days! God forbid. The skin might all slough off...then where would you be? A walking set of musculature. Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud!
Ribeaux: Oh, I don't know about that.
Kraekun: What ever do you mean?
Ribeaux: Well, in my case, he might be a bit embarrassed.
Kraekun: Oh?
Ribeaux: Well, let's just say that my soul is a bit "healthy".
Kraekun: Ah. Well, there is much to be said for the glutenous soul! Why, think of all the great men who were "portly", deep down. Why I'd venture to say that most men are of a portly sort, when you peel back the flesh and peer into the soul. What man doesn't wish to feast!
Ribeaux: Yes, but feast on what?
Kraekun: Well, in matters of the soul, I would think righteousness.
Ribeaux: Ah, and there is the rub.
Kraekun: Hmmm?
Ribeaux: Well, you see, isn't it really definitional?
Kraekun: Righteousness?
Ribeaux: Well, what is right, really.
Kraekun: I don't follow you?
Ribeaux: Well, given a choice between two circumstances...which is the "right" choice?
Kraekun: Well, that depends on the circumstances, don't you think?
Ribeaux: Not really. I mean, regardless of circumstance, one choice will be right, and therefore righteous, and the other...not.
Kraekun: I suppose...
Ribeaux: No supposition...it is black and white...right is right.
Kraekun: Well, let's break it down with an example.
Ribeaux: Absolutely. You have two guys.
Kraekun: Yes, in a chat room.
Ribeaux: OK. Let's say they are discussing...oh I don't know...sports!
Kraekun: Sounds reasonable.
Ribeaux: Baseball.
Kraekun: You bet!
Ribeaux: Hardy harr. Well, let's just say that one proposes that the ball was safe at home.
Kraekun: And the other, of course, disagrees.
Ribeaux: Precisely. Now one is right, and the other, wrong. Which is it.
Kraekun: The one who sides with the ump.
Ribeaux: No, no, no. It was a judgment call. Too close, and yet too far for most. Some said the umpire needed glasses, while the opposing team was all for his 20-20 vision.
Kraekun: But the ump is sanctified. He is a professional...accustomed to making judgment calls. It is what he does for a living, for God sakes. It's what he does.
Ribeaux: But there can only be one right and one wrong. So who is it.
Kraekun: The umpire. He's living it. He dies by it. He'll be fired if he makes too many wrong calls.
Ribeaux: So, you see, he can make a wrong call.
Kraekun: He's only human.
Ribeaux: And yet, ain't we all?
Kraekun: Well, there is Clapton.
Ribeaux: He's a ruddy guitarist. What does he know about baseball.
Kraekun: I bet he could sing a song about it.
Ribeaux: The fact is, somebody has to be right, and somebody wrong. Blues singers are all wrong.
Kraekun: Oh, now. Why'd you have to go and pick on blues singers. They are soulful, you know.
Ribeaux: So full of what?
Kraekun: They are full of soul.
Ribeaux: So was my Grandma's catfish pie, but I got news for ya...no one ever wanted to eat it twice.
Kraekun: Indigestion?
Ribeaux: Right down to to your very soul.
Kraekun: Well, you'll have that.
Ribeaux: Yeah, her pie was just wrong. Kinda like that nursery rhyme...four and twenty blackbirds...who ever heard of that?
Kraekun: Yeah, blackbird pie can't be very good...I've never had catfish pie, but now I think about it, it doesn't sound too appetizing.
Ribeaux: Damn full of bones. Tasted like the bottom of the lake.
Kraekun: Yikes. You know that ain't good.
Ribeaux: Nope. It was just wrong.
Kraekun: Sounds it.
Ribeaux: Well, listen, I gotta go. Try and ponder on that right and righteous thing, would ya? You might try applying it tomorrow.
Kraekun: Might make me sick. Like your Grandmother's pie. If I were to act righteous, people might think I was up to something.
Ribeaux: Something fishy.
Kraekun: Yeah. I'll try and live it and not "act" it. Goodnight Ribeaux.
Ribeaux: Sounds like a plan. Good night Kraekun.

A high field

2008-03-27T13:36:00.004-04:00

There is the field at the top of the mountain,
Where knee high grass is woven in patterns by the wind,
and Moved aside but not broken by the passage,
of Wild animals, children, and angels.

It is not a place of prideful self-congratulation,
nor a place for healthy disraction,
It is not a gateway to another kingdom,
nor a secret garden to keep in silence.

The sky there is hardly less distant,
And no new monument needs to be made,
To boast of man's indomitable spirit,
As evidenced by the remoteness of that place.

Yet, if I were an Irishman I would call it enchanted.
They did not look far for the fairy realms,
The dancing and singing of little people,
May come from the other side of a hedgerow.

And between the folds of the ridges below,
The dark, heavy trees fade away among the clouds,
What we have left is for the moment forgotten,
And all that we are is all that we brought.

It is a high field,
A place to be grateful.

PM 17: Sleep

2008-03-27T00:43:00.003-04:00

Ierod called to Check, and the two together, lifted my head and trunk and placed me into a sitting position.

"Feeling great?" Check said, gruffly. I was silent. "You got great scores. Great things ahead for you. Its quantifiable!"

I turned to face Ierod. He was smiling. Then I looked at Pamille. She seemed less strange to me. She seemed, not grotesque and freakish, but normal and almost natural. Her expression, before an expressionless mask, now clearly bore the signs of a nervous guilt. The weight that had been such a burden, though sensible, was not unbearable any longer. My stomach, which had been twisted in knots, now seemed steady.

"I'm thirsty."

"Tired too, no doubt." Ierod added. " Training isn't rest." I was tired. "And, it's not really over anyway. It will take a few shifts and sleep will help out."

I was tired, but I was also determined not to show any weakness anymore. These people who had seized control of my life, must be resisted if I was to preserve it.

When Ierod, stepped over to Check and pulled him aside as if to say something in private. I swung my legs over the side of the table. I dropped down and walked over to them as assertively as I could. Confidence was welling up within me from some unknown source.

"Can we go back to the canteen?"

Ieroed and Check looked at me in some surprise.

"Sure, hold on. Pamille needs to discharge you. Would you please?"

"Already done." She said.

Ierod's eyes lit up. "Fantastic! Come on. Let's go!" He gestured for Check to follow him, but the troll shook his head.

"I have to put together a team. Pamille and I need to look at the current allocations and whose overloaded. Shortage of people. Everyone is lazy. No one wants to work anymore. Especially those n-gen goons. Rotten, squeamish, miserable lot."

"We'll continue our discussion later. Come with me... Peter right?" I nodded. "You probably remember the way. " I followed him out the door steadily, this time paying more attention.

"How long was it?"

"The training?"

"Yes."

"You mean how much time did it take?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. Maybe a little over a half shift. I don't follow timers. I just run around and when I get tired I find some hole to lie down in and sleep until I wake up and start running around again. You're probably a little confused by all this. But you've had plenty of sleep, plenty of rest. You'll find you don't need so much. Well except to let those chips finish doing whatever they do up there.

"You'll find that the problem really is staying clean and hydrated. Everything is always so dry, and the n-gen don't like the way you'll smell when you get dirty. Nin-folk don't care really. They hate us whatever we smell like. All except the 'intellectual' disenfranchised type like Pamille. But even she doesn't really like us.

"Your suit and the food will take care of a good part of the smell. If you feel the need to defecate or urinate, find a hole like one of those," he pointed to a narrow door, hardly larger than a locker. It was marked by a red circle. "It shouldn't happen too often. But perhaps this is all coming to you. I don't what they teach you in training now. It used to be that the Nin-folk left most of the training to other humans, but now, they like to control it. They aren't squeamish so they probably implant all sorts of things, all sorts of hidden motivations." He said the last two words with thick irony.

"Where am I?"

"In what sense."

"What am I doing here?"

"Don't get philosophical. By the way, I don't like the name 'Peter,' It's too... abrupt. Two syllables, but too hard. I don't like the sound of long e's myself. They pierce my eardrums, like a shriek. I like quiet things more. So, I'm going to call you something else. Your surname was something Irish or Scottish, right? McLane?"

"MacLeinn"

"Not a lot of Irish or Scotch up here surprisingly enough. Or if there are they all long since forgot about it. They don't usually like native English speakers you see." We passed through the doors of the canteen. "I hate this place." He said. "But get yourself something to drink. Go ahead and get something to eat too while your at it." I did as he told and he went and sat down at a bench. The canteen was almost entirely empty. I provisioned myself and returned. "But you'll be different I bet." He said enigmatically, "You won't be like these other things."

"What does that mean."

"I don't like things too clean." He said. "Not meaning I like things dirty, but I think you have to throw the dice every now and then. They like rules, that's what being a Nin-folk is all about. Making lots and lots of rules. They want everything to fit in its own particular hole and stay in the hole. That's why they don't like native English speakers. And that's why Bud and I recruit them. You have messy thoughts, I can tell. You have dark, dirty, nasty, rotten, thoughts." The seriousness of his tone frightened me. "Which is why we are going to get along. You and me and Check and Bud. We are going to shake things up and make it a little less predictable."

"What am I supposed to be doing?"

"Oh.. you'll figure it out. You're a smart kid Macko, and it will come to you soon enough."

PM 16: Aside

2008-03-27T00:23:00.002-04:00

I feel the temptation again, to step away from the story and simply explain things from the vantage of experience. But this would not be fair. Not to me. I feel that you should suffer, with me or rather, I think you should suffer like me. Perhaps that's not what I mean either.

Honestly, it is remote now, and I strive to relive it. That's why I am writing. For who is reading? Who is caring? Who does my story concern? Only me.

But if there were a you... an invisible reader. How different things could be.

You could feel my uncertainty and disorientation. You would say, "Yes, I can see how it was painful. That was more painful than anything I ever had to deal with." Or. "How did you endure it? I don't think I could." Then we could agree that I suffered. And we could agree that it was meaningless. "The tragedy is that it was all for nothing."

How many groans of mankind are left unstudied? The vast majority of them to be sure. No one pauses or reflects on the inherent absurdity of the vast majority of awkward confrontations or embarrassments. No one thinks about the freakish absurdity of an accidental crossing of the Styx. The gargling cry in the night from a man dying of some nameless disease in some nameless place.

I survived my own near encounter. I saw the boatman, and nearly paid the coin. I stepped back, but there is a dark future ahead. I will step on that boat and no one will mark my point of departure from this world with a gravestone. If I could write my own epitaph, it would say "and no man afterward remembered that poor man."

So, tell me. Why should I skip forward a single moment or omit a single pang of being from my narrative? I should describe describe the growth of the hairs on my neck.

But I will be merciful. I will say no more of my despair, but this: something within me snapped in that moment on the table, and regardless of what lies beyond, only death can heal me.

A short, short

2008-03-04T17:24:00.002-05:00

A short, short

He was born on the fifth of December. He died on the twelfth of November, Eighty years later.

In his life, he experienced love, joy, trouble, pain, sadness and happiness.

He traveled, some. He stuck around, some.

He lived, he laughed, he saw and he danced.

He lived a life that was truly worth living, and he died a death that was truly worth remembering.

He was passing a liquor store that day, when a man exited, gun to the chin of a comely, young lass shouting profanities (in front of the children, no less).

With a gun in his vest, he reached inside and felt the curvature of the trigger, like he’d done so many times before.

He pulled it while it was still in his vest pocket. He shot the man cold, but as he was dying, and before he hit the ground, he fired a shot into his breast.

He died on the twelfth of November, in the hospital where he was born, eighty years ago.

A nurse there told me, his last words were “I had a good life. A good, good life”.

Deep down there is a small, little smile that reminds me to be thankful that I am living that same, good, good life.

