Echolalia

Fontenot

FONTENOT (“One Who is Special.”
The Great Canadian Epic. Subtitled
“The King of Nothingness.”)

Prologue

No path in life is totally obscured.
No matter how much we try to hide
ourselves away we ultimately can’t.
Out of all the problems facing a
writer the greatest is knowing that
we are here naked upon the page
with nothing to clothe ourselves
except the words we speak, which
reveal our nakedness all the same,
just in different ways.

The eyes of the world are surely
blind tonight because they see not
me, nor no one can, and these
places more sacred are for not
having me in them. But still I live
and I can’t stop living, here scattered
upon the page, even as I know it is
no life at all.

And I try and I try again to imagine
other paths to life and as a teller
of tales it seems my duty to weave
all threads together and turn a word
into the starting place of a thousand
eternities, but I can’t go into the
breach again and again, for each
time a terrible weariness creeps over
me and my very life is taken out and
put upon the page, here, which is
no life at all I fear to say.

I try to imagine other worlds and
suddenly Earth has a second moon
named Elandra and stars, Ithryxis
and Ihryx are born like stains of
black blood and ochre, or stains
of ochre and black blood. I try to
talk amongst the Ravenlords of Endor
where the witch once stood but the
wings are cast and off away they sail,
their obsidian eyes mocking me
as I am left behind for my betrayals.

And there is Elinora of the willow
burdened tree and admiring her
beauty from afar a sadness comes
over my soul all at once for a
profound silence has taken her away
from me than love can bear to stay;
you see she isn’t real and in her
unreality I can touch her not.

That is the plague of the writer too,
to know that here all things are
possible and all things are equally
bared, and the loves we speak of and
the loves we write of exist and are
confined, and yet our words confine
them not.

And so I start all over again at the
very beginning, and try to tell the story
of my home and of my country, but
the story has been told and the heroes
all carved from granite, and with
this as a final gesture I make a final
world of my very own confined within
the world I know, of woods and waters
and peoples scattered here from
across the murky regions of the globe.

1) The Zoo of the Impossible Animals

I am sitting on a street corner and around
me are many people from everywhere
and the world seems condensed as if it
all collapsed together and I am standing
in Beijing and Toronto and New York and
London and Timbuktu all at once.

And I imagine the animals playing, the
predators only for it is only the predators
who can play, as prey cannot imagine
and so learn how to be dead.

And I think of Zyaruju, a monkey I read
about in one of those books now lost
somewhere in the past, and I know
myself no different than he, being fictional
of course.

This was supposed to be a satire, a look at
my nation, but standing on the street corner
no satire comes and instead I am
struck by the realization of myself
not knowing myself at all.

I argue with myself, plead and question
if when the last word is uttered will I exist
at all, but I can never answer my own
riddle satisfactorily.

And all the faces blur and the day starts
and ends then starts again, and who is not
Sisyphus in this age of ours, forced to
roll the weight of his life, her life up against
the mountain and down the mountain again?

We live as impossible animals in a zoo
without bars or cages, and we are impossible
not because we are but because we are here
even as we stand and go to work, feed
the children and pay the bills, and sometimes
half imagine that neither of these are real
and if we turned back at just the right
moment our sons and daughters would
disappear and we’d never even remember
that they were there.

I exist here and I exist somewhere else
and the streets all vanish and perish and
the people move on, and the whole world
floods past my door and I know it and
try to reach out and grasp it, just a fragment
of it all, but there are not words enough to
prove that there are words enough.

So because I can not possess it all I stop
and mold and fashion Fontenot from my
thoughts, create a woman to represent
all the histories I have known, and
she has sailed here from France and Germany
and Rome, come from Somalia, Lithuania
and the isles of Man, and she knows all
languages and speaks all tongues,
but I am the king of nothingness for
making her, because I am no more real
than she is not.

And I try, I earnestly try to create a story
to solidify her fate, and add such phrases
as duelist sins are many but duelist
flaws are few, and yet I know not if she
ever had a duel, or who her rivals were
or if they are living now.

And so I go round and around again and
bring all of history to the role she plays but
it never seems enough and the boulder
always falls down again, and I don’t know
what Canada means and I don’t know what
to say. Who is not Sisyphus in this age? June 26-27/11.

Book 117

EROS AND THANATOS
(“If you reveal your secrets to the wind you
should not blame the wind for revealing them
to the trees.” Kahil Gibran.)

We are governed by the needs of love and death,
and both are needs I fear. We are bordered on all
sides by the time which is lost to us,

bordered also by the loves too long
denied us. And we cry out to all things and all
things cry out in turn, and thus it is that Eros and

Thanatos are born, not by their being but by our
cries that they must be. And if no words were
spoken nor thoughts imagined

there would be no love nor death, there could
be no love nor death for any created thing. June 17/11.

ABANDONED (“In a time of
universal deceit telling the truth is
a revolutionary act.” George Orwell.)

1) A man without a country to call his own
abandoned the fields of war, took no part
in battles and struggled no more.

He said nothing but truth for he had
nothing to lose. He needed say nothing
at all for no one listened to him, not once.

2) And the thought came to him of freedoms
lost and the question galled at him, for what
price freedom is? And asking himself

the question found no answer, and asking all
others the question found no answer either.
And seeking even to deal with the devil

upon the crossroads one night he asked
that old liar what the price of freedom is.

3) And the devil tried to answer, in hedonism
or vice, but the words all knotted wickedly
in his throat and no answer could be

found. Instead the devil offered a deal
but the man said no, for what need did he
have for a deal when he couldn’t find freedom

to break all contracts by? He left the devil by
the road to deal with himself alone.

4) And he looked through all things, through
all possibilities, but had no nation to tie himself
to, no loves, no hates, no not even the

indifference of a shallow passing fancy
at the thought of his superiority to all who gathered
themselves around such meager things as nations

or loves or hates or jealousies. And so abandoned
thus he went into the woods, but found nothing
there, then went into the cities, but found no

one there, then went into the fields ripe for
war, but found only corpses there, and he
was alone of all he’d ever done.

5) So he asked about what price freedom is
and the answer came to him upon the wind:
“the price is surviving when all about

you dies and abandoned you become to
everything, even freedoms you’ve tried to hide.” June 18/11.

WITHOUT MEASURE

Without measure, without number,
without any boundaries at all
humanity left with nothing to hold it back
becomes not gods nor angels, nor demons
either, becomes but humanity
all again. Take to your wildest
imaginings my friend, envision whatever
you seek to envision and humanity will
be there, just as it was before,
just as it will be again. And whatever
sins we made we will make, and whatever
crimes we are we are, for
without measure we are no greater nor less
than who we were before when we had no
power nor grace, nor imagination at all. June 18/11.

THE WYRM (A worm is both
a man and a woman combined.
A minor point of biology.)

She called down a curse upon me
for the death of Dahlia Wintercross,
and my name was changed to
Cassandra, and I forgot who

I was. I was Cassandra
Marsden and I lived in a little
house, married to an average man
who almost loved me. I’m sure the

point had been to give me a feminine
form because the witch assumed a
woman more cleaner was, but
when the police arrived I had

wiped the blood from off my
hands. My husband was dead of
course; I had killed him all for fun. I
wonder what the witch will turn me

to now, as if it matters at all for
anyone like me. As if it matters at
all for anyone else really. June 18/11.

THE SPIDER-WEBS, A PLANETARY ROMANCE

Prologue
Nathan Raleigh Pritchard, the prisoner of two worlds,
raised to be a minister, raised to hold some things
sacred, and never breath, not once, the lustings of his
heart. And there’s his daughter there and he tells her

all he can, but can never say he loves her, for it is not
the way of things. And then one day while walking
he stumbles upon a path he did not notice ever walking
once upon before. And so he turns his step, and so

the forest darkens, and so all at once he finds himself
where he never was before. And the ground is grey
and the ground is barren and high above him seems
a thousand threads, a glimmering spectacle of spider

webs which half blot out the sun, and a strange sun
it is, half crimson, half gold and half some colour
he’d never known before. And not knowing what
to do he does nothing at all.

1) And suddenly the world shifts and he understands
a few new things, hears the grasses singing and talking
amongst themselves. And he asks if they know God but
they’ve never heard the name, and when he tries

to preach to them they mock and laugh and say
they have no need of such a thing, and does he have
a need? And thinking momentarily that he is in some
stranger hell he prays, but they ask why he prays

as if he were afraid of grass, or twigs or stones? And
the spider webs cower lower and he prays he were
somewhere else. Then he sees a few souls walking,
and their legs are thin as twigs, their bodies dessicated

and thin as dry-parched trees, and their skin is grey
as parchment, and their eyes as wide as their bodies
are thin and empty; who they were he could not decide.

Some seemed to be men, and others women, and others
simply he did not know, but was too polite to ask and
simply asked where they must go. And one of them
responded and said she did not know, but

they were walking that way, the way that the sun was
pointing, and if he wanted he could journey with them,
or stay amid the grasses. And so he decided to
walk with them, and see the world beyond.

2) Sometimes he preached of sheep and goats and
how the two must part their ways, and trying to describe
as best he could described the sheep and goats. But
they all added details he had not thought

of before, and suddenly blue sheep, or red, or purple
or green were striding up to heaven to find the place
deserted, and the goats were coloured all the
same, but hell was empty too. And asking

why they explained perhaps this God he spoke
of had made a simple mistake, and only the sheep
and goats went there, and nothing else but them. So
no creatures like him were there, which made

an empty world after the world was spent of
anything and everything at all. But he tried to
explain the metaphors and they all went to sleep,
standing in the middle of greying, barren fields. And

having no audience he went to sleep as well. And he
dreamed of the next year and the next war, of the
poison gas and the lost young men, and his words
fell like leaves and he tried to pick them up,

but couldn’t remember what he had said or why
they needed so desperately to be saved, while the
young men died around him and he couldn’t save
them at all. And suddenly it descended to a comedy,

to a pantomime of children pointing sticks at one
another, and suddenly he saw figures all hollowed out
as twigs in camps and camps and camps that went on
forever; he woke up with a scream.

3) The spider webs kept getting lower and he asked
some being what they were, and they said it was a
city made in the image of some heaven, but
perhaps they were just mocking him;

he could not be sure. He asked the names of
continents, the names of those black moons, and they
answered all his questions but the words rang
jaggedly along his tongue, and sounded strange

and alien and he wanted to go home. And they
asked him why and he answered because it was
his home, and they asked him whom he loved but
he could only love God he said.

Well God is everywhere they answered, so
just stay where you are. And they said the sheep
must love it here, and surely he is more than just
a sheep. But now he knew that they were

mocking him, or at least he suspected such.
And they came, or rather the city came to them,
great lumbering stones and monoliths which seemed
to stride before them, and he asked them what it was

and they answered it was the city of Remalidus Endurom,
where the Slithering God still lived. And he said his
God alone deserved that name he loved so well,
and they just said enter in, and find out for

yourself. And he passed the gates of ivory
carved from beasts that had no shape as he could
ever dare imagine, and walking along the colonnades
he notices the spider webs drop lower, and standing in the

temple of the Slithering God he made the sign of the cross,
but nothing was there. He half imagined blunt sacrifices
of innocents, evil all displayed in terrifying manners
or some depraved religion of priests intoning

blasphemies, but there was nothing there. He walked
away and asked the beings beyond the city walls why he
had seen no God, and they shrugged and said because
he expected it It desired him not. And

one of them named Xalajrim explained and then replied
was not his God the same, when tempted by one’s pride?

4) The spider webs touched him and he died. He came
to a heaven and it was empty even of a name. He went
to hell and found it all the same.

He cried to God and realized that time had passed him by.
He sat by the shores of uncounted worlds and strummed
on nothing but lost and lonely lullabies.

Eventually he came home, a changed man at least. Don’t
ask me how, I do not care, and he never cared to tell. The
first thing he did was tell his daughter

that he loved her and the second was tear down all thoughts
he had had before, and then started all over again, the great
Edwardian hero thrown into the modern age. June 18/11.

KETHYREN

Tarbaby promises of mine to be at last left
behind, and Kethyren shall weep for me
no more.

Dead legs
beneath me buckle as if I were dead
and Zhou Truffet upon her flute leads me

on, my broken legs carrying me upon the
broken road I tread. I cast a promise,
a tarbaby promise

to be tangled in
conceits and misunderstandings,
and Kethyren shall weep no more for me. June 18/11.

THE BALLAD OF ALFRED BULLTOP
STORMALONG (An American folk hero.)

1) Born too large to ever be confined
Stormalong set sail and his head touched
the silvered tinge of the moon;

born of the size of a giant the young man grew.

2) He built the ship Tuscarora to go out
upon the waters. He found the Kraken waiting
and he hunted the monster down.

3) He gripped the beast with hands that
could have gripped the mountains and tore
the stones asunder;

out upon the waters he tore apart the Kraken.

4) When age had almost claimed him he passed
the Keys of Florida and saw the hurricane

tearing down the ships to splinters, bearing down
the timbers to splinters cast upon the waters.

He dragged the ships aboard the massive Tuscarora
whose mast could touch the other side of sky.

They weathered well the storm and after the
ships were laid out upon the water Stormalong
tended to his boat.

A wind, last gasp of the hurricane caught up the
sails of the mighty Tuscarora and he found himself
transported to the other side of sky.

5) Who knows but that he’s sailing still
beyond the corners of the moon, the sails
unfurled forever to catch the winds that forever

run and flow outward from the world we know
to all the ones we don’t, like the worlds
that children make when the wind sings
of where she’s been. June 18-20/11.

THE BALLAD OF JOE MAGARAC
(An American folk hero.)

The final curtain fell and a sword slung
in his hand, no, not a sword like some
tarnished knight but a hammer

to drive the steel with. Joe
Magarac upswings the hammer
and brings all labour down; man of
iron building an iron world about,

patron saint of the iron workers who
dream in steel, who think the thoughts
of metal. Yes it is a final curtain

for what is left about when all is rendered
rusted, even Joe Magarac’s last and final
triumphant shout. June 18-20/11.

Elene

ELENE

(“When on a mission of revenge
dig two graves.” Confucius.)

Prologue

Til all the stars are one and the mountains get worn
away in time, til the skins of the waters recede and
the mountains get worn away in time ever will there
be the passing of the shadows, from life to unlife then
back to where they first began.

Til the worlds are taken apart and put back together
again and a new strand of logic has made shape to
Creation different than it was before the shadows will
come and linger, and the shadows will fall away again.

For the monsters that we’ve become we are and we
never notice the harms we are doing because we would
be doing no harm, even as we become the monsters that
we are.

The dead and all their jealousies return, lost empires
and peoples all uncovered are, and so no action
becomes unwritten and no sin uncommited, and the
narrative illusion is wrought that this single day is
greater than all others and this one pain worthy of
a billion tears, which is true even as it’s false.

Shimmering in the heat of the black midnight sun
I serve my needs and my needs serve me til eventually
I am only able to see daylight and darkness, which
never comes.

East of nowhere I hear a hierarchy of voices knotted
wickedly in my throat, for as I am their audience I am
likewise the only performer left in this tragedy of
inconveniences, this tragedy of voices lost, never to
be heard again.

There is a woman waiting for me somewhere til the
terror is taken from off her throat like a spider’s bright
venom from a septic wound, and she need love me
no more.

And the ships that sail the sands are boarded by the
damned who damned themselves by seeking an end of
things, and no matter the times that the wheels have run,
no matter the times the stories are told we take from
them what we had, what we are, and imprint on the words
of others the thoughts and recollections of ourselves.

Thru the gates of our skin the briar-men, the briar-women
pierce the recognitions of past atrocities upon us, til
we are compelled to act for the scales unbalanced are;
thus revenge is first made.

But no matter the vengeance upon them they all feel
satisfied to inflict vengeance upon another and soon
enough are they returned in time to the nothingness they
once were, til only their shadows remain.

1) The Story of Thampton Marsh

A lyrical arrangement runs thru all things, save death only.
Swifter than lions, swifter than eagles, swifter than thunder
the world moves, creates, but when a thing is destroyed
God Himself must weep, for I surely weep when a thing,
anything is destroyed.

And yet every system in existence is imperfectly run,
and everything has its flaws. Born in corruptions, born to
die, and yet before death all things rot, collapse, or they
altogether cease to be as they were before.

She was the jewel in the crown of mankind; then she
was taken from me, for her final fatal knowledge has taken her
away, her final fatal knowledge has swallowed her whole
when Caenus, the tyrant Caenus, destroyed her soul.
Let me tell you how it happened thus.

The woman I speak of was my wife you see, and I am
Thampton Marsh; you have not heard of me? No I imagine
not, for I have been to other places and seen vastly other
things. My wife; ah yes, her name was Elene, and she was
very beautiful and we lived in a nice part of the world and
never bothered anyone.

Of course there were always wars and problems and disasters
but we never got involved, though I always wept to hear
when something was destroyed.

I was a scientist of sorts, as was my wife, investigating the
other places, the other hidden depths of spaces, trying to find
the means and ways of making everything right.

And when I say I wanted to make everything right
I mean I wanted to find the way to prevent all things from
falling apart, to save all things as they are now, without the
chance of ruin or decay.

On our street, on Trinzade Street, in our basement we worked,
she and I. The brownstone was solid but never solid enough
for my tastes, but Elene thought nothing of that in time,
for everything seemed well, and the disaster had not yet struck.
Still I worried, I always worried that things would not last.

