For
              Carl Solomon

                   I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
      madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
      looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
      ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
      contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
      ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
      hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
      among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
      publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
      skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
      ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
      to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their ***** beards returning through
      Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
      Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
      torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
      cohol and **** and endless *****,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
      lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
      Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
      tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
      dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
      storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
      blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
      vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
      lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
      ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
      until the noise of wheels and children brought
      them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
      battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
      in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
      floated out and sat through the stale beer after
      noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
      of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
      pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
      lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
      down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
      off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
      and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
      and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
      and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
      Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
      trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
      City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
      ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
      drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
      railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
      leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
      through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
      father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
      athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
      stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
      ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
      angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
      gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
      homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
      light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
      seeking jazz or *** or soup, and followed the
      brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
      and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
      to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
      behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
      and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
      place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
      F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
      eyes **** in their dark skin passing out incom-
      prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
      the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
      Square weeping and ******* while the sirens
      of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
      down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
      wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
      and trembling before the machinery of other
      skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
      in policecars for committing no crime but their
      own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
      dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
      scripts,
who let themselves be ****** in the *** by saintly
      motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
      the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
      love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
      gardens and the grass of public parks and
      cemeteries scattering their ***** freely to
      whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
      with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
      when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
      them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
      the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
      the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
      and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
      sit on her *** and snip the intellectual golden
      threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
      beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
      dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
      the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
      on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and
      come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
      in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
      but prepared to sweeten the ****** of the sun
      rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
      in the lake,
who went out ******* through Colorado in myriad
      stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
      poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy
      to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
      in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
      rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
      gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
      ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
      solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
      dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
      picked themselves up out of basements hung
      over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
      Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
      ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
      the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
      East River to open to a room full of steamheat
      and *****,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
      cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
      blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
      be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
      the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
      Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
      pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
      bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
      their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
      with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
      by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
      incantations which in the yellow morning were
      stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
      & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
      kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
      an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
      for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
      fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
      fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
      stores where they thought they were growing
      old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
      on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
      & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
      of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
      fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
      ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
      drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
      pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
      into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
      ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
      the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
      saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
      danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
      phonograph records of nostalgic European
      1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
      threw up groaning into the ****** toilet, moans
      in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
      whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
      to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
      watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
      if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
      a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
      came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
      watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
      Denver and finally went away to find out the
      Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
      for each other's salvation and light and *******,
      until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
      impossible criminals with golden heads and the
      charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
      blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
   &nb

*****


Apr 7, 2012, 6:08:21 PM by ~OmegaWolfOfWinter
Journals / Personal




"Name: Amelia Weissmuler. Date of birth: June 6th, 1920. Test subject number 314-X. Specimen: Tiger." Amy heard all of this through a haze of sedatives that had begun to lose their already poor effect. She turned in the direction of the voice and saw a fearsome **** SS General standing behind a white clad scientist with a heavy accent. The general said nothing but listened and watched as Amy was strapped down to a cold metal table, completely **** with various wires, tubes and needles protruding from her flesh. She groaned painfully, the needles were extensive, and the **** scientists had no care of decency or respect. she was hit with another sedative and before she lost consciousness she heard the scientist, who she guessed was Dr. Heismeiller, say, "Name, Mordecai Dansker, former Major of the Third *****. Date of birth: September 19th, 1919. Test subject 14-W. Specimen: Wolf. As you
can see, Heir General, these are both healthy specimens, as are the test subjects." Amy heard a
rattling of cages. Her vison slowly went dark but not before seeing the doctor's face, uncovered and psychotic.
* *
When Amy woke up again, she was being suspended from the floor, the tubes and wires accompanied by menacing electrodes. there was an unnatural blue and white crackling of electricity around her, illuminating the other suspended tables nearby, the bodies in various grotesque positions and levels of decay. she tried to scream but found a machine unceremoniously shoved in her mouth, stretching deep inside her. she looked and saw nothing but obscene machines and various glass tubes of colored bubbling liquids. she tried sluggishly to break free but to no avail. what little strength she had was useless against the torturous devices emplanted in and around her. "Doctor, begin the experiment."
"Yaboe!" She heard a solid click resound through the room and heard a male scream in another room. the screams echoed for a long while, then nothing. she heard a gasp of releif from
the doctor and, "General! Subject 14-W... he has... Survived!"
"Good. now start on the frauline." there was a large thud from outside the room. "Quickly! this facility is under seige!"
"Yes sir, heir general. Test subject 314-X prepped and ready. Begin phase 1." she cried out silently as the needles burned hot inside her and the tubes boiled her insides. the electrodes soon incapacitated her and she fell unconscious.
*
*
"Phase 1 complete, heir general, subject is ready, proceeding to Phase 2."
Amy felt an intense burning around the needles, and an electric fire through her veins. the machine had been taken from her mouth, but she doubted she could scream any more, as her throat was raw from the silent screams of Phase 1. She felt her body shake uncontrollably as more electric shocks were administered. she was left panting and slumped over. "Sequence complete, the bonding process was a success." there was another thud and sediment from the roof fell to the floor. "Get her down now! They will be through soon!" She was lowered to the ground and unstrapped from the table, picked up, and placed on a stretcher. she raised her hands on front her face and nearly fainted, her hands, or paws, resembled that of a tiger, and as she looked, her whole body was covered in a slick orange, black and white fur. She was put into the backseat of an armored car with a simple blanket draped around
her. Amy felt nauseated
as the car sped off. It hit a bump in the road and she moaned painfully, clutching her furry belly and retching. the **** next to her turned away in disgust. the car ride was long and sickening, and she lost consciousness twice, and finally she tried to lay down in the cramped space. when the armored car finally stopped, she was pulled from the back seat and carried over a soldier's shoulder and into a small bunker. Once inside, amy heard a metal door open and was laid down onto a stiff bed with a single pillow and a single cover. There was a small window in the cell, a drab, grey stream of light shining in her eyes. She propped herself up on her elbow and shielded her eyes from the blinding contrast. Once her eyes adjusted, amy noticed that things had a particular sharpness to them and she had an acute awareness of things based on scent. she stood shakily, and noticed she was almost
six inches taller now, and her new tail swished back and forth along the concrete floor. she stepped
forward and grasped the iron bars and peeked out, seeing a black leather messenger bag and a black uniform lined with white. she couldn't quite reach the uniform, but was able to get a claw around the strap of the messenger bag. she pulled it closer to her and saw that her initials were monogrammed into the leather. she pulled it through the bars and opened the bag, pulling out a small, blank, leather bound journal and a pen. still ****, she sat on the bed and practiced writing, tearing out two pages of scratch paper. She began her journal with, "I am no longer the person i once was. i am something new, something... different."
• * *
The **** captain stepped into the bunker and saw amy, half lying, half dangling on the bed, the leather journal clutched close to her chest. he stormed into the cell and backhanded her awake, snatching up the journal as she cowered in the corner, her tail wrapped around her. the captain flipped through the pages of the journal and then closed iit with a snap. he glanced at it and dropped it on the bed. "it is yours now, Frauline. you are very special to the third *****. the fuhrer himself has asked for you to be placed in the Waffen SS and trained." amy glanced at the uniform on the table outside the cell and he nodded, "specially tailored for you, frauline. he stepped outside the cell and grabbed the uniform, setting it down on the bed. "you may Change into your new uniform and join the rest of us outside." he stepped outside and she was alone. she donned the simple uNdergarments then
slipped into the soft black trousers, after which she put on her military boots. next she put on the black and white jacket signature of the SS. the jacket was sleek and menacing, though it did little to flatten her chest, but that, she supposed, was one of her feminine charms. last was her hat and armband, both adorned with the *******. she gathered the leather messenger bag and stepped outside the cell, where a mirror stood, giving her a chance to see what had been done, the black uniform was a dramatic contrast to her brightly colored fur, and her new black stripes added a fierce look to her. she grinned and flashed menacing white teeth. she turned her body, looking at herself from different points of view. she slipped the **** armband onto her right arm and turned to leave. she stopped when she encountered a high pitch noise right next to the door. for the moment she just walked past, opening the door and adjusting her vision to the outside light. the layout was grey and barren,
as it always was in wartime. the captain was waiting for her along with a small squad of SS troops. a
Few laughed and remarked at her appearance, making cat noises and wolf whistling at her. she glared at them with a bright white snarl carved into her soft face. *they will fear me...
she saluted the captain and said, "heil ******." he returned the gesture, "heil. you are now part of the Waffen SS, frauline Amelia."
"please sir, its amy."
he noted her directness and ferocity, "very well, amy. before we assign you a task, though, you must prove yourself." he addressed the squad, "they are all corporal's and sergeants. you are merely a private. you will gain a rank for each one that you ****. however, they have been told that if they do not force you to submit, they will be killed or sent to the russian front. so you best fight your hardest, private amy."
as he finished, the squad set down their Mauser 98K's and MP-40's and stepped closer to her. her eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in ferocious determination. there were twelve of them.
"Fight!"
• *
Amy took a fighting stance and faced her attackers. she attempted a punch at the nearest one but was kneed in the gut, she was thrown back a few feet. she fell to her knees and clutched her stomach with one hand, holding herself upright with the other. tears sprung to life in her eyes and threatened to roll down her cheeks. she fought the tears back and stood, feeling her claws extend. she swiped at a soldier's throat, catching him right in the throat. blood splattered the ground as he choked on his own fluids. the remaining eleven were taken aback slightly, allowing her to pounce another soldier, punching and tearing at his gut with lethal force. her fur was bloodstained and she waited a moment too late, watching the cavity she created fill with blood. she was barreled over, the wind knocked out of her by a sergeant. she lay on her back, gasping for air as the soldiers closed in,
landing a few punches and sending her reeling back. she staggered back, struggling for breath. she
Bumped up against something and realized it was a bunker wall, she was trapped. she thought quickly and decided for a new course of action, she waited for one of them to gather his bravado and throw a solid punch at her, which was useless, she grabbed his wrist and smashed his head against the wall, filling his helmet with blood and brains. in the same move, she had grabbed his Luger and had downed three more of the remaining ten. in their moment of confusion she kicked the closest one in the fork of his legs and followed up with a pistolwhip. the man went down quickly and died by the heel of her merciless boot. the remaining six charged at her, one falling by her last bullet and another caught a swift kick in the ribcage, shattering the bones to peices. the rest of the men were sergeants, and they began to retreat, running into the open field. she was about to chase after them when she
heard another Luger fire. she turned to see the captain shooting the deserters. each fell, one by
One by the captain's gun to her surprise he let a single man go. "you have done very well, frauline amy. you have killed eight out of twelve men, not bad at all."
she was panting, her uniform dirtied, "why.. did you let.. him go?"
the captain smiled, "someone has to spread you're reputation, heir captain."
she gaped at him. "i am... captain?"
"yaboe, heir frauline. you have proved yourself worthy to serve under the fuhrer."
she saluted him, "thank you, heir captain."
*
amy wrote in her journal as they were driven to one of the Stalags: "my promotion to captain has earned me my choice of weapons, ive chosen a few, two long barrel Luger's, a cavalry saber, and a sixteen foot bullwhip. i also carry an automatic Mauser in my messenger bag. other than a few knives carefully hidden on my body, that should be it. ive become the fuhrer's favorite enforcer, though i feel as if i'm forgetting something..."
amy closed the journal and placed it in her bag with a soft snap.
Amy waited for a **** private to open the car door and let her out, tapping her foot impatiently. when he finally came, she had a luger pointed at his chest. "you're late. she got out of the car and shot him, holstering the pistol as he crumpled to the ground. the colonel in charge rushed towards her, "what is the meaning of this?!"
"your man on watch was late, and now he'll never be late again. and also, colonel, as i am a captain in the SS, i am your superior officer and you WILL adjust yourself accordingly or i will replace you with someone who will."
his expression was that of shock, "y-yes, heir captain, please follow me." he escorted her quickly to the main building. amy glanced around at the peering POWs, glaring at them with distaste as they whistled at her. "who's the kitty?" "what the hell is that?"
her hands fell to her lugers and she was ready to fire when she was beckoned inside by the colonel and she followed behind him reluctantly. "you should control your prisoners.
i find an overall lack of order in this camp. you're lucky i'm in a good mood, or i'd have you strung up for incompetence. lets hope my further evaluation of this... facility... does not make me any more inclined to do so."
the colonel stuttered again and dipped his head, "y-yes heir captain."
she stepped outside unopposed by any. she snapped her fingers and a sergeant rushed to her side and saluted. she handed him a journal logbook and he opened it to the page marked with the Stalag number. she entered the closed off areas of the stalag to inspect the barracks.
*
amy's fists were clenched with rag, a prisoner mocked her from within his confines. his fellow prisoners pleaded with him to stop. "she's lethal!" "she killed eight SS sergeants and corporals singelhandedly her first day!"
the prisoner ignored them and began gesturing at her. she snapped her head up and their eyes met for an instant, she growled through a gritted snarl and was over the fence in mere moments. once over,
the prisoner that mocked her was now on the ground, his throat between her fangs. he cried out once and then gurgled blood as she tore out his throat. she spat the flesh onto the dirt and stood, brushing the dusty particles from her uniform. the men around her backed away when she approached them, and watched her cautiously as she stepped back out of the fenceline. amy picked up her cap from the ground and brushed it off. one of the prisoners called for a doctor, and when one of the guards began to look for one, she merely said, "no, he wont survive. leave him be."
the soldier saluted and went back to his post. she walked up to the colonel and said, "your prisoner annoyed me, as do you, colonel. you have three days to turn this place around or you'll end up worse off then your prisoner over there."
the colonel had turned a pale white and whispered, "understood, captain."
she returned to her quarters and listened for a moment as the colonel shouted orders. "that was fun." she remarked.

Amy was asleep in one of the larger rooms in the main  building, her uniform folded neatly on the table near the bed. she kep one luger on her bedside table and the mauser under her pilllow. her other luger, her sword and her whip were next to her clothes. she was clad only in her fur, as she'd found that the most comfortable way to sleep.
she was woken up by a knock at the door. she blinked her eyes a few times. clutching the mauser handle with one hand and holding the blanket to her chest with the other, she said, "what is it?"
"the colonel wishes to speak to you, heir frauline."
she growled, "grrr... fine. tell him to make it quick." she clutched the blanket closer as he opened the door. she held the mauser aimed at him and said, "turn." he did so without hesitation. she slipped cautiously out of the bed and began to dress. "what is it you wished to speak with me about, colonel?" amy put on her undergarments and then pulled her trousers up to her waist, fastening the belt comfortably.
"there is an important telegram for you, heir captain." she pulled on the jacket over her simple shirt, tugging out any wrinkles. "oh? from who?" next came the holster belts, each hanging slightly lower than her first belt. her sword was another belt, and there was a custom clip there for her whip as well.
"Himler, he has special orders for you." her messenger bag was next to last, slung over her shoulder before she slipped into her boots. ""You can turn now. hand them here." she stepped closer to him and took the envelope with her name scrawled on the front. the colonel excused himself so she could read the orders, "captain amelia weissmuler, once you have completed your assignment at Stalag 14, please make haste to stalingrad as there has been a number of our own turning against the *****. see to it that they cause no more problems. -heinrich himler"
she read it through three more times before folding it and placing it in her bag. she hurried outside, grabbing her hat
From the dresser.
* *
amy went about her inspection, seeing nothing wrong today. "the condition of stalag 16 has improved, heir colonel. well done. now send my car around." the colonel grinned and motioned for the car.
the black car adorned with swastikas roared to life, coming up beside her. the d

You've heard this tale
A thousand times,
Take one more spin,
This version's mine.
And this telling tale
Is its first time.
My theme is fitting,
The message sublime,
For the Season of giving,
And gifting one's time.