Reposted on Sterquilinium by permission of MB Shepherd

-(SEV)

PM15: Training

2008-02-19T22:38:00.004-05:00

Looking back at that strange walk back down the corridor to the reclamation room, I now find my inaction difficult to fathom. I was certainly weak, tired, and confused. But that is not why I did not try and fight them as they led me towards an unknown but certain danger. I did not try and fight them because I was, at last, moving again. Something was happening. Does a condemned man without hope find some relief when the guards come and get him and start the slow progression towards the gallows? Or did he learn to live with the uncertainty and build up a false hope that death would never come?

I had only been left in suspense a few minutes, perhaps an hour. But it had been enough in this disorienting realm to put my mind in a frenetic state. The slow walk, supported by Ierod and Check had restored order and acted upon me like an opiate. But that false calm was not to last long. We returned to the morgue and they carefully laid me back upon the gurney. As soon as my back touched the cold metal, an almost animal like desire for self-preeservation returned and I strove to sit up.

"Hold on there fellow. This is nothing!" Ierod said as he strapped one of my arms down. "All we are going to do is implant a few chips into your brain. That's all."

I cursed and shreiked and managed to rip my arm away from Check. But with Ierod and teh burden of heightened gravity I was fairly easily subdued. Pamille injected me with what I imagine was a sedative and in a few moments, the urge to fight left me again. The tinny taste of blood filled my mouth and the back of my head ached.

"You better hold still or you'll have some nasty brusies and the whole thing will take longer for the wires to set up. Believe me, you want the wires as short as possible to help your scores. Anyway, it's not like it hurts much."

"I think," Pamille said, "you call this 'minimally invasive.' Essentially that means we do as little damage as possible." I remember that there were only four fingers on her hands. The skin of her fingertips was soft and warm and her touch gentle as she turned my head so that my right ear was against the table. There was a sharp pain behind my left ear. "That's one." And then another in the soft fleshy part of my neck. "And two. This next one will hurt." She pulled back my eyelid at the corner and I felt something slide behind my eye, an enormous pain caused me to gasp, but it ended so quickly I hardly had time to eact. "And three. Now, four. This one is uncomfortable but not so bad." She inserted something up my right nostril. Again a pain and I began to sneeze uncontrollably. "Almost over." She said as she placed one hand over my head with impressive force and then with the other hand, opened my mouth and inserted one of her fingers. I felt a pain in soft pallete above my tongue. "There, that's five. Give it a few minutes to set up and then we can test it and see how well it does."

I lay there on the table as still as if I were dead like the bodies all around me.

"That wasn't so bad was it?" Ierod stated with a barely credible enthusiasm and only a trace of genuine sympathy. "You'll be better than ever in a few minutes."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Training." Check answered. "Five little chips in your head now. They wire themselves in and start checking things out. You'll get that sensation in a few moments."

And indeed, I suddenly was overwhelmed by a series of flickers and bright lights, sounds, sensations, tastes, and odors. They shot all over my body so that I seemed to feel them all at once and every place. If the conversation was continuing about me I lost track of it. The flooding of my perceptions was not exactly pleasent, in fact in some ways it was excruciatingly painful. But what made matters worse was the maelstrom that followed it as I was treated in rapid successions to a rainbow of emotions from despair to euphoria, wrath to lust, frustration to detachment.

When I came back to myself, I found myself unbound. Check was gone but Pamille and Ierod were nearby conversing...

"97." Ierod said. "I don't care what the other scores say, how can you argue with a 97 reflex. And a 94 retention. Combined that's unprecedented. No one scores that high. This is better than anything you could get with a C1OP."

"Yes, but the covariance is a 58. Passing is 60."

"Oh you can fake that. Who is to know."

"It doesn't matter who is to know. There's a reason why passing is a 60, and ev3n at 60 we would limit his service to only a few months."

"Would you send him to MRA?"

"Of course not. It's way too dangerous for that."

"Then what are you suggesting?"

"Dump it."

Ierod turned quickly to look at me. I was completely still though my eyes were staring at him. "How much longer?" He asked anxiously.

"At least ten minutes. It has to regain its balance. It would be completely disoriented."

"It freaks me out." He turned back to Pamille. "But 97, 94, 88, 91 thos scores are too good. He could be in charge of a division in two or three months. We need someone like that."

"58 Ierod."

"Who looks at covariance. Nobody even knows what covariance is except you and the chip designers. He probably scored low there because he scored high. Too much information always leaves a little confusion. If you go slow, it works it's way out on the field."

"58."

"Is almost 60. I need someone."

"Even if it did pass those scores are too good for what you want."

"No. It's perfect. I give him his assignment. He has time to adjust. He comes back in three months. You test him again. If he's still 58 then we dump him..."

"No."

"... look this is what you were hoping for. Your chips are better than standard issue. And when's the next time you are going to get to try them out? Three months. Check didn't see the scores. Just change them. Take four off the top three. Add 12 to covariance and he's in the black all around. The total is the same."

I heard Check walk in. "So. What's the score?"

"428." Replied Ierod cheerfully.

"Not bad. Not tremendously good, but not bad. What was his high?"

Ierod looked at Pamille. "It scored low in covariance." She said

"Oh?"

She paused. "Yes. A 70."

"But a 93 in reflex."

"93? Really? You must have plunked them down with nanometer leads. Well, what the hell is covariance anyway."

PM 14: (Continued)

2008-02-19T14:52:00.003-05:00

Editor's Note: I apologize for the use of the various acronyms if they make the conversation too confusing. C1OP = Class one operative which Peter was originally hired in as. MRA = Material Resource Acquisition, a minor position in the EARA which does not require much in the way of special skills. EARA, if you recall, is the Eternal Agressive Revolutionary Army. PE is Population Encouragement. Transit is, of course, like a period of suspended animation or induced coma. It's really used to keep people who are going to be in tight containers for long periods sane, but it is unhealthy.

The actual conversations were much worse for Peter and filled with more jargon-filled language and references. I have simplified them substantially.

"I don't think so," Ierod said, "confused more likely. Has he been trained?"

"No," Pamille replied. "I am going to administer the basic training program for MRA."

"What a waste. Look, why don't you go ahead and give him a C1OP? See how he does?"

"We don't have many left. You talk about wasting resources. It was in transit two weeks too long. Who knows what that did to its..."

“One of Gereltz people was in transit for almost two months and lived.” Interrupted the Ogre. “Remember, he had stuffed himself in to hide from that PULVA raid and shipped himself back here. But no valid claim form came with him and if we hadn’t needed the tube we would never have even looked inside.”

“That’s very amusing, Check, but if I recall that fellow’s brain was a tad on the mushy side.” said Ierod.

I regret now my first opinion of Check, but he was in fact ugly and combative. Yet I came to know that he was one of the “good guys” in the EARA. Like Ierod.

“Yes, not that it matters but it is now just re-spooling transmission records off unclaimed shuttles.”

The obscure talk was again causing me to hyperventilate. “There’s nothing wrong with me!” I screamed out, and followed the protestation with a stream of expletives. The three of them stared at me for a moment.

“Class 1? I don’t think that would be a wise thing to attempt.” Pamille said after I was done.

“Then why not try one of your experimental programs?” Check suggested. “If his mind is mush what difference will it make?”

“I don’t want my reputation further lowered around here. When it goes bad, what will people blame? Me or it?”

“I won’t tell anyone. What about you Check?”

“It seems like a perfect opportunity to try something new.”

“You could always just say he died suddenly.” She was hesitating. “Come on Check, let’s get him to his feet. Central training?” Ierod grabbed one arm while Check grabbed the other.

“No, Diot will probably be in there. Let’s take it back to reclamation. We can do it there.”

PM 14: Gasp

2008-02-15T13:19:00.002-05:00

I almost dozed off until yet another jolt startled me. And with th jolt came another intense emotion, an instictive and urgent desire to run. It was so powerful that, if my weight had not been so great I would have jumped out of my seat. Instead, I lurched upward, tripped over the bench and landed on my back with a loud and painful thud. I cried out, and went still, my breath coming in gasps.

I sweat remembering it.

I stared at the ill-lit ceiling above me, clenched my fists and groaned.

"One of yours?" A voice said.
"No. Don't know him. Probably a space transporter whose been too long on the aem." The last word came was pronounced with an emphasis on the first letter like ay-em.

I propped myself up and saw the two contestants above me. The skeleton-man crouching, elbows on his knees, looked at me as if I were a particularly disgusting bug he had just crushed with his boot. The other, spent his gaze on the other occupants who had backed away to the walls.

"Look at them. They're so pathetic. Miserable. Less than worms really. And I'm supposed to do something with them?"

"Who are you?" Skeleton-man asked.

"Oh, just get an HRO. He needs a lethal dose of something or other."

"Here, let me help you up. Where are you stationed?" The skeleton, with surprising strength and speed grabbed me by the wrists and yanked me into a sitting position.

"Why do you waste your time?" The ugly one queried nastily.

"I'm short you idiot. What have we been talking about. " He turned back to me. His look was not kind, but it was curious. "Are you a transfer or are you a new recruit?"

"I'm Peter. MacLeinn. Where is Bud?"

He put his hand to his mouth, possibly to conceal a smile. "Procurement. You're a nojen. Hey, Check, go get Pamille."

"No need, because she's sloughing her way through the door now." And in fact, over the skeleton's shoulder I could see her form approaching in its half sliding, half stubling manner.

"This one will be nothing but trouble." She said.

"Where did you get him? We aren't due for another two weeks?"

"It was simply late in getting here. It should be dead."

"So his position has been filled. Bud let go of him."

"Yes, but if you want it, it's too late. He has been claimed by Material Resource Acquisitions to..."

"Screw them. What do they need a nojen for? Any beast or lilly can stuff a bar of Beryllium down its pants." The ugly man started to laugh at this image. The skeleton turned to me, "My name is Ierod Iohann. I work in Population Encouragement. How would you like to work for me?"

The Ogre checked his snorting and blurted out contemptuously "What, you're asking him? Just tell him. Oh I suppose everything is flat now just like you like it. Let's all have a big meeting and we can take turns picking."

Pamille's voice picked up an edge. "It isn't yours and it hasn't been trained. You don't know what it is good for."

"Neither does MRA."

"It's obviously stupid."

"So? You can tell. He's a perfect neutral. That's what I need a neutral. Someone nobody thinks anything about or looks twice at but isn't a lilly."

"Where's Bud?" I asked.

"See. Stupid."

Skeeter to himself

2008-02-04T22:01:00.000-05:00

"It's a long way between drinks," I said. "A long time with the cup held high."

There's nothing but a thin coating in there.
Like paint on the inside of a can.
I'm waiting for that last drop to fall.
But it ain't coming.
And I'm all dried up.

Any minute now,
I'm gonna crack,
And the gasps at the bottom of my lungs,
Are gonna come right up to the top.

"It's a long time between drinks," I said.
I've forgotten what it was like to be drunk.
Drunk and drunk and drunk and drunk.
And whadoicare? drunk.

Because what I was drinking
It wasn't no sin
And I wasn't drinking to forget anyway.
I was drinking to remember.
But I can't remember no more.

I'm gonna crack and I wish I would,
Like a sick man who wants to throw up,
But his body is still too well to obey,
So he wants to get a whole lot sicker.

I don't know whether I should break or not.
If I break would there be sumthin there to drink?
So I go on with the cup to my lips,
That nearly empty cup.
It's been a long time since I had something.

Kick-rear, drank a beer, hoo-la-la country song title number 101

2008-01-23T07:55:00.000-05:00

"You are some body, yo just ain't my somebody"

A Pseudonym for Kingdom, Come

2008-01-22T18:35:00.000-05:00

In the place, that is not named,
in the hall, that no one finds;
there is a scribe who sits,
and ponders, upon time.