We worked on the gate between the worlds. It is a strange thing
to tell now I imagine, the thought of two scientists working in
the dark, fashioning a gate to other worlds. I wish we had been
wrong, but I never was.

On the twelfth of August the door was finished, and on that
night the door was opened. There was a flash of perfect light
and then Caenus wandered thru.

I can still imagine what the tyrant looked like; rough and dark
and covered all in scars that had too long healed. He wore, or
rather she but I will explain that detail later, leather worn smooth,
and carried a strangely runic blade. He screamed and without
warning cut my wife in two, cut her down the middle
without a second’s thought.

I screamed, I cried, I lunged, and I was bludgeoned til everything
went dark. When I woke the man, woman, creature was gone,
and the lights as well. I ran upstairs, ran out into the streets
crying and screaming but Caenus was not there, and I was alone.

Then I quieted myself as I had done when I was a child and my
father locked me in the closet and I heard my mother screaming
from the blows that he inflicted; I quieted myself and the cold
thoughts, the clean thoughts without taint of emotion ran thru me
again.

I was alone and it was night. The stars looked down as they always
had but I knew that in another trillion years they would be no stars,
no worlds, no anything, and I had to prevent such an apocalypse of time.
My wife was dead, the killer either here or had somehow returned
from whence he came.

I imagined, but how can I describe it, the cold certainty of my anger
at the injustice done to me. Yes, to me, for my wife was dead
and I was alone again, without company, without companion.
Nothing of her was left now for me.

Think, and so I thought, and realized I was a fool; the killer must
have returned from whence he came. I turned my steps back to
where I had been before, walked down the steps to the basement
and focused all my energies upon the gate.

I knew Elene’s body was there behind me but she was dead and
I was not. You might think me heartless, but I was called worse,
called monster and coward, and when the bombs fell
I know they called me much worse when I hid in the muck
and mire while so-called good men went off and died; but I
was here and they were not.

Yes, the gate still worked, the shimmering metal, the razor-sharp
metal still was warm to the touch, and I knew that my quarry
had passed back to whence he came.
I opened the door myself and I followed him of course.

Part II.

On the other side of time there was a world. Later I would be
told it was called Thanalia, but there and then it was just a golden
place, all things tinged bronze and gold, from the grass to the sky
to the very rivers and oceans. But the sun was black.

In fact the light came not from the sun but from the world it
seemed, and I learned much later there was no such thing as night
here. I had expected my foe to be there waiting for me, but there
was no one, no one at all.

So I walked. You may well wonder why I just choose a path
and placed step before step in that direction, but I had nothing to
lose you see, for the gate had closed behind me and there was
no going back. So if this way was wrong I’d have
a lifetime to correct that singular mistake.

I found myself cast against a city, surrounded by grey walls which
scaled upwards forever, and there seemed to be no door, no gate thru
which to enter. And downward swept the wind, and a woman
was riding on the wind, and smiling spoke, but I knew not what
she said.

She was dressed in slender veils and seemed always to be
smiling, and her skin was luminescent and translucent as the air.
Her eyes were the eyes of cats too long sated on the wealth of
mice, and her hair was brown and black mingling into white.

Without warning I was carried upward, up past walls, over them,
and downward we fell to the city below. Then was I carried
over streets and towers which hung suspended upon the very air
itself, carried to the center, to the palace I later learned, of
Baalis, the King of Spring.

It is such an odd thing to relate, but all this is true I promise;
I saw a man slender as a reed tending to flowers that hung upon
nothing, and upward cast his gaze as I fell before him. He
wore no crown, seemed a jester or a fool, but his eyes were
her eyes, and his clothes, although bright and garish,
seemed tailored for royalty somehow.

My clothes were brown like a banker’s and my eyes darker
than the world was gold, and my hair did not shake across my
shoulders as Baalis’ did. He spoke, in perfect English, though
later I learned that beings such as him knew all languages in turn.

“Mmmmm. Human. Odd to be here. Where did you find him?”
She spoke in her language which I did not understand.
“See.” He rubbed his fingers against a nonexistent beard
than grinned ear to ear as if I were a joke, or some perverse
mockery of sorts.

“You’ve known loss.” He said finally.
“My wife was killed.”
“Ahhh.” The open balcony upon which we three stood seemed
almost to lean outwards farther across the cacophony of space,
as the towers, spine-like towers moved back,
giving the impression of the world receding away.

“Mmmm. Nothing. Not even the slightest tremor?” He asked
himself, and I realized he had made the buildings move and
had expected some reaction out of me.
“Who killed her?” He asked finally.

I described the being to him and he seemed more and more
pleased the further I went on. “Caenus.” He said finally.

“Who is Caenus?” I asked.
“Mmmm. I’ll tell you her story . . .”
“Her story?” I asked.
“As I said, I’ll tell you her story if you do a favour for me.”
“What favour is that?”
“Kill the bitch.” He said.

Part III.

I didn’t need prompting, but I did need help. I was given
a sword, (these people seemed to love swords too much I
thought,) not nearly as nice as hers but nice enough.

Baalis lent his knights to me, knights of the air they were,
and I later learned each thousand knights were normally
governed by a single air-lord, a single prince of the air.

We rode across skies without measure and I never questioned
not once the reason Baalis would give all of this to me.
We found Caenus amid his armies, great lumbering beasts
without number and into the fray we fell, I fell, clutching
my sword I attacked the one who had taken my wife.

He had been watching all of the time, Baalis had been.
It had amused him to see a lone man fight against Caenus,
amused him to see a few of his knights, but only a few, die
on a mission so righteous, so pure, so banal.

Caenus did not feel the blade, could not for he was invulnerable,
and the sword did nothing and screaming his curses at me
attacked, and the knights all fled, and I closed my eyes, and
I thought of nothing but that I had failed.

2) The Story of Caenus

I was a woman once. I was a servant to the four rulers, the
four who governed the world. I was the servant of Algarn,
the Winter-King, lord of all waters, ruler of a thousand lords.

Thanalia was the meeting place of the four; normally we
stayed upon our own world, a world of perpetual snow and
ice, in the palace of Cascadeum.

The world was named Edira, the world of my home.
Algarn was the master of all things and no one ever questioned
him or sought to ever question him, and the frost clung to his

beard and his eyes were the eyes of the storm. But then he
look his fancy to me and raped me upon the snows and in
mocking asked what now I wanted and I cried and said

I wanted to be hurt no more. So he changed my shape to
a man’s and made me invulnerable to pain, unable to be hurt
by any blade or weapon, and then laughing went on his way.

And in rage I sought justice and went to the courts of the
others, to the courts of air and earth and fire, and pleaded
with them for justice.

I went to the Summer Queen Eliswayla in her world of warm
bright days, went to the country of Aylindra, but she turned
me away. What did the life of one matter when so many

were left with her to play? I cried out to the grass of the
fields but the fire-knights just mocked and said, under their
breath, they couldn’t help me or else into the ovens they

would be sent. Then to the Autumn Queen Athaliah and
her gardens of flesh, for she turned those who displeased her
to stone, hardened the minerals inside their bodies to stone,

but let them live, or almost live. She seemed unimpressed at
Algarn’s attempt at destruction, she wanted to show me
the best ways to break a soul, but then I was unimpressed.

And Baalis the King of Spring seemed almost apologetic,
but what could air do against ice or fire or stone, he asked,
to which I had no answer.

Then he whispered to me half heartedly about a certain blade,
soul-ripper blade cast asunder in some other place, and if I
wanted to kill Algarn that blade I’d have to take.

I spent many years in search of the blade, passed beyond the
veils of the worlds which I had known. I never once questioned
before the tender mercies of the cruel, but now that I was

hurt I questioned so much in turn. And when the blade I found
I found with it an army, all the outcast and misshapen ones,
all the broken ones the rulers had let escape to find their own

solace in their own misery. And we came home from out
the void and the war was waged, and with the blade Aurokeis
I slew many of my kinsman, and Algarn himself appeared,

and with the blade raised aloft I drew down his life to him,
only to be swept away, thrown to some other place with a foolish
man and a foolish woman staring blankly at me.

I could have stopped the path of the blade; I did not. How many
years had I wasted only to be denied so utterly by a fool’s
incompetence. I killed her and the man screamed

and I knocked him out cold. Then I turned again to the gate
and tried my best to open it, but when I had succeeded Algarn
had escaped.

The battle ended with the blood of many warriors, and we
turned and wandered back, into Thanalia, out of the
frozen wastes of my now exiled home. Upon the

blight-lands of Thanalia we plotted and we waited
and then the day after the battle I saw the air-knights coming.
And in their lead and before them all the fool came down to

me, out of the clouds and out of the winds the fool came down
to meet me. He had a blade with him, the blade of Zuaruj,
the blade that is given to those about to be slaughtered.

He struck and struck and finally I struck back, and for the
second time I silenced him, but he did not rise again.

Then we moved on, and now without the hindrance of the
fool I turned our army back to the world of Edira. And when
we faced again Algarn the blade I held within my hand

shimmered and seemed ready, and this time the blow I struck.
But nothing happened, and seeing the blade as useless as Zuaruj
Algarn froze me to the spot, and my army he annihilated without
a second’s thought.

3) The Story of Algarn

Smiling he went on his way, smiling the ruler of time went on his
way, mocking me the King of Winter for being finite, for being
mortal, and mentioned in passing the ship that sails upon the sand,
ship of the damned, and told me I too would be seeing that ship

in time. And then to make the point come home to me he
beckoned to my manticore, the beast whose life I shared, and
snuffed the creature out, then bowed and left Cascadeum. I
turned and I ran to my brother and my sisters but found too late

in passing they had all been changed. Athaliah no longer had
her enfield with her, the beast of foxes, eagles and wolves
who was also half her soul. Eliswayla too had lost her basilisk
and suddenly the Queen of Summer seemed colder than I was.

And Baalis that old liar, that ruler of the air, he hardly seemed
changed but I knew the change was coming when his chimera
was lost. And slowly we began to change and twisted we became,
and I am becoming twisted now. Suddenly the thoughts come into

my head of the things that can be done with the power of a god.
Suddenly, all too suddenly there is nothing left to keep me from
doing all the things which I must not. Suddenly, all too
suddenly nothing stopped me anymore, and I raped a servant

and cursed her because I could and she could not stop me, and
nothing it seems can stop me anymore. So she raises up an army
and as my lords and ladies are slaughtered I feel nothing but the
joy and hope of seeing more decayed and ruined, killed and

decimated. And the blade in her hand slashes across my face
but I feel nothing and without a thought I take her life away,
eliminate her invulnerability and undo the curse I made.
But in time the winds don’t answer, nor the waters nor the

ice, and I call to my brother and my sisters but they have no
new advice. And the ruler of time is laughing at the making
of his device.

4) The Story of the Ruler of Time

There were four rulers who governed all the seasons, Algarn
of winter with the frost clinging to his beard, Eliswayla of summer
with the fires of the sun pouring from her eyes, Athaliah of
Autumn the woman with the demon’s face, and Baalis of Spring,
sometimes called the shadow-lord.

And who am I? My name is Elene, the ruler out of time.
Yes, out of time as well as the ruler of time. You see the greatest
torture is time and the inability to use it, to spend eternity watching
eternity unfold. And no I am not the villain of the piece
and this is not some rant against immortality.

I have watched Myrrdin of Nowhere struggle
against the disease which claimed his wife, his people, his very
world as he survived. I have watched the brothers Talthus and
Vemthys, one immortal and forever, the other bounded by
a few years only, spend those years together,

til Vemthys shared half of his eternity and gave
it to his brother, so each would live in the other’s company.
And I have seen ghosts, the ghosts within and the ghosts
without, whole worlds existing in the blink
of an eye, whole worlds remembered only

by the mayflies and the souls of seconds lost in
passing. And no matter how great or how
powerful we all must face our ends, but some feel the
need forever to push off back to where they’ve been.

There were six rulers truly, not four you see, and I am one
and the other is Zyylemira, the Wood Queen. Thanalia is her
world, while I, being the ruler of time exist in all places
all at once. There are no people there, no knights,

no lords, no Kings and no Queens; they don’t
exist anymore. Only one left is Zyylemira and her
garden tended to by life itself. But the ghosts refuse to
leave, in fact they convince themselves that they are alive,

and no matter what I do it never changes. So one
time I take their counterparts anyway, to try to prove that
they are dead. Instead they just abuse each other as if the
pain’s enough to prove that they are still alive.

Other times I bring in those from other worlds, like Thampton
Marsh, hoping that another lonely ghost will prove that they
are no more real than the dreams of dust.

But instead he gets caught in the fantasy, and after he
is “killed” he will come back, find some new way to
avenge me I imagine, and I will try again and try again
to wake those lost souls up. But time is slipping away and
I haven’t time enough.

5) The Story of Zyylemira

They were all betrayed by the very treacheries they made,
by the very traitors that they were, but I remained, I remained
to watch. I wonder what it feels like to be a traitor to what
you are?

I tend to my
garden sometimes, and sometimes I go for walks, walk past
the ruined cities with walls all torn down, or walk upon the ///
frozen wastes of Edira, now reduced to just a swamp.

Sometimes I try to remember and sometimes I try to forget
and sometimes I just scream for hours on end. I make up
stories to pass the time, try to tell the stories differently
than how

they really
were. I create out of the past the halls of the goblin king
or the scorpion women of the lost moon, or try to imagine
the fluttering of vampire’s wings, soft as butterflies.

Sometimes I think about who they were before, all those
ghosts haunting their own pasts, wonder what they were like
when they were flesh, or if they even remember how they
really were.

It’s all an
anti-predatory cycle of revenge I guess, because no one
ever really gets hurts and no one ever really learns. You
can’t take the leg of the whale when it’s taken yours.

“Hello.”
Who said that? And I turn around and see a little girl staring
at me as I’m tending to my garden. “Who are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She says. “Well, come along with me

then, okay?”
“Okay.” And we go along the shore by the ocean of sand
and the sand ship is waiting and she gets onboard, the
first ghost ready to go home, and live again. “Can

I give you
a name?” I ask the little girl with strangely staring eyes.
“Sure, why not?” “I think I’ll call you Elene,” I say.
“What a pretty name,” she whispers as she disappears

and the ship with her. Well at least
one was saved, I think to myself.

Epilogue

The overarching themes of jealousy and revenge are closed
for now. A simple question before you leave the page I pray;
imagine a complex course, insanely complex, paths divided
and diverged again unto infinity itself.

Now imagine a man who has run that
course time unto time, struggled and struggled and continues
on as if there is no other way. And all at once, out of the
nothingness he is given the chance to live, only to find

it such an easy, simple thing, without the complex
moves he has been taught does the man finds himself lost,
or does he find the path all the easier now? Now imagine a
god before his birth is given the same

innumerable paths, only to awaken out
into life and find a simple road. Would a god know the road
were easy if he had been taught that the road was hard?
Revenge is always harder than forgiveness my friend. June 23-24/11.

Book 116

THE SHIPS

(“Can ships safely sail the quicksands?” Seneca.)

I. My words are my life, my life the words I write,
all to be destroyed every night only to be created
every day, memories and thoughts, hopes and all

our myriad despairs and I despair even as I measure
lifetimes in pens and pen strokes, and blank faces all
innumerable in the crowds.

II. Survival is in the eye of the beholder and I survive
even as I die with my eyes open to see things that have
not been as the shadow-ambered pool drowns the very
seconds smooth and indistinct.

III. And in my words I have been written down and the
mirror that reflects all things seen and all things unseen
reveals met not at all, not even once showing me to

myself. Grim and tasteless words they were, grim and
tasteless words to lead them on with a song or pass
along without a song to my very name and a cold

hatred as it burns the world to ash burns me also, til I
learn a scrap of words, a scattering of less than songs.

IV. And they cut into one another’s flesh by speaking
words of love to something other than they are, or to
nothing at all.

And we take it up those wearied thoughts all worn
smooth and indistinct for the fear’s worse than the pain,
the fear of having nothing left

to hope for and nothing left to do like the
dreams of statues frozen in the moment of a loss.

V. And this sinister design is surely blind as one despair
is furthered by another and much as one good day in a
lifetime of sorrows grates like very rough scales of bark

and ashes I am caught surrendering to the throne of the
mountain king whose mountain is made of thoughts I
have not made.

VI. We gather the sum of all good days to obliterate a moment
of sorrows then turn and march again, pressed and folded men all
in a row, til then they are no more. And this secret behind

my demoned eyes never truly leaves me amid the milk
softness of days and nights, for everything that is has its
opposite, even that which does not exist and we are

defined by our opposites in a country where change is not,
even that which never was for half of all we are exists in the
shadows of thoughts and moments lost in the midst of all but
that which might have saved us at least, or most of all.

VII. Where your beginnings are I am and where your ending
is I have already been for everything that has a beginnings
must inevitably have an end, only to begin again and all things

are then eternally renewed, and the boundaries of order
and the boundaries of chaos are one and the same I find.

VIII. When I am old and my sins are old across two worlds I’ll travel,
when I young and my sins are young across two worlds I will have
traveled. All existence is caught suspended like amber in a

jewel-ambered eye, a jewel eyed fly regarding all while
comprehending nothing at all, the last insect left barren and
alone though never realizing, no not once that she is barren and
eternally alone.