For my first Christmas
I was three,
But the warmth on that night
Never cooled,
And indeed,
It was
A cold Christmas Eve.

We stuck branches of pine
In a bucket of sand,
That's the snapshot I've got
Of our Christrmas tree then.
Here's the memory that Eve
Of a lad of three,
Yet this story is true,
It's a family heirloom.

We weren't many then,
There was Mammy and Daddy
And six children, soon seven.
Daddy was an Operator
Of cranes and loaders
Dirt packers and graders.
He was working North,
Far North,
Manning a dozer,
Distant from family
Near the Quebec border.
That's where he was
Days before,
When his pant-leg caught fire,
When the diesel was spilled.

We were only three months
In our chosen homeland,
It was 1958,
And fresh from Ireland.

No way to get to him,
Nor him to get home,
No car,  no friends yet,
Little money, no phone.
Yet somebody knew
We were out on our own.

And the snow started falling,
It was Christmas Eve,
I stood at the window,
Saw the snow fill the trees.
I was still and staring,
At what I don't know,
But I remember quite vividly
All that I saw.

Like a scene from a movie
Starring Barry or Bing,
A fire-engine red no-top
Stopped and parked with high beams,
Highlighting the snow,
On that Christmas Eve.

A big man in a red suit
Slid off of the trunk,
Literally carrying a sack,
And calling, **! **!
The family joined me
At the window to see
The big man's helpers
Carry a big Christmas Tree.

When they entered the house
Kevin, Sean, Gerald and I,
Cowered and crouched
Behind the second-hand couch.
We must have resembled
Three monkeys plus me;
I hadn't a clue,
I was dumb-founded and three.

In through the front door
They clattered and sang,
Unloading their boxes
Of food, clothes and toys,
*****, bats and dolls
For two girls and four boys;
And I'm sure there was something
For the coming bundle of joy.

I don't remember their departure,
Or where he went,
But they called Merry Christmas
And left all else unsaid.

Mammy understood
Some good persons had called,
Who'd heard of our plight
And couldn't be calmed
Til they knew for certain
We'd some peace in our storm.

So, that's my first Christmas,
Since then this my creed:
The gift of giving
Isn't under the Tree.

Cold, blue, wet, fragile, brittle, hard, steam solidified, water hardened, anger, fear, white, tensile,

steam solidified,
water hardened; you lie
in her wintered veins.

why?

"If she's awake, I'll **** you."
staccato words spoken
like a knife blade thrown...
...with malice and intent.

Her father's voice
from the bedroom next door
no sound of her mother.

The female child cowered
under her candy-striped sheets
their usual soft comfort
unnoticed

footsteps
door handle moving
light seeping into her sanctuary

her heart thudded
trying to escape her chest
as she held her breath.

"Please, please don't hear me."
a silent plea as
fear snatched her in its icy grip.

She could smell him
smell the cigarettes
smell his power.

She waited.

He backed out
returned to her mother
between her heartbeats
she heard the slap

"You are lucky this time,
*****. She sleeps."
Heavy footsteps down the stairs
punctuated by her mother's tears.

                            ~~~~~~~~~~~

The girl child had only ever blamed her mother
decades of anger and bitterness
the memory of this night buried deep.
Crazed hard ice beneath the tundra of her life.

In the third decade of the girl child's life
her mother died
alone
never forgiven for what she hadn't done
nor for what she had.

The ice remained in the girl child's veins
If anything, thicker...harder.

Then in her fifth decade this ice became water
as with the passage of life the tundra thawed
and rising with it to the surface
the truth.

Then what?

The girl child worked hard at staying warm
at keeping the ice at bay.
Not easy.

Nothing was ever said to her father.

In her sixth decade the girl child's father died
embraced in his daughter's arms
forgiven for what he had done
and for what he hadn't.

The woman had finally thawed
she was properly warm
her own love
finally able to flow

tonight the shadows ate the moon
i sat there in awe as it was slowly consumed
little by little the brightness was devoured
and behind the shadows, the moon never cowered
the blood moon shined
as the sun and moon aligned
and the moonlight becomes you
you too are consumed
eyes bright and full of wonder
the cold wind makes you shudder
make a wish as the last sliver disappears .
let the music of the night fill your ears

There is nothing new under the sun, but it was night and the indifferent blinks of gaseous lives above looked down while my friends and I were at a new fast food joint that moved next to a now lonely Wendy's, with a faded sign tarnished by something the new fast food joint had yet to experience—mundanity by time. But I had my notebook with me while we ate outside, but it was in the car. My mind is always in that book, and I remembered something I had written for a novel in progress: 'Nothing is new under the sun. How is it possible to watch stars die? There is nothing new to their dust. We are the flies of the universes.'
It was just when I had finished my BBQ pork sandwich when Ariana suggested visiting a graveyard. I had the idea to visit a Satanist graveyard that our friend, Lanessa warned us against for the better safety of our sane souls—good luck with that. I wanted a revival of fear. How the beast would rip at the roof off our metal can of a car—the greater our barbarism, the greater our admiration and imagination—the less admiration and imagination, the greater our barbarism. But Ariana disagrees with words I never say, Nick laughs with my simple words to that previous thought. How funny it would be to burn eternal.
But then he suggested we should go to the Trussel in Conway. I had no idea or quote to think about to contribute to this idea. I wander, as I like to, into the possibility that his idea is a good one. Like some wanting hipster, I dress in an old t-shirt with of mantra long forgotten in the meaning of its cadence.
That is the march of men and women into the sea—honest, but forgetful and forgotten.
I was wearing a shirt sleeve on my head I bought from a mall-chain hippie store, and exercise shorts, finished off with skele-toes shoes. I was ready for everything and nothing at the same time. And that fits, I suppose. But all that does matter—and doesn't, but it is hard as hell to read the mind of a reader—it's like having a lover, but s/he doesn't know what s/he wants from you—selfish *******.
But there I was,  on the road, laughing in the back seat, sitting next to a girl who was tired, but also out of place. I could see she wanted to close arms of another, the voice of another, the truth that sits next to her while watching tv every time she comes over to hang with him, but never accepts that truth. She is a liar, but only to herself. How can she live with that? The world may never know.
The simple rides into things you've never done before give some of the greatest insight you could imagine, but only on the simple things that come full circle later. That is a mantra you can't print on a t-shirt, but if it ever is, I'm copyrighting it. And if it's not possible, I'll make it possible!
When we got to the Trussel, the scenic path lit by ornamented lamps seemed tame once I stepped onto the old railroad tracks. They were rusted and bruised by the once crushing value of trains rolling across it's once sturdy structure. Now they were old, charred by the night, and more than just some abandoned railroad bridge—the Trussel was a camouflage symbol birthed by the moment I looked into a Garfish's eye as it nibbled on my cork while I was on a fishing trip with my granddad when I was eleven. I remember that moment so well as the pale, olive green eye looked at me with a sort of seething iron imprint—I needed that fear, it branded instead of whispering that knowledge into my ears.
That moment epitomizes my fear of heights over water—what lies beneath to rip, restrain, devour, impale, and or distract me.
But epitomize is a horrible word. It reeks of undeveloped understanding. Yet  I want a nimble connection with something as great as being remembered—a breathe of air and the ideas  thought by my younger self, but I will never see or remember what I thought about when I was that young—only the summary of my acts and words. And by that nothing has changed—am I too afraid to say what I need to say? Too afraid to hear what everyone else hears? Or is it the truth—depravity of depravities that has no idea of its potential, so I am tired of the words that describe my shortcomings and unextended gasping hope. I am tired of living in the land of Gatsby Syndrome waiting for Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
But when we got to where the Trussel actually began I felt the fear hit like the day it was born—all hope was drained, and I was okay with abandoning all aspirations of having fun and being myself in the face of public criticism. I was flushed out by the weasel in my belly—the ******* beneath those still waters. I compare it to someone being able to handle Waterboarding, but can't handle being insulted—it's that kind of pathetic.
I stood just on the last understandably steady railroad ties that I knew were safe and watched my friends sit off the edge of the bridge, taking in the cold wonder of the night, and I was told at least I was smarter than my dead cousin who managed to get on top of his high school in the middle of the night, but had to be cohearsed down for fifteen minutes by a future marine, and future mourner who still grieves with a smile on his face.
The future mourner, he laughs at the times he insulted, or made fun of, or chilled with his now dead friend. It's never the bad times he cries about, there are none—just the good times, because they don't make them like they used to.
I watched them in that moment, and I don't know if I can deal with knowing my life is real. I began to blame my morality on this fear even though I already justified the fear just seconds before. But as I write this, I look over my notes and see something I wrote a few days ago: 'Life is ******* with  us right now. You laugh and I laugh, but we're still getting ******. The demon's in our face.'
As morbid as that comes off, it resonates some truth—what is killing us is going to **** us no matter what we do—and I don't want to be epitomized by the acts and words I didn't say.
I was never in the moment as a kid—I was raised by by old people and kept back by my younger siblings. The experienced tried to teach me wisdom, and the inexperienced kept my imagination locked in time. I don't want to go home as much now because I see that the inexperienced are becoming wiser everyday and the experienced are dying before my eyes. My idea of things is enduring leprosy.
But back to the simple moments.
Ariana saw a playground as she stood up and investigated the Trussel. It was next to the river, behind the church, fenced off by the fellowship of the church to keep the young ones in and the troublesome out. Of course, we didn't realize there was a gate and it was locked until Nick stated the probable obvious within ten feet of the nostalgic playground. And that's when Ariana pointed out the bugs swarming the parking lot outdoor lamp that blazed the fleshiness of our presences into dense shadows and more than likely caught the eye of a suspicious driver in a truck passing by. But I was still on the bridge—back in the past, never the moment. Me and my friends are still children inside these ***** forms. I muttered to myself: “Life ain't about baby steps.”
Nick looked over and asked what I said. I turned around, dramatic, like I always like to and repeated louder this time, “Life ain't about baby steps.”
He asked if I needed to do this alone, and I said he could come along. I walked rhythmically across the railroad ties, and heard Ariana comment that getting to the railroad up the small, steep hill was like being in the Marines. I laughed sarcastically. Nick and I had been to Parris Island before, and I know they test your possible fears, but they beat the living **** out of them.
I casually walk into the room where my fear lives and tell it to get the **** out.
When I reached the precipice of the last railroad tie I stood on before, I felt the old remind me that death awaited me, but there was no epic soundtrack or incredible action scene where I stab a manifestation of my fear in heart—a bit fun it might have been, but not the truth. I bear-crawled over the crossings of the ties and the structure of the bridge itself. I felt Relowatiphsy—an open-minded apathy self-made philosophical term—take over me. It is much simpler than it sounds.
There was no cold wonder as I imagined. There was just a bleak mirror of water below, a stiff curtain of trees that shadowed it, and the curiosity of what lies in the dark continuing distance past the Trussel.
Nick sat with me and we talked about women and fear, or at least I did, and I hoped he felt what I did—there was a force there that is nabbed by everyone, but cherished by few—courage. And I thank him for it, but I know I did it. Now I want to go and jump in that still water below—Ariana later says she's happy I got over my fear, but I'll probably have a harder time during the day when I can see what I'm facing, but I see it differently. During the day, the demons are stone and far away—like looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun uncocked and unloaded, but at night is when the chamber is full and ready to go, and you have no idea who is holding the gun with their finger on the trigger and your destination in mind.
Then we threw rocks into the water in contest to see who could throw past the moonlight into the shadowy distance . I aimed for the water marker, and got the closest with limited footing, using just my arm strength. But it wasn't long before we had to leave, making fun of people who do cooler things than us, on the way to the car. I had to ride in the back seat again because I forgot to call shotgun. But on the way home, the idea popped in our heads what we should get my hooka and go to Broadway, and get the materials so we could smoke on the beach.
Nick's girlfriend and her friend joined us.
I missed a few puns against my co-worker as I was sent to get free water from the candy store where I work. I ended up doing a chore because I was taller than most of the people there. Appropriate enough, it was filling the water bottles up in the refrigerator.
All the while I loathed the fact that I would have to be clocked in tomorrow by two in the afternoon. I grabbed the water and got out of there as fast as possible without appearing to be in a hurry.
Impression of caring matters more than the actuality where I work—and yes, that makes me a miserable ****.
Perhaps it's not too late to admit I am recovering pyromaniac from my childhood and the flavoring we use for the taffy is extremely flammable. It would be a shame to drench the store in what people love to smell everyday when they walk in, and light the gas stove. Then, maybe I could walk away real cool-like as this pimple in this tourist acne town pops like the Hindenburg. The impression of splendor is like a phoenix—it grows old, dies, resurrects into the same, but apparently different form, spreads it's wings, and eats and ***** on everything simple, or presumably so.
I forget the name of the beach, but it was the best time I've had in a while. I was whimsy, and high on the vastness of the stretch of beach around us. They could bury us here. But me in particular. I rolled from the middle of the beach to the water, stood in the waves and shouted my phrase I coined when I realize something as wonderful as conquering a fear or realizing a dream;
--******' off!
And I stared at the horizon. My friends came up behind me and I looked back to see it was Nick and his girlfriend hugging. I gave a soft smile, put my hands in my pocket, and turned back to stare at the clouded horizon. What beasts must lie out there—more ferocious than the simple fresh water beings that wait beneath the earlier placid waters. I was a fool to think that was the worst. Nick said as I pondered all that, that I looked like Gatsby, and I tried to give him a smile that you may only see once in a lifetime, but I'm sure it failed.
I wanted to tell him that, “You cannot make me happy. It is usually the people who have no intention of making me happy that makes me smile the quickest.” But I don't. Let me be Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, if to no one else, but myself.

Hell is the deterioration of all that matters, and as the five of us sat around the hooka, and inhaled the thick blueberry flavored smoke that hinted at the taste of the Blueberry flavoring I use to make Blueberry taffy, there was a satirical realization that the coal used to activate the tobacco and flavor in the bowl is sparking like a firework, and reminds us all of where we're going.
It's a love affair between that hopelessness and hope of some destination we've only read about, but never seen.
By this point Nick and I are covered in sand, because he joined me in fun of rolling down the beach. We want so bad to be Daoists—nonchalant to the oblivion as we sit in. Just on the rifts of the tide, he and I scooped handfuls of wet sand, and I lost my fear of making sense and let Relowatiphsy take over again.
“Look at the sand in your hands. It can be molded to the shapes your hands make. We scoop it out of the surf and it falls through our fingers. There are things we're afraid of out there, and we sit just out reach of them, but within the grasp of their impressions. The sand falls through our fingers, and it plops into the tide, sending back up drops of water to hit our hands—the molders of our lives.” I said all that in hope against the hopelessness of being forgotten.
Then he said, “What if this is life? Not just the metaphor, but the act of holding sand in our hands.
I relish in his idea of wiping away my fear of an unimportant life. And by this point, it's safe to assume I live to relish ideas.