There is a name he seeks,
a name, he can not find.
Time it heals all scars,
and memory, it too may fade.

This scribe, he doth scratch,
a pate that is so sullen;
for want of years, and light,
he doth in age lose sight.

But memory somehow serves,
to render, incomplete
a soul without begrudging,
a soul, imperfectly complete!

And so it doth go,
upon the book of ages,
that One there is above,
who lives beyond the sages.

And in that mortal book,
there one solemn name.
And in that name...sanctification
of a love beyond one's nation.

And so, within this life,
I will continue, albeit same
to seek that mortal memory
of the Love, that is...His Name.

Huckabee For President

2008-01-20T20:17:00.000-05:00

We need a fighter for our side in the culture war, not some weak-kneed triple divorcée like Guiliani, or a brain-blown Manchurian candidate like McCain. Get on the train and steamroll the Democrats in '08!

9:25 AM, 101st Floor

2008-01-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

Though perched above the fires
that roil and send up acrid clouds
for now my view is clear

Before me untouched majesty
stretched out across a whitecapped sea
too far to be so near

Around me: screams and sobs and cries
and panicked prayers and futile rage
of those about to die

Heat must rise, and so it brings
in waves upon a fiery tide
an anguished tear to eye

Confronting my oblivion
yet still with choice and still with will
for minutes or for hours

Before me on my office desk
the icons of a life soon gone
to rubble with the towers

A picture frame of summer scenes
a beach with children, smiling wife
my shattered conscience learns

That all such things are treasures
for beyond the frame and through the glass
the second tower burns

Machines have failed, there is no way
to reach out from this flaming tomb
and touch those fleeting lives

Yet still I live, in mockery
powerless to save the life
from which my will derives

And so, again, that single choice
the choice to burn or fall and die
sum total of my years

I stand as I unknot my tie
then fold it, lay it on my desk
damp from unchecked tears

And walk to where the window gapes
where others, early pioneers
have given will their voice

And face against the endless wind
eyes closed, mouth dry and clenching fists
I make my final choice

Nikki Giovanni on Current Events

2008-01-02T21:17:00.001-05:00

Oh you rotten Musharraf!
You nasty, no good wanna-be white man!
You can blame the brothers
But we know you offed Bhutto
you nasty SNAKE
with your olive-drab army pants

You gonna get it when my bitch-goddess is callin' the shots

My bitch-goddess is gonna tear you up
you rotten Musharraf

The Vagabond, Entulloch's Soulful Prayer

2007-12-08T07:28:00.000-05:00

With no fixed domain to bear, his closest ally was a singlar place in the universe nestled between a massive, grey-white wing and an engorged breastplate with musculature that was of iron, yet with an inviting comfort of down, and an inner, radiating warmth.

The blood of God coursed in that breast, the energy of the universe, the power of all things combined (and then some).

It was his only refuge, nestled there like a babe. It was his only place of comfort.

He feared the great being. He knew (for he had a taste still left in his mouth, even after millenia), he knew of that wrath, that God-forsaken wrath.

It was terrible. God, awe-filled. God, awful.

It was the eye of a raptor, the eye of a shark (yet the shark might show fear - but not the raptor). There was no passion in the wrathful eye; while he knew that love was there, it was love subdued; love, restrained. Necessary, oblique and disdained.

He knew that eye, that facet. He feared it, but more, he feared that in himself that could illicit such an eye as that. He feared his sins, his weakness, his proclivity to illicit such a seeming, heartless stare.

And so, he soared.

"Heavenly Father,
rest me now,
for I know the dangers
of Thy embrace.

It is not of You, Father, that I fear,
but of myself in that warm place.
For what I might do,
Heavenly soul, for what I might do.

To earn that mantle,
to become that one,
for which Saviour pleads,
'forgive him, for he know not'.
This is my tremble, this my fear.

I must learn to rest this quake,
to quash this tremble, Oh Adonai,
and become AS you, the rock,
and soar in Thy way with confidence
that I will not falter, like remnant on The Wind.

Give me necessary strenth,
my liege,
make me so wise,
that I might soar with You,
call you friend, and tremble not!"

It was his constant prayer, as he wandered the Universe of God's will, of God's plan, and of God's design.

It was his way to rush through the cold spaces of icey breath's bluster there within God's domain (for even on cold wind, He doth move). To wander the universe at once seeking that nestled wing and finding it there, in all the recesses of a black and distant space.

Even in that chasmic nothingness, this believer sees that wing, feels that warmth and understands that presence. For even in that nothingness, His wing and His wind that lifts it, prevail.

He is there for those, like Entolluch, who will open the breast-buried eye, rend the fabric of darkness, utter the soul-filling prayer

...and see.

nuther clock

2007-11-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

Beebo's Time Out

2007-11-17T15:59:00.000-05:00

Together they trekked through through the miles of mire on a trail that snaked through a terrain one could describe only as a jungle-canyon.

It wound through the hills like an intricate weave of an intricate string on an intricate bead; the path it followed would turn switch-back here and knot around in and on itself through endless permutation.

Would there be a destination for the lonely two?

He had not had Beebo long when they took this trek. He'd heard of this place before, how treacherous it could be. The serpent would be out twisting in these hills as well, as the weather had been fairly dry, and God knows they like to seek moisture and shade.

Didn't bother Beebo much. With nose to the ground, he plowed through that trail as if his nose were a blade; the plowshare digging and turning on an ivey path.

Levin was getting a little concerned. The wind was picking up and it made the upper canopy to sway and caused what seemed a whisper from above as tree on tree, limb on limb and leaf on leaf would brush and whoosh as a deified wind animated them like tall giants towering, protecting and tip on tip scratching at each other.

It was like a battle of light touch, but an incessant campaign.

At once a gust would rip through the canopy and space itself would open from above. The sky, so little seen in these woods, would wink at him.

Yeah, Levin was concerned. Concerned that that damned Beebo would continue snorting the ground until that beast that his nostril percieves becomes one with which they would both tangle, like the vine tangles in the tree, once encountered completely entwined in a fight in its domain.

At once, Beebo froze. His tail was so stiffened that hairs on the tip shook like the branches in the wind.

His back was as straight as the cleave in a fractured boulder, yet his resolve as strong as the force that split it.

Levin felt a chill in his spine.

Today...today they would encounter the beast.

Levin's Dog, part one

2007-11-14T00:12:00.000-05:00

Scrawngy.

Matted, tufted...twisted-into-knot on twisted-knot; hair that grew like wire, barbed - heavy in places and sparse in others.

His step was like a coiled...or rather, uncoiled roll of barbed wire.

When he was a kid, he'd work on his daddy's farm helpin' to mend the fences (Matthew Levin, Beebo's Master, that is). Thick, heavy leather gloves, as thick as old Beebo's black and tarry hide - they were the only protection.

That wire, when a calf would knock it undone, pulling it from the fragile and rusted staples in weathered old wood, damn would that stuff uncoil fast.

God help ya if ya was workin' it when it unfurled.

Damn. Cut into ya like briar, shore nuff.

Old Beebo was the same. Son-of-a-bitch would jump till his last day, just like there was dynamite in his feet.

Good, old Beebo.

What a dog he was, in his youth.

Hell, he's lost half his teeth, and he's still better'n any Democrat I know. Course, none of them have any anyway. Crawl on their bellies like a worthless lap dog and lick your ass to death. Varmints gotta love that.

Old Beebo were'nt no lap dog...no sir. Probably wasn't no Democrat neither, if'n he could vote.

Damn good old dog, Beebo. Damned good old dog.

Be ashamed to put him down. Damned shame.

wow clock

2007-11-05T21:08:00.000-05:00

Knoxville

http://www.worldtimeserver.com/clocks/wtsclock001.aspx

Your candidate, squire

2007-11-01T14:04:00.001-04:00

ode to the pastoral cityscape

2007-10-27T12:28:00.000-04:00

the diesel fumes confront me from the riotous city's splendor
of traffic lights reflected off the shattered pools of water
on concrete covered earth that conceals all soft or tender
each street a tomb of meadows, monument to ancient slaughter

the horns a-blare and distant sirens echo from the walls
that rise around me like the fists of man's complete dominion
their imperfections hidden by the night ere morning falls
and men arise to share their lot with rat and roach and pigeon

Refrain, oh ye Profane

2007-10-25T08:06:00.000-04:00

Ode to the Profane,
may ye live in peace.
Through Cerberus disdain
he chases you, your pain
and no refuge found in any crease.

Ode to the Profane,
may your days be always numbered.
Like that killing brother Cain,
for you, there, a trouble that is lain.
In whithered hour, your dream-color, only umbre.

Ode to that Profane,
life for you to only agonize.
In your life, only pain,
the devil in your eye, pure disdain,
and all those about you only patronize.

Ode to you, Profane.
Tis a life not worth living,
birth for you ney again,
(for that first, from womb, was never sane)
and now your life's blood is only for the giving.

Ode to you, Profane,
your books you may write,
and the necks, they may crane,
but on the minds only strain,
and yours is a legacy of the trite.

Ode to you, Profane.
While great bastions from ye are pummelled.
But in the melee of that great train,
your thoughts, they sum in a certain refrain
of the fact of a life that is never humbled.

Ode to you, Opie Taylor
for yours is the heart of a Louveteau.
While your idol is Kaaba,
The cowan's heart in you, Jablichas
pitied soul pours forth like blood from wounded doe.

Quoth the Wraith: I have seen destruction, and I am him

2007-10-24T08:51:00.000-04:00

Sweat saves blood.
Erwin Rommel

But, can sweat stop a bullet?
-Visum

All war is deception.
Sun Tzu

So is global warming, but just look at the hullabaloo it has caused. More than one war has been fought by the deceived.
-Visum

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun Tzu

Sounds like the collectivist motto that the supreme art of working is to create something without doing anything; of course, it has gone far to create a bunch of porky couch potatoes; you might call them the "fog of boar".
-Visum

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
Plato

I see dead people...and they are fighting over potato chips and who owns the remote control for the idiot box.
-Visum

A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.
Herbert V. Prochnow

Yes, but can a microbe on a meteorite assist that nation in cultivating civility in the rest of the world? I'd say that like the socialist, all the microbe can do is promulgate and infect and ultimately lead to the downfall of civility.
-Visum

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
Ulysses S. Grant

A piece of Georgia, a piece of Bamie, and a piece of Tennessee.
-Visum

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
Robert E. Lee

Alternately we can take a passive approach...just sit on our haunches and let the barbarians (and other assorted enemas) burn a path from New York to San Diego, rather than simply a paltry 50-mile swath through the Southland. Cruel, yes. Necessary? Depends entirely on how much you actually care about things like joy, happiness, your personal God and whether you consider Columbia, Atlanta and Savannah "fair faces" in this "beautiful world".
-Visum

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.
George Orwell

I wonder if he saw what was wrought on Columbia by the blue-blood, socialist hoard?
-Visum

War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Albert Pike

And to the victor belongs the catastrophes that are the spoils of the achieved "peace".
-Visum

Men do not fail; they give up trying.
Elihu Root

And worse, they fail to try again...danged ol' under-achieving socialists.
-Visum

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
Jeane Kirkpatrick

And when what they want is not tangible, such as the soul of the infidel...what then, tit for tat? Soul, for eternal soul? Eye, for spite-filled eye? War exists as long as the devil believes one singular soul is left that can be turned from righteousness. And what is righteousness? That eternal attempt to gain a peace that only exists in total on the "other side"; a place where evil has no home. It is an attempt won only by fighting vehemently to bring some semblance of that peace to a world seemingly run by a soul-consuming devil and existing here just shy and short of heaven's bright shore.

