(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy.


Tragedy, as it was antiently compos’d, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight,
stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us’d against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse.  The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy
Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the
Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts
distinguisht each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song
between.  Heretofore Men in highest dignity have labour’d not a
little to be thought able to compose a Tragedy.  Of that honour
Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, then before of his
attaining to the Tyranny. Augustus Caesar also had begun his
Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had
begun. left it unfinisht.  Seneca the Philosopher is by some thought
the Author of those Tragedies (at lest the best of them) that go
under that name.  Gregory Nazianzen a Father of the Church,
thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a
Tragedy which he entitl’d, Christ suffering. This is mention’d to
vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which
in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common
Interludes; hap’ning through the Poets error of intermixing Comic
stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and
****** persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and
brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And
though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in
case of self defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an
Epistle; in behalf of this Tragedy coming forth after the antient
manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus
much before-hand may be Epistl’d; that Chorus is here introduc’d
after the Greek manner, not antient only but modern, and still in
use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore of this Poem
with good reason, the Antients and Italians are rather follow’d, as
of much more authority and fame. The measure of Verse us’d in
the Chorus is of all sorts, call’d by the Greeks Monostrophic, or
rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe
or Epod, which were a kind of Stanza’s fram’d only for the Music,
then us’d with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the Poem, and
therefore not material; or being divided into Stanza’s or Pauses
they may be call’d Allaeostropha.  Division into Act and Scene
referring chiefly to the Stage (to which this work never was
intended) is here omitted.

It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc’t beyond the
fift Act, of the style and uniformitie, and that commonly call’d the
Plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such
oeconomy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with
verisimilitude and decorum; they only will best judge who are not
unacquainted with Aeschulus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three
Tragic Poets unequall’d yet by any, and the best rule to all who
endeavour to write Tragedy. The circumscription of time wherein
the whole Drama begins and ends, is according to antient rule, and
best example, within the space of 24 hours.



The ARGUMENT.


Samson made Captive, Blind, and now in the Prison at Gaza, there
to labour as in a common work-house, on a Festival day, in the
general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open Air, to a
place nigh, somewhat retir’d there to sit a while and bemoan his
condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain
friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek
to comfort him what they can ; then by his old Father Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his
liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was proclaim’d by the
Philistins as a day of Thanksgiving for thir deliverance from the
hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him.  Manoa then
departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian Lords for
Samson’s redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other
persons; and lastly by a publick Officer to require coming to the
Feast before the Lords and People, to play or shew his strength in
thir presence; he at first refuses, dismissing the publick officer with
absolute denyal to come; at length perswaded inwardly that this
was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the
second time with great threatnings to fetch him; the Chorus yet
remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope, to
procure e’re long his Sons deliverance: in the midst of which
discourse an Ebrew comes in haste confusedly at first; and
afterward more distinctly relating the Catastrophe, what Samson
had done to the Philistins, and by accident to himself; wherewith
the Tragedy ends.


The Persons

Samson.
Manoa the father of Samson.
Dalila his wife.
Harapha of Gath.
Publick Officer.
Messenger.
Chorus of Danites


The Scene before the Prison in Gaza.

Sam:  A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of Sun or shade,
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toyl,
Daily in the common Prison else enjoyn’d me,
Where I a Prisoner chain’d, scarce freely draw
The air imprison’d also, close and damp,
Unwholsom draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of Heav’n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn Feast the people hold
To Dagon thir Sea-Idol, and forbid
Laborious works, unwillingly this rest
Thir Superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last in sight
Of both my Parents all in flames ascended
From off the Altar, where an Off’ring burn’d,
As in a fiery column charioting
His Godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal’d to Abraham’s race?
Why was my breeding order’d and prescrib’d
As of a person separate to God,
Design’d for great exploits; if I must dye
Betray’d, Captiv’d, and both my Eyes put out,
Made of my Enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in Brazen Fetters under task
With this Heav’n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a Beast, debas’t
Lower then bondslave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine Prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfilld but through mine own default,
Whom have I to complain of but my self?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg’d, how easily bereft me,
Under the Seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it
O’recome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensom,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest suttleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to shew withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my Hair.
But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Happ’ly had ends above my reach to know:
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the sourse of all my miseries;
So many, and so huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos’d
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th’ eye confin’d?
So obvious and so easie to be quench’t,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus’d,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exil’d from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O yet more miserable!
My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,
Buried, yet not exempt
By priviledge of death and burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet stearing this way;
Perhaps my enemies who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Thir daily practice to afflict me more.

Chor:  This, this is he; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him;
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus’d,
With languish’t head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandon’d
And by himself given over;
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O’re worn and soild;
Or do my eyes misrepresent?  Can this be hee,
That Heroic, that Renown’d,
Irresistible Samson? whom unarm’d
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand;
Who tore the Lion, as the Lion tears the Kid,
Ran on embattelld Armies clad in Iron,
And weaponless himself,
Made Arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer’d Cuirass,
Chalybean temper’d steel, and frock of mail
Adamantean Proof;
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanc’t,
In scorn of thir proud arms and warlike tools,
Spurn’d them to death by Troops.  The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his Lion ramp, old Warriors turn’d
Thir plated backs under his heel;
Or grovling soild thir crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to Hand,
The Jaw of a dead ***, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestin
In Ramath-lechi famous to this day:
Then by main force pull’d up, and on his shoulders bore
The Gates of Azza, Post, and massie Bar
Up to the Hill by Hebron, seat of Giants old,
No journey of a Sabbath day, and loaded so;
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heav’n.
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy ******* or lost Sight,
Prison within Prison
Inseparably dark?
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)
The Dungeon of thy self; thy Soul
(Which Men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)
Imprison’d now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light alas
Puts forth no visual beam.
O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth unparallel’d!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall’n.
For him I reckon not in high estate
Whom long descent of birth
Or the sphear of fortune raises;
But thee whose strength, while vertue was her mate
Might have subdu’d the Earth,
Universally crown’d with highest praises.

Sam:  I hear the sound of words, thir sense the air
Dissolves unjointed e’re it reach my ear.

Chor:  Hee speaks, let us draw nigh.  Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown
From Eshtaol and Zora’s fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl’d mind,
And are as Balm to fester’d wounds.

Sam:  Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who friends
Bear in their Superscription (of the most
I would be understood) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head
Not to be found, though sought.  Wee see, O friends.
How many evils have enclos’d me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness, for had I sight, confus’d with shame,
How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who like a foolish Pilot have shipwrack’t,
My Vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigg’d; and for a word, a tear,
Fool, have divulg’d the secret gift of God
To a deceitful Woman : tell me Friends,
Am I not sung and proverbd for a Fool
In every street, do they not say, how well
Are come upon him his deserts? yet why?
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more then mean;
This with the other should, at least, have paird,
These two proportiond ill drove me transverse.

Chor:  Tax not divine disposal, wisest Men
Have err’d, and by bad Women been deceiv’d;
And shall again, pretend they ne’re so wise.
Deject not then so overmuch thy self,
Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides;
Yet truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder
Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather
Then of thine own Tribe fairer, or as fair,
At least of thy own Nation, and as noble.

Sam:  The first I saw at Timna, and she pleas’d
Mee, not my Parents, that I sought to wed,
The daughter of an Infidel: they knew not
That what I motion’d was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urg’d
The Marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel’s Deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely call’d;
She proving false, the next I took to Wife
(O that I never had! fond wish too late)
Was in the Vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious Monster, my accomplisht snare.
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress
Israel’s oppressours: of what now I suffer
She was not the prime cause, but I my self,
Who vanquisht with a peal of words (O weakness!)
Gave up my fort of silence to a Woman.

Chor:  In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy,
Thou never wast remiss, I hear thee witness:
Yet Israel still serves with all his Sons.

Sam:  That fault I take not on me, but transfer
On Israel’s Governours, and Heads of Tribes,
Who seeing those great acts which God had done
Singly by me against their Conquerours
Acknowledg’d not, or not at all consider’d
Deliverance offerd : I on th’ other side
Us’d no ambition to commend my deeds,
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the dooer;
But they persisted deaf, and would not seem
To count them things worth notice, till at length
Thir Lords the Philistines with gather’d powers
Enterd Judea seeking mee, who then
Safe to the rock of Etham was retir’d,
Not flying, but fore-casting in what place
To set upon them, what advantag’d best;
Mean while the men of Judah to prevent
The harrass of thir Land, beset me round;
I willingly on some conditions came
Into thir hands, and they as gladly yield me
To the uncircumcis’d a welcom prey,
Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threds
Toucht with the flame: on thi

now that i'm relistening to this track, i remember the sole reason why i worked that dead-end night club job: to earn enough money to buy myself a mandolin... which i did: i entrusted myself to earn the money than to pocket the money out of my student loan... never mind picking up ****-filled bottles from the bathroom: being sexually assaulted by some ****** who thought that long hair was something akin to women and not to old-school metal-heads: which i was back then... you know: getting groped by the *** by some man who later thrusts himself at you while you're picking up ****-filled bottles of beer... oh sure: with retrospect he would have said fellow to my forehead... how times change... well yeah, i worked that job to buy myself a mandolin... which i did... for the sole purpose of learning the mandolin part of Rod Stewart's Maggie May... which i learned and played it for Fiona beneath her kitchen window in the student flats... she giggles blah blah... but... Maggie May soon turned into that other favorite song of mine: And One... Military Fashion Show... perhaps the music is sort of Disco Polo... but the lyrics?

cutest girl behind my door
everybody's hiding in love from war
the beauty broke down their chains somehow
who's gonna living on my body now?

a growing pain within my pop divine
will I ever regret the line?
switching on the light
i will not reassign
girlfriend's girlfriends never could be mine

drop her white pants wide open warm
now she's slipping on her uniform
and every second would become so mis-defined
girlfriend's girlfriends never could be mine

nope, i never had any luck with women, maybe i should have picked up gambling: but then again i don't like testing luck when it comes to being lucky with bus times... i like waiting for a bus for a minute... but with women, i sometimes observe my parents and then realise: ah... that's why i'm not married... makes perfect sense... the idea is lovely: i can never get over the idea of loving a woman, but then i realise a woman also has an idea what it implies to love, hardly a man, hardly a semi-automated thing, something that's offensively useful, from time to time activated but altogether sterile... hell: if it didn't take me playing the mandolin to a girl outside her window: Romeo is ****** as hell... Romeo is gone gone gone... the only luck i've ever had with women were with prostitutes, that realm of evidence where the transactional is up-front... there's no looping of paying for meals for cinema for celebratory self-congratulatory pieces of doodle / jewelry... there's just the up-front "rent" of a body... job done... let's get other aspects of "plumbing" worked on... i'm not even bitter... i'm just sort of: on a snooze button mentality, sort of sleepy... sort of disappointed... that? the men who wrote about love from the 19th century are antiques in the 21st century: not even 19th century folk: antique: pre-historic mentalities of the current zeitgeist of insomnia and over-burdening libido being frozen in a frenzy of self-doubts and self-appeasement of pleasures not met... by the other... i just feel disappointed by having invested so much time in Stendhal in Kundera... seems rather pointless...