IX. And she has no eye for beauty like the night, a crimson dye
about her obsidian brightened eyes while the wind caught her like
a string of sand then wind threw her fitfully away again,

scattering her across the garden ground of edens no human foot
has trod upon and no human foot now ever will, and still the thirsting
lands cry for water nor never fire no matter how near the fires truly be.

X. The ghost who beckons me is not death though surely she must be
some other ruined thing and still I clutch after her where God has
walked eternally alone, delicate bones in the leg broken

neath the shadow of an alien, unseen wing, and the songs, broken
jeweled songs of a woman with a crimson dye about her obsidian
brightened eyes as delicate legs in the bone are broken

by their reflections cast against a world alien to our singular
understandings. It is a private little genocide of my very own
to kill myself by populating the worlds with children unconceived,

lovers never met, enemies never breathed to being, or friends never
introduced as anything but strangers, lost faces lost amid the crowds
in cities cast like strands on the tapestries of unremembered dreams. June 1-14/11.

WATER LONELINESS WAXCHILD OF MINE

Water loneliness waxchild of mine like the rain witch in her
autumn town surrounded by an autumn land of lost, perpetual
memories turning upon the scent of hot milk weed wine

as the peacock kingdom is shed for a moment’s passing time with
neither memories nor dream nor reality to climb upon our backs
and wear smooth our thoughts as glass in autumn climes.

And people made of paper fear all kinds of weather as a bronze
chess piece and his bride slouch toward the red pyramid of Xauljiria
and the Trickster of Trahlure, that old jester plays chess

against Yiyi the spider with his king and queen lost upon a
sandship leading outward where the lords of shadows gather with
the lords of iron, where the princes of Mars retire neath the watching
eyes of Saturn’s lusting queens and the crimson ruins of rust

sheltered by the rain witch in her autumn town as the pyramid
slips away, sold to stranger hands which have held eternity and more,
and long still for the same.

And a sarsparilla strahman smokes his pipe of human bones and
watches as the summer lands unfold outward like a plague that
has no lasting name. June 3/11.

THE INFINITY MACHINE

The infinity machine is a machine so old no one
knows who built it or from whence it came
and of all the things that I was thinking,

that my life were once a shame fade from me
for I have this task to labour for, this truth to find. Now
no matter if I triumph my life’s the triumph that I find. June 7-16/11.

MOMENTS IN TIME

We create moments in time that never were,
imagine possibilities unexplored til a
single life becomes a labyrinth of meanings,
of twenty trillion paths leading forever

forward and back, crossing against itself til
one man become the sum of all ideals and all
depravities in the self same breath.

Sheltered in the shadowed expanses of the moon,
sun and stars man is alone neath the iron wrinkled
sky and the doors of Egypt thrown wide again

divulge but hourglasses, nor can they once reveal
a waiting second lost in sacrifice on the lips of
desolate men lost in the sacrifice of a no man’s land
between all possible hopes and all despairs.

And again and again the ghosts of our own futures
scream at us, shout “go some other way, all you
have done must lead to ruin as I’ve seen it now,

in the future as yet unwritten, unseen or unremembered.”
And every time a new path we take there is again the
scream that will not stop because all paths are equally

cursed, but still the future still unsatisfied, copper-brittle
thoughts mired like the symphony of the guns, for I am gone,
never to return. So go home and be unsatisfied

by all punishments disproportionate to their crimes lest we
change our lives and repent upon the justice done to us.

Relax your arms and see who your legs will carry, what
kind of man you’ll be without the cold comfort

of another man’s gun. For we lose ourselves not in the
labyrinth but the sheer, sure logic of each step perfectly
in place, while the future regards us all without a trace
of anything but scorn. Let the future scream,
and be as you were born. June 3/11.

THE OVERLORDS

1903 and Calthira sits, she sits and her name is caught on the wind,
Calthiran names gathered to gall; Calthirana I have also heard her
called.

And the Overlords from out of time clutch after her but cannot find
a single strand of days or nights she has spent between their borderlands
and Azarana that old spider weaves her burial shroud for wars as yet
unwaged and now are but the shadows of grimmer fates as yet unseen
and unobserved.

At Candle-mere, at the lamp lit time Calthira with her lustful eyes,
her savage mouth, her sister’s life and hers trapped in the self same breath
together beneath the skin and there upon the church’s step she mocks the

sentiments of lesser men by having them all look to her nor ever
think of Him. And the minister to cry and weep for Baaltheroph where
the temple of Nurygz led slaughtered enfants all to be so slaughtered,

but never once are the voices heard to weep for my son amid the wars
and I don’t know why, I’ll never now why Calthira is still alive nor the
Overlords dare take her out of time no matter how hard they try.

And I received the letter today and my son has a wife, a girl named Tleyela
from the province where he was stationed and I tear the letter up, try to
forget the shame, then wonder again, oh how I wonder in this world who’s to blame?
June 3-9/11.

I FLIPPED MY CAR IN TENNESSEE (Title by Nate Guimond May 28/11.)

The crimson fair is over now and I to homeward tread.
I rest my head too soon and the car slides from my grasp.

In a tearless haunted sleep I feel away and lost all sense
of where I was, or where I had been. In the afternoon
quiet of the midnight worlds

alien and strange this life of mine becomes as the true
language of hell I find written on the bones of hills and men.
Yet invisible I could not know from whence I came and

death but death plays no favourites I find. It is an equitable
trade I think to haphazardly lose a life once gained by letting

slip the wakeful hours on a road homeward bound in any
case, in any case I’ve found. June 5-6/11.

BEYOND THE PALE OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS

Beyond the pale of other human beings but the sad brief
games of demons in mockery of themselves, a hell not
of their choosing or a heaven equaled of all they ever were.

I’ve got to race against the sun sometimes I fear and let my
lips brush against my fingertips the choices that they bear,

else I am naked as the worlds upon the page, naked as the ink
dried and twisted to a shape it did not intent to make. June 7-16/11.

WHAT SHE TOUCHES

What she touches she destroys and so
she kisses me, and the earth cares not
who owns it.

Rule governed all things are lost in the
seeming nothingness of the night.

Rule governed even society is destroyed
and in its wreckage all things returns from
whence they came.

And the greatest revenge is to live well, even
when dead, especially when dead, and the earth
cares not who owns it.

And which the worse conceit, to watch the fools
in all their ruin or shut all eyes to ignore them,
as if they never were?

Eternally caught is night’s child and what she
touches she must inevitably destroy even as she
kisses me and I am lost

in the seeming nothingness of the day,
but not the night, lost in obscurity. June 7-16/11.

EYES ALIVE WITH SUCH LONGINGS AND SUCH HATE

Eyes alive with such longings and such hate as no man can describe,
empty of all meaning in the end and every day the same I find again.

Worn smooth by the very centuries themselves a single smile becomes
a mockery of stone or a soft word broken to coral splinterings.

Soft and hard and light and dark, shifting and shimmering like water
in a pool memories turn upon themselves til all that remains are eyes
longing for all but that they cannot see again, except in shame. June 8-9/11.

THE BEST THING I CAN DO

The best thing I can do is leave you are you are
rather than to interfere at all and make you into
something you are not.

A man I knew made a private little holocaust
of his very own and I could not stop him in the
ruin of his family and you I cannot

stop, either, in the ruin of yourself, yet you will
endure and with you I will go, memories of myself.

To drink your beauty up and swallow it down and
take it down into myself and never breath a word
that you were found; such things I hope
for in my dreams.

I’ve shifted my weight from off my shoulders
finally in the end, weight of all your love and all your
longing for someone else. There is a loss of being

when we are someone other than we should
have been, a satire of misspent mockeries

wasted in the knowledge imperfectly reached that
we are not now what once we might have strived to be.

I can despair of all I’ve done yet never despair of
you. Harsh laughter, harsher smile is all that
you’ve rewarded me. June 7/11.

A WAR OF SHADOWED SQUARES AND LIGHT

There is a war of shadowed squares and light, a war
of absurdities, a satire and a mockery of all that
we’ve achieved
and it is a satire of manners, hopes
and fears where shadows too they must of course be
claimed or take of us a portion of
ourselves.
A layer of light upon the upper parts of
trees and the lower part awash in darkness dreaming
and yet the foundation gleams and burns
even of night
which must ever support the pillars of the day.

Stirring like serpents in the shadows, writing in their
circular-crimson ways, but we are all the same I find;
we are all the same.
And the sage resolving secret
things shall find his answer cast back at him, oh the myriad
of those secret things! Razor fine blades
of hands and eyes
nor cell adorned with
strange and varied mysteries shall keep us from the reflections,
the naked reflections of ourselves,
the least of which is
knowing what we are,

and she has gone again into these secret days, the serpent mother
of all mankind, shadow-mother of dawn’s last smile, all too
soon consumed in ice.

And all shattered upon the grass is a wayward humanity
lost alone even in the company of twenty billion souls and
we are all strangers
even unto ourselves.

Existence is composed of sand sculptures decomposing
by the ruins of dying suns in countries of lost daylight, ruined
without a single sound. June 6/11.

PIECE OF METAL

Piece of metal caught in the reach, those slender
fingers of time, like a man of brier thorns,
like the scent of roses dying, like the pyres of shadows
upon the edges of the magic, serpent magic when feet
don’t touch the ground; oh what a terrifying world
to be so trapped from!

I think like a spider burning in the gardens of the night
in the city of swamps, in the mire and the slowly
rotting towers all collapsing in the searching of a name.
In love’s laboured requiem some lust after gold, some

after fame, some after all that is denied them. In Jajis
Dalijia, in the obsidian gardens of Ro-Shalijajis the
shadows stopped to die, lying naked upon the dawn, in
Jajis Dalijia where I have also gone to finally die.

In the shadowed deserts of Waligydia women, their flesh
of amethyst retire against obelisks made of human bones.
Beside an ocean all of amethyst I shall take no
stock of my feelings anymore to know, for yet to know

an obelisk of human bones lies buried neath the sands of
jewels which were once women but none realize it now.
Shall I forgive the earth for being such, being the

dust of souls, the dust of lives, or echoes of worlds
before, obliterated in the fires of dying suns? What
obsession takes me now to know, to hope I can forgive
myself at last of all my failings, corners never righted,

minds never ordered, thoughts never cleansed of humanness
or wantonness or want. And who am I to know of God, of
law, of anything at all, standing beside an ocean

all of amethyst, each of those I loved or those I’d
known who know me not, or perhaps they never did. And
what revenge is this to never know the acts we imagine
committing and later will forget because we fear an act

undone, leading outward to the sum of all other actions
in their turn. Imagine a family wracked by tragedy lashing out
against another kith and kin, two strands devoted lovingly

to the misery of each other and imagine now a single
life so spent upon its self same ends, to end itself in
ruin, so lovingly. What is revenge or obsession or the
thoughts cast haphazardly on the ground that life is not,

simply that life is not as we are forced eternally to drown. June 4-5/11.

TWENTY WAKA BY M. DAJABI
(A French Canadian from the 1850s.)

1) A weasel crept on
the path and challenging my
patience would not
leave. I play Ayljan to pass
the time now when you are here.

2) You are gone away
from me Shaystra looking glass,
crimson gaze and crimson
haired, lover of my
son, how I wish you never were,
so he would grieve you not.

3) A flower blooms and
pushing thru the street
up-heaves all thoughts of
a secure, unchanging world. How
I hate you.

4) Hands were never clean
when touching her, but he now
simply will not stop
and I cannot make her leave.
I feel defiled by her being here.

5) A fire burning in
the middle of the night and
the duty of the fire
is to cleanse my son of thoughts
for her, sound of her voice.

6) Alylijha, her
daughter so lovely, her one
daughter too lovely;
why can’t she go away, why
can’t everyone leave us be?

7) And now my son is
gone away; I don’t know why.
Haven’t I proved they
love you not? Don’t leave me all
alone. Who am I without you?

8) Rough hewn Xalul has
taken off, my lesser son
is also gone so
I haven’t even a replacement
for the good one that I had.

9) Drowning in smoke I
remember Shahadria,
princess of bright water,
how I wanted her to want my
boy; what a boon for me!

10) I’ll take my vows, go
to some monastery, surely that
will prove I’m right to
them. If I am righteous still
they’ll have to agree with me.

11) I’m going on the road
to Tharazaria so
that I can ask alms
from the poor. At the place of
infinite sorrow I’ll make my
sorrows more.

12) All upon the road now
regard me with pity; I
can’t see why I’d pity
anyone and Shanlia
is smiling now at me; I don’t know why.

13) Sliding toward some
mediocrity I imagine
I was a better
mother or they were better sons
or I had no sons at all.

14) Shanlia the nun
keeps whispering now
to me upon the road
I haven’t traveled before;
what is she always saying?

15) My sons sends a hand
written letter; they will be
wed despite my best
intentions. How can he
break a mother’s heart?

16) They love you not, they’ll
always love you not even
as I love you not for
dare betraying me by
loving someone I do not approve of.

17) She dies, they die out
upon the sands, or so I dream
at times when I’m alone.
And they should know I love
them all the most by hiding my
face from theirs. And from their ghosts.

18) Jaljisakua
that old liar has said
and I have heard it so
my boys are gone into the
pyre; that they are dead
and I’m alone.

19) I’ll grieve them not
but that I’m now alone.
I had two sons I loved
but they loved life more.
Upon the road I call out to them.

20) In Zalraganix,
city by the emerald sea,
city of coral I saw
my boys, wanted to cry out,
couldn’t; they’d always been
lost to me. June 3-9/11.

STUMBLED BACKWARD ONTO GREATNESS

We stumbled backward onto greatness as
a grenade, a private little holocaust of meaning
worn smooth as the hourglass I think and empty
all of a name.

On lapping seas of silken wine an obsidian
sharpness clinging to it, the scent of bitter vines.
Serpent blind, no scarlet blind all existence

is caught suspended in the moment of eternity and
then snuffed out before it ever was.

Into a sunken pool all of light man shall dwell
in the house of God forever and ever and curse
the thought of such an ignoble fate.

And the magic of the place is all undone and ruined
now I fear, the magic of the place be lost, that
place we all have gone to before we were ever born. June 9/11.

I SAW SOMETHING

I saw something but I’m not exactly sure what it is
I saw, the moth devouring time, the king of the moths
and the summerlands take hold again I fear,

all green vales like ribbons running round the
edges of the circular wheel of time as the spokes
run themselves forward into me and I am impaled

upon what I have seen, but I can never
tell what it is that I have seen. June 9/11.

A LEGEND SELDOM TOLD

It is a legend seldom told til now
that Soketh, that priest of a vanished faith
left behind the tokens of his love for all the
gods which he had named by cutting himself

apart and leaving him scattered as pieces,
echoes or words upon the wind and sky and air.
Thus it was that language was first born.
Thus it was that profanity followed after. June 9/11.

CALTHURA REVISITED (Pronounced
either “Calthira” or “Calthura.”)

And the muck and mire are gathered round
and the earth is breathing softly without a
single sound and the mirror smooth faces
gather, always gather and with their songs
invisible and barely heard they tell of worlds
undone and ruined and redone again as
Gates are opened to be closed and universes
cut off from one another til even a single
song becomes the legacy and impetus of twelve
times a trillion lost mythologies. June 11/11.

THE TOWERS BASALT ON THE STEPPES
OF VOIENAR (Also known as Vohenar.)

The towers basalt on the steppes of Voienar
and there on their thrones sit the wasp wings
green, malachite green or sometimes gold,
and all becomes a predatory design, the final

embrace of predators throwing themselves
against the walls of time and bruising
themselves upon the stone-ward glances.
And then the world is lost in fire and in fire

we both must drown, burning and drowning
all at the same time as the black continents
grow outward like crystal or arms longing for
a lover’s touch and the seas freeze fast, seas

of acid frozen and upon the haunted sand ship,
the burnished spider ship they are hunting all
the same, hunting for the wasp kings upon their
thrones of human sins and beyond the unseeing

edges of our sight a Stranger walks nor stops but
to gather up the predators and lay the predators
down as toys might be so placed in a cage
un-glimpsed by any til the lens of perceptions

are altered and opened wide, as in fire they drown. June 11/11.

THE SHIPS OF VORNAS

And the violet clouds lie scattered and the ships of
Vornas come and the gas giant, the vast sleeping
world notices not the children steeped upon it,

noticing not the violet skinned riders of air and wind
with their four wings, four slender arms, their black
obsidian eyes nor their duels with blades of bone,

and still the wind rushes on heedlessly into night
and still the riders come and blackly dance til even
the clouds vanish without a sound, and left in the void

the ships race on, hungry for less even than a name. June 11/11.

PUNISHMENT

Can one be finitely punished for an infinite crime,
can an infinite act of vengeance, an infinite genocide
be rewarded by a time bordered on one side with an
end even to the crimes one’s made, even as those

crimes infinitely cascade and rob the universe of
some perfection taken in the actions of a single one?
And if he gave us hope and then took that hope away
would that count as a crime infinite in scope, or if

perhaps he murdered all those that we loved? The
question is not of hell my friends. The question is of
forgiveness for all crimes are infinite in their scope,
all actions reverberate down the corridors of eternity.

All that truly matters is if you can lay your griefs down
and place a border ‘pon yourself that you may live again. June 11/11.