There are a few brave souls left who will fight like hell for an impure and clouded reflection of heaven's peace right here on earth. To they alone belong the victory that is heaven's ever-lasting peace."
-Visum

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill

Uh, best of luck to all you socialists out there. Happy hunting!
-Visum

Thoughts about Language...

2007-10-16T22:33:00.000-04:00

... or why there are no good Soviet poets.

Ever since college I have believed that the only two things the world does well anymore are lust and despair. All "art" as such which is any good seems to be based on either or both of those strong emotions. The many nostalgic poems, like the ones I try to write, are a part of that despair.

But look at Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

And Robert Burns

Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine,Some solitary wander:
Avaunt, away! the cruel sway,Tyrannic man's dominion;
The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,The flutt'ring, gory pinion!

And W. B. Yeats

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

Here an englishman, an irishman, and a scottsman all wrote soft pastoral poetry. Was it because they knew and understood country scenery better? Surely not.

Why did people give up? Was it too easy or too hard? I believe actually it is because the language itself has become less poetical. I believe it is because of the manipulation of the language by the elite, and by the media Furthermore it says something about the way we approach things. Instead of aiming for the universal, we aim for the "lowest common denominator" or for a level of abstraction only attainable by the professional. Thus art either becomes a speciality of the elite or merely fast food for the unwasahed masses.

The Dry Well

2007-10-12T21:26:00.000-04:00

Someplace under a dead red bud tree, there is an old well and a rope.

When I was a kid, I'd pull back one of the wood planks and look into the blackness.

For a quarter (sometimes a dollar) from my brother I'd stand on the blanks, bend my knees, push off. The old boards would bend and spring me up. They'd fall back down clattering on the stones. I'd land in the dry dust.

Belly in the dirt, I'd look down into that darkness.

Around noon, if you were lucky you could see fifteen feet and maybe more. My friend said twice a year you could see all the way to the bottom and catch a view of yourself down there. But I never did once, not in fifteen years before we moved away. All I saw was the dirt walls. All I heard was an occasional drip of water, or a plunk from a rock or from some spit. Not even that from a handful of dirt.

If my momma caught me over there by the well she'd have my daddy whip me, but there's a thing for dangerous places we boys had. I wanted to go down to the bottom. I got the rope ready to go. One end was tied around the old tree and another around my waist. I was going down, but I got scared. Would I be able to pull myself back up? I was scrawny and not very strong. Damn that scrawny kid.

I lied, that well ain't there anymore except in my mind. Someone filled it in and someone else put a lot of houses where that well was, and someone cut down that tree. The people who live there now don't know anything about that well. They don't know anything at all. Nothing at all.

From The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter IV

2007-10-10T23:08:00.000-04:00

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!
We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa, runa, runa rom!
To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars-we go to war!
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!

-J.R.R. Tolkien

A Poem for a Poet

2007-10-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

Two faced god of night and day,
Hot breath, foul corpse, mocking fear,
Corruption, skull, grinning from ear to ear.
Barren desert land beyond a boatless quay.

You I know, I know so well, I know,
I know, I name a thousand ways,
And each name its own annointed tome,
A great new novel or a novel poem,
But each is all the same

The same great devil within each thought,
The same wraiths in each inkblot,
The same fingers split between the rocks,
The same last gasp beneath the waves
As I am dragged into that liquid grave.

This I know, I know I know, I know.
It's all I hear, it's all I see,
The steady beat of tuneless drums,
The drums that call, I come, I come!
Fly far away from me.

2007-09-28T00:16:00.000-04:00

YIKES...MEEEEE?

2007-09-26T00:26:00.001-04:00

You scored as J.S. Bach, You are dedicated and intelligent. People who know you don't understand how you get it all done, and you never give up on life.

J.S. Bach

100%

Haydn

100%

Brahms

80%

Hector Berlioz

65%

Liszt

65%

Wagner

60%

Schumann

60%

Handel

60%

Beethoven

60%

Tchaikovsky

45%

Chopin

45%

Schubert

35%

Mozart

35%

Which classical composer are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Quote

2007-09-18T09:20:00.001-04:00

"Oh Narcissus! When will you tire of that paled reflection in that shallow pool so filled of thy mirrored self ? How unfortunate for this naked ape, to be so self-aware, and now aware of nothing else."

Humor

2007-09-14T17:12:00.000-04:00

Parched.

It was all about.

The water even...dry and dusty. Not really putrid. If you let it sit in the bottle, sand would fall to the bottom of the cut up plastic shell you use to scoop it up from the earth, and then, from the heat of the sun, it was so warm against the back of your throat you felt as if you'd need to chase it with some of the bottom sand, just to cool it off (your throat, that is).

Yeah, it was hot. And dusty.

The ground was cracked and craggled like an old woman's face, barren from years of depravation, and it too full of dust; gaping wounds in the mantle would remind you of the old gal's screams and laments as she cursed another day with that puckered, toothless grin.

Only the ground didn't smile. It just sat there, agape. Like a dead man's mouth.

Even the flies crawled through the cuts, looking for that drop of center-seeking dew.

Nodda.

"The rains will come again one day, old boy," the old man on the front porch said.

He leaned back on his wooden chair 'gainst the wooden shuts on the wood-framed store and spat his 'backer cross the dusty lot.

He took a swig off his RC.

"They always come back. Earth deems it that way. Even God wouldn't deprive a dying man a drink, no matter his fate after the fact."

Leyton just huffed.

Kicked the ground with his boot just to watch the tiny dust devils leap from the sandstone lot.

Then he huffed again.

"Reckon so, you ol' coot. But I'll tell ya...Ain't n'er seen it dis dry."

"Dry as an old man's dreams. Rain's ey'll come though. 'Ey always do," the old man snickered.

"Reckon I'll get back to the farm, old man. Cow's ey'll need feedin'," countered Leyton, exasperated and labored.

"You do 'at boy. Feed 'em good. See you round tomorrow," old man bit another chomp of his moon pie and spat dry graham cracker dust mixed with Penn's Thins tobacco juice across the decayed wooden porch right as he spoke.

"Feed 'em good boy. See 'at t'ey git plenty water too," he laughed long and hard.

"Yeah old man. Check! See you tomorrow you old coot. Don't choke on 'at moon pie uh yorn," and with that, Leyton began the long walk down the dusty road that laid out before him like all the rest of his born days stretching to that event horizon where for brief instant, those alley lines, left and right will meet before parting again to infinity.

And on his walk to that long, dusty home, it began...to rain!

Life sustaining rain.

And, just like the road...

on it goes.

The City of Man

2007-09-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

The world it slogs and trudges on
the same dull battle every dawn
the veil unrolling cross the land
unrolling doubt in every man

No sooner does that sun arise
than man awakes and purpose flies
betrayed by light and roiling heat
betrayed to flesh and rotting meat

Though stalwart hearts arise at dawn
by noon all goodness long has gone
scorched by the world's relentless might
but empty husks before the night

So sleep does come and peace arrives
whatever grace a man derives
will empty soul and heart restore
to wake and lose the fight once more

PM 13: In the Canteen

2007-09-08T00:25:00.001-04:00

The disgorging of my stomach contents had left me feeling light headed and suddenly empty and ravenous. I was weak and wanted to lie down, but I seemed to have no choice but to follow Diot into the room.

It was a large room well-lit unlike the morgue with several long tables. And it was almost completely empty save for a few lean looking men and women sitting alone or in small groups. Two men were having an argument at one of the tables, otherwise the room was quiet. “This is the Canteen. Pamille should be showing you around. Not me. You won’t need to know anything about it really because you won’t be stationed here but I’ll show you where you can get some food. Then I’ll leave you.”

She led me to a long serving counter which we walked along as rapidly as was possible under the burden of our own weights. At the end of the counter she pulled out a small plastic tub from a cabinet and handed it to me. “Here. You open the lid up at the corner and drink it. That’s exactly one long shift worth there and you won’t be hungry. In fact you won’t want anymore for a while. I’d suggest you drink it slowly over there at the tables.”

“Where do I get something to drink?”

“You need to drink after each job. You’ll be provided drinks by your supervisor. I’m only giving you this because you haven’t eaten anything.” She gestured toward a place and as I turned to sit down she left the canteen. I sat down and began to eat. Hungry as I was I couldn’t control myself. It was grainy and sweet like the pulp of some fruit, thick but not at all sticky and it flowed easily. It was almost without color. I drained the container and regretted it immediately as it left a sharp pain in my stomach. There was another sudden wrenching of the room and I felt myself almost turn weightless. Again I was overcome with nausea but I managed to hold the food down. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.

And then I sat there wondering alternately what caused that horrible lurch, whether Diot or Pamille would return to claim me, whether I was dreaming or dead and in hell and when and where I could lie down and sleep. The people in the room would get up and leave, others took their places, going up to the counter sitting at a lonely place at a table and slowly consuming the contents of the containers. When they talked, they talked quietly, in short staccato sentences primarily consisting in yes’s and no’s and about things I couldn’t begin to understand. They mostly were dressed in gray uniforms like mine most often, occasionally powder blue or peach but they were all thin and miserable looking. I must have been the most miserable of all.

The only real point of interest in the room was the two men arguing. They were dressed in black as Bud had been dressed and equally animated in contrast to all the others. The taller of the two was bald and skinnier than any of the others. His features were skull like especially as his lips were always curled back showing his teeth to the pale pink gums. As a consequence he looked like he was frozen between agony and hysterical laughing. He would lick his teeth with his tongue in a way that struck me as a kin to blinking. The other man who did more of the talking was smaller and more bent. Not fat but definitely more fleshy. He had thick lips which appeared to brutish to form words and eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars and a face with coarse skin and deep wrinkles. He was in a word ugly.

As others came and went these two remained in their animated conversation. I tried to concentrate and listen but try as I might my mind simply could not cling to their words and instead I kept returning to my own predicament. I do remember one small snippet however: “It’s no good!” the skull faced man said “You can’t turn them into anything more than passive participants unless you pump them full of chemicals. And then they’re psychotic and unmanageable. Yes, we can reason with them but they are completely pragmatic. All they want is recognition and power and they get it more readily from PULVA than from us.”

“Yes you see they do want something”, the brute said, “they think they deserve it. They think the way to get it is to follow the rules. But we can give it to them…”

“They don’t like to break rules. They don’t like to cut line. They get angry when you try to make them. Even now when amnesty comes along we’d lose half of them if we didn’t shoot them ourselves.”

And then it hit him...

2007-09-06T20:42:00.000-04:00

"But of course," he thought "organization!".

And with that, he began to become that ordinal creature that had interminably existed at his core. He shuffled a deck of cards, and in the dishovel, there it was. Plain as the nose on your face. It was order.

Everything he touched was again as it should be.

The deck, once a jumbled mess of suit and color, of rank out of rank and number following incongruent number now had become perfection and grace, and all with one, solitary shuffle.

"Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts & Spades - low to high, ace on high so that the flush so royal would show every time," it was just as he liked it...just as he needed it to be.

The weeks went by and shirts were ordered in his closet. The plaids, they were with plaids...solids with solids...all of them ranked in order of his colors from favorite to least.

Ties, they were ordered by texture and material, again by pattern and then by color.

His days would be numbered just as his suits, from low to high. It would always be a low day when he got down to his leasts, so it was incentive to do his laundry often to keep his moods good.

"Looking good, Darby!"

"Lookin' sharp there, Darb."

Every day the same exclamations, every day the same expectations. The comely lass, with the comely look.

"Looking good!"

"Felling good, thank you very much," came Darby's usual reply.

His humidor was ordered in accordance to the pungency of the smoke, and then again by color (from light to dark).