i finally picked up my Trek mountain bicycle today
from the repair shop...
i came in talked all giggly and bubbly with
the owners... ah... Hemmingway got it spot on
in that novella of his of short stories:
men without women...
play cards, drink, tell terrible jokes...
make loads of oaths sparingly beginning
with the letter F...
i was told £75... but the guy comes to me and says:
the cassette has been worn down?
your advice? what's to be improved, how will
this affect my cycling?
blah blah this blah blah that... o.k. i know you're
trying to milk me... milk me but don't waste my time...
if it needs changing just tell me...
'oh, but we don't have the parts'...
o.k. ask your supervisor blah blah blah...
he comes back to me and says: oh he have the parts:
SUDDENLY... no no... not suddenly:
the customer, i.e. i... am willing to pay...
how much and how long?
£35... 15 minutes... great! do it! i'll go for a coffee:
which was a lie... i went for a pint
of Guinness and sat by myself like
some ******* portrait of an absinthe drinker
by Degas... they should do one of a Guinness drinker...
a person who sits alone and drinks a pint
of Guinness watching a table of about 5 men
and 1 ****-ugly woman drinking merrily enjoying
each other's company...
with the solo drinker lighting up a cigarette
and lighting up a smile on his face thinking:
oh thank **** i'm alone...
i used to drink with "friends": with people...
i soon realised... they're as much things as much as
i am a thing: sure... dehumanizing...
but so much of philosophy and of medicine
is infuriatingly dehumanizing in achieving
the pinnacle of objective-reason, no?
tell me, am i wrong?
            
i can tell you my favorite quote of mine:
i don't hate people... i just hate things...
it's not my problem that some people behave like
things rather than as people...
reality simply states: some people, simply have not
depth to them, or around them,
they are worse than thespians and thespians
are the worst: since thespians are the most eloquent
of thieves... they steal people's shadows...
they steal other people's soul... essence...
i hate actors with the same passion i abhor
the sceptics... add that to my list:
given these two strands of being and thinking
are the most popular in the current zeitgeist...

so i drank my pint of Guinness and walked back
to the cycling repair shop... picked up my Trek...
listen: i've been cycling for the past year solely on my Viking
road bicycle... neat handlebars...
i used about 4 maybe 5 gears to climb
elevations... or cycle harder: faster...
but neat handlebars... trim... a sense of a tuxedo smart...
neat: for moving between traffic... like all road bicycles...
he gives me my old Trek mountain bicycle back...
**** me!
i was riding a Lamborghini for a year...
now? i'm given a ******* SUV... Royals Royce!
my god... it's a Behemoth!
the handlebars are wide... the brakes? so easily accessible!
**** me for ****'s  sake...
too many gears... i must have been trigger-happy
when it came to gears... must have changed them
about 30 times... three gears by the peddles
and 7 at the rear... wheels... don't get me started on those...
with a road bicycle you have a width of about 23cm...
these ******* where thrice if not more at that...
so wide that they made a sound akin to
me thinking: where's the train? they made this weird
sound i couldn't possibly express with letters
to combat an imaginary words...
the closest approximate is a SHOOM / WHIZZ....
what does a thick rubber tyre make on
a pavement, rotating, that's not insulated
by a frame of a car? what?! exactly...
then add the elevation of the wind...
i simply can't write an onomatopoeia for that sound...
it's not as easy as meow or woof... or bark...
or howl... or coo... or the crackling grr of crow...
gurgling of a crow...
impossible...

tyres one aspect handlebars another...
hands out-stretched... which means? too much
availability of a manoeuvre...
that's what happens when the handlebars
are less restrictive... wide...
you have too much manoeuvrability potential...
you're like that guy inside a London black cab...
you can practically do a 180-turn...
become a dog chasing its own tail...
i used to love mountain bicycles... now?
i ******* hate them... i don't know why i spent
£500 on this piece of junk...
unless... i try it out on some dirt road...
fair enough then... but compared to a road bicycle...
a... kolarzówka... (road bicycle in ******)
no... not going to happen...
i though i was going to be happy to own two bicycles
and change from one to the other...
it's such a beast to ride... sure... it's aesthetically
pleasing to look at... even when school was out
and the boys were coming out of school:
one spontaneously announced thinking-aloud:
that's a nice bike...
yeah... nice to look at... yeah... sure thing mate...
great to look at... but a ***** to ride it...
compared to...                              exhibit (a)
a cheap £125 road bicycle with the right sort of
handlebars... mountain bicycle handlebars are
all wrong too wide...
you just can't handle such a beast on a long stretch
of road... you require something more
gravity driven / prone...
at least with a road bicycle you get to steer
with slight details of force going towards
the intended direction...
i think you must learn on a mountain bicycle...
to then explore the road bicycle...
but let me tell you... one you have mastered
the road bicycle... going back to a mountain bicycle
make-up it like going from Einstein to ******...
i was becoming queasy with too much maneuverability
in my hands and not centered in / with
my entire body and bicycle attached...
i know i'll think differently when i take
this beast into its proper environment...
i know that's what will happen...
but mountain bicycles don't belong in traffic...

aha... right... i almost forgot... just before i picked up
the beast from the repair shop...
i has in the supermarket picking up a bottle of cider
to keep up my stamina of: not bored...
no no... i'm not bored...  

onomatopoeias... i'm sure as a supervisor i told
some of the stewards that i'm only doing this job
for good reference: for references that might me
apply for a job as a chemistry teacher:
since familial ties of references will not allow you
to apply for the position...
last shift at Wembley some pink haired freak
of a beached whale of a male started to mouth-me-off
about jumping the queue...
i retorted like for like: you ******* see a queue
in front of me? i'm standing in the same *******
place! you ******* fearful of being called
a racist: you silly little thing of an anti-racist?!
you ******* HOG of what could have been
a woman... you afraid of insulating the Somalis?!
we know that they're like... that's how African
queues work... people jump the queue...
they huddle... Africans are not a Mongolian horde:
they're huddling people...
they stress themselves by the numbers
they're allowed / are given...
all the Europeans follows some details of
the aesthetic of queuing... the Africans?
**** me... they just inverted the bottle-neck...
if bottles were to be invented in Africa...
they wouldn't have a neck: they'd have an entire
******* torso... and be slim at the base...
that's how Africans behave ergo: think...
that's not racist: that's a ******* anthropologist tactic....
on the last shift this one Indian looking chap
said the following lines:

'don't think me of being racist...
but what do you think of these blacks?'

ha ha... one curiosity after another...
  i love mingling with people: you never know what
you're (n)ever going to get!
i'm working with this one "creature" who's super
clingy to me... adamant that he's anti-racist...
but... oops... slip... he's actually homophobic...
just because Brighton has a "reputation"...
but a staunch anti-racist.... yet a homophobe....
me? i hate *******...
esp. if you're collecting glasses in a night club
and you're getting groped by... some ******...
come on: a man with long hair is no excuse to
fiddle with my *** while i'm picking up bottles
filled with ****... ******* ******!

about blacks? well... what do i care if i already stereotyped
the Somalis as useless idiots... not even useful idiots
of Communist propaganda...
they're like the Irish... you simply psychoanalyse them...
they're so detached from reality that
they might as well be called Moonpeople...
Somalia best be called Moonland...
no, seriously: not as a racist (although i'd love to be one)
but as an anthropologist (these days?
an ethic apologist, if?!)
they are just that... devoid of reality sort of,
sort of... sort of... a sort of "people"...
a sort of "reality" is attached to them...

never mind that... i was in the supermarket buying a bottle
of cider... a woman with two young girls was making
her shopping... some BLEEP emerged from
the cashier's desk... some... BLEEP some BOOP...
hmm... we're talking primary school aged children...
children... completely un-fuckable... although as loveable
as dogs... perhaps even more:
since? you can't exactly mould a dog...
you can't mould a little Frankenstein of your own
with a dog... a dog is kept ontologically within
the archetypical exactness of what a dog is supposed
to be: what a dog is...
but man? oh... that's a completely different barrel of
laughs!
i stood behind the trio... and listened...

onomatopoeias... once those infernal instruments
made those sounds... the two girls mimicked...
imitated the sounds ...
i would be a terrible father... or perhaps the best...
i like the cognitive-focus on the negative:
maybe that's why i adore the cynics...
i adore the cynics and abhor the sceptics...
i like negative-thinking...
i once assured myself that negative-thinking
attracts... positive-being...
magnets... blah blah...

with i have on my heart's "conscience":
something so innocent... the cure's: a short term effect
from the album *******...
no... woman! no!
that trio of curiosity...
i was going to do an in-depth Kantian analogy
of the origins of the onomotopoeia...
it just so happened that i was walking behind them...
i'm pretty good at lip-readings...
too much exposure to headphones...
NEUROTIC BEASTS OF **** UN-******...
the ugliest women imaginable:
busy-body women.... UGLY *****...
MOTH-FRENZY-MOTH-*****....
i'm good at lip-reading...
oh look... a ******* is the area...

no... is just so happened that the trio bough
more goods that me at the store...
silly ******* agony aunt!
no! i was just going to ask
the two girls...that you spoke an onomatopoeia
without knowledge of what an onomatopoeia
actually is!
an onomatopoeia in the mouth of a child
is not actually a word...
it can't be... there's no rigid Apollonian "humour"...
when a child imitates a sound made by a
machine...
it doesn't imitate the sound with an allocation
of ascribing letters to them...
i could be the best father:
and perhaps the worst...
    i'd become too curios... i'd become a naturally
born scientist...
the mother? just ignored them...
but this **** of a THINFG threw empty accusations
into the air as if it were breathing...

i learned one valuable lesson on my own...
there are people... and there are THINGS...
me, what?
you ******* THING! remain INANIMATE!
sure... move... but remain without character!
did these girls have knowledge
of the "onomatopoeia" of an ONOPATOEIA?
too many ******* vowels..

that's Greek for you...
i'm a what? it just so happened that it's suburbia
and i'm walking behind a giddy trio....
i'm suddenly, what?! HIDE! HIDE... you neurotic *****!
you soothsayer you Satan's last **** available!
you mediocre human being!

how would they know... they're already exploring
onomatopoeias without knowledge of onomatopoeias ...
these creatures mimic... in fact: an onomatopoeia
is something that's to be exacted by being written...
these children... they are yet aware of letters...
letters beside nouns... nouns beside the concepts
of verbs pronouns and the like...

first i'll ask politely... secondly i'll ask less politely:
thirdly: don't tread on me..
fourthly: enough is enough...
but that's how life happens...
you exit the mind-set of... it's not jurisprudence...
etymological hell-havoc...
              ah! pedagogy!
and then the reality of all that's around you...

neurotic old women who think you're: an project
you're a predator;... ******* ****-less *****!
i just wanted to hear what her onomatopoeia went to...
you objectionable UGLY CUT of ****!
she was uttering her first onomatopoeia without
a rubric of letters! as a man who's not going
to be a father: i thought that rather: inquisitive...
i know you women are ******* boors and boredoms...
the more you age the uglier you become
in spirit: let alone in physical appearances...
******* hyenas start looking pretty are a while
once you peak!
no! that's the point! i'm being serious!