The last bit of sand from the last handful of sand was washed from my hand and I looked back at the clouded horizon, pitch black with frightful clouds and said:
“Nick, if I don't become a writer. If I live a life where I just convince myself everything's fine, and that dream will come true after I finish all the practical prep I 'must' do. I will **** myself.
I looked at him, Relowatiphsy in my heart, and he said:
“As a friend, I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But that means you have to literally fight for your life now—regardlessly.”
And he left me with those words. Just the same as my granddad left me a serious heed before he wanted to talk about something more cheerful, when I asked about his glory days fishing the Great *** Dee River. He said: “I wish I'd been here before the white man polluted the river. It would've been something to fish this water then”, then he paused to catch his breath, “Guess there are some things that stay, and others than go.” Then joy returned, as it always does.

But the idea of what was happening to me didn't hit me until we were a few miles away from the beach, covered in sand, but the potential of the night after conquering my fear of heights over water had been shed in the ocean.
Around midnight, when the headache from the cheap hooka smoke wore off and the mystic veil of the clouds over the horizon has been closed in by the condensation on the windows of some Waffle House in Myrtle Beach. There was a wave of seriousness that broke over my imagination. Works calls for me tomorrow by two.
There's not much vacationing when you live in a vacation town.
And midnight—the witching hour—spooks away the posers too afraid to commit to rage against the fear.
But there are others—college students that walk in and complain about the temperature of the eating establishment, and the lack of ashtrays—how they must be thinking of dining and dashing—running from a box, but forever locked in it.

They make annoying music as I write this. That is how they deal with the inevitable death of the night. They bruise the air I breathe with love and faith and trust with no meaning—without even meaning it. But what do they know what I didn’t feel when I sat on that bridge or cowered on the fringes of the ocean? Their hands aren’t ***** like mine—their confidence does not seem fractured by these words that will never reach them, or their kids, or grandkids.
As day begins to move, I know I work at two and will be home by midnight again. The witching hour—where some stay and others go.

My worst enemy and tireless companion
finally came to my door last night.

As I slept away the time of day
And killed my poor friend Time
He traveled closer to my home.

As I slowly cowered in the face of fear
And realized my mistake too late
As I chose to make a silly choice
He quietly opened the door.

Shame came in but didn't stop
And with every tear that welled up inside
He crawled in hot into my cheeks.

As the salty drops burned away my skin
He then moved on down to my throat
And choked me up till air was gone.

I gagged and shook, begging him to go
Openly admitting my sin
But Shame knew he could do more
And as I watched my world crumble
He eagerly attacked my heart.

As he dripped down to the hearth
He triumphed with his final mutation.
The pain of Shame is nothing
Next to that of his brother Humiliation.

There, in the privacy of my soul
He slaughtered my Pride with a blunted blade
As Sloth cowered in the corner.
When the room was red he finally paused
With a smile on his face at the lesson he left.

As he exited Responsibility came in instead
And from the door watched with sad eyes
Waiting for me to rise and finally apologise.

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Pederasty mol

TO AFRIKA, THE POWERFUL GIANT WHO IS BOUND, TEARS AT HER OWN FLESH AND CAN NOT SEE HER OWN BEAUTY

How long shall we grind our teeth?
As old man's bones crack to the beat
Of their picks digging white man gold in black man land
Afrika mama, you soul is sold

Vuka Afrika Mama
Ikati lilele eziko
As vultures tap dance on your corrugated iron roof
Hyenas point and cackle baring sharpened tooth

All the while you slumbered
They shackled you and tore your treasure asunder
Now is the time to break free
Clear those scales from your eyes so you can see

How long shall we cry these crocodile tears?
As the swollen belly babies, eyes filled with fear
Watch the queen who bore them, cowered in the corner, face to the ground
Battered by the head of the household, asserting his authority
No mercy to be found

Zijonge Afrika mama
Ubone ubuhle bakho
They lied and said your ebony skin wasn't beautiful
At all cost remain dutiful
Head bowed, queen uncrowned

All the while  you doubt yourself
There are those who eye and pillage your riches
May our united voice bring you to your senses
Lest you find yourself stripped naked, while balancing on fences

It never ends, fragments of visions collapsing upon themselves painfully. Her swollen eyes opening, and bursting with orange fire. Then closing just as fast. In between those agonizing seconds she sees everything. Thousands of years cycling over and over. Visions of visions within visions.


Cassandra saw her city razed to the ground. The wall which once stood firm against the onslaught of enemies crumbling with the ravages of time. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she saw her own grief. Her cousin had fallen in battle. She closed her eyes again, and scratched at her itchy eyelids.



Ten weeks passed without a blink, not even a fraction of an opening. She was disciplined, but the longer she fought the more her eyelids would burn. One blink to ease the agony and she was forced to see her father’s skin. A purple mass of dead flesh bubbling swelling, exploding, and rotting, with maggots squirming in out and around till flies formed and flew away. Another corpse left out in a burning city. One among many denied a peaceful death. Buildings crumbled to dust, the bodies became one with the earth. Cassandra cried without opening her eyes. Her father stroked her long soft curls, whispering reassurances. “It’s all right my child.”


Another three or four weeks passed. She had become blinder than Tiresias the blind prophet. Unable to recall if that was a story she had heard, or would hear in the future.  She sobbed spilling each and every sorrow she could. Every tragedy yet to come. Her father smiled gently placing a warm cloth upon her brow. “Shush my child these nightmares will fade soon enough.”


The young girl opened her eyes again. This time a years’ worth of history unfolded. She saw soldiers gathering arms. Battlements born of the Bronze Age burning with righteous rage. Steel blades clanging against bronze shields in preparation for war. Boats fully loaded departed.


She closed her eyes once more. It would be another two months before she opened them. In the meantime she pleaded with her father to leave the city. Day in and day out begging, sobbing, and screaming until she was sent away.


It was becoming harder and harder to keep her eyes closed. There was a burning force aching to escape. She managed five more weeks until she could bare the pain no longer. As her new sisters bathed her pale dry skin with the sweetest scented oils the young girl recited all that she saw and felt.


The first footfalls of the first soldier’s feet to touch the beach. The feel of the sand as it swirled in, out and around the soldier’s sandals. The general howling commands. The green eyes hungry for battle. The faces contorted in controlled rage. All that intensity burning under the once civilized façade. She closed her eyes again.


Cassandra sat silently in exhaustion, as the sisters slowly brushed the knots out of her long brown hair. They brought her a blindfold, which allowed only a small comfort. This time she only managed to resist for two weeks. The vision came upon her with such force that she cried out and collapsed.


Now the city was burning. Citizen screamed as they ran in terror. Brave men rushed forwards to be impaled on the spears of other brave men. Arrows swallowed the moonlight picking at the earth and scavenging for some bare flesh to devour. Blood ran like red rainwater. Streets streamed thin crimson pools diluted by warm summer showers. The stench oh, the stench, it made Cassandra ***** up chunks of soggy bread and half-digested beef mixed with red wine and stomach acid, while she tried to force her eyes to close.


Finally, she closed her eyes again. The sisters tried to sooth her sorrows, to no avail. Within a years’ time the young girl lost the ability to close her eyes. Cassandra eyeballs slowly burnt out until there was nothing left but charcoaled eye sockets. By the next year she could no longer speak. Cassandra became paralyzed by the futility of her existence.


In her mind the war had come and gone. The sieges were no longer an issue. She no longer felt the urge to cry for the dead. What was, will be, and what will be cannot be undone. What cannot be undone has already happened. Apollo had cursed her. Her beauty had enraptured him, her wit had charmed him, but her will had enraged him.


She was only thirteen with brown eyes and long hair of rare quality, soul so powerful that almost anyone who met her could feel its energy. She shamed the gods with her purity, and unwillingly ensnared their affection.


At first Apollo came with strong arms and tender words. Wooing to the point of painful pleasure. Her eyes could not handle such radiance. His skin burned as his chariot burned. Hair golden flames, skin solar yellow, eye orange as the sun. Each kiss burnt like the worse fever, taking her against her will, savaging her sanity. As if, as if being a god gave him the right to take such liberties.


Apollo viewed her early rejections with whimsy, believing them to be some cute token of her modesty. A god can afford to wait, after all eternity was on his side. After the first hundred no’s his affection gave way to anger. Until his desire could not bear rejection any longer.


At last he cried out to Cassandra. “I will have you or else.”


With a firm but fiery hand he swept her up.  Forcing his mouth against hers. Parting her pursed lip with his powerful tongue.  He shoved his tongue into her mouth, until tears streamed down her cheeks. She could not resist with words, because her mouth was occupied, so she took the only action she knew available to her.


She bit down as hard she could. Lava spewed from Apollo’s lips, roughly singing the inside of her mouth. Without realizing what was happening she swallowed. Her skin began to glow, tiny childlike limbs lengthened and tightened. From her eyes radiated the most powerful light ever seen by man or god. For a moment Apollo cowered beneath the awe of her power, stumbling backwards to the ground dumbfounded.


Regaining his composure he slapped her aside. Scowling in rage “How dare you. You. You worthless *****.”


Her lips parted now of her own volition. Her voice raged with a deep and powerful resonance. “How dare you, you whimpering fool.” The power still flowing inwards filled her with confidence. “I see you for what you are. A tool, a man made invention.” The radiance of her skin was slowly fading. “I see too much now.” She cried out in an ******* fury. A smile crossed her lips. “I see what will become of you and your ilk.”


With strength previously unimagined the young girl thrusted her small hands out throttling Apollo’s throat. He trembled in fear. “You cannot hope to contain the power of me. I am generations incarnated. Passing power from one age to the next. I will not be enslaved.” Her skin began to blink, her voice loss much of its force. “I am Cassandra, and you a merely a passing phase. I will tell the world of all I have seen.”


The last bit of godly energy faded from her skin. Cassandra collapsed. “I still see it all, and you will never touch me again.”


Apollo brushed bits of earth off his person. “See all you want, I care not.” He lunged for her. A flash of thin white light flung him back.

Confused, Apollo rose. Glaring he screamed “You may see all now. It is a gift my blood has given you, but soon it will become a curse. For no mortal wishes to believe that the fates have already written their story. They will ignore you, and in doing so you will find that this power you have gained will be for naught. Thus will be your curse to see all, with no power to stop it.”


Cassandra’s eyes opened wide, seconds split into eternity. She felt the passing of all those around her. She felts time’s stench and rot all around her. Her skin would wrinkle to a certain degree but she would be eternal. She saw cities rise and fall. Some to rise again others to be forgotten. She saw herself seeing each of these visions again and again. She lived her immortal life over and over, events unchanged be anything she said.


The only real comfort was that she saw Apollo wither away. As the old gods fell to ruins weakened by the rationality of new gods, then the rationality of structured reason. Then came the rise of something new and better. Reason with abstraction, abstraction with order, a cycle of energy which emboldened and empowered man. She chuckled.
“Go away little godling.”
And like the little thing he was, Apollo ran.
Her father shushed her, wiping the tears from her face.
The sisters bathed her; singing songs of love and adoration.
Troy fell under the onslaught.
Apollo came and went again.


Cassandra’s eyes opened wide closed and open wide once more, seconds split into eternity. She felt the passing of all those around her. She felts time’s stench and rot all around her. Her skin would wrinkle to a certain degree but she would be eternal. She saw cities rise and fall. Some to rise again others to be forgotten. She saw herself seeing each of these visions again and again. She lived her immortal life over and over, events unchanged be anything she said.


The only one real comfort was that she saw Apollo wither away. As the old gods fell to ruins weakened by the rationality of new gods, then the rationality of structured reason. Then came the rise of something new and better. Reason with abstraction, abstraction with order, a cycle of energy which emboldened and empowered man. She chuckled.
“Go away little godling.”
And like the little thing he was, Apollo ran.
Her father shushed her, wiping the tears from her face.
The sisters bathed her; singing songs of love and adoration.
Troy fell under the onslaught.
Apollo came and went again.

(added) Prologue: "we'll get the baron, i swear. the ratings will go through the roof..." nick spoke nervously into the phone he held in his good hand. the other rested at his side, burned beyond use. one of the commandos whispered in his ear. "sir, we have his location.... yes... yes sir..." he hung up the phone and turned to the commando, "scramble the troops, we're going hunting..."