Brandies and wines were done likewise, and the spirits, by frequency of use (they really required no firm order, as from this consumption sprang dissaray, and he really did not care which of those he chose as he liked them all equally, and that feeling of power he'd get by pricking one card out of place; by twisting a tab collar slightly askew, or tying the tie in a half-windor).

One day ol' Darby would be buried, and it was said that somehow, there would be order there as well. Perhaps each decaying strand of DNA would be ordered in accord with his favorite building blocks, from the adenine to the thymine, guanine to cytosine and back again in endless combinations that together comprised his favorite order of what Darby McCray believed to be that perfect array of that man of perfectly arrayed perfection.

Order.

So imperfect.

Ain't it grand?

PM12: An incident in the hall

2007-09-05T19:41:00.001-04:00

The uniform was similar to those of Diot and Bud. The only novelty was in the color - which was gray with a white satin stripe - and in the undergarments which were rather tight fitting. The sleeves of the under shirt went down to my elbows, the under pants down stretched from waist to my knees. The shoes were integrated with the pants as was an under-belt. The loose long sleeve shirt had a hidden flap which snapped down onto the pants and over the under-belt. I put all this on with some difficulty but I found that the more I moved the steadier I became. And though the pull of gravity seemed to always be driving me downwards I was compensating quickly. All my movements, I noticed however, seemed to have slowed down.
There was a small backpack like the one I saw Bud using, which I hesitated to put on because of its feminine appearance. It was surely intended to be part of the uniform. I picked it up to give it a closer inspection. As I stood there looking at it, a door at the end opened noisily. I would not have even noticed but for the shuffling movements of Diot.

“Presentable.” She said.

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“It goes on your back if you are trying to figure it out. You’re geared up as a flight technician. That might not be what you turn out to be but there’s always a shortage of them and they are easily trained and so can be rather stupid.”

I took the insult as indifferently as she gave it and awkwardly put the pack on.

“Well, now let me take you to the canteen.”

I left the walker behind and followed her out the silent door and into a large and empty hallway. I was shuffling in the same manner she did. “Walk this way.” I mumbled to myself. She emitted an inquisitive hum. “Nothing.”

“From the little I’ve seen of you, I begin to think you might be a smart-ass.” I was quiet. “The whole earth is full of your type… or at least your type is the only one that are stupid enough to get recruited. Why do you think that is?” The hallway was rough hewn stone like the room I was just in but broken by the occasional door.

“Where was I just then?”

“You mean where you got dressed or where you woke up?”

“Where I woke up?”

“That’s a reclamation room.”

“Is that like a morgue?”

“I’m not sure what a morgue is. We don’t use that word. But I suppose you are thinking of the other bodies. Yes there dead and its my job to reclaim what can be reclaimed before disposal.”

“It was rather large and empty.”

“Yes, it doesn’t get as much use now. We’re all hoping we’ll be busier. I hate it.” She paused. Maybe she had surprised herself by her frankness. “I mean I hate the fact we’re not busy. But I hate the job too. I hate touching things. I hate pulling the chips. Not as much as most people. I have a high tolerance apparently though I am not like you. I am engine.” I thought the word was engine but she pronounced it stressing both syllables. “But I hate the boredom worse and I hate the fact we’re not winning. That’s how it is here. I hate it both. But good news for you. You won’t get a job like mine any time soon that’s for sure.” Her accent was strange to me. It was not foreign but seemed slightly twisted. The way she said reclaim was like the truncation of the longer word reclamation with a short “a.”

The floor suddenly lurched, and I had the dreadful sensation that I was spinning. The unexpected disruption led to the unsettling of my stomach and I keeled over and vomited. Diot’s reaction was sudden and fierce. Her eyes opened wide and she almost leaped to the other side of the hallway and began to scream at me.

“Oh just great! What a revolting mess! What is the matter with you, can’t you walk 100 yards without doing something completely disgusting? I’m not going to clean that up. I am not going to clean that up. It wasn’t in my room. Someone else can clean that up.”

I caught my breath and began to apologize but she didn’t seem to notice me. Then from the other end of the hallway emerged the lumpy form of Pamille. “Diot.” Came the pleasant voice. “Calm down. You don’t have to clean anything up in the tunnel. There are other people to clean.” Diot almost immediately quieted down, but the baleful expression on her face remained.

“It’s not my job. The bodies, that’s okay. And the blood, that’s okay too. But not that.”

“You still need to take him to the canteen.” Diot composed herself and started to walk back down. Pamille, gestured with a leathery arm for me to follow and, enlarged and elongated her eyes with an abrupt nod of her head as if to give me a look saying “What did you expect considering what you just did?”

The Ninian remained at the site of trauma. I caught up with Diot who was shufflimg at double speed. She shrunk away as I approached. “Haven’t you ever been sick before?” I asked in a desperate sounding voice. The vomit had been orange and frothy and some remained on my chin. I tried to wipe off the remnants on my sleeve, but the material was synthetic and water repellant.

She refused to look at me “No! And I don’t plan to be. That’s something you do.” With those words she turned towards one of the doors which slid open with barely a whisper at her approach.

Our Precious Faith

2007-09-02T21:52:00.000-04:00

For it was of a year not unlike other years in that of this quaint past of this provincial town there was this church of pews and altars and the prayer bench, and the Sunday school class room - all filled to overflowing.

They were filled with people, whose eyes were filled with tears.

There was gnashing of teeth, and rending of clothes.

There were hugs and pats and warm embrace and handshake, galore.

Shouts of praise filled the halls, a halleluyAh symphony of angelic proportion played on every heart, and together they were a chorus, an army of spiritual praise, of love, of adoration for the divine "He".

At once there was sadness. At once...joy.

Elation filled this palace, and together they would bump heaven's ceiling (would heaven be bound).

Their's was a happiness not of this earth...not of this dirty realm...somehow in their joy, even the firmament, earth itself in its peaty dearth, it too seemed cleansed in their praise, and in His presence.

The pain, that presence, the suffering, that joy - altogether in Love they came, and in the name that is, our precious faith!

And about their lives they would go, filling streets and restaurants and sidewalk cafe's...there they would go about their happy, little lives in this happy little town.

Together they were one, and in the one, they were together.

And this, their precious faith would carry them, through yet another week - driving them, keeping them whole, keeping them together. They would share words, and phrase and even praise all through the live-long week until together again they would gather in and of that precious, precious faith.

Together they were, and how not unlike that gathering on distant shore; the symphony at once is one, and yet composed of so many, many...many souls. The souls of the ages for this moment in time are altogether one in the precious faith.

Quip o' da day, lads and lassies

2007-08-31T05:10:00.000-04:00

The quill, quintessential to quiver; quixiotically it will "shake" the spear.

The unforgivable sin

2007-08-28T23:12:00.000-04:00

This world may have been painted by an amateur god.

The sky is a deep blue but a dull ceiling. It is small and lifeless, unbroken by a bird or a cloud or even a puff of smoke. Beneath it, what life there exists is confined to this narrow yard of colorless rock and surrounded by cement walls. The rough faces like curdoroy, are pierced here and there by open black windows. There is also that single, wide, doorless hole that is the sole exit from the yard... or entry to the yard depending on your mood.

The animal inhabitants, myself included, are of no interest. Not worth the bullet as the judges told us. They were right. We are so contemptible that we prefer total silence to conversation. You might think I wonder what the others think, what crimes they had committed and so forth. But the truth is I don't care in the least. That would be like admitting they matter somehow. They matter less than me if that is possible. Their silence says tehy think the same way about me. They are here, like the cement walls and the gaping maw and the yard and the painted blue sky.

From day one it has been the same. I walk counter-clockwise. Everyone does. Some faster and some slower but it doesn't matter a bit. Standing or walking its the same. I could have passed the black hole a hundred times or a million or a hundred trillion and it matters no more than if I had passed it at all. I haven't even got the will to reach out my left hand and touch the walls. I just walk. And do you want to know the worst of it all? I can't even muster a sneer. Not even a sarcastic snort. Absolutely nothing.

Nothing matters but this. I am a cynic and nothing. not. one. thing. will touch me.

Perfect Opening Line to a Perfect Country Song, No. 673

2007-08-27T22:32:00.000-04:00

"Dear Lord...bring me somebody who'll treat me, just like that gal who treated me so fine, a'forin I treated her so rotten, right before she treated me worse to get back at me, and then treated her fiance so bad when she said there, on the daince floor, in that smokey ol' pool room that she wanted me back, which led me to think (for the rest of my life) what I really wanted, which was 100 per-cent pure (and unadulterated) true love, of the variety of sorts that existed a'forin all the above-said crud went down...holler julia! I am HOOKED on luv!"

Ravenous Quote, Numero Uno est Duo...ver

2007-08-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

"Everyone who puts quill to page doth plagiarize the sage"

"Trust in what you want, as for me, I'll ere on the side of God's good reason; all else, I fear, is vicious treason"

On Drunken Drivel

2007-08-25T08:48:00.000-04:00

Spew not ever,
one syllable that is torn,
of strong drink down gullet poured
from which some drunken drivel is born.

But here I lie
and here I say
it is the writer drunk of passion
who should be avoided in all ways.

The Quadrillion

2007-08-25T08:21:00.000-04:00

Millions strong, they marched them in
across the pregnant sands
where lightning fuel doth ooze
these brothers march in bands.

"We'll have them home by Christmas,"
one Governor did say.
"We'll bring them in by greyhound,
if the flying wing should frey."

And yet we cannot escort,
our visitors here so wrong.
Yet soldiers we can march them,
for all the months so long.

"Political expediency,"
it was their rallying cry...
"we must have them home by Christmas,
else victory's slim chance should die."

And to what end would they grab their power,
these lepers at the gate?
For their mouths unbridled and dour
they run so fast from hate.

Like striped dogs they worm around
and blame the other packs
for bellies them so yellow
no hair left on their backs.

With baren tooth, once alarming
they snarl and spit their bile
about them, nothing left is charming
and what backbone there is vile.

An inebriated populace
play these video games
And wolves win victory domestic
Then who do former allies blame?

Gegangen Fischen (Gone Fishing)

2007-08-21T21:54:00.000-04:00

Lanny had hated hospitals since the time he was a kid.

He really hated institutions of all variety.

He hated school. In school they take you away from the finer things in life. Like fishing; or hunting, or damned-sure just about anything besides being in school.

School was a place they educated you. And a hospital...well hell, it was just a place for the lame, sick and dying.

Living, for Lanny, was being anywhere besides cooped up inside four walls.

When he was about five years old, his family took him to Johnson City to visit his sick uncle at the Veteran's Hospital. He could still, all these years later, close his eyes and see the puke green tile on the walls, smell the sickening sweet smell of the alcohol on the ward, and just picture in his eyes the chicken wire windows and the ominous shadows they cast on that dirty tile floor.

His stomach still twisted in knots at the memory of his Fahter's voice "I wouldn't bring my dog here to die, much less my brother".

Lanny hated these damned institutions. They stunk of the government. Of fat men in straw hats with cuds of tobacco in their fat, filthy cheeks peppered pink with engorged blood vessels and three-day stubble.

"We're from the government, Mrs. Davis, and we are here to help you".

His family had always lived by the code "ain't no kinda help for them, can't help themselves".

No kinda help's right.

And here he found himself again, trapped by four walls and that sickening sweet smell.

It tore him up inside to watch his best friend, tubes down his throat, stickin' out of his spine and and even shoved up his privates.

Institution ain't no kinda place to be, for a free man. No kinda place.

"Tomorrow, I take the kayak down Tellico Plains way, out past Toqua and Razor to the mouth of the fingers. Tomorrow, I catch fish. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll be free."