it only takes one false accusation: lip-read to demand
a crazy momentum of reaction...
oh no no... it's not going to stop!
best ***** assured this ******* momentum
is not going to stop! now i'm grizzly bear tooth worn
on smiling...

now... i have encountered men who encounter violence
of man against man...
i have yet to encounter men who encounter violence
of woman against man...
let's just say... it's more complicated...
i love children... some women love themselves
to the point of willingly perform... what's that name?
oh.... right... has he risen too?
the deity that's Moloch... the deity of infanticide?!
has he? so... i'm not alone...
there must be more of me...
gents! we're being redeemed!  we're going back
to a singing status of existence in the ***** of our
dearest "Abraham" of Ha-Shem!
let's put on a proper, decent, show!

then again... i might: i just might be...
a solo trick-of-treat... bellowing into the depths of well...
after all... as i looked at the whole affair from
the antithesis of Darwinism...
the strong and the smart don't really reproduce:
en masse...
the idiots do...
mammals like insects...
the ill-fated reproduce: that's why they bemoan
their fate of being ill-stocked in genes...
smart people are exploratory...
i'm exploratory...
i'm not saying i'm smart but i'm certainly not dumb enough
to have children in order for them to suffer
unnecessarily... for a per se reason
that's somehow supposed to be self-explanatory:
without... an accountable self!

there's no chance in hell these two girls imitated those
sounds in the supermarket with...
a knowledge of an onomatopoeia!
no chance! speak to me an "onomatopoeia":
onomatopeia!

     ono-m'ah-t'oh-p'-ah!

   they wouldn't even catch the vowel catches of Hs
in the plural sense without the apostrophe...
no...

write me a poem using linguistic notations:
i.e. onomatopoeia: knock knock: woof woof: .
details of some book... frankly? no book...
journalism rules...
/ˌɒnə(ʊ)matəˈpiːə/
   /nɒk,nɒk/
        /wʊf/ /wʊf/:
      /ˈdiːteɪl/ some
/sʌm,s(ə)m/
                       /bʊk/
  
yeah: that's what i like... linguistic graduates...
graffitti artists with a TAG..
children and onomatopoeias...
you want to play more and more games?
aren't we living in the most circus prone times?!

hey! in current environment of events:
hello herr besondere!
drop qords not bombs!

= +- / ha;f and half...

Oh! might I kiss those eyes of fire,
A million scarce would quench desire;
Still would I steep my lips in bliss,
And dwell an age on every kiss;
Nor then my soul should sated be,
Still would I kiss and cling to thee:
Nought should my kiss from thine dissever,
Still would we kiss and kiss for ever;
E’en though the numbers did exceed
The yellow harvest’s countless seed;
To part would be a vain endeavour:
Could I desist?—ah! never—never.

A MOST astonishing thing --
Seventy years have I lived;

(Hurrah for the flowers of Spring,
For Spring is here again.)

Seventy years have I lived
No ragged beggar-man,
Seventy years have I lived,
Seventy years man and boy,
And never have I danced for joy.

There was a person

Sat at the garden

Sat sad and alone

Looking at the roses

It was one of roses

Moved towards him

Saying and telling him

What’s making the moon

Looking upset and sad?

All the world equals that!”

He looked at her

Saying “do you talk me”

She said ,she said”

There must be guy

Sit beside me”

He laughed and looked shame

He said “ but I”

She interrupted” you are the one

You are the moon

Of that beauty garden”

He wanted to praise

She said to him “why?

Why are you sad?

Why your matter is bad?

Who makes you grieves?

Who closes these roses?

Who tries to spread sadness?

He must be the ugly person

He” I am a singer

When I went to sing

I lost feeling and meaning

But I remember every word

The attendance hate me

They lisped by bad word

The producers hated me

They didn’t want to make me

Again as they thought I am frustrate

She said “sing!”

“What ?“ the guy answered

She repeated

He stood

Saying his song

She said “bad, bad”

You must have feeling

You must know meaning

And get it from your heart

Do as I do”

He began to sing

She do some movements

She was imitated

She said “now go and sing”

I will attend your party”

He went there

His turn came

He appeared on the stage

He remembered his failed

He remembered his gained

He remembered every undertaker

Refused to call him as a singer

He remembered how he argued

The last one to introduce him

It was the last chance

He looked at the attendance

He didn’t see her

He felt with big fear

He tried to do a verse

He couldn’t open his mouth

The attendance yelled and cursed

Till he saw her entering

She stood moving

The movements as the verses

He did the same movements

The heat of the party increased

The attendance did as he did

The attendance wanted it more

He repeated it more

He became a famous star

She brought every party

She learnt him carefully

He imitated her very neatly

Till she disappeared suddenly

He stood in the stage

Waiting to her immersion

But she didn't come finally

He couldn't do sing

He went to ask about her

He know her home

He knew she was gone

"Dead ,dead that is bad

Why does the death take every wealth?

Why does the death take the best?

And leaves who does not worth?

To be in that life

Why did you death take her?

I love her , her ,her?

I would marry her

That was after the last party

Then peace on her

Sleep in tranquility"

He went to sing again

After the undertakers argued

He stood on the stage again

He remembered her shine

He remembered her smile

He remembered her hands

How move them to argue him

He remembered her moon

How did it guide him!

How did he bright his mind

And converts his dark to light!

He couldn't sing a word

Till he saw her spirit

Entered the hall

She moved as the past

She was imitated

Till the song is finished

He fell dead

His heart was carrying

The mounts of that world

Of sad and bad think

His river of life was stopped

His air was not blew up

His eyes was closed

Only her face up

At the sky moved up

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,
So little here, nay lost.  But Eve was Eve;
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength he was to cope with, or his own.
But—as a man who had been matchless held
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite,
Still will be tempting him who foils him still,
And never cease, though to his shame the more;
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;
Or surging waves against a solid rock,
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,
(Vain battery!) and in froth or bubbles end—
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,
Yet gives not o’er, though desperate of success,
And his vain importunity pursues.
He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide,
Washed by the southern sea, and on the north
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills
That screened the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the midst
Divided by a river, off whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes
Above the highth of mountains interposed—
By what strange parallax, or optic skill
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope, were curious to enquire.
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke:—
  “The city which thou seest no other deem
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations.  There the Capitol thou seest,
Above the rest lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel
Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires.
Many a fair edifice besides, more like
Houses of gods—so well I have disposed
My aerie microscope—thou may’st behold,
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold.
Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in:
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the AEmilian—some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;
From the Asian kings (and Parthian among these),
From India and the Golden Chersoness,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,
Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British west;
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.
All nations now to Rome obedience pay—
To Rome’s great Emperor, whose wide domain,
In ample territory, wealth and power,
Civility of manners, arts and arms,
And long renown, thou justly may’st prefer
Before the Parthian.  These two thrones except,
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;
These having shewn thee, I have shewn thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.
This Emperor hath no son, and now is old,
Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired
To Capreae, an island small but strong
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy;
Committing to a wicked favourite
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious;
Hated of all, and hating.  With what ease,
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne,
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
A victor-people free from servile yoke!
And with my help thou may’st; to me the power
Is given, and by that right I give it thee.
Aim, therefore, at no less than all the world;
Aim at the highest; without the highest attained,
Will be for thee no sitting, or not long,
On David’s throne, be prophesied what will.”
  To whom the Son of God, unmoved, replied:—
“Nor doth this grandeur and majestic shew
Of luxury, though called magnificence,
More than of arms before, allure mine eye,
Much less my mind; though thou should’st add to tell
Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts
On citron tables or Atlantic stone
(For I have also heard, perhaps have read),
Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne,
Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold,
Crystal, and myrrhine cups, imbossed with gems
And studs of pearl—to me should’st tell, who thirst
And hunger still.  Then embassies thou shew’st
From nations far and nigh!  What honour that,
But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear
So many hollow compliments and lies,
Outlandish flatteries?  Then proceed’st to talk
Of the Emperor, how easily subdued,
How gloriously.  I shall, thou say’st, expel
A brutish monster: what if I withal
Expel a Devil who first made him such?
Let his tormentor, Conscience, find him out;
For him I was not sent, nor yet to free
That people, victor once, now vile and base,
Deservedly made vassal—who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed;
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily Scene effeminate.
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved,
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?
Know, therefore, when my season comes to sit
On David’s throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth,
Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash
All monarchies besides throughout the world;
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end.
Means there shall be to this; but what the means
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.”
  To whom the Tempter, impudent, replied:—
“I see all offers made by me how slight
Thou valuest, because offered, and reject’st.
Nothing will please the difficult and nice,
Or nothing more than still to contradict.
On the other side know also thou that I
On what I offer set as high esteem,
Nor what I part with mean to give for naught,
All these, which in a moment thou behold’st,
The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give
(For, given to me, I give to whom I please),
No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else—
On this condition, if thou wilt fall down,
And worship me as thy superior Lord
(Easily done), and hold them all of me;
For what can less so great a gift deserve?”
  Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain:—
“I never liked thy talk, thy offers less;
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter
The abominable terms, impious condition.
But I endure the time, till which expired
Thou hast permission on me.  It is written,
The first of all commandments, ‘Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.’
And dar’st thou to the Son of God propound
To worship thee, accursed? now more accursed
For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve,
And more blasphemous; which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world to thee were given!
Permitted rather, and by thee usurped;
Other donation none thou canst produce.
If given, by whom but by the King of kings,
God over all supreme?  If given to thee,
By thee how fairly is the Giver now
Repaid!  But gratitude in thee is lost
Long since.  Wert thou so void of fear or shame
As offer them to me, the Son of God—
To me my own, on such abhorred pact,
That I fall down and worship thee as God?
Get thee behind me!  Plain thou now appear’st
That Evil One, Satan for ever ******.”
  To whom the Fiend, with fear abashed, replied:—
“Be not so sore offended, Son of God—
Though Sons of God both Angels are and Men—
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear’st that title, have proposed
What both from Men and Angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of Fire, Air, Flood, and on the Earth
Nations besides from all the quartered winds—
God of this World invoked, and World beneath.
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me most fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem’st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute;
As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother’s eye, thou went’st
Alone into the Temple, there wast found
Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses’ chair,
Teaching, not taught.  The childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day.  Be famous, then,
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o’er all the world
In knowledge; all things in it comprehend.
All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature’s light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean’st.
Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And Eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive-grove of Academe,
Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls
His whispering stream.  Within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages—his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous Orators repair,
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democraty,
Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates—see there his tenement—
Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom’s weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”
  To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—
“Think not but that I know these things; or, think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought.  He who receives
Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;
A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;
Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue joined with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,
By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the World began, and how Man fell,
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none;
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things.  Who, therefore, seeks in these
True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud.  However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace?  All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor’s ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived—
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid
As varnish on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies and his Saints
(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);
Unless where moral virtue is expressed
By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll’st as those
The top of eloquence—statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
In their majestic, unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only, with our Law, best form a king.”
  So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now
Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),
Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—
  “Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative
Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost thou in this world?  The Wilderness
For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,
And thither will return thee.  Yet remember
What I foretell t

Life for me has been no crystal stair.
No steps of marble, granite or gold lay apt for my ascension.
No—I have climbed through thickets and thorns.
I have persevered—I have triumphed.
Yet it seems, despite these hardships,
life has always afforded me second chances.
The delicacy of my actions,
the sensitivity of negative repercussions
scarcely affected my younger self.