"N-no... not this again..."  Baronyx muttered in his sleep. "I wont... i wont do it..." it was the same nightmare that had plagued him for years. he was what the Two-legs called an Exotic, one of the few hundred dragons left in the world, and a showpeice for the high paying two-legs.
Baronyx had been captured once and forced into slavery as a circus act and performer for many years before he escaped and burned an entire city with his fiery wrath, killing some ten thousand two-legs in his path and sending a message, "don't cage a dragon..." ever since he had been plagued with nightmares of his experiences while enslaved. "stop... No!" he ****** awake and roared in fear. the full moon's light shone on his sapphire scales and temporarily blinded him until his green slit-eyes adjusted. his mate, a green scaled dragoness named Lyra licked his cheek and put a comforting claw around on his shoulder, "its the dreams again, isnt it ***?" Baronyx nodded and stared outside of their cave den.
He glanced over his shoulder at his daughter, Tali, her young yellow scales getting a tinge of green. Baronyx sighed and said, "she's growing so fast... she'll have your scales..."
Lyra looked as well, "and she'll have your eyes, baron." they watched their child sleep a moment longer before Baronyx stood and stepped outside the den. "i'll be right back." lyra nodded and lay back down with her eyes closed. he spread his wings and with a powerful downstroke took flight. Baronyx closed his eyes and glided into the wind currents and to the cliffside where he went to clear his mind and sort out his thoughts. his claws clicked across the hard rock as he landed and tapped rhythmically as he walked to the edge of the cliff and hung his claws off the side. a wild wolf howled in the distance somewhere behind him. something in the air was different tonight and Baronyx felt uneasy. he lay his head down and snoozed for a while, oblivious of what was happening at his den.
- - -
Tali screamed as
Two-legs with metal-spitters swarmed the den and threw heavy nets over her and her mother. "ma! ma! whats going on?!"
"tali! just stay calm.. just stay calm." Lyra roared in protest as the two legs brought lightning-sticks and began prodding at them. "don't you dare touch my daughter you *******!" she shouted even though she knew they wouldnt understand her. to her surprise though, one two leg stepped forward and said, "we won't touch you or your daughter if you tell us where the Baron is."
"i'll never tell you, monster."
the white man chuckled, "from my point of view, you're the monster. and you'll be a wonderful addition to the show..."
- - -
Baronyx heard tali's scream echo In the dark forest surrounding the cliffside. "No!" his roar resonated farther than tali's scream.
at the den a few moments before, the two-legs had caged Tali and Lyra and had set about stabbing at lyra with the shock-prods hoping to draw Baronyx back to the cave. Lyra kept her cries quiet and had refused to satisfy their wishes. the two-leg in charge snarled. "Enough... last chance, dragon. Tell me where he is!"
lyra growled at him, "i'll tell you nothing, worm."
"fine, suit yourself." the man turned his back to her. "lets see if you're daughter has the same resolve, shall we?"
"no! don't touch her!"
"i'm afraid its quite too late for that, dragon."
"tali i'm sorry!"
he turned to Tali and jabbed her in the side with a shock ****. tali groaned and gritted her teeth but did not scream for the man.
she growled at him said, "that tickled." tali grinned at the man with her sharp fangs fully exposed.
the man glared for a moment and then smiled cruelly.
"temporary pain doesnt have an effect on you... maybe something more... permenant will bring him to me. bring the iron!"
two-legs carried a white hot brand in the shape of a greek Omega. the man pointed to tali and said, "on her throat. make it burn."
more two-legs had muzzled lyra to keep her from screaming. the iron cut into tali's scales and burned into the flesh underneath, forcing tali to scream as loud as she could, even after the iron had been taken away. she collapsed on the ground and the tears spilled over her eyes as she continued to scream.
they heard a roar passing over them all as Baronyx rushed back to the den.
"well done, everyone. the prize is near. get your guns ready but DO NOT FIRE!"
* *
baronyx flew faster than he ever had before. he growled  as he swooped down toward his den and saw the two-legs. he screeched in protest as cables wrapped around his wings and limbs. forcing him hard into the ground. "Nick you *******!"
the white man grinned, "so we finally meet
Again, baron. and you have a nice little family i can use to my advantage now."
baronyx looked at tali and Lyra and loosed a mournful moan deep in his throat. "what do you want, nick?"
the man stepped forward and replied, "i want you, back in my show, just like old times. or i'll torture your mate AND this lovely little child of yours. sound like a deal?"
baronyx shut his eyes and nodded as a tear trailed down his cheek. "just know... when i get out, everything will burn... just like old times..."
(add on 1)
The white man and the other two-legs shackled Baronyx and his family with heavy chains and electric collars that would shock them randomly. they were put on a train car headed east and the collars were taken off. Baronyx immediately examined Tali's neck, the brand already scarring over in a whitish pink Omega. tali's voice was hoarse and tears came to her eyes. she buried her head into her father's chest. "i'm so sorry tali, lyra... this is my fault.." the family embraced as they knew there would likely be very little contact with each other after the train stopped.
the train traveled a little while longer and the family shakily said  their goodbyes as the air brakes hissed violently. the doors shrieked open and they were met by Nick. immediately. baronyx pounced on top of him and roared. they stared eye to eye for a moment before they heard the clicking of the two-legs metal spitters. baronyx kept his eyes on Nick and said quietly, "touch her again... touch EITHER of them... and
I swear, no amount of metal spitters or electricity will stop me from hunting you down and tearing off your head."
as baronyx stepped back, nick stood up and replied, "i won't harm either of them, hell, i'll give them whatever they want, as long as you do as you are told, Baronyx."
baronyx thought this over and after a few moments said, "i have one more condition, i want full access to them. whenever i choose."
nick chuckled a bit, "we'll see... we'll see... it all depends on how you perform."
baronyx nodded. "then lets get this over with..." the white man beckoned some two-legs to lead Tali and Lyra to the cages inside the massive pavilion that stood before them. two of the men brought the brand again and put the Omega on Baronyx's throat much like they had done with tali. he gritted his teeth and let the tears come but did not cry out or roar. when the pain had subsided, he asked nick, "when do i start?"
nick looked up at him with a sinister twinkle in his eyes, "right now."
*
Nick and a handful of two-legs escorted baronyx back onto the train, but not the same traincar. this one was blue and had ornate gold lettering on each side. once baronyx was inside, a string of lights came on and he saw his old armor plates each polished and the dents pounded out. he took his helm and stared into his reflection.  "i swore i'd never touch this stuff again..."
an intercom system beeped above him and nick's voice filled the car. "Baron, you have five minutes to suit up. the game starts as soon as we arrive."
baronyx sighed and donned the cold armor one peice at a time. he looked into the mirror on the wall and turned away in disgust.
"for tali and lyra..." there were a few peices left, the ones he never wanted to see again, they were sharp talons that fit over his claws. in the show, he had to use these to **** his opponent. nick's voice came over the intercom again, "arriving at the arena now, the press is fired up for your return, baron. DON'T disappoint them."
Baronyx growled and said a silent prayer for his family. the train screeched to a halt and the door opened. baronyx stepped out onto a black carpet and was assaulted by blinding camera flashes and the deafening roar of the crowding two-legs. over the crowd, an announcer shouted, "Its the Baron! he's back and looks better than ever!"
baronyx kept walking until nick stopped him for the game briefing. "you'll be going up against a group of wyverns, so you should have no problem killing them." the wyverns far outnumbered the dragons, wyverns being the dragons' slightly smaller, less intelligent cousins.
nick began walking away when baronyx asked, "what do they get if i win?"
nick turned, "they?"
baronyx bared his fangs. "my family. what do they get in return for my win?"
nick thought this over for a moment before replying, "they will eat, sleep, and live in their own hovel. and depending on your performance i'll let you stay with them."
baronyx growled, "then lets get this over with."
*
Baronyx was led to the arena doors and he waited patiently for his introduction and call to the game. he looked around at the all too familiar sights, the fight screens, the scoreboard, and the dim light that would signal his entry into the arena. it would be a few minutes before the match and in the meantime, he thought of all his old strategies and gameplans. "i wonder if tali and lyra will be watching..."
nick came out of the shadows and said, "remember, their future depends on what happens next."
the light turned green and the doors opened, spilling light into the room. when baronyx's eyes adjusted, he saw the all too familiar sight of the ****** arena, mangled corpses being dragged away from the last battle. "the baron! he'll be going up against seven wyverns from the northwest territories." baronyx roared as loud as he could as he stormed into the arena. the wyverns on the other side cowered for a moment before charging him. the first one lunged at him and was caught in his
Claws. baronyx looked into the wyverns eyes and saw the fear, the terror of a beast facing his own demise. "for them..." baronyx tore the wyvern's throat out with his claws and threw the body at the next assailant, bowling him over.
the next wyvern was impaled by baronyx's tail and tossed aside to bleed out on the ground while he set about killing the others in various other ways. when the bodies stopped twitching, baronyx's armor was coated in blood. the crowd was silent and he became worried. he looked to the trainer's balcony and spotted nick, who gave a subtle nod of approval. baronyx looked at the timer: one minute seventeen seconds. it was a new record, the shortest match in history. the crowd roared and applauded long after he was led out of the arena. "an amazing, record setting performance by the returning champion, the Baron!"
baronyx was met by the press' cameras outside the arena. Nick's two-legs stripped the ****** armor and allowed him some room to move around.
The camera flashes continued to blind baronyx but his mind was elsewhere. nick finally showed up to answer the press's questions, while baronyx glared at the group of reporters. after an hour of questions and his agitation reached its breaking point, baronyx growled at the reporters, silencing them. when they didn't move, he bared his fangs and roared, forcing them to make hasty retreats and fleeing the conference. once they were gone, nick turned to baronyx and sighed, "thanks. i thought they'd never leave..."
baronyx stared down at him. "we had a deal."
"so we did. and for that breathtaking performance, you will stay with your family in their hovel."
baronyx started walking towards the train, "then i have to go."
*

The old man sighed and jammed his freshly rolled, freshly lit cigarette into the ash tray.
"Too many cigarettes before bedtime oft' keep an' old man like me up all night."
The young man put out his cigarette as well, gently weeping inside over the wasted tobacco.
"Aye, a youngin' like myself as well."
The conversation had been going slightly south ever since the young man made the mistake of asking about his counterparts first wife. "She died," he had said "One of them December o' 2012 suicides that plagued the big cities such as this."
The young man remembered how he had looked out the window at this point a bit too nostalgically.
"She was crazy," he had added "I knew it the day I slipped the ring on and I know it now."
They dropped the subject and began talking about The War, coincidentally another touchy subject.
"Most of my friends died, and if you've read your history books you know it was not courage or chivalry that killed them but the ignorance and fear that our country breathed when drafting all the young men."
He had escaped with his life, which he believed was garbage. he told of how he had hid in the sewers while the long thought peaceful Canadian's swarmed over the East coast. While his friends died he ate rats. While the war machine chugged he was cowering.

"Aye, I see how you looked at that stoke, though."
"Pardon?" The young man had been deep in thought of the conversation they had been having.
"How old are you anyway?"
"19 on the 9th."
"And still not a whisker on your chin, aye?"
"Aye."

He told of many more battles. Some he fought in, others he cowered under.
"And one, that I cowered over. I passed out in the helicopter, do-it-please-yah."
He told of his second wife, a bit more fondly and romantically than his first wife.
She had passed away not 8 months before the young man visited him for the first time and that was 6 months past.

He showed scars, from the prison camps.
He rolled cigarettes from his poke pouch.
He admitted forgetting the face of his father.

I swirled my fingertips on the surface of the water and sent a message across with shiny, glossy ripples that grew slowly, and gracefully. He kneeled on the other side of the moonlit pond and watched as the ripples from my fingertips reached him. He cupped the ripples of the water into his palm and drank the cold water, sighing happily.
“What does it taste like?” I whispered hoarsely, as loud as I dared to be while knowing we would be reprimanded fiercely for sneaking out of the huts at this time of night.
“Love” he called back.
I burst out laughing in panting breaths and tried to stifle the noise with my fists. I heard him bellow out, and the echoes rang freely through the woods before he quickly shoved his face into the water and laughed in there, the bubbles of his laughter surfacing violently.
“You idiot” I whispered joyfully when he brought his head up from the water, his dark hair curled against his forehead, “I didn’t even write anything to do with love. I wrote how foolish of a boy you are.”
“And you still stick with me so that’s love isn’t it?” he teased me. His finger tips swirled in the water for a minute. “Your turn to taste, Masra”
I waited till the ripples hit the side of the pond and quickly dipped my tongue in and lapped the water. I pursed my lips, pretending to debate what his message was. The surface of the black water was littered with reflection of the stars. It was so beautiful that I momentarily forgot the little game we were playing and gasped, “Oh stars!”
He took a quick intake of breath and stared up at me with wide eyes. “Really?” he asked in an unbelieving tone.
“What do you mean?”
“Stars?” he asked again, sounding like a sweet little confused child.
“Yes!” I laughed. “Stars!” and I splashed the surface of the water to show him.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe you could read, I mean, taste that... That’s incredible…”
It took me a second to realize what he was talking about. I decided to play along anyways and whispered dramatically, “Yeah, but I didn’t know what you were trying to say”
“A million stones on fire with wishes
Yet the brightest star is not up there” he recited his favorite lines from an old love poem.
“You are disgustingly soppy” I got up from kneeling by the pond and treaded softly on the dry leaves so that they wouldn’t crackle so loud. Reaching him, I kneeled down beside him and ran my fingers through his curly wet locks. His dark eyelashes were still wet with water and the chestnut eyes gleamed brightly.
I curled into his lap comfortably like a cat and he rolled over with me lying on top, while his strong arms held me. I buried my face into the skin of his beautiful brown neck and inhaled the sweet, musky smell. Reab smoothed my hair before murmuring huskily, “Why do you always do that?”
“It smells like you, the old Reab smell. It makes me feel safe and warm and happy.”
“I love you.”
“Do you think we’ll always be happy like this?” I asked, speaking of my deepest fear.
“I will never stop loving you, if that’s what you mean. And if we are caught sneaking out, I’m pretty sure no one would be too surprised. They all know from the way I look at you I intend to marry you when Chief thinks you’re old enough and finally say okay.”
I laughed at the thought of Chief being able to give me away.
With my parents both gone since I was a baby, Chief had adopted me as his daughter and he loved me tremendously for all his lecturing ways. Reab laughed a little too but without any fear of Chief rejecting him. Chief loved Reab too and approved of us most of the time.
“Do you remember when he caught us making ‘sheep-eyes’ at each other as he put it and he was furious?” We chuckled at the memory of Chief turning storm on us, declaring we were too young.
“What would he say now?” he turned my face to face his and kissed me for a while, with the wind blowing the tendrils of my hair on his face. He smiled mid-way through our kiss, for the soft strands of my hair on his face always tickled him.
I didn’t want to continue with my question after that happy moment. But I had to; he was the only man who would tell me the truth. “Our tribe has enemies. We have many men, many strong men… but I know we are in a constant threat. I have seen the midnight meetings you men hold when you think we are asleep and more weapons that normal are being made nowadays.”
He looked at me with sad eyes; with so much love and desire burning in them that my own eyes began to swell up with tears. I fluttered my lids to get rid of the wetness but he reached over and caught a tear on his pinky and licked it. Then he licked all the tears off my face and I giggled as his tongue flicked over the tearstains on my cheeks.
“The tribe is in some danger. You and I are not. I will love you forever.” I shook my head and was about to interrupt with another fearful question when he continued, “You know what Chief always says. We don’t live just one life. I loved you since we were babies. You know what I think?”
“What?” I asked, his voice slightly soothing my fears.
“I think I’ve known you before. There’s no way you can know someone the way I know you in the short life time we’ve lived. This is not the first time we’ve met.”
“You’re not worried if a battle comes we won’t be together?”
“No.” he answered and kissed my forehead.
“Why?” I couldn’t get rid off the idea of such a terrible fate.
“I think…” he struggled to get the words out, “I think we’ll always be together somehow. Masra, I’m… I’m just not afraid”
We lay there for a while until I fell asleep in his arms. I was awoken a little later with him shaking me softly for us to sneak back into our own huts.
There was a little advantage in having both my parents gone. Lela, my cousin who shared the hut with me, stirred only a little as I crept back in.



“I’ve been hearing from your sister that lately you have been waking very late. I don’t approve of this laziness.” Chief said to me as I sat on the floor of his hut, admiring the new spear he had just made. I sharpened the stone a little for him and smiled up brightly. His face softened. Chief was not usually an easy person to get around, but he always said he loved me more than was good for me. “I saw Reab today. He didn’t look so alert and awake.”
My mind clicked into place as I realized Chief had his suspicions. “Reab?” I inquired with an innocent expression. “Is he ill?”
“He just looked tired.” Chief replied with raised eyebrows, his eyes were a little puzzled. I had fooled him for now.
I balanced the spear in my hand. “You hold a spear too well for a woman” he grunted. “Spending too much time with me, I suppose. You should spend more time with your sister Lela. It would have been different if your mother was still alive. She would’ve taught you some womanly manners.”
“I think I’m feminine enough.”
“Look at you, blundering around after the men of the village, killing creatures and planning your attack even better than my men.”
“I don’t plan Chief; it just comes to me”
“Making it even worst!” he cried with a hidden pride.
I burst out laughing and bade him good night. He ruffled my hair fondly. “You go to sleep now Masra. Get some good sleep. Tell Reab that too” his eyes sparkled wickedly. Perhaps I hadn’t fooled him after all.
“You tell Reab, won’t you? I won’t see him till tomorrow morning.” I replied demurely.