And with that Lanny took his friend's listless hand and drifted off to dream of a heaven that would never be defined by the walls of a cold and Godless institution where men seem to just die a little more each and every day.

Signs of Scientific Armageddon No. Thwee

2007-08-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

"The lesson for today is the cause of Earthquakes. Eathquakes, lads and lasses, are caused by the body human and its excrement. So, in a word, let's cut the shit, put a cork in it and wait until our head's explode thus atomizing all the liberal loads of crap forced down our gullets by education liberalis and thus contained there-in; then we save the planet from this scat-induced shattering of Mother Earth and make it free for all the Earth Faeries, and of course for Charles Manson who everyone knows is the nuclear genius behind our Global Village ! Down with Crap. Down with Crap! Brown with Crap! Helter-Skelter 4-evuh!".

Quoth du Jour No. Four Hundred Ninety Fuhrer

2007-08-15T22:14:00.000-04:00

There be no greater angst than the angst that be at the quill that is nil - feckless, soul-less and utterly dry of its life-giving ink - as is poor writer who has no writing left to think.

-"BLUESTEIN !!! Get in here. NOW."

The Price

2007-08-13T23:39:00.000-04:00

"It is a heavy price we pay when we do the bidding of the Lord".

"A heavy price, indeed."

"Indubitably, and, in deed".

The deed, 'tis done, and 'tis done, in deed.

"In deed, indeed.".

"Indeed! 'Tis done.".

"And 'done', in deed."

"Indeed! 'Tis done! ".

"Yup. Done, in deed.".

Flippin' Flip

2007-08-13T23:01:00.000-04:00

"It's a flippin' outrage," he said.

"Flippin' flip, my "flipper's" done flipped.

"What's the flippin' matter.", you might ask?

"My flipper's done broke, and betwixt channels, none-the-less".

"Well, what the flip?".

"I'll tell ya the flip! It's flippin' outrageous, I'll tell ya, a flippin' shame.".

"Shame, ya say. Well, I'll never!".

"Yer probably right, I'll say. You probably ne'er will. Fer the likes uh you'll n'eer experience tha like of a flippin' flipper that's done gone 'flip'!"

"Well, I'll be 'flipped', I certainly will!"

"And a flip it'll be, if ya flip with me!".

"Well, flippin-A!".

"Flippin' 'A' ".

"Yay!"

"Ya know...if I gave a 'flyin flip', I'd done give a flip about the likes uh you, and yet, I don't. Now, who's ta say 'what the flip'? "

"I'll tell ya done who" ME, for cryin-assed flip. ME!. I certainly give a flip, I do at that!".

"At that, at that?"

"At that, I say. I give a flip."

"A 'flip', ya say!".

"A flip, indeed!".

"Well, I'll indeed be 'flipped' ! ".

"You are indeed, Sir.".

"Flipped, ta be sure!".

" 'Fliped', indeed! ".

And a flipper's noose, she done shall wait fer thee!

"Well, flip me o'er, an' flip me done."

"Done ye ere, Sir.".

"Done, I am!".

"And a cyrin'-assed flip y'all turn, when the door done slam on yer' cryin'-assed fate".

"Fer sure, fer sure. My flippin' flipper done flipped. And I, you see, done "flipped" fer sure!".

"Well, a flippin' shame it is!"

"Fer sure, fer sure. A shame indeed."

A shame...a shame, indeed!

PM 11: Cleaning Up

2007-08-08T21:47:00.000-04:00

"Now try and relax," she continued. "Take a deep breath."

I did as she told me, my first breath quite rapid and shallower than I intended. Then I gained some self-mastery and swallowed hard. Gradually the weight or pressure seemed to subside a little and a warm feeling spread all over my body. When she could see that I had calmed down she returned to her work at the console. The air came into my body and went back out: in, out, in out. My heart beat in my chest, thump-thump thump, thump-thump thump. The blood flowed through my temples: throb, throb, throb, throb. I clenched my fists and released them, I clenched my jaw and released it. As I calmed down I began to notice another sound which at first I mistook for my own breathing. It was deeper and rougher and out of sequence with the movement of my chest.

"You'll be glad to know that you now have been assigned a number and are on a schedule. Aren't you lucky."

I tried to lift my head again and found it much easier. I turned my head back to her.

"Well now, you're existence has been re-established. I put a bulletin out for you, but we'll have to wait to see who is interested in you." She took a moment to look me up and down. "I think we might as well get you up and start getting you used to things." She shuffled towards me, gracelessly, with heavy footsteps. Then bending over me she unhitched several straps and I felt the pressure diminish further, though not completely. The table I was on tilted and my head elevated as my feet descended. I was soon sitting upright but the position felt very precarious as if at any moment I would topple over and slam hard against the floor.

I felt a pinch in my arm and a burning sensation. She was using a syringe to inject some yellowish fluid into my arm. "This will keep you from throwing up. Just sit here for a minute and let the medicine work." The ill-lit cavernous room stretched out before me in all directions. I noticed that it was not exactly an aseptic environment. Little piles of damp cloths and other indefinable substances were strewn around the room. I waited for quite some time as the human resources worker went from one locker to another, from one console to another, disappeared altogether and reappeared from another direction, never taking a fast step but always with that ungainly gait.

Eventually she emerged from one of the shadows with a walker and placed it in front of me. "I hate this part of the job." Diot said and sighed. "Time to get you cleaned up." She slipped an arm behind my back and pulled me off the inclined table towards the walker. My hands reflexively stretched out for the handles. My grip was weak and I stumbled again but she, much larger than I, managed to keep me from total collapse until I established enough muscular control to correctly distribute the burden of my weight between my arms on the walker and my wobbly legs on the floor. The shroud had fallen off me and I realized I was naked.

I glanced at her in my shame and embarrassment but she was clearly oing her best to avoid contact with me, visually or physically. “Go straight ahead, follow the little copper colored strip and it will take you to the showers.” On the trash-littered floor there was indeed a copper colored walkway painted. “I will meet you there.” She stepped away and I was left to my own abilities to reach my destination. At first it was a struggle but with every step I gained some more self-control.

I soon left the realm of the spot lights and corpses and worked into the shadows. These had been created by rows of hanging curtains the purpose of which I could not guess, but every now and then I seemed to catch a glimpse of some reflection of a metallic object in the murkiness of that room. The copper path I walked along seemed to glow a little in the darkness and if not for that luminescence I would have had a great deal of difficulty. Eventually I reached a wall which, from the shallow semi-circular grooves, appeared to have been ground out of a solid rock and then coarsely smoothed down. And in the wall was a doorway to another room. As I looked a bank of lights came on in this room revealing it to be no more than ten feet deep and twice as wide with a series of shower heads in the far wall. I wheeled my way in and as I did the water came on in one of the heads.

Steadying myself with my right hand, I reached out with my left to touch the spray. It was very fast and hard and the temperature was lukewarm at best. I hesitated to step into it. But this whole time I had not looked down at my body and when I finally did I saw that it was rather filthy.

“Any soap?” I called out. My voice merely echoed. There was no other response. I noticed however, that on the floor, the water from the tap appeared to be generating its own sudsy lather, so I stepped into the spray. It was unpleasant, neither hot enough or cold enough, or even, for that matter wet enough. It seemed to take a long time to effect much cleaning. The filth on me was rather sticky but oddly did not have any smell to it at all. I wondered a little what it might be. The water dripping down from me, hardly a trickle actually changed from dark to lighter and as it did the soapiness of it seemed to reduce and then the spray stopped altogether. The stream of water suddenly became a blast of warm air, but with a kind of chemical odor to it. Then it too stopped. I was now clean and dry but still naked. And I was cold. I turned to look around wondering what I was to do now.

“MacLeinn.” said Diot’s voice from a masked speaker. “Step through the showers and into the uniformary.” Then I noticed a doorway off one of the sidewalls. I wheeled my way through the door and into an ordinary looking locker room. I was feeling steadier, and wanting to get rid of this walker but I did feel physically tired and still very heavy. On a bench against a wall was a little stack of clothes. I assumed I was to put them on. Wheeling my way to the bench, I parted from the walker and sat down heavier than I intended hard against the wall, my head coming to rest with a solid thunk. “Put it on.” Diot’s voice urged impatiently and I turned my attention to the clothes.

Dee Bob Daily, Diddy-Quip No. 96

2007-08-07T22:33:00.000-04:00

"Faction schmaction", said Jackson.
I'm just here fo the "punch" !

*The writer of this piece dissociates himself from all criminal and civil liability that may as a matter of course arise from any liberal interpretation of said piece, or any more liberal "leaps in logic" such as an affiliation of this piece to any piece (penned or coined) by any such authors as Nomran Maelstrom, Wilt Killdey's "PoBo" series, "L'il Babler" & "Unfaisen Dazey" or any other concocted piece of acid-induced fiction that might be floating around in some fat, licentious and bulbous-brained, flatulent-headed fat-asses in baseball caps who's appearence (even in print) just oozes stench; and from the commie-left wing socialist party of Aremenians backing such nondidates as Sillary Whimseyon, Usama YoMomma Mohemian or Michel Moor. Periodosio. Ad Infinitum!

Coupier Liberiaum!

Unfinished Poem

2007-08-06T22:03:00.000-04:00

We're all born with the appetite for a certain kind of pain
and as we age this appetite grows ever more refined
so torments of our youth we think we've gladly left behind
imprint upon our hearts a thirst which always will remain

Evincing in domestic wars and struggles for success
this lust for self-abuse obscures and smothers every good
and never will permit us to behave the way we should
...

The Purloined Penman: or, that bastard propagandist

2007-08-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

He's a stolen man, with a stolen life
he's a stolen inkwell, and a stolen wife.
He'd steal from the blind,
to aid the sighted
and steal from the clean
to advantage the blighted.

He's stolen words as thoughts
and penned them as his own,
stolen hearts from young maidens
and flew on high - as sick, filthy raven.
Then there's the concepts he'd steal from all the world's thinkers
and bright, shiny daubles he'd steal from the tinkers.

In his path he's left nothing,
and all ahead all he sees
are opportunities for thievery
driving sane men to their knees.
If only able, he'd steal even soul,
but for that he would hang in heaven's own trees.

So he's content to bend minds,
with the words that he's taken
and for those who consume
God, let them not be foresaken!
Mend them up, stitch them well
and for this glutenous thief, may he rot in wordy hell.

On Intellectual Bankruptcy

2007-08-05T13:28:00.000-04:00

In the courts, the crime of over-indulgence is "beheaded" by the process of chapter thirteen.

The little man, he is "kaput"...out of cash, out of life, out of time and literally, out of pocket.

How does one "run out" of intellect? Can you assert that it is really the same as mis-managing money?

I say, "hell yes"!

Thinkers can get lazy with their "thoughts", and pundits can state "and this passes for intellect"?

I could propose tomorrow that the best system of government is no government (and darned sure, may be correct in the assertion) - but only "certain" people would live well in what would surely be a time of chaos.

Intellectually, I know that those equipped for living in the woods would, for all intents and purposes, be as happy as the proverbial "pig wallowing in his own...ahem...Svinsti". Where would this model leave the rest of the world? To fend for themselves in the sewers of the cities? To fight for the last morsels of food left on the grocery shelves?

And what of intellect then?

Catastrophe of this magnitude would certainly issue challenges for the American human race like none other in its infantic existence...but in the end, would it be a good thing?

I've been in the woods enough in my long, long life to know - it ain't exactly a bowl of cherries. Yes, you can survive out there...yes, you can get used to it, and yes, you can "make it pretty good"...but each and every time I've been out there for a prolonged period there is nothing I look more forward to than a hot, hot shower and, well, a bowl of cherries.