Opportunities always seemed to present themselves.
Though money and its evils have graced my experience,
my soul remains relatively innocent and refined.

Though I have, on past occasions,
become enveloped in the physical substance,
I quickly learned the long term suffering that these ideations efface
far out-shadows the temporary pleasure of the immediate.
I have overcome afflictions both physical and mental,
and lingered in the pleasure of remission.
Quickly to be reminded how easily diseases can emerge
when disregarded.

I’ve learned that of all things in life—
love, above all, deserves attention and sentiment.
Love, with all its purities and imperfections,
more often fruitlessly sought after than easily attained.
Love, above all other things, cannot be imitated, falsified or forged.
And though I spent some years deprived of this blessing,
I am none the more depraved for it.

I am lucky to say that I have loved.
My heart, delicately and handsomely entwined with another.
And that I am loved in return is a blessing beyond bounds.
Adoration and all its accompaniments are the greatest treasure in a lifetime.
For, what are treasures worth without anyone to share them with?
Any other accomplishments and joys are devalued without companionship.
And indeed, a faithful companion is most appreciated in times of hardship—
the throes, truncheon and tribulation of the everyday
faced alone can prove debilitating.

A great man once said “Life is a bowl of cherries.”
It took many years for me to understand the full meaning of this declaration.
But now I understand—
that each of us reachs into life,
like we reach into a bowl of cherries.
We know not whether what we receive
will be pitted and bitter
or sweet and juicy.
We will not know;
we cannot know,
not until we take a bite.
And if there is anything I have learned
it is to live and let live.
It is to reach into life, unbridled yet controlled,
with morals and constraint
and yet bereft of the fear of outcome:
the guilt of the past,
the impeccable omnipotent pressure of the present,
the trepidation of the future,
and the transience between the three.
The acceptance of this passage through time:
aging,
learning,
making mistakes,
making new mistakes,
loving:
this is how to live.
For, if we fear time,
which we cannot control,
we will always be afraid.
To live a life afraid is to embrace hardship.
Any semblance of hope or happiness
is abandoned with the acceptance and embrace of fear,
for fear, without use or cause
is the impetus of great misjudgment and injury.
We must, to avoid this,
relish in moments of happiness
and string them together
with the constant felicity and solace of companionship.

Aesthetics shuns at its pedigree of Adonis fine
Athena sleeps in imitated leopard skin
Bark colored sheets, maroon subtle and deep, performs symphonics for the eyes
Aesthetics shuns at its pedigree of Adonis fine
Mediated time arises, not an evident second passes by
Aesthetics shuns at its pedigree of Adonis fine
Idols of the twilight  prevents all which is dim
And Athena, she sleeps in imitated leopard skin

Dear Chicago
I have known you since birth
Was placed on this earth at the corner of belmont and clarke
Between thrift shops and sports bars
Amidst high rises and churches
At introduction was enamoured
Fell in love at first sight
Fell in love with your capacity
Your buildings
And skyline
Fell in love
With the way the pier's ferris wheel
Glows against lake michigan
How I felt invicible
The first time I ever rode it
A tourist attraction to say the least
But to me, has always been more
Has always been comforting
I claim to hate the cold
But the snow blanketing the trees in the winter time
Is a beauty unlike any other
Is painstakingly unbearable in it's temperature
But worth it
Worth the below zero windchill
Worth the frostbitten hands and hour long commutes
The weather has yet to prevent celebration
Couples bond over frozen lips with kisses and hot chocolate
Skates click against glass ice in Millenium park
I have always thought
That the city looks best dressed in christmas
In street lights
In holiday
In togetherness
In road rage turned blessing
It is hardest to hate what is shared
And freezing cold has a way of providing unity
As does autumn
How nothing has ever been more breathtaking
Than how leaves make death look graceful
How they make fifteenth story falls seem desirable
Something about the air
Feels different in the fall
But regardless of season
There is always warmth in the food
In the deep dish pizza that settles at the bottom of hungry stomachs
In the hotdogs that cannot be imitated in any other town
I have noticed
That some things can not be replaced
And this city
That I have grown up loving
Is not one that deserves to be changed
But still
Is imperfect
Is molding
Growing in ways more negative than good
In ways unwanted
Gang violence is no longer a rarity
Earning us a top spot on the list of high ****** rates
It seems today
That gunshots and sirens
Are the only music to be heard in the streets
That the jazz born here decades ago no longer plays
Only silent cry of mother losing child
Only unanswered prayer
Reports of daily shootings have become routine
Safety is not one of the stronget attributes
And a girl like me
Would be unable to securely navigate the streets on her own
Survive in this community turned war zone
Chicago
I have loved you
For as long as I have known what love is
I have painted picture after picture of you
Admiring your intricate details
Your originality
Your parts that can not be found any place else
But there are flaws
That have forced me to leave
Have driven me thousands of miles away
You must understand
That I needed someplace
That could offer me protection when alone
Chicago
I may not be in your arms
But you will always
Hold a place
In my heart
You will always
Be home.

big bang? i just call it the: reassertion of φνς; big bang? the bing bang? scientists are creative and artists are prone to rigour? what an "unexpectedly" unoriginal definition to draft the genesis... bangs in vacuum?! that tree falling in the forest trick that only women seem to answer? i'm literally having a limp-**** moment with someone telling me: it began with a big bang! wow (łał)! amazing! you predicted a sound, excavating it from a vacuum, where, apparently, you can't hear one!

most of the time it's like dry laugh, perpetuated by a: ha ha... but then someone becomes drunk and gives the scales to further the impromptu, managing a: ha ha ha ha... ah ha ha ha ha... equivalent to: chasing a fly out of a room... catch the ****** by their *****! catch the ****** by the *****! unlike chasing a mouse... which is fun... more fun than a stampede in mecca for sure... you get to build a labyrinth... you get to catch the little ******... dangle him by its tail for a selfie... then you walk into the corridor of the apartment building you're living in... and what does the mouse do? so traumatißed by the lack of mouse-traps... what does he do? commits himself to suicide... jumps off the stairs into the abyss of paved concrete, and i'm like: i built this theme-park for you, and the best thing you can do is jump to your immediate death? is there another universe handy? i'm not quiet ready to deal with this one seriously.

that's for the intro, but try to incorporate the concept
of *polyphony in writing,
they'll think you're mad... rightly so, most people
love the concept of the paragraph,
just like they love donning eyeglasses -
and they love the linear concept, that "reveals"
a story...
                    they love that ****, give them rotten
cabbage and tomatoes and send them to
the shakespeare globe... to get a proper critique
if the theatre performance turns sour...
         grows fungii and what not.

oh i had a suitcase of verbiage with me...
      but the writing bit is really working on me
to necessitate a fathomable break from... "composition".

etymological pointers nonetheless:
    slav               and e?
   not really, not when you speak the language...
am i ethno-centric? i probably am,
you sort of have to be... comes with the package...
or the: shindig?
                               oh look... i know slang.
anyway...
                            around here i'm the only one laughing,
it's not an idiotic laugh that stresses: nothing or
nowhere...
                   it's the times supplement article:
the new narcissism (harriet walker reports)...
and i can't stop laughing...
   because it includes: taking selfies by the mona lisa
and by the gates of auschwitz...
                and then the n.p.d. complex (narcissistic
personality disoder)...
            and i can't stop laughing...
and i'm thinking: what's wrong with these people?
oh, right... the per se... (giggle)...
                           they're like su dokus you
abandon because you can't relax when solving them...
stray dogs and ****...
                      you whaa'?                  dunno.
i'm actually afraid of people that advertise missing
cats... how horrible do you have to be to
make a cat                       stray?
                             the ****'s wrong with you?
cats are counter-intuitively clingy... there's no leash
on them, and there's no walkies... but how abusive
or just dumb-boring (do you have to be)
                     to make a cat become stray / missing?

... (pending, ding-along-ah-****)...

"artists" made the mistake like philosophers...
                     they think poetry ought to be visual...
they already have the polyphony spectrum there,
the ******* rainbow... and then they think poetry
is all about imitating geometry: cohesion, rigidness...
bunch of ***** in all honesty...
                   Bach invented polyphony, we're going to
talk about it like we might talk about digression...
layering... it's also a geological term for: oh... looky looky
at this piece of sediment!
                     i don't think poets should mingle with
painters, to be honest: i wish they were an
apartheid apart...
                     poetry isn't a visual art-form... based on
the concept of the φνς (that's hebrew for:
hiding your vowels, like the romans imitated
adding stresses to letters)                           ooh! fancy!
is writing 50 years behind painting? (w. burroughs quote)...
don't know... is writing a century behind
                                     musical composition?
that's more likely than writing competing with
painters... why did poets cling to painters in the first place?
φoνoς... you're not painting a picture...
                   oh ******* o'hara, and you tenure
as regent of an art gallery: get hit and die by a beachball.

variants:
in the west the etymology of slav = +e
      well... unless you speak the tongue you can say:
                 zdrowie na budowie - buda! psie / pśιe!
there really is an etymological variant to the anglophone
understanding of stating the noun, indicative...
                but i need to bring the greek iota into the picture...
i.e. it's naked, it has no diacritical marks attached to it...
i.e. ι                      so... now...
lesson no. 1:          slav, in mother tongue   słowianiń -
iota variant?                            słowiańιn   (lazily, just słowianin)
   etymologically speaking, i.e. derived from what?
word... the slavs call it:          słowo.
   literally.
                      germanic peoples of north america can
be so obnoxious that it really does suit them...
    but who the **** would want to marry their women?
probably muslims... and breed a bunch of inbreds,
household peasant people,
                        orangutan down syndrome people;
gonna **** your granny pete?

oh right...

    lesson no. 2:
   i can't stop laughing at this grammatical transgression...
you really have to transcribe the transgender concept...
      ...
           as might have been expected: laughter can really
exhaust you... what i didn't know was:
           to the point where you are lullabied to sleep -
fully dressed - to only find yourself getting up in
the morning: pouring yourself the remains of the ***,
sticking your head out the window and seeing
spring in full swing: two sparrows getting it on...
                                       but gender neutral pronouns?
what, like it?
                                oh hey, here comes cousin it -
huh? i swear the point of pronouns, or at least
the categorical basis for a word to be a pronoun is
to stress a gender of the speaker -
                                        the argument for gender
neutral pronouns: let me put it in analogue form -
you see on the news, daesh destroying ancient
roman temples in syria...
                            world heritage sites protected
by international law... what this transgender movement
is doing to the english language? looks pretty
similar to me (in non relative terms) -
                     but it's sure as **** in being some form
of desecration... it can't be anything else...
the problem would be staggering if appropriated in
poland... where gender feeds into verbs...
                                   if this movement is an isolated
indicdent, that is,isolated in that it's an anglophone
phenomenon (thailand? well... they got into the groove
and didn't perform a real ****** on their sprechen) -
just an example of how gender is incorporated in
the western slavic language...

i.e.
         podniósł (masculine - [he] picked it up...
    the thing being picked up is not specified)

   podniosła    (feminine - [she picked it up...
      ""      "      "           "       "    "    "          ")

could have just written ditto, anyway:
                   but also notice the beautiful orthographic
transition - it's almost a ******* representation
with the acute o (ó = u, well: orthography is not
exactly grammar, but like grammar: it's an aesthetic) -
      pod-nio(h)-sla(h)            - i'm lazy, american
linguistic studies use this form of notation -
                    evidently i'm expecting some puritan who
actually studies phonetic encoding to come up to
me and tell me: no no... it's like so:
                the point is, a transgender movement could
never pick up in the western slavic language:
     well, because a gender specified pronoun
permeates to other words that aren't in the pronoun
category... i.e. as the above - verb category -
                        obviously the above two example are
what they are in terms of gender, but they're
also a past participle attached to them... past tense -
but we are talking about pronouns, aren't we?
   so that has to be incorporated into the example -
evidently a *****-nilly pure verb of the above two is
gender neutral, but it has nothing to do with pronouns.
- like i already said once before:
                compared with german? english is shrapnel.