And here passed, long uneventful days with the occasional nights that Reab and I would sneak out of the huts to spend the cool nights together and forcing ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn along with the villagers, exhausted but happy. I suspected Chief still had his own wary thoughts, but with a denial somewhere in his mind, he did not seek to expose the truth or confine stricter rules on me through Lela. The few months that went by, I watched as Reab grew from a boy to a man.
A man I loved more than life itself.
One night, as I was lying in his arms I poked a thumb against his forehead and breathed out happily before nestling into his chest.
“What?” he asked me, amused at my random, loving behavior.
“I like to check that you’re real.”
He had no words in reply to that but tightened his hold on me, and swiftly kissed my dark hair with a sudden passion. His fingers caressed my head, and he inhaled the flowery perfume from the brown strands clutched in his hand.
“I wish you a long and happy life.” I whispered softly, afraid of the feelings that were surging through me.
“With you.” he replied back.
“No. Not just with me… anywhere… as long as you’re happy.”
“So with you then…”
Some days after that night, when it was pouring so furiously everyone had retreated back into their huts to cozy up, gossip, and flirt while warming their hands on hot wooden mugs we snuck off and climbed a special tree.
It was special because it was a giant, and very old with gnarled branches and knobs that made it easy to grip on with our toes, but the trunk itself was as smooth as a baby’s skin. It overlooked most of the village and the canopy was so thick it protected us from the rain except for the small wet drops that would escape through.
The tree stood apart from the woods and was very difficult to get to. One had to climb several other trees to reach it, ducking in and out of the tangle of branches up in the canopy like a maze. Only Reab and I had spent enough time up there to discover the path in reaching it. We were yet to discover how to reach it without getting scratches and bleeding scabs all over our skin.
Every time the thunder roared deafeningly Reab would yell, “I love you!” and no one could hear but Reab, the heavens, our special little tree and I.
He was so beautiful; like a lithe dangerous animal and his muscles were graceful and strong as he climbed around on the branches. I wished for the rest of our days to be like this and I remembered the lines he had recited to me only a little while ago,
““A million stones on fire with wishes
Yet the brightest star is not up there”

*

A distant roar erupted. The stars had not granted my wish, they had granted my deepest fear. The sound of drums rumbled steadily over the noise of screaming villagers, over the noise of animal fear in those I loved and lived with.
It was the sign that our enemies were finally in sight. We had been waiting for there attack all year long.
Lela grabbed me by the arm. “The chief says all women must flee!” she gasped and choked. Her eyes were leaking with tears. I stubbornly shook away her hand and I could see the desperateness growing in her eyes.
“There is no time to cry Lela”, I tried saying confidently but my voice shook. “Where is Reab?”
Even in her hysterical state she did not want to answer the question I already knew the answer to. “Where is Reab?” I repeated. When she did not reply I narrowed my eyes.
In the face of danger I had never been woman-like and cowered.
Chief had raised me stare any wild beast straight into its cold, predatory eyes before slaying it. I was not unfamiliar to thrusting a jagged dagger into the heart of danger.
I would not leave a man I loved behind like the running footsteps of women carrying their babies, pushing old people along, and dragging wailing children were doing.
I would not leave and I would fight when I could.
Lela stared at me as if she’d just read my mind.  “You may not fight Masra!” she cried. I pushed her aside.
“Help the women evacuate! Grab a baby, help a village elderly; just do it Lela!” I yelled violently and ran through the women who were running towards the woods.
I shoved women aside to get to the battle. My long legs tangled with the other woman, and I fell on my knees. They were both bleeding badly when I got up. Running with my knees stinging, a huge man suddenly grabbed me and swung me to face him. For one moment, I thought he was Reab and I clutched onto him; then I saw it was Chief, and I clutched to him even tighter.
“Chief, please don’t make me go away! Please let me fight with you!” I was screeching and begging with no sanity left in me.
He smiled weakly, “I wanted you to come without little Lela, I knew you would be headed this way. I have not much time Masra, my men need me. I have something I want to give you to make sure you will be safe enough to last through this war if I die,” he spoke softly.
I shook my head and hugged him. “But- but you- you wont!”
Chief gave me a sad smile. “I don’t know that.”
His brown hands reached to his neck and tugged a simple black leather string free. He shoved it into my hands. “Remember this, Masra. Just say to it, ‘Jack, Jack, shine the light’ when you feel there is nobody left in the world for you. Be ready for what happens. Goodbye Masra…”
He touched my cheek and warmth spread though me, momentarily making me feel safe.
“Why Jack?” I asked wretchedly, in a detached curiosity and trying to prolong the moment that Chief would be safe.
Jack was a commoner’s name; no one in our tribe was called Jack. We all had strong, powerful names that spoke of destiny, truth and purity.
“Chief Traben!” a man cried from the noises of surging mob of warriors.
“Go, Masra, go!” Chief said hurriedly, and pushed me away before whipping out of sight.
Chief had been like my best friend, my big brother and … my father. I wanted to fight with him, for him. But I knew in doing that, I would go against his wishes, and that was the last thing I would ever want to do.
A sudden thought made me realize I did not have to fight. I just had to be there or I would **** somebody in my own village for leaving behind loved ones. I knotted the black leather string determinedly on my neck.
I ran to the bottom of a slippery tree and climbed up to the canopy and began to duck in and out, swinging between and onto branches in the maze-like chaos of sticks and concentrated leaves to get to the special tree Reab and I shared.
I hid among the thick tangle; so thick no arrows would be able to pierce me and no enemy would see me. Growling and cursing myself, I remembered I carried no weapons with me and hastily patted my clothing to check again.
Then I remembered it would be useless to have any weapons unless I intended to go down there, for the abundant tangle worked both ways. A spear thrown from where I was would only get stuck in the dense branches below.
I could see the battle though, and that was enough: for now. I searched vainly for Reab, scampering along the top, trying to find where Reab was. I was wild with fury for him for coming.
He was just a boy, newly turned a man. He could still run and hide without shame. When I had him back in my arms again, I was sure to hit him and berate him for choosing to fight for me instead of being safe for me.
It never occurred to me once that Reab might be dead.
It still didn’t occur to me when I saw his body lying on the dirt below, with a man from a village - someone I couldn’t recognize from this height- dragging him. I shouted out, careless of the arrows of enemies.
For the first time in my life, I was terrified of blood: the blood that was seeping out of the wound on his stomach. I didn’t think he was dead; I believed he was injured and I thought of all the herbal concoctions I knew that I could paste over the wound to clean and heal it.
It still didn’t occur to me Reab was dead when the man left him by the bottom of a tree to return and fight. The men in our village did not leave those who could be healed. They stayed and helped them heal to the best of their ability before hiding their healing bodies’ safe in a bush. They only left behind those they could do no more for.
I trembled at anger in the neglect one of our men villagers had shown Reab; the disrespect in it. I would **** him if he were not killing our enemy. Somehow, in the wild pulsing of my body, I found myself climbing down and creeping stealthily to where Reab was and pulling him to safety in a bush.
When he was safe in the bushes, I held him and whispered to him that I was here. I said hold on Reab and I would go and make sure he was safe. I was sobbing. I could not comprehend what was happening for my mind had gone numb and blank.
How could a man who I loved so much bleed so much? All I knew was Reab was not moving in my arms and he must be terribly hurt.
I pressed my fingers to the blood on his stomach. I knew no man could have survived such a wound and so much lo

You've heard this tale
A thousand times,
Take one more spin,
This version's mine.
And this telling tale
Is its first time.
My theme is fitting,
The message sublime,
For the Season of giving,
And gifting one's time.

For my first Christmas
I was three,
But the warmth that night
Didn't freeze,
And indeed it was
A cold Christmas Eve.

We stuck pine branches
In a bucket of sand,
That's the snapshot I've got
Of our Christmas tree then.
Here's my memory that Eve
From a lad who's three;
Yet this story is true,
It's a family heirloom.

We weren't many then,
There was Mammy and Daddy
And six children, soon seven.
Daddy operated cranes and loaders,
Dirt packers, graders, and cable drovers.
He was working Far North,
Manning a DC10 dozer,
Distant from family
Near the French border.
That's where he was
When the diesel caught fire,
When his pant legs lit up,
But the flame grew no higher.

We were only three months
In our chosen homeland,
It was 1958,
And fresh from Ireland.

No way to get to him,
Nor him to get home,
No car,  no friends yet,
Little money, no phone.
Yet somebody knew
We were out on our own.

And the snow started falling,
It was Christmas Eve,
I stood at the window,
Saw the snow fill the trees.
I was still and staring,
At what I don't know,
But I remember quite vividly
All that I saw.

Like a scene from a movie
Starring Barry or Bing,
A fire-engine red no-top
Stopped and parked with high beams,
Highlighting the snow,
On that Christmas Eve.

A big man in a red suit
Slid off of the trunk,
Literally carrying a sack,
And calling, **! **!
The family joined me
At the window to see
The big man's helpers
Carry a big Christmas Tree.

When they entered the house
Kevin, Sean, Gerald and I,
Cowered and crouched
Behind the second-hand couch.
We must have resembled
Three monkeys plus me;
I hadn't a clue,
I was dumb-founded and three.

In through the front door
They clattered and sang,
Unloading their boxes
Of food, clothes and toys,
*****, bats and dolls
For two girls and four boys;
And I'm sure there was something
For the coming bundle of joy.

I don't remember their departure,
Or where he went,
But they called Merry Christmas
And left all else unsaid.

Mammy understood
Some good persons had called,
Who'd heard of our plight
And couldn't be calmed
Til they knew for certain
We'd some peace in our storm.

So, that's my first Christmas,
Since then this my creed:
The gift of giving
Isn't under the Tree.

The words they speak
are sharper than blades
And their looks,
daggers that could tear a skin
Their eyes are blind,
can't see what's inside

Like shadows they creeped
Stabbing backs and innocence deemed
Always lurking in the darkness
Justice they served
but lives diminished

Your flaws are
something they gaze
The truth made me daze
The word equality is no
longer in their vocabulary
How can they fire bullets
without thinking the lives
they perceived

Trash in their brains
are twirling like a tornado
slowly messing their thoughts
slowly killing feelings, everywhere they go

Dictated by their own free will
Cowered in fear as they
thought it was real
What they've seen,
deception in mutilation
Power overrule by those who torture
Torturing minds, creating lies
The innocent happily flying kites
But they cut it with pure contempt
Convincing they will get
that chance again
"Listen to the words you seek
Don't listen to a word they say
Do NOT listen to a word you've heard
Do not listen to a word you've heard
People are people we live for our own
Live how you think not by what you've been told"

In God's eyes we're all the same
where do you think we all came?
Don't let them fool you
By their tools of deception
We are all the same
We will die someday
So maybe, it's time for a change.

-*Adele Karla & Erenn

The rock slept
Genghis Khan clamped fingers
Over the edge of a land mass
And peeled freedom away from the East

The rock slept
The mob beheaded a woman who aided the American Revolution
Americans denied it later
But every town called Marietta is named after her

The rock slept
A vegetarian who didn’t drink and smoke
Commandeered information technology and chemical engineering
To commit the biggest ******-robbery
In the history of daylight and star-shine

The rock slept
The vegetarian cowered from justice
Committed suicide like the milksop/milquetoast he was

The rock slept
A fourteen-year-old boy clamped his fingers
Around it
Aimed it at High Strength Lexan riot shields
Protecting flesh, blood, and bone minimally paid
Protecting shields of numbers, theories, interchangeable office holders

Until he realized the futility of it
Dropped the rock
Turned south (or maybe north)
And walked away

The rock slept
Snoring unheard through the next spurt of tyranny

People think that Dublin, Ireland's fair capital city
Is a place of merriment, overflowing with craic and whiskey,
Whose narrow streets are filled with poets and singers and also
Pretty girls with wheelbarrows selling cockles and mussels;
A city redolent with history, whose gutters run with half-digested Guinness
After closing time, and the drinkers have been hurled into the gutter
By jovial bouncers who can recite "Ulysses" from start to finish
From memory, and where the Liffey, sweet Anna Liffey, flows peacefully,
With only an occasional splash when a pedestrian topples gaily in.
                  
But there is a darker side to famous Baile Atha Cliath, oh yes,
And the following anecdote is a sad but true indictment of the evil,
The omnipresent evil, which lurks in the black soul of the city.
I was trolling along the banks of the old Royal Canal one summer's evening
With my drinking companion, my Afro cousin, Black Paddy McSpigot,
Pausing only to glance briefly at the copulating couples on the towpath
(We were slightly amused by the small crowd watching one couple
who were engaged in the athletic congress of the ****-backed whale
underneath the bridge by Rose Street, a favourite spot for young lovers),
When a terrible shriek rent the air and a horde of renegade drunken nuns
Poured out of a late night underground folk-music drinking den
(the hugely amplified noise of the massed uilléan pipes was deafening
and had probably driven the poor dears into a religious frenzy).

Seeing Black Paddy, and mistaking his gay rendition of "Skibereen"
For an excerpt from the Satanic Mass, they yelled out polyphonically
"Tis the divil himself, so it is, an' all, an' all, let's get the focker",
And without further ado they leaped on him and ripped him to shreds,
Hurling lumps of his poor, poor body into the crocodile infested canal,
Where they were immediately masticated by the terrifying reptiles
(the mighty creatures had been stolen from the Zoological Gardens
by a group of drunken Animal Rights campaigners out on a ******,
and were the toast of the town in every gay bar in the vibrant city).
I cowered in terror at the horrific spectacle, thanking my lucky stars
I was wearing my archibishop's fancy dress uniform that evening
(it was the only way to jump the queue to get into Davy Byrne's Bar).
Dear God, I'll not visit the dear Emerald Isle again in a hurry, to be sure.