MASNAVI

On the isle of Taliz the grasses flow and mingle with the
shadows and gold stands alone, witness to the murder
of opal and obsidian.

And Cahtnir, gentle Cahetnir, what shall become of you?
Kehleyra loves you not even as she loves herself.

Xalajhis is murdered upon the grass, a blade within her
grasp, yet no wound upon her body save hollow, vacant eyes.

And what of Enyrhadou, what of the executioner of Myhren?
He trembled and he fell even before the guillotine.

Ariadne is dancing to a lapwing’s song and Tjsatus looks
on lustfully, even as the girl’s blind still she so looks on.

Alijhas Gonjal has painted the isle of Taliz and there she
sits, a silent witness to the carnage of the grasses murdering
even the stones themselves. June 11/11.

AT NETHER-MERE, AT NETHER-MERA

At Nether-Mere, at Nether-Mera an incomplete anger
gripped me and I beheld the towns all dissolve away
and in a malachite coloured suit the bankers all went

to gather up their wealth in all their counting houses,
the forests all stooped low to gather all their tresses and
the love-lost women gathered up their beauty lying

upon the eyes of older men. Yes the towns are all
dissolved my friend at Nether-Mere, at Nether-Mera,
and Caleb Wintersong is all dissolved with them. June 11/11.

IF IT’S ALIVE

If it’s alive I can kill it,
if it’s dead I can make it worse
but against the laws and mores
of men what chance have

I? Even a barbarian is civilized
compared to the likes of them. June 11/11.

PASSENGER TO HELL

Passenger to hell,
passenger to oblivion,
passenger to all heavens
all unnamed at least.

A machine has caught
a child, lonely as a child,
the machine has sought
to find their pain together;

each other’s flesh they knot
together,
passengers to hell,
passengers to oblivion,
passengers to all heavens
all unnamed at least. June 11/11.

IMMIGRANTS

And Ixalthranis
came from Zelganix, came to
the fields of Canada, an alien
and an immigrant.

And asking why the trees
did not shimmer crystalline
it was explained

that trees here were
not made all of diamond flesh,
and no they never sang in
the rain either.

But they sounded good all
the same, rustling and sighing,
and I explained
that’s
the sound we all make far
from home, which he was making. June 11/11.

PLANETARY ROMANCE

Send the Harvesters down,
all block-like and grey,
to take a few specimens up, but
the Harvesters never come back.

Send the Dominators down,
all guns and spines of teeth,
to take a world for us. But they
shall never return again.

Send the men down; no,
never send them down. All
lush trees and forests, men given
such a luxury is this after centuries

on ships in boxes grey as corpses.
No, leave the planet all alone.
We’ll claim another one instead. June 11/11.

AND WHAT IF THE QUEENS REBELLED?

And what if the queens
rebelled, the boards all
undone, knights and
bishops run and kings

make their allegiances
with their shadows? Whose
to say the victor in a war of
sexes where sex is not,

just a satire of manners with
an audience of giants mutely
staring on and peering down. June 11-13/11.

XALALIA

Nerh and Ner’iha at the city of Xalalia,
duelists, with their pistols drawn and
all their bullets fired.

And the serpent-crow
perches on Xalilulix’s shoulder and
makes a wager that none shall win

or be the victors on the ramparts
of Xalalia, stone towers in their

seas of dust carved of human
hands and bones and thighs. June 11/11.

BLUNT ANIMAL COARSENESS

Blunt animal coarseness,
the mantids curl and
worship in their sleep,

the war in Willow’s Square
undone, peace restored but

only in dreams, as the mantids
curl in worship as they sleep. June 11/11.

ALL BLOOD DRENCHED ON
A SOLITARY GROUND

All blood drenched on a solitary ground
and God was silent all the while.

All solitary on a blood soaked
ground upon the road I have not traveled

on. I had two sons and now I have none,
I saw my dead boys upon the streets

as if alive and turned my face from
them. And God was silent all the while

and the footsteps showed that He had stopped
upon the road and would not walk again. June 15/11.

CLEAR GLASS SEAS OF AMETHYST

Clear glass seas of amethyst and
waxen wings of glass my lover wore.

Gripping the ground with feet too
bruised to stand and I a man of glass

imagine that we are all the serpent born.
Loved and yet unwanted Neksis feels, and

the air’s so clean you can never see
it properly; she drives me to the ground.

Death taken out of the world flies away as
my lover flies away, without a sound. June 15-16/11.

NALDYEH

I was raised on your exploits Naldyeh,
that you battled the warrior Le Shu
at the ravine of Duaghern,

that you set your ship to sail to
the silvered moon itself or even beyond
to the malachite-obsidian drenched world,

which is but a stepping stone to the
Paradise you were about to step upon.

But remember Ahalya her husband turned
to stone; sometimes the worse punishment
is no punishment at all.

Do not step to Paradise and
leave me with but your exploits. June 15/11.

CURSE OF THE SCORPION WOMAN

The difference between chance and incompetence
is when you accidently step upon a scorpion in the
dark as opposed to

slapping the face of
the scorpion woman as she is about to utter a curse
upon you, the woman who already doesn’t like you
very much. June 15-16/11.

A LUC BATH (A style of Vietnamese poetry.)

And whose to say an end
for me has come, a bend upon
the road broken still, gone
forever as I am thrown down to
the fate of one life so
that I may go into my one
path, one way, one now gone
never to return, become some new
person, some new man, thru
some miracle she knew, woman
become what she wanted when she began. June 15/11.

THE ENFIELD (A heraldic beast.)

The shadow-shrouded sea and the
Enfield with her lupine tail sweeps
down the stars,
her eagle claws catch
up the very scatterings of days and
dawns, and in the mask
of Reynard
she gazes cunningly on the machineries
of Creation haphazardly cast about.

No wonder the old bards dared
not sing of her; who were they to
her but echoes of herself? June 15-16/11.

THE LOVER’S PLOT (“And
hatred keeps their alive.”)

And the lover’s plot and the wife is killed,
but afterward, ah afterwards? And what
happens then; a marriage, seeing each other
sick with the flu, children, maybe children?

Never dismiss hatred as a motive for love.
Had the lovers never killed her I doubt they
ever would have separated as they have now. June 16/11.

WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE DAY

Within the confines of the day, of
a single day at least many paths are
opened, til night closes all the doors. June 16/11.

THE SOLDIER’S SOUL

Brink on the edge of nothingness; still
he presses on. And the obsessive eye
is surely, terminally blind, the eye which

can never see the battle’s lost. And he
slows and stops and dies; the soldier’s
soul. I wouldn’t have it any other

way for him. Awbray has what he wanted
most. And me, I have the revenge of seeing
him. June 16/11.

THE DESERT MOON ATOLL

The desert moon atoll: I look upwards and see
the sands peer down at me, mock my pretensions
of being less than sand.
I look about me at
the streets, the faces all innumerable in the crowd;
imagine it a desert and I am gazing
past the ground, upward to the skies
where I have not yet been found. June 16/11.

ROSALIE

(The following poem is composed of the best lines
from the poems of Eric Mackay Yeoman, a Maritime
writer born 1885, died 1909.)

1) Rude monuments of Chaos from whose sides
tinged far away with gloomy amethyst gush snowy
streams whose foaming liquors roar to gaping
caverns full of night and

pour to verdant plains afar in pearly mist. This is
my universe and my frail heart is center of it where
ghostly morn-mists flee chartless, pursuing wraiths
of reality, a luring void.

I stand upon the edges of eternity.

2) Would you be fairer set in pomp of thrones,
form adorned with wealth of cunning lands?
Purple from Chios decked with Indian stones

graven by deft Egyptian hands or thy brown
head crowned with gold the savage sifts from
desert sands where the Gryphon dwells,

hands enriched with gifts of Arab perfumes in
Red Sea shells in woodland guise, blue gaze on
the west a lily flower in my hand, upon thy breast.

3) Where in the kingdoms of wan
flowers the rich verdure hides its
wealth against the creeping shadows’
stealth as a cloud comes wandering from
the west stolen from magicians of the

skies, its magic smokes of violet hues burst
to violent gold chased with lost forms and
vanished eyes I found some potent witchery
from all the wealth of perished days.

4) Cold-plundered Earth delight her
bowers fashioned of milk and faint
vermillion’s blush and chosen scent find

sustenance in my eyes thru all the green
haunts of the stately wold where the simple
heavens descend shrill riotous with winged

things’ harmonies, til I alone commune
with miseries. And Spring’s straying odours
sicken all my sense to a narcotic chaos of

despair, songs frantic with ecstatic care;
my heart is weeping-ripe in me chilled to
a withered thing by sorrow’s frost.

5) From bright palaces beyond the west
earthward with quiet splendor spread on
high from far stations in the dusky sky
and a seraph band of friends she lost and

mourned. Do snowy angels haunt thy
crimson halls, lingering from their lands
of long delight, looking purely to the rosen
sky to smile again with thoughts of destiny?

Rapturing the world entrancing flowers
sprang like lips all ruby-dye that dwell within
our native air unseen beneath whose graces lie
the beds of forms gone into dust and death

which blend with the faint west-wind’s sigh
a dirge for life that perishes unseen. Sing a
requiem instead for the laughter of
children, crooning mothers and the
love-hushed tone of red-lipped lovers.

6) And spread my feast of soft tranquility,
a promise of abiding rest and this shall tell
the fable of my days, the fabric mingling of

joy and anguish in kingdoms that were
but vanities to spoil and overthrow amidst
the wreckage of their themes that life is but

the ruins of our dreams. So fade, fade
wan flowers in the dusk cold shades! The
world was fair in perished hours. And some

earths blighted were, some were stolen away
by angels gathering for their paradise and
some we nourished not no more to shine upon

our voided eyes like faint frail flowers that are
the night-wind’s prey, to grace rich bournes with
all your soft delight. Fair things ne’er perish though
their wanderings be far and strange; and you were fair.

7) On the lofty loveliness that lies
in high sweetness of thy fragile grace,
in the pale blue beauty of thy guise,

thy shape and painting all so delicate;
or like a desert-girt oasal bower or
chemeric angels out of Paradise some

new-known wisdom holds me separate.
I look upon thy beauty’s mystery for as

I hold thee in my caring hand new things
of earth and heaven I understand.

8) A mist lies on the twilight sea;
it forms a bridge til thoughts be changed
to dreams. The fiery sun’s departing glow
with warlike glory gleams and the last
red embers die.

Then with the dying of the day
the bridge of dreams across come vision
airy as the mist and we see the joys of other
days, the sorrows that are past and through
them all how Nature’s hand

shapes out the best at last. We see that
though the passions rage the soul that scornful
of life’s scars strives for calm, like that of stars
that shine like the mist above.

9) I wandered sadly by a shadowed sea
as darkness triumphed. My soul was kinsman
to the sleeping night.

A wind came wandering o’er the deep and
passed me with a plaintive lonely sigh
wending onward moaned and seemed to weep
as though it had harsh troubles, e’en as I.

For if man’s zenith were to-day would life be
worth its trials, worth the pain and mortal life
if but a preface brief, a discord harsh, to
make our after-life more sweet?

10) Kingdom of the west thy million
azure domes of wood and prairie sky
may throne his kin in generous homes
pure spirited as are thy snows,
harmonious as thy water flowers
sons soaring as the wings of worth
lust-burnt for lofty Virtue’s spoil,
strength driven emperors of earth
eager for plunder, young empress of
an earth renewed follow thy mountains
to the skies, and gazing in their footsteps
scan the message in the flower that dies
til tranquil paths of love may lead
nearer to God and nearer Man.

11) We have wandered where beauty lies
mongst purple violets dancing on the leas
and lakes like silver mirrors
searching the wild rose in her costly guise
and mingling with the sun’s gold radiancies
that shone upon the painted flower seas
from out the heaven-girt cavern of the skies
that lay across our pathway, all unseen.

That withers wantonly and scatters their
needed kith to fade awhile and darkly languish
on thou wast a flower chilled in summer time
Frail with its beauty, strengthless with its grace.
Thou wast a flower in an unnative clime
that Death upgathered in his wild embrace.

Did angels hear the moaning of the skies, their
waiting lovely shapes and gentle eyes grieving
for our throes and gentle Jesus heedful of our woes?
But let my heart weep for its dark distress when bright
remembrance haunts its emptiness, weep for
these tears, but joy that joy is thine.

With couch of carven gold and amethyst
ornate with Indian stones that brightly glist
and gleaming walls encrust with jewelry
nor cell adorned with splendor,
myrrh jars gemmed with rare pearls
gorgeous mist or chiseled ivory vases
of time no heart to let the fair endure
with my rose-blooms and milken lilies pure
and thine own beauty most of all.

And give her to the spoiling earth’s embrace
and she shall lie upon a hateful bed and the
white beauty of her sleeping face shut in
with Destiny devouring a loathsome banquet
of her clay and but a little mete of dust shall
stay of all her store of beauty and delight.

And thou shalt mix with earth and air and
sea when my elder footsteps lead amidst our
pathways in the flowered mead thy form I
worshiped in the silence of the tomb; shall she
not save thy spirit’s rarer bloom?

O’er troubled spheres where flickering planets
flare and dying suns emit their pallid glare ghastly
mists enshroud and mock where hurtling stars crash
and rumbling space forth-vomits worlds that blare
and roar through stagnant gulfs while shrieking
whirlwinds join their hideous flight.

But I dare believe there is an azure land where
bloom our dead in beauties all unthought
with senses new they endlessly employ
to know its pleasant life and deathless joy.

Where bursting suns impel their crystal blaze
and snowy flames into the cosmic haze
above the zones where painted lightnings
flashing and battling cast their gorgeous
flames in vast displays yet beyond where young
suns hold their sways while worlds swirl round
to drink of virgin light.

I have a faith there is a kingdom fair
where tho art watching with flashing eyes
companies of angels that uprise
with splendors in the tranquil air
chanting songs of love that never dies and
bliss that springs eternal everywhere
and weaves a rose-bloom in thy dusky hair.

Seraph hands masterly cast your roaring
trumpets, send a joyful thunder out!
Scream violins in ecstacy and let the sons
of God send forth a shout to swell the mighty
pealing triumph rout and shall all heaven with
crashing symphony mark the pearly dawn
and writhing silver smokes that there appear
a glistening majesty draw near with God
her guide and Death her charioteer.

I have a friend that shall control my wanderings
with her soft angel hand and feed my heart with
comfort and mix her tears with mine and
soft console my spirits haunting woe she
shall watch beside me and in my need ward me
with her snowy wings and lead my footsteps gently
to their goal.

And she hath vanished with her sable hood
and filled her drinking-cup of ebon wood
at lightless eyes that gush their opulence.

The hollow withered earth shall burst
and with it all the ponderous sphere
round busy suns that hang in air
their potent nourishment shall be dispersed
and shadowed unto ruin with the life they nursed
in kindred wreck the sepulchre of worlds that shall
survive to hold the quiet reign it held at first.
My shapeless soul in its immortal course
what ruining hand of time shall find a prey
in me, Kin of the Builder, summoned to its Source?

Thine eyes are closed to earth’s harsh tragedy. Fate
hath called her child away and she hath gone into the
peopled skies, queen of a heritage in Paradise home with
her spirit’s kin that earth kept hidden from her trustful eyes. June 5/11.

Cassandra

CASSANDRA AND DELILAH

Prologue

And I hear the ministers singing all those twitting hymns of theirs,
of God in His heaven, and there is the sound of war and the soldiers,
and the guns and the nightmares on the run, as uncertainty overtakes
the human soul.

And prophecies, why they litter all the streets, the thoughts of
ruination and destruction, and everyone is holding tightly to their
hats as another threat overwhelms like a passing storm and after

when they are proven wrong well then the prophets all exclaim
how it wasn’t really their fault because after all they were trying
their best and who has any right to believe whatever they have to say?

And I am caught by the thoughts of it all and taking pen and paper
try my best to tell a little prophecy of my own, when God once fell.

Part I.

1) Her name was Cordelia and in the world was she born. Given all
chances she found none and given all hopes she lost them too
for the poor girl with her golden hair and gold-bright eyes could
never see ahead of any moment but the moment she was in just then.

For when every child is born they gaze ahead of them and see the
future all spread out, each moment caught and studied, seen and viewed,
and nothing that they ever do can ever skirt that path they’ve seen
and even after death they see ahead, know the heaven awaiting them,

or the hell. But not so for her. When she was born she actually cried
instead of how silent children were and had to be taught number, letters,
words and phrases instead of knowing all such things instantly, but no
more than this. It seemed that she had stumbled backward into greatness

though, for she did more she then be told what to learn, she learned herself.
Snake blossoms in her hair were put there by herself and she taught herself
how to do such things, to imagine the sheltered expanses of the moons and
stars and more to the point she asked questions.

In class, for children still had to go to school even though they knew all
things at once because they had seen themselves in school they had no choice
but to go, she would ask questions and the teachers could not answer for
they had never seen themselves answer her.

In fact her mother and her father often could not tell they loved her for
they had never seen themselves tell her such a thing and yet they moved
because they saw themselves giving her food, teaching her things, acting
as they were supposed to act, and afterward they saw hell awaiting them,

but because they could change nothing, neither act nor thought nor word
it barely bothered them, because they didn’t know it was supposed to.