The experience of a black woman is one that can not be imitated
Although it is not always enough or even always reciprocated
Her heart is full of love, almost bursting out of her chest
And even when it gets tough, the black woman always tries her best
She longs for an equal who shares her level of intellect
Someone to listen to all her problems and attempt to put them in retrospect
The black woman often fears sharing any of her thoughts
For fear of being labeled the angry black woman, which she’s heard lots
Some black men refuse to date a black woman because of her attitude
But thank you to those strong black men that show them so much gratitude
Sometimes the black woman confidently wears her hair natural
The time she takes to detangle each curl is truly admirable
Other times she doubts her beauty as she is surrounded by Eurocentric guidelines
Men gawk at the beauty of those with straight long hair as she stands on the sidelines
Sometimes the black woman adores all of her god given features
But when she sees the women men covet she feels like an ugly creature
The black woman comes in all different sizes, shapes, and color
And instead of black women competing with one another
They must stand together and see the beauty in being black
So that they can truly understand that beauty is not something that they lack
My sisters, all of my black sisters, thank you for making me feel so human
Because no one understands the experience of black woman like a black woman.

I’ve always been intimidated
By the man in the mirror
With his cocky face and his self-assured grin

I’ve always been imitated
By the man in the mirror
With his worried sigh and his eyes full of doubt

take me away from this journey
i am trapped in the land of placelessness

blind / hypnotized
route 36 / bolivia
deaf / treated with ultrasound
simultaneously

scarcely knowing
what all that means

i am feeling the rising of blood
a wave of heat like sandstorms

inevitability: willful / knowing / aware

i am putting myself at risk of dying
long ago i read about the risks and consequences
of my ******* abuse
pervaded them intellectually while

my heart remains deafly because
of *******
bitter
sear
aflutter and in panic

there is just:

one life
one heart
one body one man

man what are you doing?!?!
i am hollering into my inner
embracing the envelope
obsessed over bitterness
numb love
in the dungeon of plotted heavens
lofty as never before
is where i am running away from:
every day

in the 1920s there was a man
who they called "koks-emil"
he sold ******* in the nightstreets of berlin

the national archive has been keeping
a picture of him doing business with
two girls out of gangland we
can't see the face of the one standing left only  
her back

however her companion typifies precisely
what the drug creates in our souls:
a form that can not be imitated
like the effect of the drug

a form of longing and greed in the
girl's face

longing and greed
balancing each other
not one of
these states predominates

while beholding the girl i am becoming
horridly conscious
about myself
horridly about

my relationship with *******
my affair with *******
my love to ******* this
sounds sick?
indeed it is

we call it
suffering from an addiction

we call it
suffering from a dependency

become clean.
i wish you willpower
wish you strong luck
wish you peace at last

the rate of relapsing
******* users is vast
during the night

when the wind is
breezing mildly

when the stones of the cities
are breathing out the heat of the day

while you are
sneaking over the streets

while every street corner resembles
the very one where
koks-emil used to sell his product

while you are sensing the smell
of bitterness

while you are being preoccupied with
her face: her longing her greed

while you are experiencing
yourself:

more deeply
more soberly
and more knowingly
as before

while you
are reaching out your hands searching
with kidfingers for koks-emil

the guy with the warped corner of the mouth
the reliable / greedy one

the one who is always ready

a salesman has to be available for
every second of your longing
every second of your greed

koks-emil: your world is made of black and white
your hat is grey its bonnet is vanishing as your
shivering hands

hands that spread capsules
hands that grap at bills
hands that you use to brush away your sweat

**** between the lipps
shabby coat

koks-emil your spirit
blows through inner cities like gas fumes
a grin on your face coming from
lurid lights

you became immortal
you underwent rapid decades
you were an addict
you created addicts
you served addicts

the ****** expression of the girl
your child-like customer
remains for

all for everybody with a
*******-addiction

for all and for everybody
who depends on *******

for all and everybody
who is clean from *******

for all and everybody:
longing and greed

rest in peace girl

Venice - California - **** me, i'm supposed to write what i can't write -
dog eat dog's equivalent of the offspring - cooler shaker -
i'm ******... i can't strip dance a sentence together -
**** me, the personal hatches to be held within - blues sways -
i can't write out the personal, it's too personal....
the sacredness of the moment as in:
cleaning the house, having conversation
with dad, the BBQ... mum's away tending to her mom -
insignificant parts - dog eat dog's one day -
cruising down with a Brooklyn groove -
you cool? i'm cool. you cool? n'ah man!
see you two Februaries later.
the **** comes later.... i write poetry, i have nothing to lose...
what i have to lose is the need for ink
and the celluloid ear to listen in on me -
if i hadn't i'd be writing the bestsellers for
insurance... i don't write bestsellers...
i write kites... i write what i write...
your capitalistic teams will hardly mind the craft...
poetry is otherwise known as
white boy's rap - less Korean gangsta style -
dog eats a dog to make a hotdog -
buns ahoy! too much personal **** man -
i cleaned the house today,
pretended to be a psychiatrist with my father -
this ain't no Hispanic gimmick -
i cleaned the house... ****'s too personal -
mind your tight Kenyan *** with that curl of lip
with the agony of pride with what a half-Kenyan president
would ignite - a Jew keeps a hammock
and a sense of investment - i know the personal -
bullock Pendulum smack via the potato sack -
prizes like at the Ferris Wheel - please spare me the
Israeli ******* with Arabs included -
please... please! you're no more part of Europe than
the Jihad coupe readied to make us
artistically bankrupt - Jew, you have your land!
tend to your ******* olives
                              and slouch on pitta bread!
let us be! don't keep inviting your repressive
justice agents into the enigma - we fostered Jesus
for 2,000 years! leave us be! take him back!
consolidate your confusion with an Egyptian Jew,
tend to the Egyptian library exposed -
we have no part in it... you make us take part
in it... we'll make Arabs into Nazis, if they
aren't already suggested.
you don't want what we will answer with when
Islam crosses the mark of consistent attack!
you don't want it! wear your kippah *******
symbolism when you either think or don't!
i don't like barbarians anyway,
the niqab shroud of cut-off ******* is enough
to match-up a ******* kippah as imitated
by the saint's bald-patch... leave! go home!
so why is it that home is so violent at your rekindled
reception? the Irish are clearly the first to ridicule,
but as James Joyce said: no Irishman will read me
prior to reading Yeats... the rhapsody of ridicule
will be worth a market stall of pears in
hope for aid to make anything less than poaching
them in pickled speech at stipend of acid talk...
too much personal speech... let's just say i
imitated my neighbour's dog bark by night...
while in daylight hours we talked about her job
and the closure of Broadmoor.

Smiley was a face without features.  We called her smiley in grammar school because that is what she appeared to be since the doctors had sewn her lips shut in a permanent smile criss crossed with thread so as to appear more human.  She was my best friend, and I the town crazy.  She was seen as an animal because she often imitated the likeness of a feline and she would often lick the back of her hand and catwalk as well as lounge like one sometimes.  She would try to meow but only the slightest mew would come out, the faintest high e.  She could still open her mouth slightly after all so as to breath.  I would often photograph her in various environments with artistically appropriate themes and her image would appear slightly more angelic with every picture.  With every strip of film, she became more and more endearing.  Her outer shell really was the polar opposite of what her heart encompassed.  Her face was as if a beautiful girl’s however it was only the template before all the details were added.  She was a girl before her second face was put on in front of the vanity.  I loved her deeply.  She had not a clue, so caught up in herself and for good reason too.  I remained single and didn’t care for making it official or taking the next step because she was my best friend anyways and all we had was each other.  So for 10 years we grew old together.  10 years. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-… just counting 10 seconds seems unbearable… but I enjoyed every second of the ten years as if it were melted butter clogging my arteries with their undeniable grasp on my taste buds.  Smiley was all I could ever want in a lady because she was unwanted by every other male.  She was a rose in glass casing, except that she too was made of glass.  
​So, I couldn’t take it anymore one day and so I staged for us to have a video shoot for an art video I was creating to go along with the song I had written about her several years back.  The guitar work had finally reached a level of mastery that I thought was appropriate for how much classical beauty I saw radiating from this girl’s unemotive face.  I called the song, “A blank canvas.”  I was actually part of this piece as well and so a cameraman was hired.  We went on a long crazy trip through the city on horse & carriage.  We went to a ball, danced and later on to a scenic restaurant overlooking the city and got some great shots of us holding each other on a transparent balcony and again with several different ice sculptures.  At the end of the video I finally mustered up the courage and with her eyes granting me permission in the way that only I would be able to recognize I took out my pocket knife… cut loose the thread… slowly pulled it through and finally unraveled her lips so as to kiss them for the first time in the rest of our lives together.

i staying this hostel in amsterdam,
less glorifying than ginsberg
to be a czech fool king wording
self-praise about spinoza,
two germans (who decided to take
mushrooms watching american dad:
i tell you, hallucinogenics
and television - plato's cave -
equate to plato's deepest caverns),
i spent the first day with the germans,
i didn't smoke ****, i just drank,
second day i spent the day
with the egyptian (architect student,
nice scrapbook of doodles), who was cradling
a bottle of the potato elixir known as *****,
in one of the cafes he gave me a blunt,
then gave me his hearing-aids from which
music blasts, he chose to play me
le trio joubran's masar (https://goo.gl/4vcBE1),
there and then i opened my mouth and
in oh oh oh surds imitated a woman's ******,
all ******-active drugs are a release from
thinking, ******-active drugs don't like thought,
indeed i was thoughtless, and in ecstasy bold
enough to attract a dutch girl's curiosity
at my mouth turned in O and my eyes closed
being fed the agarwood trembles of horsehairs
tied either end for a song,
it felt... it felt like a unison resound of
solomon's harem... i turned marijuana into
a ****** because of the music...
these ******-active drugs don't like thinking,
they disperse thought into a semi non-existence,
less carousel more dodo (extinction),
active ingredients of such a nature restrict thought
and reveal an intoxicated self, or self without thought:
a "true" / "undiscovered" self.
and now looking into something resembling
a library, but actually a graveyard...
you tend to do that, keep company with the dead
scribblers, given your position of demised
appreciation numbered less than expected
filling a quarter of the imagined auditorium,
you turn to the dead ones...
among the tombstone crucifixes a few are still alive:
will alexander (poet), fady joudah (poet & physician),
jim bradbury (historian specialising in accounts of
philip augustus), norman davis (historian,
author of god's playground, competitor
with paweł jasienica about the history of poland),
there's also an addition by will self and irvine welsh,
but that's about it... the rest of the ******* are dead:
and this makes me feel nearer to what's intended:
a brick, on a shelf, a brick in the heart layering
of first 20 years, and subsequent life after till
promised anno mortum 60 with the world's age
of civilisation aged 2052 (e.g.);
hence too the exhausted day filled with sleep
awaiting its completion,
but that memory stitches me up into a whole of
the puffy duck-feather teddy bear's abdomen content,
as i parted the egyptian with laughter
once a single drag of the blunt started to wear off.