O'er the South landscape a force did attack
Whipping winds thrashed furiously about
Buildings were smashed down by the great thwack
Angrily the tornado voiced its tout
People cowered neath protective cover
The skies were tinged in a grey green rage
Twas like a roaring train passing over
The ghastly scene was of utter carnage
Driving rains fell they added more insult
Oklahoma's South witnessed devastation
Nature had reeked an awful assault
A twister caused so much destruction
The tornado was of powerfulness
All in its path under extreme duress

Me and Jagged Teeth usually dont take this path, but , it was an unusually hot day.
The shadows from the trees grew thick expelling most of the heat
She always had badluck , tripping on her own shoelaces , getting caught in every mischeveaous
act and even biting her own tongue as she spoke. there was a day unlike this one where she claimed dominion over
the forest we walked, only for  her to fall face flat from her throne , a trunk cleaved by lightning it seems,
and chipping her tooth on a very vicious rock.
forever since that day i've called her Jagged Teeth
"there it is" she spoke pointing towards the middle of the path.
A large filter of light from the sky fell upon the center ,
the sun seemed to have chosen this one spot where it would torture the wood.
"this is where the heart is"
she whispered. "they say if you make a wish here in the sunlight..."
"Who cares!!!" I yelled. It was beutiful enough without all of her fairy tales.
Never had i seen nature at peace with itself in such a way... No sound would echo
through except the chirping from the crickets and the buzzing from the gnats.
They did not swarm here or attack...Nature was at peace with herself.
"You dont belive me?" Jagged remarked
obviously not, i thought to myself . "How would she know"
"I'll show you then"
over where a patch of
flowers were swaying in the breeze she stumbled over a vine,
turning, to me and giggling at herself,
peculiar enough the flowers were taller than us
She moved them aside crawling on the soft
bed laden with petals and worms and other beuteous things.
She swept away some soil and dug her hand underneath  
and up she pulled a small white daisy, roots and all...She looked me in the eye
"Quick!, Before it dies"!!!
She bolts back out of the thicket of flowers i
stayed confused at how she knew so much about this,
from the corner of my eye , where she picked her treasue
a small snakes head rose up from the soil...
"Hurry" she exclaimed  i ran to her. "There was a-"
"SHH!"
Just watch!
slowly she walks to the heart of this  Oasis and holds the flower at eye level. Slowly picking each petal one after the other ...
"so what " I thought but then, the petals flitted in the wind like a tornado was around them and each white petal
burst with color into butterflies one red, one green, one blue, one yellow , one black and one white
They flew around us growing larger and larger until they burst into hundreds,
flew up into the sunlight and exploded into petals each a color of those butterflies
I could only smile. Magic before my eyes and Jagged was the one to show me.
"How did you know of this place, Jagged?"
she skipped towards me and smiled. " I saw it in my dreams." She explained "BUt hurry before the sun goes down!!!!" "Make your wish!!"
Excited i ran towards the flowers taller than my head. Leaping i fell on the bed to my knees and reached deep through
the soil of this hallowed ground. I felt the emptiness
of this space and reached deeper my hand grazed something soft and i grabbed and pulled it out
A low hiss and a stinging sensation was on my hand. "Benjamin!!!" cried Jagged
but before i could turn to her i fell darkness came over me like a thick shadow...
As Benjamin fell Jagged caught him in her arms he convulses and shivers.
"Help!" She Cried and begged and pleaded
"Help, I dont want him to-"
"Die?" muttered a soft deep voice
"N-No...I do'nt...Where are you??"
"Beneath you." It hissed and from below the snake transformed into a figure reminiscent of a human in a dark robe it dressed and spoke softly,confidently and quietly.
"What did you think the price of the young life you took was?"
"Young life?" she queried. "The Daisy...But i didnt know!!"
"NO ONE EVER KNOWS!! They Come and mutilate and ravage this land like savages and expect no retribution!!" He booms causing the infinite chirp of the crickets to cease, the sun to sink lower and the flowers wither deep into their bed.
Jagged Teeth cowered before it crying and sobbing silently , gripping Ben tighter.
"But I'm sorry..."
"Sorry will NOT bring back the life you took selfishly ,Child...Now leave him here, the poison in his veins will soon end him leaving  him to become part of the Oasis..."
"No!!!"she cried
"YES!"Declared the spectre
"Now leave this place, and the LIFE that is the cost..."
"Take me instead!" She begged
I've already done this deed little one. I cannot reverse this..."
"You lie!.." she retorted "If this wood can grant wishes I'm sure you could..."
The shadow leaned towards her Smiling widely, grimacing its teeth blindingly white but eye deep and black.
"You would give your life for his and the little sprite you took?"
She kisses benjamin on the forehead and lays him gently on the bed of the forest.
Standing sloely looking it boldy in the eyes;
"Yes..."
"FINE!" it hissed
Spininning the spectre turns bright white  and consumes Jagged Teeth...
*
"B e n j a m i n..."
I turn to see Jagged standing in the middle of the Oasis.
"J a g g e d!" I yelled runningtowards her.
I see behind her a figure ghastly grinning with darkened features...
I reach out towards  her and so does she.
The ground, thick like mud slowing me with every step. On my arm is a grasp cold and sharp. The figure is clutching
my wrist behind me but i keep running, the closer we get more of the spectres appear...closer and closer...until everything is black. The spectres ooze black liquid and i scratch to reach above them. I see Jaggeds limp hand and before i can clasp it in mine we are swept away by the black mass of the river...
"Jagged Teeth!"
I lurch forward and scream.
The room i awake in is white and a loud beep is blipping in and out. The door slams open
"Ben, Sweety its ok it was just a bad dream!"
"Where is  she mom, Where is Jagged!"
"Honey, Who?" she replied
My heart sinks into my chest and my head into her *****...
-
Behind her she closes the door. She did her best to calm him but he still seemed restless,distant even.
What was this Jagged toothed monster that haunted his dreams?
She motions herself around the corner and she sees through the window where her son is resting. The doctor is standing there looking confused with his charts mumbling about anomalies and other inconsistent data.

"Will he be ok?" asked bens mother
"Yes, But he seems rather Dillusional.."remarks the physician
"Its an act of God that we found him in time, the poison he was subjected to was more than three times the fatal dose...."
Bens mother clasps her purse and reaches into it to pull out a cigarette.
"Thank you doctor..."
She lights her cigarette and inhals the white fumes.
"When can we go home?"
"Well lets run a few more tests, I want to make sure he is ok, Physicallly and Emotionally."
"I understand.." She exhales violently
"Where was he found if you dont mind me asking...?"
"He was outside of the Forest, Hell i didnt know he was the adventuroud type...Hell inever even Knew that place existed until now..."
She drags one last time on her cigarette before ashing it in her hand
"Looks like he's been through hell."

KING EOCHAID came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara.  Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height than any stag in the world
He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth
Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;
But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,
Rending the horse's flank.  King Eochaid reeled,
Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point
Against the stag.  When horn and steel were met
The horn resounded as though it had been silver,
A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there
As though a stag and unicorn were met
Among the African Mountains of the Moon,
Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,
Butted below the single and so pierced
The entrails of the horse.  Dropping his sword
King Eochaid seized the horns in his strong hands
And stared into the sea-green eye, and so
Hither and thither to and fro they trod
Till all the place was beaten into mire.
The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met,
The hands that gathered up the might of the world,
And hoof and horn that had ****** in their speed
Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.
Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,
And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves
A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;
But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks
Against a beech-bole, he threw down the beast
And knelt above it with drawn knife.  On the instant
It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
So mournful that it seemed the cry of one
Who had lost some unimaginable treasure
Wandered between the blue and the green leaf
And climbed into the air, crumbling away,
Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,
The disembowelled horse.
King Eochaid ran
Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath
Until he came before the painted wall,
The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,
Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps
Showed their faint light through the unshuttered
windows,
Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,
Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound
From well-side or from plough-land, was there noisc;
Nor had there been the noise of living thing
Before him or behind, but that far off
On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.
Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,
And mocks returning victory, he passed
Between the pillars with a beating heart
And saw where in the midst of the great hall
pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain
Sat upright with a sword before her feet.
Her hands on either side had gripped the bench.
Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.
Some passion had made her stone.  Hearing a foot
She started and then knew whose foot it was;
But when he thought to take her in his arms
She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:
"I have sent among the fields or to the woods
The fighting-men and servants of this house,
For I would have your judgment upon one
Who is self-accused.  If she be innocent
She would not look in any known man's face
Till judgment has been given, and if guilty,
Would never look again on known man's face.'
And at these words hc paled, as she had paled,
Knowing that he should find upon her lips
The meaning of that monstrous day.
Then she:
"You brought me where your brother Ardan sat
Always in his one seat, and bid me care him
Through that strange illness that had fixed him there.
And should he die to heap his burial-mound
And catve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,
"He lives?' "He lives and is a healthy man.'
"While I have him and you it matters little
What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'
"I bid them make his bed under this roof
And carried him his food with my own hands,
And so the weeks passed by.  But when I said,
""What is this trouble?'' he would answer nothing,
Though always at my words his trouble grew;
And I but asked the more, till he cried out,
Weary of many questions:  ""There are things
That make the heart akin to the dumb stone.''
Then I replied, ""Although you hide a secret,
Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,
Speak it, that I may send through the wide world
Day after day you question me, and I,
Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts
I shall be carried in the gust, command,
Forbid, beseech and waste my breath.'' Then I:
Although the thing that you have hid were evil,
The speaking of it could be no great wrong,
And evil must it be, if done 'twere worse
Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,
And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,
Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain.''
but finding him still silent I stooped down
And whispering that none but he should hear,
Said, ""If a woman has put this on you,
My men, whether it please her or displease,
And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters
And take her in the middle of armed men,
Shall make her look upon her handiwork,
That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though
She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,
She'II not be proud, knowing within her heart
That our sufficient portion of the world
Is that we give, although it be brief giving,
Happiness to children and to men.''
Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,
And speaking what he would not though he would,
Sighed, ""You, even you yourself, could work the
cure!''
And at those words I rose and I went out
And for nine days he had food from other hands,
And for nine days my mind went whirling round
The one disastrous zodiac, muttering
That the immedicable mound's beyond
Our questioning, beyond our pity even.
But when nine days had gone I stood again
Before his chair and bending down my head
I bade him go when all his household slept
To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden
Westward of Tara, among the hazel-trees --
For hope would give his limbs the power -- and await
A friend that could, he had told her, work his cure
And would be no harsh friend.
When night had deepened,
I groped my way from beech to hazel wood,
Found that old house, a sputtering torch within,
And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins
Ardan, and though I called to him and tried
To Shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.
I waited till the night was on the turn,
Then fearing that some labourer, on his way
To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,
Went out.
Among the ivy-covered rocks,
As on the blue light of a sword, a man
Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,
Stood on my path.  Trembling from head to foot
I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;
But with a voice that had unnatural music,
""A weary wooing and a long,'' he said,
""Speaking of love through other lips and looking
Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft
That put a passion in the sleeper there,
And when I had got my will and drawn you here,
Where I may speak to you alone, my craft
****** up the passion out of him again
And left mere sleep.  He'll wake when the sun
wakes,
push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,
And wonder what has ailed him these twelve
months.''
I cowered back upon the wall in terror,
But that sweet-sounding voice ran on:  ""Woman,
I was your husband when you rode the air,
Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,
In days you have not kept in memory,
Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come
That I may claim you as my wife again.''
I was no longer terrified -- his voice
Had half awakened some old memory --
Yet answered him, ""I am King Eochaid's wife
And with him have found every happiness
Women can find.'' With a most masterful voice,
That made the body seem as it were a string
Under a bow, he cried, ""What happiness
Can lovers have that know their happiness
Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build
Our sudden palaces in the still air
pleasure itself can bring no weariness.
Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot
That has grown weary of the wandering dance,
Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,
Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,
Your empty bed.'' ""How should I love,'' I answered,
""Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed
And shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighcd,
"Your strength and nobleness will pass away'?
Or how should love be worth its pains were it not
That when he has fallen asleep within my atms,
Being wearied out, I love in man the child?
What can they know of love that do not know
She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge
Above a windy precipice?'' Then he:
""Seeing that when you come to the deathbed
You must return, whether you would or no,
This human life blotted from memory,
Why must I live some thirty, forty years,
Alone with all this useless happiness?''
Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I
****** him away with both my hands and cried,
""Never will I believe there is any change
Can blot out of my memory this life
Sweetened by death, but if I could believe,
That were a double hunger in my lips
For what is doubly brief.''
And now the shape
My hands were pressed to vanished suddenly.
I staggered, but a beech-tree stayed my fall,
And clinging to it I could hear the *****
Crow upon Tara."
King Eochaid bowed his head
And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,
For that she promised, and for that refused.
Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds
Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed
door
Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,
And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood,
And bade all welcome, being ignorant.

Had I fought the minds marginal error by staring into the glare of the granite counter,
I might have found myself to be haunted by the thoughts of misinterpretations as I cowered,
Hiding in fear from the thoughts I had misread;
Perhaps I'm too tired, or perhaps my body is made out of lead and has therefore rotted my mind to the core..
Something like an apple in the compost,
Or the composite measure of a lamp-post in juxtaposition from where I stood most often on the night that she died.

And I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried,
But for the most part, it was irrelevant. For the hell of it, I didn't fight it, as the pain had hit the pit of that slit in my heart where I held her so close;
And for too long, my heart fell into a state of comatose, but I made the most out of all I had lost,
But nothing worth gaining can come without cost..
So it's for this reason I ceased measuring what I had gained, or how differently the furniture in my minds living room had been re-arranged by the causation of my future elation that, for the moment, was making me sick to my stomach...
As I found that inside of myself, comparison can only take away from my shelf of rational wisdom and heart to be handed.
Forever, your name on my heart has been branded, in a form I find quite candid in comparison to what later came to be,
The future love I didn't truly feel until I looked back in alarmed retrospect
And realized, I had just missed the border post where it was the point of my comma that they checked,
So as such, it appeared I was under-arrest,
But while my mind was in jail I toned my behavior to the very best and later broke the vestige of ignorance that had previously vexed that place in my mind I had forgotten to check.

And aw, what the heck, I'll blatantly honest.
I've always thought of myself as modest artist whose realized that the world can't be changed,
Only temporarily re-arranged;
And this current arrangement has gone completely insane,
So I'm waiting around for some revolutionary rain;
*** the clouds are quite visible,
But our confidence is divisible by factors of 300 invisible and miserable Marxists stuck in a closet of oblivious self-denial.

All I know is this world is on trial, and if we don't march the final mile in less than awhile,
We're going to miss our chance to plant the seeds while the soils fertile.

So I'm ready.
Everyone, get ready.
It's time to make this world a bit sick and unsteady,
Because it's time for the furniture in our minds to be re-arranged by the causation of our future elation that, for the moment, is making us sick to our stomach.
And don't turn around, this is the worst time to turn back;
Just cut the slack; freedom is behind those great walls we have yet to attack,
So sit back and wait for the call of the words which we lack,
*** they're coming,
And they're coming real soon.
So soon, I can already feel the monsoon sweeping across the exposed cityscapes,
Tracing the skylines shape in the clouds while I sleep.

When I was six, my grandmother enrolled me in ballet class.

     This choice was the first of many attempts to negate my tomboyish nature. Perhaps, she’d hoped that instead of collecting insects and cutting apart Barbie dolls, the pirouettes and glitzy attire might spin me. I was spun, eventually, but that had nothing to do with dance.

     Blame it on my peers; blame it on the tutus. Truth be told, my time was generally spent out of sight; but I got my kicks sneaking a reptiles home, playing with dinosaurs - never dolls, or - of course - taming earwigs. Alone.

     I don’t remember the classes, or the other little girls. In fact, the sole (no pun intended) impression left behind by those dance classes was why they'd end.
It was to be my first recital. The whole class had been coaxed into flashy leotards and uncomfortable tights. We’d been instructed to skip in a single file line onto the stage, which catalyzed my predicament, as I hadn’t a clue about the routine.

     As the girl preceding me danced into view, I floundered in terror – my turn had arrived. I fumbled along in her wake, passing the curtain and reaching the stage.

     The stage!

     An arena of ruthless lights, unveiling my anonymity. I faltered in terror, registering the audience registering me. How vast the auditorium looked against my tiny body! Betrayed by those blinding stage lights, I cowered at the mercy of the whole world.

     The instructor, a faceless female, was showing whose boss as girls began skipping around me.

    And yet, there I stood. Petrified that moving forward negated any hope of escape. My proximity to the curtain merited two options... the bright side of the curtains, which would soon claim everyone else in the vicinity, or the dark. I engaged in a mental game of Tug-a-war that lasted all of about half a second.

     The dark curtains won.

     So, dodging around the obnoxious ballerinas, I descended back into safety. It mattered not where I went, as long as I put distance between myself and the audience. Distance between myself, and detection.

     At some point, I discovered a backstage crevice, in which darkness sheathed me. For, even at five, I understood dark and safety to be synonyms.

     So, I crawled inside, and I hid.

     I don’t remember who went seeking. Nor, do I know who found me. Nobody is a possibility; it was an “Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free” forfeit, perhaps. A rule that defeats the point of its own game. For at six, I was young enough to obey that “come out, come out, wherever you are” nonsense. But, such rules were dropkicked long ago.

     For, your existence – dear hide-and-seek – all but defines me. This game, that darkness, possesses my psyche.