2) Her name was Galdisana and she was a classmate of Cordelia’s and
when she was eight she saw herself about to hit the girl, but couldn’t stop
it for all such things were writ in stone, and so felt nothing bad about it,
for she couldn’t help herself.

And so Cordelia hit her back but Galdisana had never seen herself be hit,
and at the moment of impact her memory of future things dissolved. Or to
be more precise it changed a bit, and suddenly she couldn’t gaze ahead.

And screaming now is heard for Galdisana now is screaming but no one
can help her for they have not seen themselves so help her. And Cordelia
reaches down her hand and Galdisana shoves it away on instinct and
knowing it is but instinct knows not what to do next. Thus their great
rivalry was born.

3) And Maximilian Cuthberg gets up every day and has his coffee, pats his
daughter on the head even though she’s know sixteen, kisses his wife
goodbye and goes to work. And the feelings too great to ever be ignored
well up in him, but he hasn’t seen the feelings grow against him, and in

his office types and types and never makes a mistake unless he was
supposed to and he never once proclaims himself the man of the green
wood, wild man of the woods, never once says that the parade of scorpion
men are walking through the colonnades of Karnak with the stone temples

and black pyramids far behind them, but those thoughts like scars still
linger and no matter how fast he is supposed to type it never seems enough
and thinking of three things, four, five all at once he begins to wonder why
he is typing words he never learned to understand.

And at night he goes home to his wife and Galdisana, the daughter that he has.

4) “The roots of the world are dead tonight,” so the preacher says, and looking
up into the eyes of God somehow expects something there. But God answers
not because God is expecting someone to answer Him and as no one has

seen themselves ever question God such questions never are asked and
because God can see no less than anyone and everyone can see all things in
turn He never stops to question once Himself.
“The world is littered with the world’s unconquered dead but the Maker
of all things stands still upon the floor of the world, floor of the world littered
with the world’s dead, the roots of the world are dead tonight . . .” And so on

he speaks for he has no choice but to speak nor never can he ask God in his
throne to stop for he doesn’t know that he is supposed to. And God never
answers him.

5) And the ocean swells and falls and the tide of humanity rises and comes
to its end but the ocean is still the ocean all the same, and it weighed fitfully
on her mind as the she grew, as Cordelia grew, to learn that when the dreams

are given skin than the dreamers will have none, for in her life all seemed but
a dream, and all were the dreamers lost in turn. And she read books she never
saw before and learned things in ways that no one else was able to

and imagined the cold lands, the barren grounds of places she had never seen
and never could have seen, and had her parents the strength to marvel than
they would have marveled when she told them of things that they too had

never seen. And she would sing, for no one stopped her, and talked of a
paradise of scarecrows, parade of raven masked scarecrows carved of bones
and who was there to stop her, to call her, to even know her name unless it

had been preordained? And when war came and nations clashed and perished
then she took her parents away, dragged them through tar and blood if needed
but they could not go any other way for they had never seen such a fate for

them; instead they saw only the fire, the gun, a hell awaiting. And nations
fought for no gain and soldiers learned to shoot before they ever left the
womb and when they died they died to go to hell or heaven, but they never

had a say in it, and never knew they could have dared to speak. Piles of flesh
in a row, tatterings of flesh, parchments of bone and a closing down of history
for what is history if no one can ever unlearn what has been, what is, and what

is surely yet to come? And the war cost much and Cordelia cried and wept
and her parents never saw that they were supposed to cry, so they never did. Yet.

6) And in the halls of infinite grace God is able supposedly to see trillions of
possibilities and all at once choose the right one for His own ends and the right
path for his chosen creation.

But amid the tide of eternity, tide of humanity, tide of oblivion all consumed
in blazing white light even while the world was nestled in the hem of God’s
garments He still seemed so unsure, so blind of everything, even as approached

the unhurried pace, the soft slow footsteps of Death. And he is there, Death
is, in every city in all the world and she seemingly on ever street corner, the
shadow of Cordelia, and all is slowly now unlearned by God in His heaven

and none know why. And we are all mourning the loss of one we could not
ever really claim and I despair of all I could do, all I was for I was one who
contended with the very stones themselves, to no avail. I always won for they
could be nothing other than stones upon the naked ground.

And hidden in the wings of God is none other than God Himself.

7) Dead on good living the man spent ten years going the wrong way, eating
and never stopping for he never saw himself once stop. Music, memories,
faith, reason, hope, all of these things were never given once to him and

so he sought them never. And one despair always furthers another unless
alleviated by hope but what hope was there for him? And for every step
forward there is always a backward step, but for one who never saw the

chance even a bottle of miracles, a place of wonders, a feast of sorrows
could not be enough to change the man. And between the infinite complexity
of everything and the finite resources and simplicity of one lone life, between

those poor benighted fools all in a row on some battlefield about to die,
pressed and folded men all in a row til then the slaughter started, and this
one here avoiding all, saving himself at the cost of all, even if one pushed

him into making a mistake that he could never really ever walk away from,
still it wouldn’t be enough. And yet when he died he went to heaven and they to
hell, not for any sin of theirs or virtue of his own but only because they were all

made that way, and truth to tell they couldn’t seek to change. And if he was just
a worm before he became the man he is would that change a thing? And if after
death he spent eternity in empty white rooms with nothing to do, no not even

eat, but just wait for time to end, and they in hell left to wait in red rooms for
something to happen, even torture or fire, but this too never comes, no not once
to them. And that is the only difference between heaven and hell; the colour of
the rooms.

8) And money moves from hand to hand and seems to have a life above the lives
about, for even as they cannot act it acts, spreads and thins, collects and channels
itself like a living fire across the whole of the world. And every coin and every
piece of metal moves and passes and uses them all like beasts of burden

but they can never have nor hold unless they’ve seen it happen yet, or at least
know that it is bound to happen, and so the money moves and travels and never
once complains, for like them it knows not how.

9) And one day Cordelia tried to breath in eternity or failing that like naked
upon the ground, and noticing a heaven round about she went to take a look.
For heavens and hells were left at odd angles and odd places

by God and everyone looked and knew where they were but
no one dared explore them while alive for none had seen them ever
do such a simple thing. And so she walked into the white rooms and

asked people what they were doing there. And one said “before my eyes
constantly is death and before his eyes constantly is death, and death lingers
after me in this place.” “So what’s the point of being in heaven?” She stopped

to say, to which he had no answer. And on it went, soul after soul speaking
of death, but being dead themselves it seemed a pointless exercise so
Cordelia threw a few of them out, bodily, to the streets. They didn’t

quite know what to do with themselves for they had not seen themselves be
thrown from heaven’s reaches. And of course they could have simply walked
back in but they hadn’t seen themselves do that either and

so there they were, white robed souls on a street corner, uncertain
what to do or how to act. But Cordelia was still bored so she went next
door to hell and did the same to them who were lying there, bemoaning

Death of all his graces. “Now what are you going do?” She asked them
all, but of course they couldn’t answer. So she simply walked away.

10) Where the shadows go to sleep eventually and angels on the far shores
howl eventually for me, where the worst thing that I could do to you is leave
you as you are, that was where Cordelia made her own destiny.

Galdisana, partially freed was trying to kill Cordelia again but being only
partially freed could never figure out how things couldn’t be seen before
they were seen, and so all her plans dissolved to schemes that she would be

utterly sure of, and of course nothing is truly sure in the life that is unexamined
of its own future. And in her usual fashion Galdisana failed to exactly perfectly
aim the gun which would have hit the knife which would have hit the wine

bottle which would have released the cork at Cordelia’s head, which would
surely have killed her, or so Galdisana assumed. After Cordelia’s meal at the
restaurant was over (which was free because no one stopped her from just going

in and taking what she wanted,) Cordelia noticed her nemesis once again.
“Give it up,” Cordelia said. “I’m bored.” And so she walked away. But
Galdisana followed her and tried to kill her again with an even more
convoluted scheme I won’t get into now. But as she was walking away

Cordelia tripped and fell and hit her head and almost died. And while almost
in the realms of God she saw Him arrayed in all His splendor and asked “what
am I doing here?” before she fled away back into her body, no

thanks to the paramedics or the strangers who passed her by. And God
couldn’t give an answer. But at least now someone asked the question.

Part II.

1) Old sins have old sinners attached to them but old virtues are always
held in the possession of young men or young women. But even a little
girl in time’s reach becomes a crone all too soon I fear, and Cordelia did

die although she was not supposed to for another century at least. And that’s
where things got interesting. For she went to heaven but decided she didn’t
like it and left. And Galdisana who had also died followed her, because she

didn’t have anything better to do. And watching the world unfold it seemed
an army of the crowds were all becoming but silences themselves, just
shadows on the grass which cut the feet of dreamers as they pass, but no

dreamers were passing there. So, being dead and not really caring Cordelia
decided it was time to leave earth for a while and see what else was there.

2) She rode in a dragonfly spaceship which she had to build herself, with
Galdisana’s help. There wasn’t anyone else. And off they went, past the
limits of the earth, past the moons, for there were a few around, at least two,

and decided to go somewhere else for a while. No one expected that some
one else was following Cordelia out. Not even the one who was doing it.

3) First they journeyed to a world of ice where great winged beings dwelled
and pointing out to them that there was more than ice or blackness many
decided to leave with them, with Cordelia and Galdisana who grumbled

constantly. Then off they flew again and found a world of only clouds, cloud
lands of the barren ground and the crimson winged harpies sailed themselves

across the infinite white, blinded to all else, till Cordelia showed them. And
there was the world of great jungles, the jungles and the jaguars of Zatarajia,
and in the giants’ silver city where no one lived Cordelia took photographs

of the ancient ruins. And the angels on the far shores howled and the
harpies turned silent all of a sudden and turning to face them suddenly

Cordelia all at once asked their names and they were the names of the people
which she had known, all of them. And turning suddenly to face Galdisana
Galdisana just shrugged and didn’t know what to say.

And his oval upturned smiling face appeared
and M. Hequa introduced himself to them.

4) “A practiced hand am I,” he said, “at changing things. Sorry for the
delusions child, or illusions, but I don’t mind telling you that you gave
me quite a fright, leaving earth and all, after all I’d done for you.”

“And who are you?” Cordelia asked. “Why I good child am the evil
one.” He replied, and smiled. “Sure you are, goodbye.” And Cordelia
walked back to the ship, with all the angels and harpies in tow and

Galdisana but following after. “Wait, I really am, and those are just
figments of your mind! I created them.” “They’re mine now,” Cordelia
said and bundled her angels and harpies all inside and left the jungle world.

5) After that M. Hequa wouldn’t leave them alone. He used to follow
from star to star and world to world but Cordelia didn’t take to the evil
one very well. In fact on many occasions she simply ignored him.

But one can only ignore M. Hequa for so long and so Cordelia finally
confronted him. “What do you want?” She asked. “Why you are my
vessel, chosen to unseat God and make the universe the way it’s

supposed to be.” “What if I don’t want to?” She asked. “Well you
have no choice.” And so she ignored him again, only saying once to him

before leaving “my eyes but follow where my heart has led. My heart
is not leading me to you. Get lost.” And what could he say to that?

6) M. Hequa tried to convince Galdisana to turn against Cordelia but
Galdisana already hated her for giving her freewill and besides as they
both were dead it wasn’t as if there was anything Galdisana could do to

Cordelia anyway. But again he pressed Galdisana til she finally tried
and had all things together to force the woman to the devil’s side,

only to ask at the end “What is the point again? I don’t see why.”

7) Wings are mine to hold and mine to ruin, wings and eyes and hands
all at the same time, and no roads have I but wings to tread upon, yet my
wings all are torn or ruined or there are simply none left to find.

Angels and rabbits, across the path I saw a rabbit as an angel stood
or would have stood in Eden, barring paradise to a few, to none, to all,
all meeting an uncommon end by being too common after all.

And don’t make the same mistakes, make a different one instead or
so I have been told, and they should know, who make them all in a row.

And here is my protagonist crossing stars and seasons, and Cordelia
doesn’t notice for a moment that I am. And I walk into the bronze city
upon the bronze world, wings all torn and tattered, an angel in all but

name, but she doesn’t notice me even as I pen the words I write, even as
I write of how she reaches a chalcedonyx world of blackness overarching

all else besides and M. Hequa claims that he can stop the blackness if
she but bows to him, yet never can I make myself write that she will bow
to him, and so instead the utter blackness now gnaws at my very soul,

in the bronze city of Knayria, upon the bronze world.

8) “Let’s go back home,” Cordelia said, and turning the dragonfly ship
homeward brought the angels and the harpies and the cancermen with her,
and because she would not bow decided instead to make illusions of her

own and so imagined great floating continents above the world for her
children now to dwell upon and great labyrinthine cities underground for

her children too to dwell in and imagined at once M. Hequa as but a cancerman
with the sum of all his sins upon him, til he had a talk with God. But he had
never seen himself having such a talk so she dragged him to the throne of

infinite grace and made him speak. But she would not play his game,
nor cause all souls some mad destruction, even as angels in other worlds

atop their plateaus built again great silver cities for the giants now to claim.
And that seemed the end of the story; shades of people she knew brought home,
God and M. Hequa forced to talk again. But the story was still not done.

Part III.

1) In the city of bronze, the city of Knayria I thought I saw Cordelia one day.
I sat and felt my shoulder blades where wings had been and there was Cordelia
with her golden hair looking across the great golden space between the temple

and the prison. And she was just walking by and all of a sudden she disappeared
and I don’t know where she went. And then Galdisana came after her, and I looked
next to me, hoping to see someone I did not know, but instead M. Hequa with

his oval upturned smiling face was staring now at me. “We have some
questions,” he said, and I nodded and realized that for me it already far
too late. My children and my shadows had come home to find their maker.
Yes, it was far too late.

2) “What do you want to know?” I asked Cordelia as she stared at me.
“Why?” She asked simply, to which I felt compelled to reply.

“The practiced pursuit of knowledge above all else I fear.” “Well that’s
no answer.” “It is for me.” The world, the whole world hung hollow
all about, and as it was empty save for me and them I felt free

enough to explain myself. “This whole world is empty you see
because people made choices and I thought that if I could imagine
a world or a place where all choices were made before that they

would be somehow happier than I was. If nations fought and identities
were carved in stone before anything terrible happened to them that
maybe it would be better.”

“What about hell, or heaven?” Cordelia asked. “What do I know about
hell or heaven, and what’s the point if no one has a say in the matter?
Even dirt is clean in the eyes of God, and I’m not God.”

“God isn’t really God.” Cordelia replied. “He’s how people see Him.
That’s close enough, isn’t it?” “So where is here anyway?” M. Hequa
asked. “I don’t know. I’ve just been here forever after

everyone else left.” “And you never looked for them?” Cordelia asked.
“I never thought to look, I never saw myself looking for them.” She
smiled. “I can think of doing that.”

2) Before they left I had heard stories, stories of Cassandra taken by the
knowledge of her own death and Delilah who felled the terrible monster
Samson and saved her people.

Those stories clung to me while I waited alone and here was Cordelia
making a story herself, even as I was compelled to write it all down.
And in her wake Galdisana followed and asked me why she had been

made to follow after Cordelia. “Someone had to,” I stammered out, at
which point she hit me. But I had already written that she would.

3) To go from Cordelia’s world to mine or mine to any other is not reached
by walking but only by force of will. I don’t know how she dragged the
others with her but soon enough she was leading us to go seek those who

had vanished long before. And could I say no to her? All I could ever
say was yes. So we left and she lead us out and first we retraced out steps
for every things leaves a trace and in the world I had made we yet found

no one that we sought. And trying to imagine them I could not save
as wings or words or eyes and then the bonds that kept the world
moving as it was moving slid away, and everyone, everywhere couldn’t

remember what was going to happen next. Suddenly heaven closed up
and hell with it and twisted into some other shape, suddenly God vanished
and M. Hequa with Him, suddenly no one save Cordelia, Galdisana and

myself remembered what the world was like before, world of my own
invention now utterly out of my control. And Cordelia’s parents came
and wept with her and I barely remember thinking that that might happen

soon. Then we were again off to other parts of other minds, to the isle of
women’s wanting, to the rain forests of Britain, to the maiden’s fair where
men were often left as the dreamers were left when their dreams were

clothed. And Galdisana changed during those wanderings and finally
simply walked away, which I could not ever imagine her doing, leaving
her fixation upon Cordelia and finding some centaur named Uther Laradei

in a world of ancient forests and knights of dragon scales. We sailed the
seas of black water and reached the isle of Uthaira where riddles scattered
on the ground pricked at our heels. And there are many other things which I

could tell, but I won’t tell here, until we came across Elagalus Markub Taji,
holder of the silver sphere, sitting upon the wine dust sand beneath two
suns, one of gold, and the other black.

And within the sphere weeping now is heard and the tent behind the seer
rolls back against the wind and he lays bare the questions of my heart
and makes me afraid. But Cordelia just rises up,

snatches it from his hand and asks him a question of her own. “Why did
the people leave this man? Answer me if you know.” “They left because
they were compelled to leave; there was no other reason but that.”