I tried fitting in with them but was told my skin was to dark and that I was not the type.
I asked a darker crowd for companionship but was denied because I was told I talk white.
In reality they ment proper but I cannot hate my own people for what they don't know.
In a country where a letter from Willie Lynch divided us and still stunts our growth.

We were deprived of our name, religion, and planted an idea in our head that lighter is better.
Features once  seen as a sign of ugliness such as big lip or now being imitated and make others jealous.
These life scars remain though, that rain from feeling left out seemed to only get wetter.
Hoping one day this alienated feeling will dry up but one can only be zealous.

And though our lives move on and our days continue to be filled with the life we had all once left behind, we still remember. And though we wake up each morning with a new crowed of people to share our breakfast with, we still remember. Etched into our minds like those three numbers we held so dear as a symbol of our freedom and identity. Those three numbers that separated you enough to show ones independence, but connected you with a community of people who forever would fill every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moments of your life. These three numbers, coupled with a key, representing a time of transition from parental curfews, sober nights, and childish antics to a life of frivolous and naked moments. Passing into a time where the only sober though one had was that approaching deadline and getting everyone home safe. A time where basketball games, endless games of cards, crazy dance parties, shower time, movie nights, redbird pizza runs, *** talks, burning frat houses, fights with floor 8, board games, and multiple YOUTUBE sensations took precedence over whatever was due the next day. And though our nights sometime met the light of day; we continued in our ways knowing each morning when we awoke the day was ours and would be filled with people who would make every moment spectacular. So with our new found life consuming us we ignored the grains as they fell towards a time when the life we had come to know and love would be thrown into a whirlwind of tears, hugs and goodbyes. But that day has come and gone; and though promises were made and dates set, we still can’t help to remember those three numbers and those people who made them more then just a room number. And though those days are gone and we consider our selves grown, we can’t help but cling to childish moments where friendships were forged and long lasting bonds made by a simple acceptance button found on our social portals. A bond that we now hold to for dear life as a means to keep one another connected. Connected to those people who became our life line in times of good and bad; those same people who we shared the good and bad moments with and knew we could turn to no matter what. Those same people whose lives we would put in front of ours and bend over backwards for no matter the cost or how empty our wallets may seem. And even when we found our selves counting quarters and estimating how many loads we could run, we always knew we could count on the person across the hall or right next door to fill that half hour until our whites were done. We laughed, and we cried, we made nick names for each other and threw up in each others arms. We watch each other run around naked, made never ending “that’s what she said jokes,” and maybe kissed a few people we never thought we could. And though nights got out of hand and feels hurt here or there, regret is something none of us feel. For regret is an emotion that holds no place between people whose moments with one another were made priceless because of how embarrassing or stupid we acted. Stupid, embarrassing moments that we have come to cherish and hold close to our hearts in the hopes to keep those people we refer to as our kin with us when distance challenges our very bonds. Moments that cannot be duplicated, remade, imitated, or passed off as a normal Saturday afternoon; but rather remembered and someday share with our kids and grandkids as they move in for their first year of college. And when our kids and grandkids are overcome with emotion and come to us for advice about conquering the college scene, we can say from the depths of our hearts that the people they meet in college will forever change their life and make them a better person. Those same people whom I could never replace, and can’t wait to embrace as brother and sister when the next semester of ISU rolls around. :)

The worse thing I could see in this life to me
is the insight on what's going on inside the
mind of another person whose eyes when
tested are wide open yet half closed an
glazed fixed with a message
No rest
**** bested
Just like me with a feeling that's overrated
I'm never waking cause your never sleeping
Yeah that's what we call self medicated
Drug dedicated
To ****** up to hate it
Even when your looking into the eyes of another behind a two way mirror that's not so two way
I'm faceless
A psychopath unlike the rest
So let me color this
Wait did you say something
Whos there
No one It's just you
Then whos looking back
Just yourself
That doesn't look like me
Why because they walk talk and dress different
No because I'm here and their there
A fact created by self absorbed ******* who believe to have made it
A bunch of fakes spitting venomous lies deceit filled eyes
Stabbing the backs of friends and foes alike
believing to be justified with what it is they
do
So don't you even begin to believe that
**** too
Now count to blue and remember there's been to few of us created with two sets of eyes so different yet their look is self imitated
Originality being one oh one over one duplicated known to be unrelated
Something I see each time I see my reflection so you're the worst thing I could see along
with this ****** up connection
Now don't get me wrong it’s amazing how we in no way tried to be found found each other
But I don't know if i’m ready for the inside tour of another just like me but uncovered
A psychopathic lover
And as I begin to laugh I hope like me you won't quit because if your like me we're
made for this wicked ****
I'm ****** glitch
Broke like a *****
Why am I so lyrically rich
That being said I gotta say I'm happy that **** so far has stayed where it belongs tucked away unlike this song
Inside my mind with the imagination creations I've created in my crayola crayon nation made education

Explosive
Recently on a trip not to the holy land but to sacred lands of the Navajo just wanted to visit and talk to
The heroic wind talkers following still in the footsteps of my grandmother who was a code breaker in the
Sense a woman in the depression taking off in a Walton’s truck with nine children to go visit her people
In the Indian nation in Oklahoma more than five hundred miles away that wasn’t the usual code
Followed by women of that day little did I know I to would be meeting a woman later or at least hear
Her I got off the beaten path stopped in a small store I planned on paying respect to the great western
Writer Louis L’Amour he had on occasion set among the fields in California and cut open a can of peaches
Enjoyed his tramping with some fruit but as I walked up to the door a bill on the window gave this invite
Come to half moon ranch it gave the days date and direction hear the astounding violin of teal waters
She is noted for bringing tears to those who hear her haunting renditions some are other worldly I was sold
So I did a long lunch up on a bluff above the ranch I could see the draw or small canyon that would serve
As a performance arena not all that impressive somewhere along the line my eyes lost their fight to stay
Awake the sound of cars passing in numbers brought me out of my slumber the crowd was a little
Surprising out in the middle of nowhere this is a land where magic is believed and taught like in no other
Place the only place more famous would be Sedona Arizona well we all had taken our seats darkness was
Gathering faster because of the canyon walls with just a small introduction she started by saying she
Was going to honor her father and the other wind talkers wow was I lucky they came to me I didn’t even
Have to look them up well she set the tone that instrument with the thinnest whistle sounded just like
When I set out on the hillside all night in the fire truck waiting for the howitzer shells to explode down
Range then I was honoring dough boys from all past times in far more extreme circumstances but the C
Rations were the same and when I stood down on the flat valley those rounds sailing over then
Exploding a half a mile or more down range and the waves of the repercussion shook your pant leg
As if an angry dog had a hold of it she even imitated explosive blast on the heavy strings then the
Eerie was brought in while you set and peer into the darkness hoping against all odds you didn’t see an
Advancing horde when they continued on only your dead staring eyes would remain on the battle field
Did she switch to my country tis of thee I only know our hearts swelled I thought the red white and blue
Radiated somewhere and surrounded her she touched on the star spangled banner blazing lights truly
Rose from the stage that bow either caught the silver moon or it lit up and glowed white hot why not it
Was telling America’s story and the stories of her heroes who left arms and legs and lives scattered
Around the globe with that sacrifice our children are left to grow free and strong making the world
A safe place for all who love freedom and then the quiet strain carried the widows sigh and the
Children’s cry a daddy and mommy would only walk in the wonder of memories and in the loveliness of
The spirit that is forever close she did more numbers that ran the gambit of emotions and tears and joy
Gave us a rollercoaster ride to remember and I bought a CD TO relive a night to remember when the
southwest burned with patriotic flames flying in all direction from a truly inspired violin

The creature watched them come and go and marveled at their beautiful wings and their elegant movement in the breeze. " i'll get my wings one day and they would put shame on the rainbow, you just wait and watch!" before long the day came and he got his wings. Through agony he fought his way out of the shell. With help of the breeze he spread the wings and flew in sky. When he was passing by the river, in still water, he saw an image and moved closer to it. Saw a dreadful creature in the silvery water that had a thousand eyes and the ugliest wings that he had ever seen.The creature imitated his every movement and then he realized that it's his reflection. He was angry and hateful and just like water that reflected his image he decided to reflect that anger and hate. From that day on he hunts the other winged creatures that he adored for so long. he flies static on silvery waters to see the beast every now and then.  That's the story of the dragonfly.

you may be entitled to a cash settlement you know when you walk passed another person you say hi then they say hi as you go by you realize you wish you could know more about that person perhaps wish you had said more (could’ve should’ve would’ve if only)

April is the cruelest month breeding out of lifeless land mixing memory desire stirring dull roots with spring rain

i’ve always had a problem taking my existence the world too seriously i’m way too sensitive way too longing dreaming praying hoping wishing

winter kept us warm covering earth in forgetful snow feeding little life with dried seed summer surprised us coming over rain showers we stopped in walkway went on in sunlight into the garden drank coffee talked for hours

a strong metal material which can morph shape based on heat cold transference

a pill that makes you smart brilliant genius a pill that makes you eye-catching handsome gorgeous a pill that makes you strong slim sinewy a pill that makes you young a pill that makes you rich successful powerful a pill that makes you loved respected imitated a pill that makes you godlike a pill that makes you disappear

a new form of *** more wild mysterious ***** sensual intensive explosive gratifying than current ***

a painting that changes colors forms images yet remains intriguing unsolved pushing the viewer to make up imagine answers outcomes possibilities

a song that joyfully melts the heart of every person in the world causing each to blissfully dance deeply bow in reverence build a sustainable bridge of appreciation

and still she cried and still the world pursues jug jug to ***** ears and other withered stumps of time we’re told upon the walls staring forms leaned out leaning hushing the room enclosed

a neighborhood where white males between ages 21 to 40 are given carte blanche all other men discarded based on age ethnicity income a street where females are rendered undesirable after age 45 a town where no one reads books discusses psychology sociology philosophy ideas dreams war a wall with no windows door that never opens ceiling that inches downward

my nerves are bad tonight yes bad stay with me talk with me why do you never speak? speak what are you thinking about what thinking what i never know what you are thinking think

i think we are in rats' alley where dead men lost their bones

the smell sight sound taste feel acknowledgment of dying

what is that noise wind under door what is that noise now what is the wind doing nothing again nothing do you know nothing do you see nothing do you remember nothing i remember pearls that are your eyes are you alive or not is there nothing in your head

shattered casualties along the road people who once believed they would be successful winners making difference in this world another drink another smoke another night week month year gone another life envisioned planned strived for lost job lost house lost another baby born

twit twit twit jug jug jug jug jug jug so rudely forced river sweats oil barges drift with turning tide red sails wide to leeward swing on heavy spar barges wash drifting logs down reach past isle of dogs weialala leia wallala leialala

It smells of cigarettes and 12 year old regrets.
Matted shagged rugs with creeping, crawling bugs.
There’s shouting from the back.