Thus, my position on anarchy. It would not be a pleasant thing, living like wild animals, but I do think that living as such would most certainly be living sans-intellect. There is not much time in the woods for discussing international politics over brandy (although, it has been done on safari, I understand).

Mending ropes, chasing varmints, and killing quary are but a few of those "everyday things".

The point being, with the breakdown in social graces comes the breakdown of the nation's intellectual soul. There is not much need of intellect when all that is required to survive is to hunt and to kill and to eat and to hunt and kill and eat again.

The only engineering would be left up to the shelter builders...if and when man finds that inevitable discretionary "time" he might then begin spending it building aquaducts and spring houses (and with it, of course, the advent of new "civilization").

Well, I suppose it is time to "wrap" this meandering mess that passes for "intellect" - I will close by simply posing the question "is anarchy, from an intellectually rich standpoint, truly what we want for our world, or for our Nation" ?

Here's to the thinkers! May they never, ever find themselves without a thought (and should they, may the Good Lord help us all in our dark time of bankruptcy).

Ditty #73

2007-08-03T07:39:00.000-04:00

Can any guilt be so sublime
as that of the thief of another man's time?

The Many Lives of Dolimer Gusset

2007-08-01T22:24:00.000-04:00

Dolimer Gusset had lived a life that was a compendium of mini lives.

Truck driver, stock clerk, loader on the loading docks, bell hop and purloined pen-man (for he stole every drop of ink); yet the life he was leading today was unlike any preceding.

Dolimer had found his curtain call in the arms of a married lady.

Jealous husband, rants and raves, and there lay Dolimer in a bloody pool perhaps to live another day - his sins forgiven perchance in belief, a belief over-all?

For it was now only known to the stars in heaven, as his many lives (and many wives) had now become only one.

And the many lives that had been part and parcel of Dolimer Gusset rise and fall, and rise again with the sequential nature of that hot and boiling - rising, falling sun...and all those lives that come, and go, forever reaching under its seemingly ever-present domain.

One life it is, in strife; yet at its end two roads that follow very different, but equally infinite lines.

And these lines that unlike the many lives that become singular in the One, these two shall never merge as one again. Alas, the one becomes the infinite Nil where and when time itself, and that seemingly ever-present sun that measures become forever irrelevant and evaporate in self-consumption in a vacuous chasm within a dark chamber that to no one life will become even a singular matter ever again.

And a Sheriff's report lies on an empty desk with scant little detail of a man who'd lived so many lives and was now in this life eternal, dead.

And thus is written of the many lives lived and now died in and of a name on a page of a one, Dolimer Gusset.

May he rest in peace.

Dolor

2007-07-29T22:38:00.000-04:00

Born into a dying world we adopt its dying ways
And hasten death with every day we grasp toward the sky
We scorn our saviours from our birth, our tormentors we praise
and cling to poison, kiss our pain, our very souls deny

Thus we as rotting creatures do descend into the mud
So fit to all our characters this purposeful despair
Though baptized late with water, we were baptized first in blood
Our first words incoherant screams, our last words always prayers

And on these amber days with their honeysuckle songs
We remember that which owns us but forget that which we owe
And cherish our due right to commit nothing but wrongs
And so long to ascend we always fix our fate below

O Purgation! Molten slag! Eternity of fire!
O burning taste of hell at the feet of heaven's gate!
If earth's pain cannot tame our hearts before our lives expire,
can there ever be a man who finds his death comes far too late?

A Nation of Law, Not Men

2007-07-29T05:26:00.000-04:00

John Adams should have stuck to the family brewery.

I was watching a democrat on TV this a.m. and she quoted Mr. Adams, that "we are a Nation of laws, not of men" (this in reference to the writ of habeus corpus and the Gitmo "prisoners" (she of course sets the standard for "taking no prisoners")).

A flood of thoughts rolled through my being...of the synedrion...of King George.

The law-givers and the law-interpreters - the lap dogs to tax collectors who look more like Jabba the Hud or Ted Kennedy.

I also thought of our own George. Mr. Washington, I understand, was simply trying to make a go of it as a businessman, but due to inferior product from England and repressive taxes (the teeth of the law), he was unable. Caught in the snare of a free will caged by a repressive King.

I'll bet King George was a fat-assed drunk too. Probably sat around drinking aperatif and eating bon-bons all day while he wiled away the hours talking about Camelot. I wonder what Ted Kennedy does all day?

And then there is our own George - a man, subjugated to the law. One might say enslaved.

Gee whiz, how is this any different than our modern Congress? Our law-givers, and law-interpreters - our own King of tax levee.

I don't know about you, but I feel as if I am in a straight-jacket.

And we are a Nation of laws and not men, indeed! (Consider this source, would you?).

Blood courses in my veins, but not because some Democrat on Capitol Hill deemed it so.

Cursed is the law, and cursed those who incessantly quote it.

I am a man! (and not one defined by the laws of this Congress).

There is a song that I've picked up from an internet radio station...I don't know the band, but it has one of those driving beats punctuated by some minstrel-sounding dude reminiscent of a Rolling Stones diddy. The main riff and verse, I can't get out of my head "Tell me all the rules...girrrrrl - I just want to get along" (da don don don, da don don don, da don don don).

Well, I'm going to tell ya, I'm tired of all the rules, and I'm tired of "just getting along", girlfriend!

Trust me, I am no advocate of revolution...it only leads to pain. However, something has got to change as one begins to weigh the pains that are caused in a system through which there seems to be no redress (and hardly fair when you consider we are the closest thing left that resembles capitalism and we are having to support a world of socialists, all on the government cheese), and that god-forsaken alternative, revolt. Which is the more painful?

When the weighing comes down to this, the scale is so easily tipped.

The hippies crossed over to becoming females in the 60's. They are the "girls" who are making the rules. I say it is time to deflower them.

When boys become "men" they often hear phrases like "that'll make a man out of him", or "mit the rope's end" or that inevitable "attitude adjustment".

So what does it take to bring a girl into "womanhood"?

Well, we all know the traditional concept (archaic - I'm no advocate of caveman philosophy...but in truth, in a wife, I'm not seeking an absolute equal - I want one who is equally different in all the right ways).

But what is the cultural equivalent of this "then you will be a man, my son" concept?

Now that they are leaders, what is it that causes them to go through a similar "phase-shift" ?

Well, whatever it is, I believe, they'd better team up with their hippy-assed boyfriends and figure out how to mit the freying ends of the rope before someone else decides to do it for them.

I've dated some women who constantly set rules and expect others to live by them when they constantly break them themselves. Arrrogant twits, they were...and completely self-absorbed. As a point of reference outside my own realm of experience, reference this Lohan chick or Ted Kennedy. You do the math.

There is an extreme sense of desperation afoot, and from an historical perspective there can be but one answer to it.

I sincerely hope that someone in Washington will get a clue, before we all begin to feel like the city's namesake and seek our independence yet again, and once again, as free men at heart and breaking free of those surly, albeit freying, bonds.

Mit them up, Washington.

-Visum, enraged

Why No Science, is Good Science

2007-07-07T08:46:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me today that I should not mourn the death of valid science.

I should get used to the fact that it is gone, and move on with life without.

So, I began to ponder, wouldn't it be interesting (now that science is dead), if I join the fray of the noveau-pseudo's and form my own observations about the universe.

So here goes: (WARNING: the following contains references to the Al
Gore's, bad acting, homo-eroticism and the blogosphere. NOT FOR THE KIDDIES!!!).

1) The world will end as the result of excessively poor thespian performances.

Here's the hypothesis (can we have those in the new science?) - the world will eventually end because we will all, ultimately, become bad actors (given that life emulates art and all).

The date of the implosion will be April 4, 2008 (at the Greater London celebration of the Bard's Birthdate).

What will happen here, essentially, is that a chain reaction will begin at this celebration event in which the audience begins to "bleed" into the performance (the acting was so poor on the stage).

The actual "acting" on the stage will have degenerated at this point to the level that everyone there ad libs at such a level that Hamlet begins to look like an episode of Family Guy (the episodes where there is a great deal of injected silence, to the point where you think about changing channels, but for some, odd, reason - continue watching). The performance will be rife with melodrama, Jerry Springer-esque incestual relations, beer, and fist fights.

It is widely rumored that Alec Baldwin and the rotting corpse of Paul Newman (although, his acting stinks so bad that no one is really sure he is dead) both drop trou and moon the booing crowd.

Well, of course, the audience (as the audience always does at such affairs) will be drawn into the "performance", at which point civilization will begin to break down into its "essence" (think Greek philosophy here).

Each "atom" (in the form of individual "thespians" from the crowd) will begin a reaction in which a sort of mass psychotic break takes place, in "piggy-back" style (appropriate for actors).

The truly humorous thing is that the acting in the crowd actually begins to take on Olivier qualities, and could one only observe the situation, one would certainly find it of the highest caliber entertainment.

The unfortunate thing is, anyone who observes it will immediately have a psychotic break and join in the "thes"-tivity.

Well, you can imagine just how fast this will spread. The entire planet will become populated by thespians in a, ahem, New York minute.

The culmination of this thespiaddict armageddon transpires when the last two educated inviduals left are about to be "infected".

One, a used car salesman from Walla Walla, Washington (who we only know as "Harvey") faces off with a young exchange student from Liberia who has just landed in America and was seeking his way from the airport to his host home via Harvey's car lot (a difficult thing to do when all the cabbie's are trapped in an un-ending episode of that highly-esteemed and classy show of the 70's "Taxi" (or was that "Taxi Driver", I get them so confused).

The exchange student, Yamballa (or "Yams", to his chums) had never even seen so much as a movie. The closest he'd come to a performance was watching two ants fight over a blade of grass (hardly qualifying).

The unique thing about this is, Yams was essentially immune to the bug (his immunity recognized by an underground group of Cock-fighters who predominantly got their entertainment from fighting with their cocks and seemed also to have a degree of immunity to the disease, along with some homosexuals who were already living in an alternative "staged" reality and found the new disease rather "ho-hum" - at some point we will have to delve into those underground groups who survived the bardeggedon) - but I digress.

Yams and Harvey it seems, were discussing the price on a 1955 Custom Country Club Nash Rambler when the "final act" was about to transpire.

A roving band of actors (led by none other than Albert Gore the toid) happened upon the scene and began producing a performance of that acclaimed work "Love Story" in which Al Senior and Al da toid portray the principle leads in homo-erotic incestual style.

Well, Harvey thought it a porno script (and who wouldn't, given the caliber of acting - did I mention the mutations? Yup. Nuff said)...at any rate, Harvey turned a flip and was nekkid before he hit the ground.

This scared poor Yams to a point that he took note of a rather thick rope hanging, seemingly, from the clear, blue sky at which point he lept into the air like a gazelle (practically leaping out of his loin cloth), grabbed ahold of the rope and - you guessed it, brought the curtain down on the entire planet.

One of the underlings told a reporter later that he could not get the picture of the two Al Gore's out of his mind as they descended netherward toking on a bong fashioned from a blogosphere (truly, a site to get your head wrapped around).

Next week's pseudo-scientific hypothesis: the world will end as the result of flaccid brains.

(Negre) Quoth du Jour

2007-07-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

"I find fleas irritating. They are difficult to see, always itching, wriggling and biting and you just can't seem to get rid of them. Like Democrats - the flea would have been a much, much better mascot than the donkey, for even the donkey suffers of the flea."

SEV, ought, ought sieben

Midnight Marmelade

2007-07-06T00:02:00.000-04:00

Oh to you, dear Titus,
wher'er thou must be!
Thy son is deemed now "wreckless",
and your head must now hang low.

Oh to you, dear legions
who follow in his steps.
For tis you the earth is warming
to your herb-induced entreaty.