“But why were they compelled to leave?” She asked. “I won’t give this
back til you answer me.” “Because you might not be who you are. Because
no one is who they are. Because people can’t choose for themselves. And

because no one is there to choose for them.” So she gave the sphere back
to Elagalus Markub Taji, the seer of the desert in his tattered robes of coarse
hair and fabric, though I could not tell what kind, but before we truly left

Cordelia went back and took the sphere from him, looked at it carefully
then tossed it behind her back. And it cracked and out came my people, all
of them, all those souls who looked so much like the people that she knew,

and I felt myself compelled to speak and say “It’s like a fire inside of me
that must at once be let out or I must burn, the fire of writing all that you
do, all that you are. But how can you do what you do before I have the

chance to put pen to paper? You cannot be. You are burning way in the
middle of the night like lightning must from time to time.” And she
just smiled and I noticed the pen and paper were in her hand

and she asked me the question I could not think to answer though I
tried, I so ever hopefully tried. “Who are you? No, rather the question
is not who are you, the question is who do you want to be, now that you

know I’ve written all that you are?” To that I gave no answer as my people
were created from out the hand of the woman who had first created me. May 3-4/11.

Book 115

TWENTY ODES

1) And God created everything And Satan tried to destroy
in turn, and all things belonged all things in turn for none
to Him. So I belong to Him, belonged to him, nor nothing
and you, and all things besides. could be his. And I am not his
And Satan also is His creation nor you nor anyone, and yet he is
then. Satan too is His. the lord and master of the world.

But who am I and why do I exist?
Is God my father or Satan? Whose
salvation is mine to kiss, to embrace,
to hope for all these days? Why am
I compelled to choose between the
Creator and his own creation? May 12/11.

2) I have cried out to God and never I have cried out to Satan and never
received an answer out of His lips, no received an answer out of his lips, no
not once. I have seen the winds call to not once. I have seen the soldiers
their own children and watched the murdered on the blade bent winds of
mountains fall only to be born again their own consciences and viewed the
but never have I experienced such things. bodies stacked as cord wood, or ashes.

If I argue myself the servant of God
I prove myself the fool for believing
in Him. And if I argue myself the
servant of Satan than I prove myself
the fool for believing he exists. Heaven
and Hell I have seen from where I stand. May 12/11.

3) A woman weeps or yet a man and A woman weeps or yet a man and
still they cling to faith. Faith clings to cursing their faith curses all. And
God and what does God cling to I faith lost clings to nothing and what
wonder, what sets His mind at peace in does Satan gain by faith lost, even
the lateness of Creation? Does even He faith in his own existence? Does any
know? Does even He care? hope cling where there is none?

I have cried and I have laughed,
lost and gained a faith all of a kind
its own, and the memories of God
cling to me and the thoughts of Satan
echo within me, but who were they
and who am I now that I have none? May 12/11.

4) Why do we seek a God? Toward Why must there be a devil for
what action does He guide us by us to imagine Hellfire by? Why
seeking Him? What does God want must each criminal be possessed,
if not our worship, but why then give each sin the fault of some other
us the will to choose otherwise? evil thing, for it can never be our
Why does God despair we ignore Him? own? Why do we ignore ourselves?

I look for myself but never find
myself as I was before. I try to
imagine what God sees or Satan
knows but only come face to face
with myself and no one else. I
can’t ignore myself much anymore. May 12/11.

5) I tread through mud and watch Does Satan have to walk in no man’s
the sparrows tread through sky and land to be believed as the prince of lies?
imagine God made us both but I Does Satan need to scream and spout his
don’t know why. And a hawk catches monstrous talk or else be forgotten forever
her and I am caught and a bullet hit my as less than a sparrow’s cry? I close my
arm and I fall, and no one catches me. eyes and dream of what eyes have not seen.

We try to imagine the good but the
evil deeds of our lesser angels comes
through all the same. Is God our excuse
or Satan for the crime’s we’ve made?
Why do we fault each other and die
when our fates are all the same? May 12/11.

6) What has the thought of God done What has the thought of Satan
for us? We hope in all that we cannot done for us? We rise in terror
see and by hoping acknowledge death at the thought that beyond death
and accept its ending upon us. Is awaits the killer of souls to devour
that enough, the vaguest hope, the shortest us all. Does eternity care if a sin
breath between the finite and the infinite? is taken up or taken down?

Will I exist after I am dead and my
flesh is spent as coins at a passing fair?
Will I remain essentially the man I was,
or become an enfant, child, some other
form alien to all I can conceive of now?
What question least terrifies me the most? May 12/11.

7) Eden and paradise and the garden Hell and oblivion and the fiery
ground of eternity walked on by angels seas of burning souls, or the
and pure white souls. No tear is shed frozen wastes of Cocytus and
nor eyes left to see the death and here the demons walk and here
suffering of previous lives lifetimes the sinners bleed and spend all
ago. Is that payment enough for all the eternity paying for the little that
pain we’ve shed? they have done.

I have been to my own hell and suffered
there, nor turning back in my flight did I
stop to touch upon heaven where there is
nothing but peace, peace spent against the
weight of knowing what peace is not. For
peace is not life, nor heaven made for life. May 12/11.

8) We want there to be a God to We want there to be a Satan to
explain it all to us. If something explain something to us, for if
is higher than we are than all things evil has a name, has a face than
are not in vain, nor suffering, nor all things revolve around him and
hope, nor even death. Else we are no hint of evil’s taint is left to us
adrift in a sea of nothingness. as portion for the evils we have done.

We want to believe in something else
nothing is there for us to believe in. And
when all things are taken, all things are
left what is there for us, what portion ours?
Is heaven secure or hell made ready if we
are the makers of such things in turn? May 12/11.

9) Who is God? Is God to be found Who is Satan? Is Satan to be found
in wave and water, mountain, cloud or in fire and flood, in the trenches and
the stars themselves? Is God us? Are the mud and all the soldiers’ guns?
we the source of God, the creators of Do we need the thought of him to keep
the Creator? How empty a heart must be alive the hope that we are not him in turn?
to need make the maker of ourselves. Is his creation the making of our sanity?

In the end we are what we are. I
guess that proves as sure a point as
any I could hope to name. I don’t
know if there is a God or Satan
watching all but this I know, that we
are, for now and utterly and eternally
or not at all. We are though we are
or at least we choose ourselves to be. May 12/11.

10) War is a hard mistress and death Peace is a hard mistress and life
a harder one. Life is filled of sorrow a harder one. Death alone is full of
and nothing but death clings to it. sorrows, for it takes nothing with it.

Peace and war are ours to take and
sorrow and sufferings we have made for
no end, no purpose, save that they are. May 12/11.

11) The envious lion kills even The lands of cold and the lands
his own young to savour death of heat, the lands of desert and
in all its forms. Along the edges the plains where the grasses flow,
of eternal night it stalks itself. all these the dead lion ruled over.

Traitors to a cause that they don’t
understand mankind hunts and kills
and shatters even the mirror of their
own actions, as a killer would. May 12/11.

12) Actaeon ripped apart by his And now the gods lie dead
own dogs and there is Artemis and none remembers them,
bathing still, surrounded in the no not even the dogs they used
splendor of the hunter’s blood. to kill their masters.

Cry to the wind and perhaps the
wind will cry to you, or sing, or
call out the legacies of blood.
Though the wind is silent through
it all my passing love. May 12/11.

13) There’s a black barge of thorns Dissolving in the crowds becoming
upon the golden river, the sacred nile silences all themselves, but shadows
where all the souls must go when they of gold, of golden darknesses cast upon
have died. the deep.

Sing to the wind and perhaps the wind will
sing to you in the company of scarecrows
along the edge of silences I don’t dare speak
of, before dissolving in the crowds to become
a silence to myself. May 12/11.

14) And they who dwell within us all I forgive you of your treacheries,
have secrets yet to keep against the forgive you of your betrayals still.
thought of anyone knowing who we are. In the pale room what is left to forgive?

Who am I to know who I truly am even
in the company of they who wound me
least? Who are you, if not a beast? May 12/11.
15) Flight thru the lands of night and Day comes and passes all its
the fire clown waits to burn the day own, to its own end, its own
to ash. beginning.

What will come to us has already come
to face a day and a night forever in the
company of ourselves, in the company
of whatever gods we serve. May 12/11.

16) Ajad, and at Ajad the warriors At Ajaldria the women built
built the pyre for their kings and their pyres to sacrifice themselves
for their lords. in mockery of their husband’s lives.

All the collectors find are bones and
ashes, but I am sure a mighty empire
once ruled here, gone forever more. May 12/11.

17) I have nothing left to give except I have given all and still more
what I was before. And when even is left to be so given. All is mine
that is spent then I am lost to you and to spend on all I wish to spend upon.
to myself the most. Yet I am alone.

Money owes no allegiance to they
who use it, neither does time, life,
pain nor joy. We are spent of them
yet never are they spent of us. May 12/11.

18) Tired all my limbs fail of their I never rest nor never do I tire.
own accord and I lay myself down The whole of existence is mine
to sleep. to do with as I please.

When I rise I have no purpose
nor in dreams no purpose clings to
me. I am set adrift of my own self. May 12/11.

19) All we have done we have lost All we have lost we have gained
and I have died with each word said. and we shall gain all things again.
Yet I am not spent, nor God nor Satan. Even spent and lost with God, with
I am not dead though eternally dead. Satan, even dead I am content.

We rise with healing in our wings and
then we rise no more. The greater we
come the greater our losses come. Yet
even the losses incurred are worth the price. May 12/11.

20) In a shadowland life breaks down In a heaven no man can describe
and even thoughts of salvation fall away. Satan screams nor can he find the
Sin rises and sin dies and nothing is left reason he was born. Virtues cling
to believe in anymore. God does not smile and burn him and he is lost, so
nor laugh but remains as stone remains. utterly, terribly lost. And I sit and
And I am alone. I was always ever alone. comfort him and then I walk away.

Who am I? Who are you? Who do
you want to be now that you are gone
away from me, away from yourself,
away from everything you thought
you’d be? What will you do now my
passing love, my passing tear, my all? May 12/11.

THIRTY LANDAYS (A style of Afghan poetry.)

1) Don’t wake him for the he is tired and
I am alone my love. Let my husband sleep. May 12/11.

2) And they will never stop their cursings
for my birth but in the dark I curse them all. May 12/11.

3) Qasifyia is weeping for her son is dead and
we all comfort her in the dust of the morning. May 12/11.

4) At Jalalaban her body was torn and left by the
dust of the road, and we carried her to burial. May 12/11.

5) A drink of water and a few grains of sand and
only this is given to reward a daughter’s birth. May 12/11.

6) And the men they could not save left the bruises upon
us, for we lived and so many died, and we were blamed. May 12/11.

7) Prison and there she is left, twelve years old, for
being alone, and now she is still alone, in her cell. May 12/11.

8) Zlyura, poor Zlyura left in another land, land of
the dead for no one is left but her, and she is no one. May 12/11.

9) And the rags we wear and the weddings we attend are
all the same, revealing too much of the little that we have. May 12/11.

10) And if all men died what would be left for us but
peace and life and hope? Yes, what would be left for us? May 12/11.

11) Cry out that they may hear us, that the wind
may be left to carry our words to them, as curses. May 13/11.

12) A scar, a bruise, a dying breath, and all
these things are left to he who killed me. May 13/11.

13) Desert and jackals and bones. All these belong
to them, belong to soldiers as I belong to them. May 13/11.

14) So the knife has found its mark and he is dead.
Had I been the one to kill him there would be nothing left. May 13/11.

15) My daughter is dead and he is dead. And I am
grieved that he did not die sooner before he killed her. May 13/11.

16) Dust is but life for we are dust and my bones rotted
through become dust, as the soul of my husband is. May 13/11.

17) And the wedding feast is ended and the tears begin
again, and what is left of tears but sorrow barren of itself? May 13/11.

18) Qasipha has taken her own life, and now she is not even
given the chance for burial. Her broken mouth seems happy. May 13/11.

19) All the same we take her to Illyuran, weight her of our
grief and lay her beneath the skin of the desert, to be taken. May 13/11.

20) Our grief is consumed in the skins of stone, flesh of sand,
loss of life our grief is consumed forever by its very being. May 13/11.

21) In our life we huddle for fear of pain and in our dreams
the makers of our pain huddle together and then dissolve away. May 13/11.

22) And the imams speak out against nothing and the men
speak out against nothing for we are considered nothing. May 13/11.

23) Who will cry out against injustice if no one can cry out?
Even the spirits of the dead would cry if they could. May 13/11.

24) I have seen the sun bleed her tears as I have bled mine.
I have heard the moon sing her grief in answer to my own. May 13/11.

25) And there is the sorrow when a girl is born and sorrow
when a man dies. What is left when a girl dies, what sorrow? May 13/11.

26) It is all taken, all sorrow is taken when a girl dies and nothing
is left, no tears, no grief remain. It is as if the girl were stone. May 13/11.

27) If I had the knife and his throat before me would I take
his life? Would he take mine? All the answer that I need. May 13/11.

28) And the foreign soldiers come and they offer no hope
nor comfort either, nor knowledge even of who they are. May 13/11.

29) I sweep away the dust, sweep the bones away, sweep
even myself away til I am nothing and no one anymore. May 13/11.

30) My husband is dead and now I must follow him. At
the very least we shall not go to the same place after death. May 13/11.

HAIKU

Help the little sparrow
back into the nest of
the eagle. May 13/11.

Why does the man stare
at her reflection so? Ah,
he fears they will leave him. May 13/11.

Stronger than pain the
scorpion returns to the jaws
of the jackal. May 13/11.

Feel the wind scream?
It is because you were
born my son. May 13/11.

Fire is dancing upon
the roof of the man
who cheated me. May 13/11.

What will you give to the
child of night? A match,
a torch, an eye blind? May 13/11.

Ants swarm the corpse and
the priest’s wayward children
reward the monsters feasting. May 13/11.

And the child falls into the pool
of shadows and is lost til rescued
by the absent thoughts of the lion. May 13/11.

QASWYALE

And the boy was brought to me and strange he
seemed and cast weird shadows upon the walls.
But he was the last they had found and so I
raised him as my own and used my azure chitinous
hands to rear the boy, even as he slid from shape
to shape, as his kind so often did, and naming
him Qaswyale instructed him in all the things I knew.

My thousand eyes regarded him and wings I
used to teach him how to grow wings of his own,
and from tower and hall and cavern he learned
of the wars we waged, and through my thousand
obsidian eyes he saw his people murder and destroy,
and understood why he was so raised by me.

When he is old enough and ready enough I will
send him upon his own people to destroy them as
so many have been destroyed. But before this he
must know I am as a father to him, and he a son to
me. When he is sent amongst them I must go with
him. We came as one to stop the end of all things
and I would be a coward if I did not go with him. May 13/11.

XZYARIL

She was Xzyaril, and she was endowed of wings,
insect like and shimmering, and with her claws
she had already killed a man. So I shot and pierced
her skin, her skin the colour of steel, and when she
died I buried her, and she was the last of her kind.
And I, now being the last of my kind wondered
who had won the final war? May 13/11.

CORALALIA

She is Coralalia, what else can I say?
To call her beautiful would deny the words
I speak for no words can capture her beauty
enough. To call her wise, but how
can words be forged or engraved with
sufficient force to call her wise?
So all I say is simply this; she is Coralalia. May 13/11.

THE FATE OF PRESENT MEADOWS, ESQ

Empires come and empire go.
This is what you must know.
Empires rise and empires fall.
Empires do not rule all.

The words were etched upon a stele
we found in the desert and through
some mockery the translation rhymed
perfectly, creating the sing-song verse
I just relayed.

And what are we to do with such a
find? Of course we can bring it home
and show off the grandeur of a dead
world and a dead time

but underneath the poem, or prophecy,
I happened to glimpse my own name
staring back at me.

I think I’ll let this find be
lost and my name besides. May 13/11.

AMARJARGAL

And in the grasses Amarjargal is walking
and never knowing who follows her the
girl but stops and then is often talking
to the wind, the tall grasses, even the far sea

and the hoary head of the beast, the razor
claws, the shadowed eyes, all this she does
not see, but onward goes, onward for
she has no other reason, onward she goes

with her robes of fire-tinged crimson, her
hair of shadows and her eyes of gold,
ancient eyes that have seen all and where
all must lead, even into the jaws of old

beasts who will be devoured by the winds and
tides long after Amarjargal has left the dying land. May 13/11.

THE FIRE CLOWN

And one world was covered over in great seas
and the isles were isles all of the blest and the
people there were lovely and pure and none
imagined any woe of any kind.

And the other was a world all of fire and sand
and desert and the people there knew great
sufferings of every kind and in their torment

build cities upon the air and traveled from
one world to the other, to escape the flames.

And the Fire Clown who ruled neither world
thought to himself and in his mad genius cast
all those of paradise to fire and all those of fire
to paradise. And what then

happened? Why the fires suddenly cooled
and the oceans suddenly boiled and all that
the wicked touched died and all that the good

touched came to life and suddenly the deserts
became vast oceans and the oceans became

vast deserts. And whatever deities ruled were
displeased but the Fire Clown explained it was
no fault of his if the ships of fate were turned
in directions other than they supposed.

But being stubborn the god of righteousness
stayed in hell and the god of wickedness in heaven
and that is why no one listens to them anymore.

As for the Fire Clown he journeyed to Zuragulas,
the place where shadows are born, and told all

he met there of his jest and mockery of fire and
water, god, demon, woman and man. And all were
amused at the jest and he reigned among the shadows
a good long time, til time itself had ended and was gone. May 13/11.