Humming coming from a ***** metal box.
A shrill announcement that it's time to get our fill.
We race back while trying not to spill.  

In my bowl is the same hard heat of imitated meat.
I run my finger across the couch. A halo of polyester,
where too long an ember was permitted to fester.

My friend had dawned new clothes,
a flashy new skin, but a month’s gone by.
Holes now show what she’s hidden.

Uncertain, she’ll dawn a new curtain.
Whether a lack of communication or a thoughtful hesitation
to force another her burden.

Nobody Loses All The Time

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

—by ee cummings

if it be a tribal issue, i'd craft a society
from each nation,
but it be a furthered without ethnicity
for a system,
socialism is equated with borders
where the many calais migrants are male
with no female counterparts,
a sort of faked ******, more apparent
when the tennis matches roll into quarter finals,
kacap ******* moaning and groaning
a serve, a return... russian galls all eager-******
for the ooh-ah, ugh-nibble pull apart the ribcage!
even serena williams imitated for a while
the welcome ******* distraction,
the song named the misty mountain colds
will define my life, i invested many words
for the emotion behind it, and i'll invest in nothing else
in order to feel:
like i feel lessened in creative exploits
with a thousand blank pages between me and the ink
of zoological phonetics encoding emerges
(put a number to it, and every time
i get depressed - because the quality changes
very little, and the little that's left only
belittles with a sudden loss of adventure:
poets the naked narrators who cannot
craft characters, instead writ into action
a familiarity with narration but no
de-personifying narration),
mind you the god that endowed you with adventure
mind you the god that endowed you with pampering,
and which world to designate life with will you choose?
kacap! kacap! orthodox mad monk kacap *******!
let the commonwealth oar its last into the geography
of poland ukraine and lithuania carved from the mapping
of frequented transit of commercial goods...
that i find my un-originality among the blank pages
published, when i read the inked blotches of former
invaders of the blanks tattooing their tongue
from breath and into word, in order to ignite a nobleness
of delay: that word might invoke memory porous,
and breath imagination, and the riddle of dissected
airing of thought: with vowels the zenith and consonants
the nadir, i here by name meeting a loss of anonymity
proclaim a union in syllables of the height and depth
coordinating a linear road well travelled, universal;
here too i claim the sloth of slang mismatched from
quicksilver, taking off the trailing technology of
such an endeavour of rhyme upon rhyme with the
sole expressing it successfully: the utility of a rhymed couplet:
rap pancake potato sack readied for the flip flip
of the slavish rubric of packing the ones readied
for cotton picking.
route back to tennis: kacap ******* smoking
thick tough cigars of: umf! pooh! plough! ooh oh ah!
backhand spin, forehand ****! umf! ****! clap loud!
ooh oh ah!
the iceberg sized diamonds were easily dispersed,
and all other riches were stored with
screams in helium kept tight: advantages of
wealth circular economy
in the octopus incisor depths of
the mosquitoes of iron maiden skeletons
of sharpened blood draining arteries dubbed
the clippings of st. peter's of st. petersburg insignia nailing
a fathomable curse, readied for the public,
and readied for the ***** of a concentrated public
expression in only one statistical imprint: continuum
(be met assuredly):
our garden of eden readied for the public barbers
where once the bread of the beards begot a trimming
of a diet, should erotica feign a menopause of onomatopoeias
once readied for the ultimate pleasure,
now readied for old age's onslaught of readier
sober speech to make choice akin to mistake,
given 2 be 2 and both located in a flat earth of the square,
as seen in linear rather than omnipresent orientation
of the optics... and so on and so on, successfully,
to unsuccessfully remind us all of the candle flame hush,
arable the last neared star to give moon dominion
over the night that was a feline gaze of luminescent
fattening of many mirrors in termed phosphorous
elemental, when john, catherine and gabriel
stood contrast erectile on the spaniel's spine converted
to a dimension of dissection of rooted distances
made worthwhile unknown now (the surd k)
and the phonetic approximation of knowing (surd
the 15th century, surd the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th,
in order to speak now and sepia the rest, as the
equivalent of not having the surd for the syllable now).

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year;
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear,
And you in every blessèd shape we know.
    In all external grace you have some part,
    But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

Sometimes,
I try to escape you.
Whether in my thoughts;
or in my day.
I have become spectacular at blocking out
the memories.
But sometimes,
I try to escape you.
When I see the curve of your cheek
lit in the soft moon light
and all I want to do is reach out and cup my hand on your face;
I try to escape you.
When I close my eyes with you right next to me;
and I dream of interlacing my fingers with yours,
my head on your chest.
When I can hear the actual sound of your heartbeat being imitated in my sleep;
and I wake up and wonder.. hope.. That I wasn't dreaming;
too afraid to ask in fear of being chastised for wanting you..
I try to escape you.
And in the morning, I prepare myself to go home.
Even though I know I'll miss you
and only think of you when I'm there.
But then you ask me to stay one more night
and I can't say no to your beautiful green eyes
or your bright smile.
I try to escape you.
But I can't.
**My love.

There was an elegant *****, from New York City
Or maybe Rome or New Orleans.
He was a spectacular ***, but didn't do drag at all;
Falling somewhere in between that category
Of glorious ladies and men of the day.
A queen with no throne nor entourage scene,
Camouflaging himself in skin-tight trousers,
Spectacular coats and jackets,
Packets of sachet in his pockets
To give him a scent of an unusual gent.
As if he had a choice in the matter.

He had a delicate way with his manner,
His hands and his eyes touching gracefully
As if not to disturb the dust on the mind,
Often very unkind, he used his tongue slicing
And dicing those who offended his senses
When such dared to step on his train
Invisibly dragging behind him, around him
Keeping his visitors at bay, a few feet away
Like proper subjects, courtiers to his grace
His face locked in a grin; hiding all within
The secrets protected by laden witticisms
Criticisms if you misbehave, saving smiles;
Handing out compliments like cookies.

There was always a waving of hands,
The arms caught in the wind like cornstalks.
For a moment. Then catching, ending like feathers
Settling together, resting as if cradling a baby
One hip thrown out, the head to one side
As if listening; hearing a devil's good joke,
Smoking a constant cigarette, the ends never wet
Laying the tip on the lip like a kiss
His face slightly lifted so the smoke will drift
Away from his half-lidded cynical eyes.

The talk could be varied, of Tom, **** or Harry
He would call women men and vice versa
Saying, Robert is a ***** woman is she.
He then waiting your laughter, hesitating
Seldom laughing himself, having said it all
Heard it all, done it all, had them all

No fertile male soil left unspoiled by his touch
Just entirely too much for one man to handle,
No woman to compare, he lived alone somewhere
Coming to the bars each night, a familiar sight
Drinking, but not seeming drunk,
Never sunk so low that he staggered,
Still swaggered after hours at the trough
Not so much as a slur or a cough.

He knew all the jokes that could be made
From a seemingly innocent mistake
Taking a word here and there and trading
Raising a regal eyebrow, somehow changing
Restating the meaning leaning it toward the crotch
Watching the listener's face, sensing the disgrace;
Granting himself the luxury of the infrequent howl
His majesty could keen like an un-oiled machine
Setting his victim's nerves and gooseflesh to snap
Giving his udderless chest a slap, he would go on
Make more of the jest, leave his victim no rest
And the mourners to offer their apologies.
Words such as that are not for ladies
Such as this infamous old queen.

The old spirit held on after the body was near gone
Propelling it nightly to appear on the scene.
Mean children would taunt him, just as he taught them
And waving their arms like cornstalks, cackle like hens
And tease him again, then resume cruising the men
Hurting the once regal spirit more with their disdain
Than beating him, or cheating him; ignoring him,
They dealt him a blow he never could abide
That fear he kept inside, all those years, the tears,
Still left un-cried, after he died, in his room somewhere.
He has left to be shared, the way he fluffed his hair,
The off-color joke, spoken in a strange lady's voice
Something like a boy's, not like a man's;
That flutter of the hands and the stance
Still copied today, by the splinter-group gays
That straight people think we all are
Is all that remains of a star once seen;
The seldom lamented, well-imitated, eternal queen.

Last Saturday, I took an empty seat
on a park bench, with book in hand.
Feeling sorry for myself, I failed-
to notice others on this public land.

Disillusioned with life’s loneliness,
my heart and face both wore sad frowns.
From my perspective, this world was…
insistent on dragging my weary soul down.

While my inner sadness wasn’t enough,
to completely complement my pitiful day,
I was approached by a breathless boy,
who had taken time to rest from his play.

With unexpected exuberance, he spoke
to me, with his head oddly, tilted down,
as he shared an unwanted gift with me-
"Look at this flower, I’ve just found!"

Though all of its petals were badly worn,
I could tell, it had been a supple rose;
my spirit, desired only misery’s company
and not his presence of disheveled clothes.

I hoped that he would take his treasure
and leave- in search of solitary play;
so I imitated my finest, insincere smile
and intentionally shifted my gaze away.

Instead of retreating, he sat beside me.
“My flower is scented and beautiful too;
thanks for being my newest friend today,
for I picked this, especially for you.”

Patiently waiting, with tiny hands extended,
he presented the remnant of his dead ****;
I knew I had to take it, to induce his leave-
so I sarcastically replied "Just what I need."

Without an explanation, he held it mid-air;
then I finally noticed, for the first time,
that this happy, gift-toting child was blind
and I’m left more speechless than a boxed mime.

Thanking him with a repentant, quivering voice,
my streaming tears shone brightly like the sun;
while I managed to express some real gratitude,
I acknowledged that he had chosen the “best one”.

Unaware of the powerful impact that he had on me,
he smiled and joyfully slid down off our bench;
then he wandered off, as quickly as he could-
with a second, dead rose that he lovingly clenched.

So I was stunned, wondering how he managed to see
this woman drowning in her self-indulgent plight.
Through his blindness, I saw that the problem was me;
by his heart action, he blessed me with true sight.

From this moment, I vow to change and see beauty
in life and appreciate every second that's mine.
Therefore, I’ve decided to move forward with purpose,
for I can’t allow my fragile heart to remain blind.

And even now, I’m becoming emotionally overwhelmed
with this unexpected flood of tear-filled shame.
In retrospect, my manners were severely lacking:
for I neglected to ask- this earth-angel… his name.