     Some days, I ponder the uncertainty of memories. Vexed, for where memory dies, illusions are born. Illusions romanticizing reality – a reality in which I never came out, lost and unfound, a reality in which I’ll never come out, out, wherever I am. Hidden beneath the darkness.

     For, in truth, I have been hiding ever since.

A body bigger than anything we've seen before
Wings longer than a bus and wider than a house
Teeth sharp and point like looking in a alligators mouth!

Scales shining like a ruby in the light
A tail swaying so hard it hit most rocks

Leg's that crushes the ground beneath it's feet
Claws to ripped fresh meat

A roar so loud
It pierced the clouds

Elements of all sorts
Fire, Earth, Air Wind, Metal
So much more

A beast with such power
Sure to make you cowered
Only the bravest dare go against it

Sleeping in caves
Protecting the treasure

So will guide you and some will ****
It's all up to their will

Facing a creature so intelligent
It's would cause fear and worry
But also worship and love

We all know the beast i speak of
The dragon! It goes by many names

The thing we all grew to love
A dragon, More like a god from above

A blessing and A Curse
That's the best way to put it
A Dragon i bet you can't wait to see it

To see it in the sky
Flying high over the town

Hearing roars the sound so close yet so far
Wishing to be blessed

We all know what a dragon is capable of
But see we will risk everything just to get near

A dragon
Something we both love and Fear

It’s always Monday here with the hustle and bustle of the boisterous marketplace,
Negotiations carried out over loudspeakers and hailers,
It’s never without a fight.
It’s always Monday here with the cries of half-dead swans and suffocating dolphins,
Collateral damage is a word used loosely,
Now that the main guy is here.

Last night was a good night, befitting a Sunday’s catch,
Rest is only for the lost and lonely on a lovely Sunday night.
They brought them in, lined up in rows of ten,
Nothing on but a white singlet and pretty underpants.
They cowered in fright and tried to huddle,
The whips flew as freely as the flies that came to meddle.

It was not long till your turn came
Pretty as a rosebud
One man claimed
Smooth as a rose’s petal
Another one gleamed.

It was all too real for you and you fell dead, in silence
It’s always Monday here, someone said,
She was so pretty...
As they carried you on their back
to dump you in the truck
to throw away the body
just outside the city.

It’s always Monday here, said the man shaking his head,
as he went to the playground to fish
for another haul of fresh blood and good meat!

It’s always Monday here...
Someone said...

Around two weeks ago, part of a three-part dream,
I hadst seen Christ as he is; and always wilt be.
I wont speaketh of the other sections-
Just the part of the Savior,
Get thou to the right direction.

I sawest mineself, what looked to be in a hospital bed,
Fear and anguish wrapped mine mind, was I living-
Was I dead?

The two women I thought, originally to be nurses,
Saidst to me Brandon art thou ready for thine
Shot, I felt the rush and high they gave was
Perfect.

They stuck the needle in, pain medication's rush,
I calmed, de-stressed, mine spirit un-bunched.
After a few minutes, of this reality's vivid way,
The two I thought to be nurses spoke to me-
"Brandon art thou ready to meet God",
Mine high started floating away.

They saidst to me, come on " follow us", twill be ok-
I argued " I'm not ready " not ready today;  yet they
Hadst a tranquility about them, as I noticed these
Weren't thy average nurses, I followed them out
Of curiosity, as the shot faded from working.

They led me to a gigantic tree, not the norm you'd see,
It was like an oak, but it's height spoke, from heaven's
Reach. The tree hadst a door, they opened it for me-
Again they saidst " Brandon art thou ready "?
I stepped into the tree, getting first view,
Their was a stairway leading up, the path
Narrow, darkened, with handrails on the
Sides, as an abode, or earthly view.

As soon as I looked up the stairway, to the unknown,
I sawest a face observing downward to me; mine eye-sight
Hadst froze. I couldn't seeith the ****** features, just the glowing
White thick glorious beard, and thickened wool-set hair, I didint look at the body, because his countenance shone- as a million sun's, I got ****** into the light, from his face I felt one.


Beams were rapturous, as if a halo around his head, though
Twas not a halo, just the way he glow's tear's wilt be shed; then the man I sawest, disappeared as if mist, it hit me it was Yeshua ha'mashiach, Jesus Christ in mine midst.

The two women saidst again, ready to meet God? Fear built inside me, I wasn't ready because the sin I've got; though the man I sawest, didint cause me any fear, he was waiting for me, ready-
As tis I followed these two nurses up into the tree's care.

Getting up inside this tree, I stepped mine feet on hard ground,
It looked as if I walked into a new York flat, if in luxury Earthly
Bound. The room was big, with a brick wall in the back setting;
The two women took a right, into a wall they disappeared.
Again I thought, " Lord I'm surely not ready ".

I kneweth where they went, into the realm where God's throne-room was, I cowered behind them, I ran back down the step's for mine own good. I ran all the way back down the tree, closed the top door, ran out the bottom, shut the other one behind me, coming out of the trunk, not needing to know more.

At the end of the dream, switching to the last part, I took mine parent's to the scene, as mine story touched their heart's. I showed them the wooden giant I was taken up into, I told them of the two women I thought to be hospital worker's; though in reality being Angel's of God's truth. I spoke to them of the face I sawest up the stairs in the tree, how it shone like the star's all together for thou and me. In the tree there was a shelf, mine parents walked in, saw it for themselves. The shelf hadst huge tomatoes, and fresh vegetables I've never discovered, this was a tree of life with Christ, it's signifying mean's soon a death for me, as Christ awaits me; or like all the rest having rapture dream's- Yeshua is telling me his coming is soon, I'm just warning one another.


©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©My dream 2 seeks ago,

Do yourself a favor and keep scrolling.
Our first snowfall began at 9 a.m. this very morning.

Down came crystal ice, lacy clouds, and with it came the seasonal side of human troubles. I found my self transformed into a filthy romantic, gazing longingly out the window, wrapped in a wool blanket and holding my little brother who smiled at the Frosty the Snowman cartoon on TV. With the cold always comes the chills. The ones that shimmy up your shirt as you stand in the bathroom, trying not to look in the mirror while you undress. The chills that creep into your veins through open wounds and wind themselves around your rib-cage. I couldn't feel the warm air shooting from the vents while I sat beside them. I couldn't taste the Jack-In-The-Box daddy brought home at midnight. He put on an old movie and slowly everyone drifted to sleep. That's when I stole a few hours for myself. Taking my little doe-eyed puppy out into the yard, tossing him into a snowdrift for the first time. He cowered there for a moment, before darting back onto the deck, staring in awe and terror down at the snow. I lit a stolen cigarette and plopped down into the freezing mess.

I had a little too much to eat and felt like sleeping right there in my dampened jeans and Joe's Crab Shack t-shirt. I thought about putting out the Pal-Mal stick and being a straight-laced little girl for the holidays. I thought about the stinging of my latest stress-relief therapy (a bit of a home remedy) and also about Robert Plant's hair. Soon enough, after endless replays of my favorite music videos, my mind had emptied. The frigid air had ****** all my thoughts and memories from my head like a vacuum cleaner. All that remained was a sense of impending doom. A needle in the base of my skull, every nerve-ending in my body was pinched by icy fingers. Someone was calling my name from inside me, My own skin was shifting and rippling over my muscles, trembling and tingling. There was somewhere I had to be, something I should be doing, someone who needed my help. I sat up and looked around the yard, from the chain link fence, to the gorgeous view of the valley and the city *******, to the ugly siding of my manufactured home. My eyes darted back and forth, my puppy, the chicken house, the dead rose bush. I was alone, alone with my dog in a white miracle. Every snowflake looked like a stray bullet, raining down on me from the gods, but kissing my cheeks and melting on my feverish skin. I wished i could fall like that, and drip onto someone's lips or cling to their eyelashes.  But i was here, alone in the darkness with smoke-scented gloves and breath, in a yard of dead grass frozen in a flood.And then I started to cry. I didn't know why, I still have no idea what kind of madness washed over me as I shivered, my *** soaked and my nose running. But I sobbed and sobbed and put my head between my knees. The snow had gathered on the shoulders of my woolen pea-coat and sprinkled down as I shook and gasped, I must have sat there for half an hour, listening to a train go by in the valley, singing to the empty streets, trying to pull myself together. I'm still shivering even sitting here in my warm bed. But at that moment, I was as fragile and fleeting as the very dust that had settled across the entire town.

I managed to dry my eyes and stumble back through the front door tailed by a whimpering brown pup. Everyone, still crashed on the couches and floor, unaware of the scraggly disaster crawling through the living room. The Christmas tree twinkled in the corner and the TV played static. I kissed my baby brother on the forehead and slipped my lighter back into my coat pocket. The season had set in, the snow was here to stay. I was left wondering about the madness of  the season and the sanity of the skies.

Every year,  water freezes mid air and falls onto the earth in heaps of cold white heaven. It's a ******* miracle. It happens every year without fail and yet somehow it surprises and amazes us every time.

The girl was scared of puddles
And she was scared of rain
Every time the thunder clapped
She raced back inside again

She was given beautiful umbrellas
And coats of waterproof silk
But still she sat inside
And read on the window sill

As she grew the rain poured harder
And the girl cowered away
She hid behind her mother’s back;
She never ran to play

She was afraid of what the droplets were
So she sat and watched them gather
She still refused to step outside
And so she grew ever sadder

People came along
And people quickly left
They found the girls odd cowardice;
The way she counted every breath

There came a day when it was too late
And the girl was forced outside
She was lost without her silken coats
And with no place that she could hide

The girl was chilled clean through to bone
And her shy life came to an end
In her silken coats she reached the gates
And the golden stairs she did ascend.

In God’s own home she lay down her fears
And she swore that she’d be brave.
For there there are no window sills
And no pouring rain or hate.

Saint Peter smiled and praised her,
The girl who’d been inside,
And Saint Peter whispered truthfully
As he watched the young girl cry:

“Now, girl who’s scared of puddles,
And girl who’s scared of rain,
Did you ever think that when the thunder claps
It doesn’t have to mean your pain?”

“There’s others out there, like you
Who have suffered just as much
Yet they stay strong and they pull through
And they do not lose touch.

“I’ve been here always to protect you,
And that will never change.
So when you’re scared next just think of that,
And stand to face the rain.”

You must learn to love the puddles
And embrace the freezing drops
Dance under the thunderclouds
Until the lightning stops

It was a heap of plaid,
Orange and vinaigrette
It dully blended the white washed denim
The sod contrasted around his knees
Pete Abrams Jonesy was a discovery on his own.

The glow of the night sky released
The party goers and the venomous tendrils
That loomed beyond the tree hats and
The milky grey drift of dust that
Skated around Jonesy’s fingers as he dug
Scattering the Earth,
Searching and searching for the creepy crawlies
Between the plates of dirt,
the patches he’s scabbed away before;
His mother,
Hard at work building a nation in the kitchen
And Johnny filling his swine
Slipping between the cushions of the sofa.
It was that very night
Tucked away under the fresh linen and the feeling of
His mother’s lips pressed against his forehead
Warming his entire body –
That he realized his kneading desire to take his journey farther
To take it to school.
That day on the playground,
His hands knuckle deep in the land’s treasure
Creating pressure beneath the stubs of his fingernails,
Did he meet her
He met Charlotte Anne Avery.
Her ladybug blouse was loosely cast away from her shoulders
And he felt the urge to push her into the sand
But he couldn’t.
Charlotte Anne stood with her
Pine cone hair mushed on either side of her face;
The chocolate spit smeared on her cheek
Was enough to lure the mosquitoes all around
And he wanted to be her friend;

She’s always seen him around
Though; never before had he been keen on
Gazing back at the eyes of curiosity
Or rather her brown ones,
The plain and wide innocence –
It loomed over her face as she knelt
Bent beside him and dug a hole into the cream sand
With her elbow, gently brushing the circumference of
The minuscule hole she created.
Her glitter pink glasses were
Riding down the bank of her nose,
With her bottom cushioned in the crevice of sand
And Pete Abrams Jonesy’s sandy-fingers
Shoving her glasses back up
To rest beneath the kind eyes
That laid on him.

The end of germs and suspenders came fast,
Summer sped around the corner
While Pete Abrams Jonesy and Charlotte Anne Avery
Flew through the highlights
And the untouched parts of the forest –
Gallivanting beyond the age of the bell toll of adolescence,
Did they lie beneath the Sugar Maple Tree.
The promises they made of an un-relinquishing friendship
Grew beyond compare
And ever so did a union of love between him and her;
Every day was a hot hurricane of journeys spent
Devouring the wilderness together
Until the occurring reign of school
Sprung up again.

A new appreciation for the human body
Was as much as Pete Abrams Jonesy
Had accumulated for the first semester
Attending Mayfield Middle –
His life was horribly array without the presence
Of Charlotte Anne Avery.
His new herd of acquaintances
Brought about a new kind of education,
One that was foreign to the halls of Mayfield
And while his afternoon lunches
Sparked a flame in his soul
He became well oriented with the hypnotizing effects
Of Rummy and Black Jack 21,
His mind still sauntered to the round table
In the bull’s-eye of the café
Where a cloud of pink headbands and perfume
Captured the interest of his Charlotte Anne Avery.

She couldn’t believe the variety of books and music
That were made to live in this world
Sharing the same space as her –
It was enthralling, thrilling, and slightly frightening
The tales and the morals were anything but limited
Was it possible to live a well versed life having heard them all?
Would the chance ever be presented?
Her friends were of everything that was made to be
From sports to gymnastics to video-games to art;
It had all been opened to her in a flurry of welcoming gestures
From the minute she sat down at this particular table.
Even as her best friend now swung in the birches
As his friends, the panthers, ran low
She’d always be welcome on his other side;
Though, surprisingly, she was comfortable in this
Shade of manila spotlight.

A second semester, of many years,
Was a gift in its own
A surprise gesture wrapped up in a bow
Of questions, tutors, late night studying
It all amounted in a pile of stress –
A mound of snow
Of tests and quizzes and failed homework grades;
Pete Abrams Jonesy wasn’t alone in his mind
There in the far corner of sawdust
And memories of the plethora of parties he attended
Did lay his old friend from miles ago;
Charlotte Anne Avery had moved away across the lake
On the tips of his fingers so far away
For whatever reason she had moved away
It was amongst him unknown.
“Should I feel an ounce of sorrow, of grievance
For this new found distance between us?
I suppose not; we have new friends now
A new family
I haven’t known her in a while.”

Solemn years passed.
Days of solitude and confinement,
Days of pondering and guilt – heartache
Mr. Avery had passed away
Lost to his kin
His pristine precious child
Charlotte Anne Avery.
The wake had been nothing more
Than shades of black and blue and grey
Uncomfortable heels and rough tissues
That rubbed her eyes and nose
As raw as the pain she felt for the absence
Of her father
Her mother’s happiness and
Pete Abrams Jonesy.
It’d been years since she’d uttered a word to him
Years since they’d even been in the same room for long,
Though her hands still cowered
When she shoved the letter in the mail
Serving him the news of what transpired –
He made no appearance
Her expectations should have dwindled over time
But they remained the same
As strong as ever,
Slightly calloused with time
Until there was nothing left but a sore spot
Of where he should’ve been.

