Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.

Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.

A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.

And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.

The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.

And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.

Preludium, or, *what has gone before:
A man makes his way, alone,
Through rocky ash and bluff,
His feet a mass of ****** scabs
His throat gruff with rust.
In his savage thirst he sees, delirious,
The City from whence he flees;
The City that stole his Name.

Furious! O righteous hate;
Bubbling! Consuming! Melding with his haze of pain:
Fickle Justice! Intangible Law! Humble Equity!
Alien words for an alien time
That has quickly descended to muck.

But we must leave this Nameless nomad
To his dark visages, for now.
Perhaps we shall return
To plough his tale and groan
To find him drowned in thirst;
In self-pity, the liquid fire.
For now- to the City, we are bound!
And the mind of one so fortunate, as to still call his Name his own.

Squint scurried.
From rooftop to rooftop,
He skipped and he flipped as he
Scrambled amongst the tiles,
The blur of slate was his domain,
As, through the haze of reckless speed,
The slowly revolving City
Did imprint upon his vision.
So that as his sly lids descended
Its outline he admired;
Its screaming centre he desired.

In the end even Squint cannot run forever.
So he will slow, and shade his eyes,
Catch his breath and gaze and sigh.

And when he’s had his fill of the sights and the smog.
Down he slides amongst the pipes
Of better folk; of harder folk,
Of those with Proper Names
Like ‘Welder’ and ‘Melder’
And ‘Roland’ and ‘Fairer’.
Names that came after a ‘Mr’,
A ‘Lord’ or a ‘Sister’.
Names that one Day he would have for his Own.
For in the Glass City, Names were always changin’ hands.

Squint.
Not much of a Name,
Even for one so young as he
It would seem he would deserve
A Name of much more worth
Than simple, humble ‘Squint’.

But Squint lived up to his Name.
He may look young and full of fun,
But crouch on a wall and you might just
Be appalled to see that not a moment after
Squint is left alone, his eyes will glitter.
And if any Man’s flesh could ever express such malicious scheming,
It was the writhing face of our humble Squint,
Once his eyeballs set to gleaming.

Introduction:
What is *Preludium but a time to reflect on what it is we know;
What has gone before, and how it might shape those things to come?

Preludium, or, what has gone before:
An entire world,
A great big steaming musty living breathing screaming world and-
For all we know-
There’s but two souls that care to fill it:

Sly Squint, our latest hero,
Swinging through his city like t’were a steaming jungle
And him the proverbial Ape,
He crouches in shadows on rooftops,
Directing his lust, forceful! At all
That kneels before him.

Then there’s our mysterious wanderer-
One hell of a sorry, stinking, sulky sort is he.
No Name to claim yet garbed in rags aplenty
Travelling on an endless quest
Towards a dying dusk.

Yet we need to draw a Third.
See, in this strange place we find ourselves, riddled with danger and loss,
We need one who knows some things;
One who is up there;
Better yet, one who helped to shape this world.
Because for now we are clueless, vulnerable, shambling in darkness.
And that will simply not do.

So, with haste, dear reader, with haste,
Let us ride for the one with the answers;
The one with more Names than you can count, even if you had a lifetime in which to do so;

The one who holds all the strings.

Introduction
There they stood; keeping silent company.
Yet of His face, wept searing electricity.

To the lovers of life*
Here they stand, keeping silent company.
No utterance dealt; yet clear in both their minds
A single, brilliant truth:

He longs for her with a savage delight.
And it cries from every fibre, exalting!
It is in the bearing of his eye;
Rifling through her tender flesh
In search of what he knows, from voices ages old, is there:
That her heart will beat for no other as it beats for him right now;
That in this moment, their Souls are bared
To each other’s glares- naked, and blemished, and cowering-
Yet his eyes remain fixed and sure:

And for this, she loves him.

For they have seen each other for the First of Times,
Truly! And as with many the Ancient Laws unfurled,
They stand aware, in lack of ever being taught,
Aware with every atom, every straining tendon tight
That their time's so very short.

And so they drink… wordless
To each other, to their youth, and to their bodies
Shining like never before in the noonday air
Garbed in cloth that snaps and furls around their waists.

They imbibe with electric eyes,
Eyes that are new born to this world of light
And come out screaming, living, and sensitive
For lack of ever being touched.
They revel in their new-found joy;
Pouring from Her figure,
Of Her sleek, supple waist and the arch of her back,
Bristling with delight,
Of His strong hands and easy smile,
That spoke of laughter scattered
Across countless campfires of summers past.

Their light does burn intense as any fire,
And when their brimming anticipation
Overspills its crimson chalice
The silence shall SHATTER.
To find peace again in each other's arms.
Fumbling in sweet darkness-

Of heavy lids, of earthy flesh,
With lips embraced...

In ravenous finality.

She looks in the mirror
At the age on her face
"I wonder what he thinks
of me this way?"

She considers her weight
and the pores on her skin
She thinks out loud
"I don't deserve him."

She picks apart
the woman he loves
Separating her worth
from all that she does
              
He looks in her eyes
and caresses her face
He sees it glowing with love
and full of grace

 The lines on her face
  he views with pride
  Recounting the victories
  each time they've been tried

The weight that she carries
 is that of a mom
 Nothing's too heavy
 She just marches on

These bodies will perish
 and mirrors offer no truth
True love abides
 beyond the corridors of youth

  No, she doesn't deserve me
  Perhaps God can see
  Conceivably, one day
  I'll be as worthy as she