1992, seldom electric fire
  Top tier tenement
grease paint balcony
White flack veranda, in cold
     Aircraft damage
diamond hill - screen run
  centipedes crawling from under carpets
  Three stacked wage
Lighters tossed in
click click click
            Shared alternate
          Wiping vandal on jeans
- aquatic codex
     Ran       G - Er
Cleaning ***** pipes to play
     Brushes
Pushing out bits of pigeon meat
             Nature
                   Takes back
                         Inner pink
walking through valley, 2 shops
   Butchers, newsagents, bag on back, 75p Irn Bru
     - niaroo, old folks
a Roman decoration
   Holding hands, woken camping
Damp - Sleep
             Dams
man-made, man-made
   shoes
Taken off
  tiptoeing in inch high slow decline
Straddling fallen tree rings
           Egyptian replicant
      Citerazine, bag full of frogs
       Tree swings
                  - rope burn
    Cap full of Night Nurse
And a newtonian lung full of phlegm
  Mattress protector, cold sweat, menthol
                      - Or
  Retailed Jelly Beans pushed through face
      Lactic acid
          food pylons
     change t-shirts on trains home
     Thawing moments
     In a misty aether
       - That we found
            While eating in the Rain
     Sidestep
         Sidestep
              sidestep
         Til' we ***** rocks on waxpaper
                                Quasi-negativity
overheard on the 57th chemical bus
           Imitated cough
  Flash point culture
Aching on
a woken bad comfort, 50 minutes
    Surfing on liquid Archipelagos
- Camping - On a swollen inner thigh
                 Cause the
                 (carriage)
                           Today
Several dead.
   Yet cosmos vanished lacquer
                              Manslaughter
boiled mouthwash
       in the future
- drole
        acryllic ****
Shoes taken off at doors
      A need to laugh, Not in bars
    Not in rigor, not in Lips
Blankets on open doors to Firs
         rings century heat fort
  eight days external
             licking
     The imaginary
                  (Wound)
Shameless St. John
  Bricks
  Smashed off 204th launch
          finger split.   Splint
      -Fibration
              g
               oo -
finding Love in Junipers
        enchanted, Vanilla pod
Apple fries, casual ***, loose horseshoes
    Draper
           &
             a cold Vermont
        Liberty, capitol savings/Planck
        Ever twisting Venetian control
           Executive seep
        - In Sunlight
          skies scraped Cosgrove, Skies
presents, present
maybe sunny side of Barstow
    Agony aunt Limericks
and - Deep thrombosis
Let's build pyramids          In our Dreams
the night time sky
here
Will         never     Win    any    Awards

Minuscule cockroaches creak
Conspicuously around the crude crumbs
On the dusty kitchen counter,
And tadpoles squirm in the cremated creek.

The porridge poured itself
For the poor stray kitten,
Who was too spritely
For eureka's euthanization,
Triumphant in trespassing
The proximity of the porch.

Meanwhile, the revolving rover
Imitated the raunchy rocket ships,
Launching like fervent fertility
Interceding September's secret,
Sacred admirers of ethereal pyres.
The sepulchre's soma
Spread from the peach's center
Like the terrific thighs of a virile *****.

Jurassic travels ,
Machines running on ancient carcass,
Annulling the terra firma
Of its aloe vera-like virginity,
And courtesans adorned with jewels,
Pretending to be Aphrodite?

Just as Jupiter does,
Joy wears covetous rings..


Originally written 8/12/11
Revised 10/19/14

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

All this sunshine
And these branches
With leaves and overflowing juices
Saps and morning dew
Surround the bricks
And the polished steel
Of content frigid happiness
Boxes
All these boxes
With things we must do
And rules for obtaining perfection
All this liberty
With obligatory attachments
And abstinence
Beauty
All this gold plated beauty
Bought with fruits and flesh
Fresh blood and bodies every month
All this necessity
This war on voices
Speaking out of turn
And living out of tune
Voices
All these voices
All this unspoken nausea
From breathing imitated air
Between designer chairs
And eating love made slow food
Made by soulless unloving people
Love
All this hollow propaganda
Designed to numb
To tell the critics they're dumb
Until they, too, succumb
To the same ideals
As the rest

i can't say much about today, well, i probably will,
made a burger and did house chores with Steptoe,
and i know what you're thinking -
the common trend in western society, you actually
like familial interactions, you're not into
7 year itches, you're not inclined to conjure up
Norman Bates all of a sudden - you're content,
quiet respectably normal - and to be frank,
the following as happened to me: the psychoanalytic
technique of regression, i.e. planting false memories
when being psychoanalysed - page 25 of Friday
July the 8th 2016 the times newspaper - headline:
THERAPIST FACES CLAIM OF "BRAINWASHING"
GIRLS - she implanted in them a Freddy Krueger -
a reverse Friday the 13th scenario -
one psychiatrist tried it on me - he hushed the words:
'oh... he was abused as a child' - but the pronoun
usage was already wrong, or simply odd -
this sort of musing aloud got to me worked up,
i said nothing, i continued with an interview, i had a few,
don't you worry, they passed me around like hot charcoal,
they couldn't put a box on me, (bragging? on this subject,
just the reality of what happened) - they employed about
five psychiatrists and two students to decipher me,
i was holding the joker card every time -
they couldn't understand that a real physical ailment
could be translated into metaphysical ailments -
if you mean metaphysics turned into a lysergic acid-like
experience then i might as well have talked to the police -
five of them, none bothered to use the funding the
national health service gets to book an m.r.i. scan,
they prescribe psychiatric drugs assuming your brain
is a sponge that soaked up a chemical soup -
i'm talking natural sedatives, alcohol, not synthetic sedatives:
anti-psychotics. the structure of the family breaks down
in the west, but it's fine, we have legal partnerships
and gay marriage - i guess the latter is the only positive,
but like any married couple, the nagging will invariably
enter the scene, and given that heterosexual marriages break
down, i'm hardly going to bet on homosexual marriages
being the maiden voyage of Titanic without the iceberg.
so 5 of them, beaten to the core, but only this recent story
made me think of the inherent sadism in psychiatry,
regression "therapy" whereby i did for a moment play out
the trick and thought about what sort of abuse i might
have suffered as a child... oh, that time i taught myself
how to ******* aged 8? well, that's self-abuse -
and a pretty good one i might add, few people will *******
and feel ******* but not the end product, or maybe
just me - so Ms. A (as is noted in Poland when a criminal
is identified) did this regression tactic to break up families,
she might have failed hers, and strategically invoked the failures
into other people - we already know that psychiatrists are
very sick people, we just don't know how sadistic they can be
by being subtle in their methods... after all... thought
equated to the senses is 5 times more fragile, and more
sensual if you think about it - all the senses bundled up into
one function, and we don't necessarily know what that
function is taking away a Cartesian moment of realisation,
your daily chores, your professional web of utilities,
after all, what is thinking? fail-safety-mechanism in philosophy?
ask a question - the alternative of a ¶, a new paragraph.
so when a society shuns public intellectualism, philosophers
poets... who do you think will enter in their place in terms
of political dynamics? yep, the men in white coats with pills...
pills pills pills... nothing more, and bogus theories half
expanded and half shunned by a zoological treatment of
human beings - i know there are exceptions, a man last year
stabbed a pensioner 30 times over a minor traffic-accident,
he was labelled a paranoid schizophrenic... oddly enough
i too was labelled that... a 5 minute diagnostic session,
man comes in, i say - a woman across the street is walking
around naked, and so are her daughters... i'm getting this
****** fuelled fantasy working on me, can you tell her to
invest in curtains? i don't mind the naked bit,
but imagining doing a mother and two daughters is a bit
too much for my pigeon brain.
the stimuli ingested by the senses are nothing compared
to what stimuli thinking ingests -
it's less the sun the moon a summer breeze,
and more McDonald, Gucci: pseudo-capitalism with
your generic schizoid symptom - insinuations.
oh believe me, faking this condition out of personal-interest
was necessary - to fake it, to take an interest in it
to see what the other side was doing about it left me
with an inexhaustible source of resources: experience.
i think i'll end the intro and tell you something else.

two books on my lap, Jung's *answer to Job
and the long hard road out of hell - a semi-autobiographic
by Marilyn Manson and neil strauß -
so before you think i write about religious matters
like some cuckoo evangelist having a library of
only one book and a lot to talk about, i don't -
but we live in times where everyone imitated someone,
that someone is already obvious -
funny though, the Greeks invented the concept
of Antichrist... without knowing that the concept
of anti-matter would pop up about 2000 years later -
a coincidence you say? not given the Atomists
Leucippus and Democritus - the theory of anti-matter,
but in a religious person?! travesty you scream!
john of πατμoς - he had the anticipation of anti-matter
like the Atomists cited (obviously there were some
in the east - the Jain Genies - modern day scenes
from Tokyo and Beijing - wouldn't eat a ladybird
or sniff up an airborne microbe) - but hell, if Johnny
~anticipated anti-matter, but really didn't, why
was the anti person invoked? it took all the dereliction
of religion to provide the basis for anti-matter,
and that's no surprise, it makes it easier to think of
another world, no scientist would come up with it,
because only a religious person would somehow conjure
up a mechanism whereby what was once matter turned
into anti-matter, or a version of Christ that reads,
writes, and doesn't give sermons... well, why not?
let's go crrrrazy. yet the main point of this entry is, well,
the profanity Christianity took to when learning about
the tetragrammaton, there's much beauty in it, and yet
for Christianity a crucifix is somehow an improvement...
benedictio fontis (blessing of the fountain), the sign
of the cross is made - Catholics make it on themselves:
forehead, left right, stab at the heart and then
romeo:
if i profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
to smooth that rough toush with a tender kiss.
juliet:
good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
                                                  (you **** a lot),
which mannerly devotion shows is this;
for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
and palm to palm in holy palmers' kiss;
Orthodox Greek and Russian: forehead, right left,
stab at the heart - hey, why not put a few together,
you know, those gesticulations -
(index, thumb and ******* - the "holy trinity"
in Braille) forehead, left right right left (****,
where's a traffic warden when you need one),
and then hand clenched into a fist... smack... a mea culpa
straight away - honestly, god to a Polish Catholic mass...
go to one... you'll end hearing a Satanic murmur
roaming through the crowd, esp. as the creed of faith
being said... shivers down the spine.
but that's what's written in Jung - from the eloquence
of yhwh to † - in effect a bit more than Christian sign language,
more like the acronym n.e.w.s. - north east west south -
and when he said kneel, he replied don't tempt me,
and when he said kneel and all the kingdoms will be yours,
someone ordered chicken chow mein in defiance
to the moment, and China remained with Confucius,
predictably confused when the one-child state policy came
into effect - ever wonder why they play that pebble
game at the Hajj? you think they're throwing a pebble
at a raw Rodin block of stone before the chisel was aimed
thinking they'll throw a pebble and get two pebbles back?

Sometimes pain is so strong
it transcends conscious thought.
So powerful it cannot be described,
imitated, or understood at all--
It simply is. It exists,
and welcome or not,
It is present.