Oh to you, Madam Marteau
pound for pound so delightful
for the masochist, Freudian Bourdeaux
and they the people will drink 'til none are insightful.

Oh to you, merry legions who follow!
with the fate of the marching lemming
o'er cliffs to a chasm that is redeeming
for the souls that are surely hollow.

And to that marching soldier
lone against the crowd
may you trudge on through eternal
thy soul to their incite never cowed!

SEV, ought-ought sept

Ode to an Injured Friend

2007-07-05T09:31:00.000-04:00

My pal, you've been with me
for many a year now;
many, many more than most -
the kindest friend, confident and host.

I've trusted in your judgement,
and hung life on your very word.
Your friendship has been enriching,
your humor, salve to haggard soul.

Never a man more true have I met,
and never one for whom
I've more enjoyed the bon mot,
the laughs, the charm - the fun, and rot.

And now you face some troubles
few would wish on any one.
My heart, it lies there with you
in your troubles, in your shun.

If only I could stand in,
for that sentence coming on.
I'd gladly do so just to know
a freedom for you and son.

But now we go into this day
a squint against blinding sun.
One day again we'll both live free
and once again be ... "all for one".

(Negre) Quoth du Jour

2007-07-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

"There are few things in life one can do extremely well; some things, one can do fairly well but there is one thing for which we are all exemplary - living that well-intended life".

S.E. Visum

Quote of the Day

2007-06-21T22:33:00.000-04:00

"Tradition may be the living faith of the dead and the dead faith of the living,, but the modern alternative to tradition is the faith of the living dead."

-Xavier Martel, 2007

Scale (note walking stick)

2007-06-21T14:17:00.000-04:00

Up close

2007-06-21T14:15:00.000-04:00

Flower Tree, Andrew's Bald, circa ought, ought seve

2007-06-19T20:50:00.000-04:00

Forest Hill

2007-06-19T20:34:00.000-04:00

On Forest Hill
did I there dwell
(in one life, one time)
and for some time, therein, did live.

Where raindrops fell,
wet-weather creeks ran well
and I, forsaken,
did for once, just breathe.

Life itself was simple there,
and the time there spent
it was spent well.

But alas,
as time must do
this time spent here
it too, will pass.

And onward and upward
I will rise
to new events...
and another sunrise.

On a long, flat road
I will climb and climb.
To the sky, Lord,
to the sky.
To the sky, I will climb.

There will be other hills
(and forested dale).
Other adventures
(in long time, for there to spin tale).

But this precious time,
that I spend here,
is time indeed
time indeed.
Time in deed, spent well.

Tis time spent well,
spent well,
spent well
alas, spent there and spent well
spent well on Forest Hill,
nesteled there in the forested dale.

Meme Response

2007-06-17T23:10:00.000-04:00

Four from the prior four

Explored the possibility of leaving my denomination for another.
Owned and operated a communications company.
Considered changing career and decided to stick with communications.
Learned a thing or two about women.

Four for the next

Serve once again as Master of my Lodge and improve in my Masonic "life".
Settle down.
Explore the why's and why-for's of Methodism (applying the "quadralateral" to my daily living) (and why I can not seem to stop loving Methodism); answering that interminable query "why?".
Write something that I would deem a masterpiece (something of my own that I would enjoy reading over and over).

And if there were five, five would be "run for office" (dog-catcher).

Meme response

2007-06-15T15:51:00.000-04:00

Are we allowed to tag in group? I'll just use your tags...

Four new things in the last four years:
1) Added two new kids to the family make four total (my wife did most of the work)
2) Changed jobs: was a decently-well-paid peon now just a peon
3) Got 8/9 of the way through the Divine Mercy Novena (accidentally repeated one of the days)
4) Listened to about 450 hours of books on tape in the car

Four things I would like to do
1) Finish my PhD (fat chance!)
2) Go on a vacation someplace where the water temperature is more than 50 degrees in August
3) Get a little boat like a sunfish and finally learn to sail
4) Go back to the Smokies and hike up to Spence Field

I'm late (I'm late)

2007-06-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

It's 10:48
I'm late (I'm late)
10:48

What will I do?
Where will I go?
How...will I know?

It's 10:49
I'm sick of the whine...
but sicker still, of that cocky shrill
from the that pusher of cheese, ol' weisenheim

It's 10:51
ho hum.
Ho, hum.
10:51

At ten-fifty-three
I think I will see
what might become
of this dreadful drum.

Oh, it's 10:53
Oh me (oh me!)
10:53

At 10:55 (if I'm still alive)
I think I'll sneeze
or perhaps start a breeze
who knows (if I'm still alive)

Dog gone at the time,
it's 10:59
No more breeze
No more sneeze
for me it's "dream and wheeze"

At 10:59

Short C.S. Lewis Parody

2007-06-11T20:51:00.000-04:00

I hate to parody a notable Christian Apologist but someplace in That Hideous Strength there must have been a part like this...

His eyes looked into her eyes and she felt as if she were staring across a pale sea across a distant horizon at peaks, marbled, bronzed, frozen, and yet flowing with a radiance of a thousand past sunsets, trapped in time and space and yet transcending space and time altogether as if it were a single ray from the sun somehow halted and yet moving ever backwards towards a never-ending stream of unspeakable conciousness, a presence that has never been and yet always was, explicable not in words but only in senses and yet not touching in any way upon the material but rather the unalterable knowledge that this time there may be a next time but there would come a time where there would neither be a next time nor a previous time but only time itself, coursing, heaving, undulating, like the mountains across that distant sea of imaging that was her impression as he met her eyes without hesitation and with no resistance.

Abortionists: my take

2007-06-09T20:05:00.000-04:00

It goes beyond even that they are "non-human" (?) or "non-person", but more, non "child of God"...

The zygote itself, sans eyespot or even rudimentary brain stem is still one of God's "sparrows"; as the Gloria Patri states "all creatures, here below"...

The abortionist isn't trying to murder man; he is trying to murder God.

By the way, have you caught the latest? I am burning to the core of my existence. Intimidation, indeed!

SEV

Abortionists

2007-06-08T18:25:00.000-04:00

The abortionist position is not one of recognizing that the dawn is different from full daylight. Rather, it is one of declaring that the sun itself is different in the morning than at noon. The whole position rests upon redefining "human" so that the fetus is a non-person. And this in the name of convenience.

Levella Joppannian ("Their" Planet)

2007-06-02T08:20:00.000-04:00

(continued from "Their" Planet)
The Joppannian lineage were known as those of the "forged" clan, as they typically belonged to that genus of Del Ghattian who left the Ra's at record prematurity.

Should another clan of Del Ghattian ever "best" one of their "preemie" records, the Joppanian would again force another "Ghet" to leave the Ra at an even earlier stage of development.

The Del Ghattian, it was believed (by their scientists, and not their "holy" men), it was believed that they really did not "require" that time in the Ra at all. They could, conceivably, "burst" onto the Ghattian orb, with no gestation. It was believed that once a Father Gha had thought about having a son, that conception and birth could take place in an instant.

Experiments were taking place, and moving forward in this regard.

That golden orb (or orbs) that the Mother Del Ghattians carried over their shoulder as a hobo would carry his knap sack was the source of much of the Del Ghattian belief system.

The Ra's (and especially the Hoo Law Law's) were considered a sacred place of sanctuary, at the very onset of life on this side of the great concentric spheres. In fact, many of their holiest places were based on the configuration of the birth-orbs and took the appearance of a sort of three-dimensional Manelbrot configuration rising to the great sky-orbs.

The Del Ghattian edifice (even many of the homes) all-too-often took the shape of great orbs rising to the sky, one atop the other. They were of geometrically decreasing volume, until that very last orb that could hold only the single Gha.

Here, the head of the family (most typically PaGha, although in some homes MaGha) would find solice in this "meditative" level of being...those times he or she spends regularly irregular in a state of altered consciousness and pure synthesized worship of the creator (complete relaxation externally, but elated within - no smile to be seen, except by the others at the pinnacle, and then, only in the mind's eye).

The family, in rank, would find their times in the orbs lower to the family head...none of whom would leave their orb until the head Gha was finished in his or her worship.

The living quarters would decend from there (some of the largest families eventually had to build orbs beneath the skin of Ghattia...taking advantage of the large, naturally-occuring orbcavs there underneath the great Ghattian orb-skin).

They had no problems with structures here, as issues with gravity did not exist. The legend had it that rather than a natural attraction of bodies (as with most other planets), the Gha were affixed to the surface by unhappiness.

As joy (elation, really) would build in their hearts, they would rise from the surface.

This eliminated the need for elevators or stairs within the orb dwellings. All they had to do was "get happy" and they would float to higher orbs.

(Of course, this led to an under-culture that refused to seek this enightenment through the traditional means of worship - they sought "artificial" forms of happiness through "alternate" nourshiment and were known, quite universally, as the Wron-Gha).

Levella Joppanian had left her Hoo Law Laws at an extreme early age. Her record had not been bested for some time (it was said, several globerevs, perhaps as many as four was her nearest competitor - but finally in the sphere-year globular_seven, she had been surpassed and now the bar had been set at globerev_three for gestation).

The unfortunate side of being in Ghattia was that should a Gha leave the Ra with no orb-mate - that Gha was sent to the land of the Angle (Angellia - where there were no orbs, on the dark side of the planet).

Here there was only twisted angle-iron rising from the ground. They lived there as singles and perpetually changed their partners. They were like living lost souls, constantly lost and in search of an orb-path that simply did not exist for them.

Their dwelling made use of the twisted steel, and their buildings were crooked lines rising to crooked clouds in a red and crooked sky.

Pity was taken upon most of them (for how can you blame for those seeking the best mate), although many joined the ranks of the alternates (those seeking artificial nourishment), many still tried to remain true to the faith. Much of the alternate nourishment forms came from the land of Angellia (where it was said, their King made no distinction for the risings...paths to happiness were strictly tied to the volition of the Gha, and it was acceptable to use both natural and artificial means).

Many of them would continue to worship the correct paths, but were still pariah as they had no orb mate.

It is said that those who stay the longest have the most difficult time finding their orb mate, and the highest gestation period had been set by some fellow long ago at thirteen-globerevs...legend has it that he became the King of Angellia, but most believed it a silly children's story designed to stress the importance of staying within the glob-system.

Levella was a queen in her own right (although in Upper-Ghattia they had no royalty), and most believed it would have been her destiny even without the record Rha.

She of course had mated with the best of the Gha. He was handsome, and he was smart.

His family lived in one of the tallest of the orb-estates. They were known for their piety, their goodness, and their love of everything orb.

In this year of the glob-rev, Levella was with child. Her Ra was swollen to the burst stage and many in her family feared it would split into hoos (a common occurence with increasingly late gestations, and it appeared, this would be a long one).

All were fearful for her, and everyone talked of how unusual it was. To come from such a lineage of record-holder, and to carry so long. How could it be (there were whispers of an Angeliere in her heritage).

Soon, very soon, the world of the Gha would forever change.

Levella was about to introduce to Ghattia the predicted one...her son would come to be called "Angst", and Angst would unleash the great war with the under-beings...the Wron-Gha were about to have their day in bathing crimson heat of lower Del Gha's Giant red sun.

Artful Dodger

2007-05-29T13:11:00.000-04:00

Great poem, not by me.

2007-05-28T21:45:00.000-04:00

Our fathers took oaths as of old they took wives,
to have and to hold for the term of their lives.
But we take our oaths, as our whores, for our ease,
and a whore and a rogue may part when they please.

--Thomas Brown

I saw this on the following website. Frankly, I know nothing about Thomas Brown.

Daniel Mitsui Blog

Del Hippian

2007-05-26T07:56:00.001-04:00