ZARALALIA

And Zaralalia wrote the poem Immajinaria,
the poem of how one’s imagination once
it had taken hold could wield all things, even
life itself, against its wishes to do whatever
the imagination once commanded.

But being unreal herself Zaralalia was made
both slave and high priestess of her idea,
for it became her blood, her essence, and
from the shadows of unreality she forced my
hand to write what now is written here. May 13/11.

HAIKU

Who has taken the time
from my life? Whoever
it is give it back. May 13/11.

Betray not the sound
of your own heart beating
by silencing it. May 13/11.

And if the demon were to
possess me would I act any
worse than I have now? May 13/11.

Shades of light and thunder
mingle in the dark, as the
thief strikes. May 13/11.

Lost in the forest the wolf
howls for prey to come to it,
yet none ever does. May 13/11.

Lost in thought the artist
notices not the paint brush
ruining the portrait. May 13/11.

And the well gave water til
the farmer drew up his own
son’s bones. May 13/11.

Shadows dance upon the blade
the butcher uses upon himself. May 13/11.

Give all to the fire and the fire
demands still more, always more,
til you are spent, and finally gone. May 13/11.

And the sky weeps tears for the
wicked man to plant his garden by. May 13/11.

The deer never fears the archer’s
arrow in its quiver, nor the archer
blind to himself. May 13/11.

Blind to his own skills the
warrior challenges even the
mountains to battle. May 13/11.

Climbing upon the cliff face
the crow forgets she has wings
nor yet how to use them. May 13/11.

Into the stairwells of each other’s
skulls the dreams we have discuss
the meagerness of themselves. May 13/11.

Because of us the dreams are
meager things to cast nets of
hope by, slender hopes they be. May 13/11.

Who will face the shadow
of the lion? Who will then
face the lion itself? May 13/11.

Bring to us the breath of
God that we may mock His
lack of existence. May 13/11.

And the tower falls upon the
man who built it, all three feet
upon the prideful man. May 13/11.

And the law is read that who
so ever reads the law must die.
And so the law is never read. May 13/11.

A crimson leaf breaks and the
twig cries that she is robbed of
the chance to kill the leaf herself. May 13/11.

And the road goes in either
direction but still a man can
only take one. May 13/11.

Why does the raven sing when
none care to hear her? Why does
the poet write words left unsaid? May 13/11.

Crookedly the wings are left
and broken the eagle is mocked
by the sparrows about him. May 13/11.

And soon enough the pride is
left of having cheated even death
til Death returns the favour. May 13/11.

Soon, all too soon the seasons
give way to themselves, unmindful
that they ever were. May 13/11.

ZALURAGULAS

By the city gates of Zaluragulas,
stone gates and stone walls, the
man lay. He was covered in rags
the colour of dirt and waiting,

his legs broken, he sat and watched
the sand sweep the world asunder
and all signs of human habitation
all away. And the wind came to

the city gates but could not enter
because the beggar said nothing
could enter past the prayer mat where
he lay. And the sand came up and it

too tried to enter but could not,
and leaving the city felt ashamed
that such a meager thing as a
broken man could end the ambitions
which the sand had made. May 13/11.

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

Each person interprets their own
heaven, their own hell, and no
two visions are ever really alike.

There is no faith of our fathers
to rely on but only our own.
We are who we are, and that is

faith enough to begin life by. May 13/11.

WE PICK OURSELVES UP

We pick ourselves up to put us
back down again. We collect
all those memories and feelings

and together they form the echo
of who we are but never really

who we are. From moment to
the passing of a moment we are
not a single person but instead

a community. We are a legion
of one who is never truly one. May 13/11.

RIDDLES ON DIVINITY

And who shall be punished for all they’ve
done, and how shall they be punished?

Is eternity enough, is pain enough?
Hell is not just if even eternity in hell

is not enough punishment against the
crimes that we have done and have been
done against us all. May 13/11.

IF WE EVER COME THIS WAY AGAIN

If we ever come this way again we will
not meet ourselves but meet instead the
people we have meant ourselves to be.
Be careful whom you find. They may not
love you anymore, or you may not recognize them. May 13/11.

I WOULD LOVE

I would love as the grass loves the rain
or as the raven loves the night, but failing
this I would love as you love.

And if you do not love? Then
I shall simply find the better teacher amid
the grass or in the sheltered expanse of night. May 13/11.

TANKA

What has become
of the world we live
in? I have seen
the children fooled into
thinking that I love them. May 13/11.

Has the night
come to shelter us?
No? Have my eyes
failed then?
And who again are you? May 13/11.

THE WOLF HOWLS

The wolf howls against me
I fear. And the sun rises against
me, and the tide. All things hate
me. I am destroyed that they
exist, I am ruined that any thing
exists I cannot control nor make
do the wishes of my heart.
And though I command all mankind
to obey all I hear is laughter
scattered amid the rains I did not
wish to fall upon my burning skin. May 13/11.

Book 114

ONE HUNDRED SAYINGS (A Satire.)

1) Life is an illusion for the rich, a reality to the poor. Feb 3/11.

2) When one person commits a crime another person solves it. When a nation commits a crime it become the new law. Feb 3/11.

3) Marriage is the division of self into the company of strangers, of which you are one yourself.
Feb 3/11.

4) Politics: the way to beat a man to death without using your fists. Feb 3-6/11.

5) Why should a beggar pray to God? A rich man doesn’t pray to his banker. Feb 3/11.

6) A cat and a mouse have this in common, they kill their children on human sins. Feb 3/11.

7) If I wanted an honest answer would I really ask it from a man, a woman, or a god? Feb 3/11.

8) No problem is so dreary an opportunity cannot solve it. For the problem of sex nature created children. Feb 3/11.

9) Evil; whatever happens to you that should have happened to someone else. Feb 3/11.

10) Hell; being stuck with relatives and strangers in the same room forever. Feb 3/11.

11) Poetry; the means to say as much as possible without anyone ever listening. Feb 3/11.

12) A lion in the savanna mirrors any tyrant: lazy in all ways except the spilling of blood. Feb 3/11.

13) The ability to eat has this limitation over the rest; we are stuck with whatever we love and our body hates, and love what we eat all the same. Feb 3/11.

14) If a butterfly becomes drunk is it any less beautiful? Answer me again when you’ve seen a woman drunk, or a man. Whom am I to judge? Feb 3/11.

15) What is the worst stain upon the human soul? Originality, else why would it be condemned by so many? Feb 3-6/11.

16) Metal bleeds flesh and flesh bleeds words, so what do words bleed when they are cut? They bleed thought, and thought bleeds all things in turn. Feb 3/11.

17) Give us a child to set our heroes by, for everyone would think their son or daughter a hero when they are first dead, but never when they’re alive. Feb 3/11.

18) A galaxy is a wheel of stars and a star a wheel of light. But what is light a wheel of, if not darkness in its self appointed time, like an ignorant mind. Feb 3/11.

19) To annoy a person is to find their innermost weakness without realizing it, at one’s peril. Feb 3-6/11.

20) Sex is an act bound in time; each time one has sex closer one realizes they won’t want sex with this person anymore. Unless they’re very lucky. Feb 3/11.

21) Philosophy; the means by which one ignores reality by trying to understand reality. Feb 3/11.

22) To carry a great weight acclimates one to the weight, but when the burden is a lost and torn heart what else can be felt if not the pain of it? Feb 3-6/11.

23) In order to forget one must first remember something must be worth remembering. That is why history bores so many. Feb 3/11.

24) Perception is reality when reality is naked of itself. Feb 3/11.

25) If I kill a man I am guilty of a crime. If I watch a man die on screen I am blameless, even if I want that man to die. Why should intent be less valuable than action? Because all people are cowards in their own ways and of their own accords. Feb 3-6/11.

26) Second description of philosophy; confusion married to inspiration, previously divorced from commonsense. Feb 3/11.

27) Gender is not a division; it is a door. Feb 3/11.

28) Pornography was not created to satisfy lust, it was created to satiate the hunger of loneliness for a time. Feb 3-6/11.

29) Hero; whoever could do all others want to do while being punished because no one else has the courage to do it. Feb 3/11.

30) Lose something to your detriment, except your sins. Feb 3/11.

31) Death; the break between two meals, or the bill for a well made feast. Feb 3/11.

32) Truth; whatever else can survive the most brutal of tyrannies, except of course for lies. Feb 3/11.

33) The good is one step lower than the good for myself. Feb 3/11.

34) True and good must always be true and good for the least among us; that is why it never is, in this world. Feb 3/11.

35) Skeptic; one who denies all, even their own existence. Feb 3/11.

36) Believer; one who wants there to be a god in order to take all responsibility from themselves.
Feb 3/11.

37) Mirror; delusion reduced to a sheet of reflective glass. Even what one sees is not actually there. Feb 3/11.

38) Self; delusion writ large, all of one’s life dwarfing the lives of all others for no reason at all.
Feb 3/11.

39) Liar; the ability to imagine the sky is red at noon and still try to say it’s blue, in order to convince others of what you have not imagined to be true. Feb 3/11.

40) Light; the absence of darkness to set one’s life by. Feb 3/11.

41) Opera; the means by which tragedy is transcended to comedy all over again. Feb 3/11.

42) Heaven; boredom simplified to grandiosity. Feb 3/11.

43) Nowhere; where all roads lead when no one has anywhere else to go. Feb 3/11.

44) Power; the only narcotic no one can escape from, even after death to those who knew them.
Feb 3/11.

45) Democracy; the sleeping giant irritated by a gadfly, without ever waking up. Feb 3/11.

46) Terrorism; the final fad before conformity. Feb 3/11.

47) Love; the only pain never salved by its opposite. Feb 3/11.

48) Gun; the last resort of the coward, or the first. Feb 3/11.

49) The first law everyone ignores if they try to survive; a noble deed is equally balanced against a mortal life. Feb 3/11.

50) Hate; the only narcotic never outlawed by the state. Feb 3/11.

51) The greatest game; the shadow of an empire ignoring its own misdeeds while trying to cling onto power against all sane and insane odds. Feb 3/11.

52) Sex without love, the beginning of most marriages, or divorces. Feb 3/11.

53) Second definition of pornography; the key reason technology ever moves forward. Feb 3/11.

54) Feast; the meal one doesn’t need for a cause and purpose one doesn’t understand. Feb 3/11.

55) Judaism; a faith brutalized by belief in its own special divinity, and a sign that all human societies have the potential to survive all and any odds, despite their deity. Feb 3/11.

56) Africa; a land so much like Europe, both blighted by a blind and grasping religion; capitalism. Feb 3/11.

57) Pain; the reason most people know they are alive, irrespective of whether they want to or not. Feb 3/11.

58) Homosexuality; no more annoying than anyone else trying to get laid without knowing they aren’t really that charming or attractive. Feb 3-6/11.

59) Slut; a term which implies one will have sex with anyone. Wife; a term which means one won’t have sex with anyone. Husband; someone who lusts for the former while superficially choosing the latter. Feb 3/11.

60) Age; the only reason civilization contemplates its end and seeks to do more with the less time they have. Feb 3/11.

61) Rudeness; the only leveling act between two great or lesser enemies. Kindness; the only truly immoral act between a friend and one deserving respect while receiving only pity. Feb 3-6/11.

62) Relief; the act of knowing the executioner has chosen someone else. Feb 3/11.

63) Science; a turning away of superstitions toward other, less demented superstitions. Feb 3/11.

64) Humour; the act of dying eloquently, before being hit by a pie in the face. Feb 3/11.

65) Execution; the act of choosing someone other than one’s self. Martyrdom; the opportunity to make sure no one can be chosen. Feb 3/11.

66) Christianity; the greatest example of belief transfigured to cliche. Feb 3/11.

67) Order; the end of history. Chaos; the end of rationality. Feb 3/11.

68) Dogs; the only companion trusted above one’s self, justifiably. Feb 3/11.

69) Theater; the only honest representation of human existence and experience. Feb 3/11.

70) Exercise; the bane of the 20th century. Feb 3/11.

71) Women; no different than men in all respects. That is why misogynists first despise themselves. Feb 3/11.

72) Communication; the only way to say what you want without anyone ever really listening or understanding the message there of. Feb 3/11.

73) Prison; the only way to waste bricks, mortar, money and time in order to make no one happy.
Feb 3/11.

74) Possessions; held on by the briefest whisper, moving from one person to another, fought over incessantly, serene throughout it all. Feb 3/11.

75) Tolitarianism; the promise of the future paid for by the raping of the present. Feb 3/11.

76) Euthanasia; the only crisis fought over and argued against by those who don’t have a stake in the outcome. Feb 3/11.

77) Fiction; the only reality that truly, deeply matters to everyone. Feb 3/11.

78) Fear; the one drug money can’t buy, no matter how hard we try. Feb 3/11.

79) Time; the way of all flesh caught in the undertow of unbeing. Feb 3/11.

80) Satire; the desire to twist the knife in slowly to those who deserve it least. Feb 3/11.

81) Anger; the justification of being alone. Feb 4/11.

82) What is sacred if not the profane mind, reformed to everyone’s benefit but one’s own? Feb 4/11.

83) Food; the reason civilizations turns against itself, or rather the lack there of. Feb 4/11.

84) Mythology becomes religion when uncertainty and imagination is replaced by bland conformity. Feb 4/11.

85) The gods are not; humanity creates the gods that have then created humanity. Feb 4/11.

86) Hypocrisy; the only form of sanity available when righteousness is considered a form of suicide. Feb 4/11.

87) Deception; the most significant reason love does not immediately always sour. Feb 4/11.

88) Angels; the intermediary between righteous action and a sadistic and twisted deity. Feb 4/11.

89) Lawyers; the new priesthood which so much resembled the old. Both try to destroy those who worship the ideals they claim to comprehend. Feb 4/11.

90) Islam; a faith experiencing a dark age in a dark age, a lost world stranded in a lost world.
Feb 4/11.

91) Sadism; when empathy is dead what is left to believe in if not the breaking of another human soul? Feb 4/11.

92) Sociopathy; the absence of a soul married to the sentiments of a demon. Feb 4/11.

93) Loss; the moment when one realizes they are not a god, and not everything is theirs to possess or have or control. Feb 4/11.

94) Alone; being the last person in the world in the company of strangers. Feb 4/11.

95) Accomplishment; the ending of striving toward ignominity. Feb 4/11.

96) War; the logic of murder amplified by the infantilism of greed. Feb 4/11.

97) Victory; an enemy’s neck beneath your heel, waiting for the axe to sever your own throat in turn. Feb 4/11.

98) Insect; the point when survival is overturned against survival, leading always to victory and defeat. Feb 4/11.

99) Incest; the point when sex is overturned against sex, leading always to taboo sheltered by a bland and blind conformity. Feb 4/11.

100) Second definition of self; the delusion that you exist as a single being, moving toward a perfect end, sheltered by fate to always have all things end well for you, even when they don’t. Or am I being too optimistic do you think, yourself? Feb 4/11.

Book 113

A SOLUTION TO PENROSE’S COSMIC CENSORSHIP HYPOTHESIS
(A singularity miniature reflective matrix)

During my time in university I came across a theory proposed by Roger Penrose about the nature of a singularity within a black hole. According to Penrose one would never be able to see a singularity and more over part of the reason for this is because within such a structure the laws and rules which govern our universe would break down.
A singularity, according to this model could not be viewed because its effects upon regular space-time would be so disorienting, so warped that the laws of physics, time, etc, by which we exist could not function. (I am purposely ignoring the variation between weak and strong hypotheses as they are not relevant to my point.)
So how does one see what is literally unseeable? The theory I came up with involved another principle, the concept of quantum entanglement. Simply put quantum entanglement states that all things, all matter in the universe is connected irrespective of distance. So what if one could create a world, or if there was a world connected to a singularity.
Now I am neither a mathematician or a scientist; as far as I’m concerned this idea makes better science fiction than science fact but it is still interesting enough to add as an idea. Imagine two worlds, one existing within or near a singularity and one in orbit about the black hole where the singularity lay.
Now, if both worlds were connected via this method of entanglement one need not see inside to understand what’s going on within the singularity, one need only view the reflection of the planet outside the black hole. And I am arguing that the planet would be near the black hole not because the distance is relevant but only because it is more convenient for the theory, and because it makes a more concise model to help in understanding the factors involved.
Now, one might argue that this does not help demonstrate what is going on within the singularity; after all I am arguing two planets, and most would consider the idea of a planet inside a black hole an impossibility. But when I say planet I am not referring to a physical object but more to a section or subsection of the singularity itself.
Just as the moon is not the earth it is still caught in earth’s orbit and for all intents and purposes forms a series of gravitational and luminescent properties that affect life on earth. Eliminate the moon and you alter the parameters. So now imagine a singularity, which is already a point where no laws of physics or existence apply. Is it not possible that even a small “planet” or moon or piece of this would provide evidence of its totality, much as knowing the effects of the moon on the earth can allow one to guess from another planet the overall location, size, and even composition of earth itself.
But, what if Penrose is right and one cannot gain any knowledge even despite the evidence existing outside of the event horizon? Well considering that there is no way to know until or unless such an insanely unlikely thing happens this is all just speculation anyway and so I have no problem being wrong. It would still make a good idea for a poetic work though. April 19-21/11.

AN INFINITE NUMBER OF HEAVENS,
AN INFINITE NUMBER OF HELLS

Prologue

Good day to all the world, a faint amen.
If you can’t go one way go another then.