The rumors still rang clear as she began to heal
She fell in love with Marcus Stalling
The final year of puerile days
Now left to rot in the past;
Graduation was held at noon,
Her cap was arced on her head
Perfectly set in place
The rumors still rang true.
Pete Abrams Jonesy was the
Shadow of a boy she once knew when she was
Figuring things out
He didn’t even make it to this day.
The rumors of the hit and run, the drunk driver
It spread around the halls like wildfire
She had been ashamed to have once claimed him
In any form of the word –
She missed him still.
What would his life become?
“No one will visit him. What will become
Of the adventurous and jovial mind
I used to spend time with?”
When she heard the news on the local station
She’d lost her father all over again
And still no one had the answers
To any of her questions.

College and Marcus
The grand scheme of life begun with those two
Wisdom came with age
Anger subsided
And joy was restored –
The life she once dreamt of having
Still rendered mist to her eyes
So many individuals were supposed to be
Toe to toe;
Charlotte Anne Stalling the center of it all
Yet she felt the same orbital satisfaction
Yielding around her with only those two elements.
All mornings were the same
Her sanity strove from cycling about
In comfortable routines and an endless screenplay –
A memory of a future once shielded her sight,
The warm bodies were anything but familiar now.

The winter would always be cold
Rushing the blood to the tip of her nose
But spring came about
In a parade of confetti and open arms
The coffee shop on the girth of the boardwalk
Met her every day during the breakfast of the sun
And the coffee kept her warm.
It was a morning where the tide was crashing down roughly
The sun fried her skin,
She was glowing
Her attention was snatched away from the scenic grounds
Stolen away by the scream and shouts that traveled
From the end of the boardwalk,
There stood Pete Abrams Jonesy
Clutching his arm while peering at the welt
Given to him by a Sugar Maple Boer.

They came through our Forest
And spread through it their stone,
Through this haven
They thought they could take.
And the Little ones ran,
Afraid and confused -
The play-place was changed,
But it was their mistake.

And the Little ones thought,
Burn the corruption,
Burn the corruption,
Light it on fire,
Light it on fire!

The blind mute child came,
And he tried to tell,
So the Watcher came
To see what they'd done.
He brought the rest,
The ones who could help,
But all were needed
So to this scene they would run.

And everyone thought,
Burn the corruption,
Burn the corruption,
Light it, light it,
Ablaze!
Ablaze!

So they all gathered round
And trapped the intruders;
They stood in the way
Of the corruption's path.
The New Ones were stopped,
Surrounded, even,
And they could do nothing
To escape their wrath.

And they stood and chanted,
Burn the corruption, and
**** those who bring it!
Light them on fire,
Ablaze!
Ablaze!

And the sword of the Angels
Was just over their heads.
They cowered and looked up
So hopelessly.
But the loneliest one,
Who saw so much loss before,
Stood in its way,
And helped them to see.

And they learned they knew not what they had done, and realized,
*End the corruption, but
Forgive those who brought it.
Light it on fire,
Ablaze!
Ablaze!
Cleanse the forests, and
Cleanse those who hurt them,
The flames will renew,
Forgive,
Forget.

It flickered in the air,
sagged branch to branch,
pushed against the windows:
a death was pulsing.

It spilled into the streets
of my hometown.
I opened an old phonebook,
the names were humming.

I was cut to pieces by it.
I knew her as a little girl,  
she knew my sister
in her hippie period.

The telephone lines cowered
beneath the gray massing of moon.
The faces of houses screamed
ceaselessly at me as I drove.

It is so insistent,
her sixth-grade smile
in my old class photo.
It hovers inside me.

in winter we rubbed off our skin with bitter yellow soap
& danced across the murky floor of our brains.
ankle-deep in ambien, our toes scraped urchins & palms of anemone.

we built shelters in the living room
from moss-green blankets & coffee tables,
our fingers making furtive wishes in the quivering dark.
we picked small hairs & pennies out of the carpet.

when i grew hungry you offered me your left thigh
like an unwrapped christmas present.
under the aquatic quake of the fluorescent light
you fat seemed to boil
& your bed turned into a small, cold island.

we opened checking accounts under fake names
& you started to worry about your gently doming stomach.
when the mailman came, we cowered in the closet.

each year the temperature of our livers
rose a few degrees.

spring brought us flowers that smelled like DDT.

––Appears in the Spring 2013 issue of The Columbia Review.

So I’m cleaning out my closet, and I find this box. It reminds me of when I was a child.
I remember this box: it’s full of photographs,
Of these beautiful landscapes and the world that surrounded them.
I can remember a time when I used to live in this closet,
When I used to take these photos out and look at them,
Wondering where these beautiful places could
Possibly be, I’d thought that they were just paintings.
When I was a child, I thought like a child; I’d been born in my closet and didn’t know
There could be anything else.
I was happy, and I had everything I thought I needed: The pictures were nice to look at, there were other boxes full of trinkets and toys, there were four closed walls, and there was even a nice-smelling carpet for me to sleep on–
The closet was my home.

I’m cleaning out my closet, and I can’t believe I actually used to live in here.
I used to think that those were clouds stuck to the ceiling, but really
They’re just spiderwebs.
The carpet didn’t smell nice or home-y, it smelled musty and *****,
And god, there was so much ***** **** in here.
Back then, as I grew, the closet didn’t. I can’t believe that I used to think I fit in here,
That I used to sleep curled up in a knot on this hard, grainy excuse for a carpet.
Back then, as I grew, my trinkets and toys started to lose their virginity,
And that box of beautiful pictures that I used to stare at, and dream of, and imagine about
Started to irritate me.
Those places weren’t real. Staring at them made me feel sick,
As if there could be beautiful places somewhere in the world that I couldn’t already see,
I’d studied every inch of my closet, my closet was the world.
The closet was alone.

I didn’t even know that there was a door to the closet until one day, it opened.

I don’t know who did it; maybe it was God, maybe it was the wind, but all I know is that
Light flooded in.
I remember standing up for the first time in years,
Slinking towards the light and out of the door to find
A bedroom, and a window, and doors that lead to new places,
And the beautiful landscapes from the photographs?
I could see them from the window of my bedroom.
They were were in my backyard, and so was the rest of the world,
It was mine for the taking.
But I became so overwhelmed by the visuals, by the brightness and realness and colors
That I shivered, closed myself back in, locked the closet door,
And then I was angry.
Why didn’t anybody come tell me?
Why didn’t anybody ever knock on my door?
Why was no one ever there to tell me there was a world? Who put me in this closet? Can anybody  hear me?
It was too much too soon and I punished myself for not knowing,
Figured being in the dark forever was better than knowing what it was like outside,
I made it twenty years without daylight,
Might as well do twenty more.

The closet was worse than ever before,
And I hated it there, I wanted out, but what could be out there?
It was safer here, dark, cold, clammy, cornered, instead of
Open, airy, vast, promising, no!—promises can be broken,
And what if there were people out there? I’d have to explain where I’d been all this time,
And then, all of a sudden,
I was tired.

With the door still closed, I sat on the floor and faced the wall.
I lost track of time. Twenty years, or until I fell asleep for good, whichever came first,
That is, until I felt the door open up behind me.
I felt the Light against my back and cowered from it,
“I just want to be alone, it’s not real, it’s not real,” I said.
I was scared, but the Light began to
Warm my skin.
I turned around to face the open doorway,
I stood upon a higher ground, and I realized that the old box of pictures
Still sat by my feet.

When I stood up, I realized: these portraits and landscapes of beauty and nature and peace,
I’ve always had these.
I’ve always known what it was like outside,
I didn’t need anybody to set me free.
All I needed was me.

I’m cleaning out my closet, and I’m glad I’m outside.
I’m glad I found my home,
And my backyard, full of wonderful places.
I no longer have to wonder where such beautiful places could be,
And I’m never going back in there.
I’m finally free.

Inner not outer, without gnash of teeth
  Or weeping, save quiet sobs of some who pray
  And feel the Everlasting Arms beneath,--
Blackness of darkness this, but not for aye;
  Darkness that even in gathering fleeteth fast,
  Blackness of blackest darkness close to day.
Lord Jesus, through Thy darkened pillar cast,
  Thy gracious eyes all-seeing cast on me
  Until this tyranny be overpast.
Me, Lord, remember who remember Thee,
  And cleave to Thee, and see Thee without sight,
  And choose Thee still in dire extremity,
And in this darkness worship Thee my Light,
  And Thee my Life adore in shadow of death,
  Thee loved by day, and still beloved by night.
It is the Voice of my Beloved that saith:
  "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, I go
  Whither that soul knows well that followeth"--

O Lord, I follow, little as I know;
  At this eleventh hour I rise and take
  My life into my hand, and follow so,
With tears and heart-misgivings and heart-ache;
  Thy feeblest follower, yet Thy follower
  Indomitable for Thine only sake.
To-night I gird my will afresh, and stir
  My strength, and brace my heart to do and dare,
  Marvelling: Will to-morrow wake the whirr
Of the great rending wheel, or from his lair
  Startle the jubilant lion in his rage,
  Or clench the headsman's hand within my hair,
Or kindle fire to speed my pilgrimage,
  Chariot of fire and horses of sheer fire
  Whirling me home to heaven by one fierce stage?
Thy Will I will, I Thy desire desire;
  Let not the waters close above my head,
  Uphold me that I sink not in this mire:
For flesh and blood are frail and sore afraid;
  And young I am, unsatisfied and young,
  With memories, hopes, with cravings all unfed,
My song half sung, its sweetest notes unsung,
  All plans cut short, all possibilities,
  Because my cord of life is soon unstrung.
Was I a careless woman set at ease
  That this so bitter cup is brimmed for me?

  Had mine own vintage settled on the lees?
A word, a puff of smoke, would set me free;
  A word, a puff of smoke, over and gone:...
  Howbeit, whom have I, Lord, in heaven but Thee?
Yea, only Thee my choice is fixed upon
  In heaven or earth, eternity or time:--
  Lord, hold me fast, Lord, leave me not alone,
Thy silly heartless dove that sees the lime
  Yet almost flutters to the tempting bough:
  Cover me, hide me, pluck me from this crime.
A word, a puff of smoke, would save me now:...
  But who, my God, would save me in the day
  Of Thy fierce anger? only Saviour Thou.
Preoccupy my heart, and turn away
  And cover up mine eyes from frantic fear,
  And stop mine ears lest I be driven astray:
For one stands ever dinning in mine ear
  How my gray Father withers in the blight
  Of love for me, who cruel am and dear;
And how my Mother through this lingering night
  Until the day, sits tearless in her woe,
  Loathing for love of me the happy light
Which brings to pass a concourse and a show
  To glut the hungry faces merciless,
The thousand faces swaying to and fro,
  Feasting on me unveiled in helplessness

  Alone,--yet not alone: Lord, stand by me
  As once by lonely Paul in his distress.
As blossoms to the sun I turn to Thee;
  Thy dove turns to her window, think no scorn;
  As one dove to an ark on shoreless sea,
To Thee I turn mine eyes, my heart forlorn;
  Put forth Thy scarred right Hand, kind Lord, take hold
  Of me Thine all-forsaken dove who mourn:
For Thou hast loved me since the days of old,
  And I love Thee Whom loving I will love
  Through life's short fever-fits of heat and cold;
Thy Name will I extol and sing thereof,
  Will flee for refuge to Thy Blessed Name.
  Lord, look upon me from thy bliss above:
Look down on me, who shrink from all the shame
  And pangs and desolation of my death,
  Wrenched piecemeal or devoured or set on flame,
While all the world around me holds its breath
  With eyes glued on me for a gazing-stock,
  Pitiless eyes, while no man pitieth.
The floods are risen, I stagger in their shock,
  My heart reels and is faint, I fail, I faint:
  My God, set Thou me up upon the rock,
Thou Who didst long ago Thyself acquaint
  With death, our death; Thou Who didst long ago

  Pour forth Thy soul for sinner and for saint.
Bear me in mind, whom no one else will know;
  Thou Whom Thy friends forsook, take Thou my part,
  Of all forsaken in mine overthrow;
Carry me in Thy *****, in Thy heart,
  Carry me out of darkness into light,
  To-morrow make me see Thee as Thou art.
Lover and friend Thou hidest from my sight:--
  Alas, alas, mine earthly love, alas,
  For whom I thought to don the garments white
And white wreath of a bride, this rugged pass
  Hath utterly divorced me from thy care;
  Yea, I am to thee as a shattered glass
Worthless, with no more beauty lodging there,
  Abhorred, lest I involve thee in my doom:
  For sweet are sunshine and this upper air,
And life and youth are sweet, and give us room
  For all most sweetest sweetnesses we taste:
  Dear, what hast thou in common with a tomb?
I bow my head in silence, I make haste
  Alone, I make haste out into the dark,
  My life and youth and hope all run to waste.
Is this my body cold and stiff and stark,
  Ashes made ashes, earth becoming earth,
  Is this a prize for man to make his mark?

Am I, that very I who laughed in mirth
  A while ago, a little, little while,
  Yet all the while a-dying since my birth?
Now am I tired, too tired to strive or smile;
  I sit alone, my mouth is in the dust:
  Look Thou upon me, Lord, for I am vile.
In Thee is all my hope, is all my trust,
  On Thee I centre all my self that dies,
  And self that dies not with its mortal crust,
But sleeps and wakes, and in the end will rise
  With hymns and hallelujahs on its lips,
  Thee loving with the love that satisfies.
As once in Thine unutterable eclipse
  The sun and moon grew dark for sympathy,
  And earth cowered quaking underneath the drips
Of Thy slow Blood priceless exceedingly,
  So now a little spare me, and show forth
  Some pity, O my God, some pity of me.
If trouble comes not from the south or north,
  But meted to us by Thy tender hand,
  Let me not in Thine eyes be nothing worth:
Behold me where in agony I stand,
  Behold me no man caring for my soul,
  And take me to Thee in the far-off land,
Shorten the race and lift me to the goal.

I was sitting next to you on a ledge
overlooking the Hudson River
and the orange sun seemed to stare at us
as it fell, like it knew something
sad and terrible was about to happen
maybe a joke was being played on us

in the back of a dimly-lit Japanese restaurant
we cowered behind white makeshift walls
and sipped crystal blue sake, and you whispered something
and I smelled you and the smell was strong
like crushed feathers
and dead roses
such a lovely fragrance
and my heart swelled in its wake

and then a snapshot
and a white fist
and a heaviness
and a fleeting thought I’m too ashamed to disclose
and soon, you
were in between me
and your rough voice was crying
it was crying dangerous things
and then I watched you
drive your hands through worn walls

and now you are cracking
and I am weeping and I am running
through beams of lights and buzzing highways
and I am watching your hulking form disappear behind
a metal barrier, and my eyes roll back
to the orange sun that stared at us
as it swept beneath the same river
you are about to plunge in

Despite myself I find myself,
Thinking about you again,
You don’t make sense to me,
But the rhythm of your thoughts are predictable now,
Someday will never come,
And my dear,
Someday we'll be together again,
Perhaps I say that just to leave you happy,
To leave you in power,
Because I can sustain most damage,
Or at least I've yet to meet my maker,
And maybe then I can play the victim,
And maybe then that means I think you are fragile,
And maybe then I'm a cowered,
And maybe then I’m a sexist,
But I can’t control why or what,
With you
With you,
Never again.