Part I.

1) Before Satan was a gleam in God’s bright
eye the sun died in her tarnished armour.

2) A claw of the kodiak bear embedded in
the bark of a winter drenched oak tree.

3) Life is bathed in winter now
and then, neath a dead black star.

4) The sky opened up neath the ruins
of copper as life unseats itself of us.

5) The lens of perception opened wide
at its widest point for me.

6) A painting is not a poem, a poem is
not an opera, an opera is not a song.

7) It’s quite easy to want something if you
don’t have to do a damned thing with it.

8) My secret country of autumn crystal
leaves and crimson fire in her steps, my dawn.

9) An inherent order is always
nestled within an inherent chaos.

10) The lens of experience opened wide to
me in its well and self appointed time, alone.

11) Along the path we did not intend to make, we
did not take, which conceals itself in us most of all.

12) With the wealth of paper that I now
have the novel takes form, unveils.

13) Unseen roads that don’t go anywhere at all;
perception of time is never correct, period.

14) Fate, the clothing by which it
conceals itself most of all; fate.

15) Traitors in a land no more; greensward,
lord of the manor, the execution block.

16) Ironies abound in that statement
of ours, swallowing insanity’s pills.

17) The day’s grey and I feel
grey as well my friend.

18) Faith rots and from it’s
death Rome is eternally fed.

19) When you get itching of having it costs
you but what you had you had anyway.

20) In jungles of stone neath black skies opened
up to me alone unveiled of their eternities themselves.

21) I dared to do whatever I wanted and I
wanted to do it now, or was it then I wonder?

22) And Kullervo was a man like I am, impotent rage
and curses and words beyond his keen or my understanding.

23) A desolate road, a bleak
road going nowhere at all.

24) And Inliarda whispering to me
that I am past saving now.

25) “That idiot’s smarter than he looks”
some fool once said about me.

26) Angelica whispers that
I am past saving now.

27) The totality of time unravels
and the ecology of madness is born.

28) Suicide taken by itself is not a sin, all
actions leading up to it become a sin themselves.

29) Inherent flaws in the system;
this can’t end well.

30) Cliff-swallow promises of wings and
crimson eyes and crooked, broken songs.

31) The killer in the home;
Torquemada staring in a mirror.

32) In Manticora Lothropa has laid his
skin and bones scattered upon the sands.

33) Can’t rush myself to death
to do it anymore.

Part II.

1) I have no future nor into
the past I tread, alone.

2) I walked on the very
surface of your thoughts.

3) A man with nine lives owning none;
himself an immortal slave to every dying one.

4) Between Austerlitz and Auschwitz is a few
lines of blood, some dates, and nothing more.

5) A mistake on history; all
things happening all at once.

6) I can remember who I was
before I saw Medusa’s stare.

7) Torquemada impaled heretics; I feel
the smoke, the spears, the memories.

8) The Jalidsai would pursue when the creature
was in pain; they couldn’t any other way.

9) Gamoj, a desert world and the Gimmaron in their skins
of stone, wise sentinels and counselors first encountered.

10) The Jalidsai had claws and eyes blind and in
the forests we sang to them our languages.

11) The Gimmaron like pillars, like obelisks we carried,
wise sentinels, listening to the songs of wind, of sand.

12) I am standing on a street corner as
Gavrilo Princip points his gun and fires.

13) Aithrana is writing a poem, and
outside I see the ziggurats of Akkadia.

14) And all mourned the death of the man
created by the author while the author’s death
they all forgot in turn.

15) At moments of clarity the ship is
restored to me and I am as I was before.

16) And I can speak other languages and imagine
lives that I never have imagined before.

17) General Cliffswoyth and we are going
over the top, the trenches, the mud, the guns.

18) I see an obelisk born on sand
the colour of malachite roses.

19) I imagine a world the colour of malachite,
darker shades the ocean, lighter shades the ground.

20) The city below the stairs on an Earth as
the sun flares into nothingness and is no more.

21) Torquemada is on the rack
and I have put him there.

22) Where names are lost
new names now are found.

23) My face, in the mirror it is not
mine, nor yours, nor hers, but theirs.

24) Medusa stares, roars in my face,
but I watch her turn to stone instead.

25) At once I stand before I was, I am,
and after I am gone, yet I still am.

26) Manticora opens up to me and the jungles
of Manticora where Lothropa my mother is
not yet born.

27) Next door to dying water burns and
crucified my blind eyes see what is unseen.

28) The composite intelligence of the Rh’wagathra,
a trillion minds as one; how small they all seem now.

29) I have seen the stars unfold and
flatten to dust and less than dust.

30) River of light and shadow, a nile sojourning
between a sunless world and a sun-starved eternity.

31) I stand between all things
and all things about me turn.

32) I stand between all things
and become all things in turn.

33) A friend is not a friend if you
have to pay for the privilege then.

Part III.

1) In the Vornax galaxy we beheld
a planet orbiting a black hole.

2) The world held infinite space and
infinite mass. It was tied to a singularity.

3) Time would backwards then
forward again, then sideways.

4) We sent a probe, and my second officer,
reviewing the data began to speak in tongues.

5) He began to write non sequiturs
like he was a babbling fool.

6) Someone then spoke, using
the probe, to communicate to us.

7) No one expected to find
life on a dead world.

8) At once there are no cities;
at once cities appeared.

9) At once life was alien there; at once
we’d known such life for uncounted centuries.

10) The first officer continued to write
words that made no sense save to those
upon the world below.

11) We later learned they had unknowingly
infected him with a portion of themselves.

12) There is a legend or myth seldom told now
which we later learned; the story of Medusa.

13) To see Medusa one would be turned to
stone; only her reflection was safe to view.

14) The world below was a reflection, reflection
of a world connected to the singularity itself.

15) Time, the totality of time unveiled
and unraveled in that place.

16) I say cities but that was a mirage;
they hung in the sky below the ground.

17) And the creatures there seemed all things at once,
and time slowed and sped up til we could talk as one.

18) Within the singularity they lived. A whole
realm condensed and expanded there.

19) And we could move through space but they through
time, stranded on two worlds, in darkness gleaming.

20) Gravity unburdened itself of gravity and they walked
on air, flew when flinging themselves to the ground.

21) No words described them though some tried, but
none could, no not even their reflections satisfied.

22) The third officer we left behind to be tended
by the creatures only she best understood.

23) Darkness there but no one was blind and
the world supported life if they willed it so.

24) Angelica said leaving him behind was a mistake
but I disagreed; only they could help him now.

25) And ghosts were there, for even dead such being
still lived and at the point of death they but gained the
greater control.

26) For what is life if one can go back, go forward,
go sideways, and meet oneself a trillion times or more?

27) I imagine winter snows and cliff swallows and
Torquemada for him to cling to as talismans.

28) And Angelica whispers of a road for
him to walk on, know, to be healed by.

29) I tossed a coin and tried to imagine all the ways
that it could fall on the world below, but couldn’t.

30) Before she is sent down I slip in her hand a
smoothed piece of malachite, an egg, or a sphere.

31) A sphere of malachite; how would he
interpret such a splinter of our home as that?

32) I wonder how long til he is
healed, but what is time to them?

33) I will come back in forty days for my friend.
I had almost forgotten his name is Iswell Shanix.

Part IV.

1) A world where sex is not and a thousand genders
all at once and one man lost amid the multitude.

2) And in the sky he is there on floating continents and
he is there in cities beneath the ground simultaneously.

3) And the beings who passed as reflections through the
infinite world began to put the man back together again.

4) An agate rose-coloured sky came into view
one day then departed just as suddenly.
5) And there couldn’t be a day for there
was no sun nor even a single star.

6) And the sky held no clouds, no atmosphere at all,
yet there the sky stood, nor nakedly clothed at all.

7) And pride has reached their head, and lust, and
unteaching him they teach themselves the more.

8) And they began to give themselves a name,
and they began to name everything in turn.

9) Suddenly the blackness was called “sky.”

10) Suddenly a single being called himself something
different from the others, and gave himself a gender.

11) And for the first time ever two came together and
a child was born, already ancient though finally born.

12) And the story began and the story started
all over again, but Shanix was writing now.

13) And when ghosts died they went into the darkening
ground never to rise again but hope instead for an
afterlife of sorts.

14) And if no afterlife then the memory of them
were left, and for the first time grief entered the world.

15) Time at once ticked at a steady pace and Shanix
dreamed malachite dreams which gained their flesh
and blood.

16) And he stood and stared at himself coming together
piece by piece, mirror murdered by itself, a subtle suicide
of being.

17) And how young would you like to
be if your first day never came to end?

18) And suddenly there were mythologies and the
fear began that how one died affected their afterlife.

19) And because time still moved in concert with
the mind suddenly Shanix saw the afterlives of them.

20) He saw that those who died violently their
tattered bodies they regained, all tattered still.

21) And they who died in sleep in sleep they spent
eternity and their dreams all begat eternities themselves.

22) And they who died in hate to the black sun
they turned, devoured and were no more.

23) And ghosts who died were born
again, all returning whence they came.

24) And when Shanix died to hell he turned
but barred from hell’s entering at the gates.

25) And heaven’s doors all closed were and
the afterlives closed from him they were.

26) And dead he was put together, only to be taken
apart and in the womb of the black sun he burned.

27) He was born in the void
and caught by a ship passing by.

28) He was restored and remade and turned
homeward all his steps now turned.

29) Forty days were up and eternity broke down,
collapsed and petal-wise it opened all again.

30) The clocks ticked down, then stopped,
then started their own beating all over again.

31) “I have passed beyond
the thousand gates,” he said.

32) “I have seen the heart
of the black sun,” he cried.

33) “I am come home,” he heard
himself whisper all to them.

Part V.

1) A dissertation on the singularity, a practical
guide to eternity and infinity themselves.

2) All things tangled in the void,
the black sun, the two worlds.

3) They have an ecology of
madness, a place of miracles.

4) The only way to know, beyond the way
I have previously described; insanity’s pills.

5) The drug is not easy to find; it can only be
found by synthesizing seconds between seconds
at time’s end.

6) Then and only then can you enter the second world
and talk with them without being compromised.

7) In Manticora scientists gather to make
first contact for the first time with them.

8) They prepare and from there go into shadow, final
shadow between time’s beginning and time’s absence.

9) We stepped from Braxidia, from Byraxidia,
and stepped ‘pon the final shadow.

10) They were waiting there, had
been waiting there all along.

11) Dr. Kenkeknem spoke to the great lumbering titans
and they answered him the questions of his heart.

12) Dr. Sunec learned of their almost finite physiology,
her mind untainted by the thoughts of them.

13) The representative of the Cts’wen Confederacy asked
the meaning of causality and he was answered and they
answered him.

14) And Angelica Speqmic whispered to the wind
about her lost friend and he appeared again

15) For every law, even those of motion have their
inherent flaws in the final shadow of the universe.

16) Amid the absence of time much was learned and
bringing back Shanix, or his shadow, much unlearned.

17) They crossed a country of malachite trees where
Shanix had given birth to them, in Manticora.

18) Gasaj the poet was translating the verses of Aithrana
who died a billion years before, in Manticora.

19) Setse7 met Shanix brought from final shadow and
introduced him to Shanix, brought from final shadow,
in Manticora.

20) Setse7 flipped a coin and let it hit the ground
and it did not land as he had once expected it to land.

21) Angelica watched Shanix play a game against
himself and win or lose it was never the same to them.

22) Each move was always the same but
never the same, and malachite trees grew.

23) Lothropa wondered who her son now was, and walking
between the trees she felt she was in a dream of theirs.

24) The voyage into the singularity of a dead star was
postponed when the ship emerged before it had even left.

25) It came from the black sun but no one had sent it
yet. And Shanix explained that they were coming.

26) Kzathus was reading The Knights of Remler
when he saw himself dissolve and become her.

27) Kzathus watched Gasaj grow arms and legs
from stone, grow bones, grow eyes, grow tongue.

28) Angelica was reduced to a whisper, her
flesh reduced to the sound of her own voice.

29) Shanix was remembering Torquemada impaled
and scattered like pages of a burnt bible on the ground,
on the sand.

30) There was terror in the language of the stars.

31) They were coming, unknowing how, coming
to meet the man who untaught them so much.

32) They had new questions yet to ask, new
worlds yet to understand as never before.

33) For obscured where they had been the scientists
provoked much thought in them, and they had perhaps
been wrong.

Part VI.

1) Some pursue eternity, infinity for wealth,
others for fame, still others just to know.

2) Imagine the laws of reality reversed,
kinetic, thermal, gravity and time.

3) Imagine then a man lost in such a space,
on such a world, if only for a moment.

4) Why everything he’d say would sound deranged,
unstuck by space, by time, by fact, by cause.

5) But would he not teach they who lived there
his own mind, his own world and its laws?

6) And if he were caught and taken back would not
eternity itself and they who dwelled within follow
him in turn?

7) And all those scattered world, Gamoj, Manticora,
Earth, what fate would they now have governed by
other, timeless laws?

8) If one thousand cats in hell felt the touch of heaven
would they scar paradise or the realm from whence they
came?

9) If a dream were given skin all of a sudden would then
the dreamer enter into shadow, and become shadow in turn?

10) In a world where politics is not what happens
when humanity is governed by the law of power over all?

11) What happens if one spends existence neath
a set of rules suddenly dissolved and rent asunder?

12) And so they came out from out the shadow of the black
sun, and humanity taught them all they sought to know.

13) And the Gimmaron instructed them and the
trees of malachite etched runic geometry into their skin.

14) The malachite trees sang to them songs without
tongue, without mouths, and they saw without eyes.

15) Etched runic signs carved by a kodiak bear and
winter clothed herself in summertime, in Manticora.

16) And I have heard it said that when they came
and asked the questions that none could answer them.

17) None could answer satisfactorily.
How can order ever answer chaos?

18) Iswell Shanix alone answered them, both of him,
though the answers made no sense to anyone but them.

19) There is a place, the pool of Inliarda
Inmdlyryn where all things dissolve as one.

20) It lay on a world the colour of malachite
between the waking and the dream.

21) There all truths are answered, there
and there alone true communion is.

22) And I have heard it said and I have seen it
so that dreams reflect a truth reality does not.

23) The beast of time, the maw of time, the law
of everything; at this pool they are connected.

24) Between the dead sun and the living,
thought alone sustains the universe.

25) How many ways can one imagine a coin falling
to the ground; which side will face you, how many
trillions of faces?

26) And the ship reached Earth,
and the black sun too.

27) And perhaps in Manticora the black sun peered
in, and perhaps Manticora or Earth was where they
came from.

28) Or perhaps they came simply
from the void, as all life does in time.

29) And in one history Earth, Gamoj, Manticora
became the heart of a new black sun.

30) But in another history it never happened
at all, nor did Shanix learn anything at all.

31) But here they sought their answers, received them
and were satisfied, and turning back they understood.

32) There was a final logic to their thoughts
that we at last and finally understood.

33) Communion in the black, in the final
shadow of the pool, communion.

Epilogue

If you can’t go one way go another then.
Good day to all the world, a faint amen. April 20-25/11.

Belinda

BELINDA

Prologue

And the thing was you see the war
had to be fought, had to be won, there
wasn’t another way, another way for
any hope to be given to anyone, no care

placed in the better hands of better men
and women. And always we were told that if
we died in battle to heaven we’d go then,
in service of our countries all round, lifted

as angels off the ground. And we heard in
other countries how they believe after death
they are returned as other lives; it is sin
of course to believe so I thought, to be left

to fight eternally in other skins than ours.
How wrong I was, in the language of the wars.

Part I.
1) The zeppelin Tenebre Vindicator loomed overhead
as if sailing above the Maria Tenebrosum, the sea of
darkness on the moon, over ruined cities, trenches of
mud where hopeless screams were heard, before it was

set on fire, great bloated thing caught burning in the
night. And it’s quite different there from here, or the
last that came before us who always fell, or always
the barest thought, barest hope to have eight lives

more and try to live again. But O’Bannion often said
that a man with nine lives would never truly live til
his eighth was up, for only when facing death could
man ever live. But he died in the trenches and no one

was there to mourn over him. The krauts keep coming
and we keep coming, out on the barren fields, and in the
ocean we are marching too, marching as Jesus would,
walking on the waters of the night. And I read a church

pamphlet once when I was a boy, explaining how a man
tried to become more than he should have been, for being
in the body of Christ God always puts us where we should
be placed in life.

“There are foods we’ve eaten in haste that later we’ll forget
and mistakes we’ve made in passing that later we’ll regret.
The Tenebre Vindicator is likewise burning in the night.”

2) Belinda is my coy angel, my love back home, my last
chance when the war ends. And I’m not well equipped
for the cold but when I think of her, and even with Gen
Burncotton and his unpleasant sense of humour still

I would march on, if only to keep alive my memories of
her. “A pretty face has a disease behind it,” I am told, but
they don’t know and when I ask “money I need for

what?” they just smile knowingly and make none too
subtle references to prostitutes they’ll find. But I won’t
find them boys, not when Belinda is home, at my side.

3) The sound of the drums never ceases nor the shells
and O’Bannion used to say “take care of the small things
and the big things will take care of themselves,” but
the drums never cease in the middle of the night and he

isn’t there anymore to take care of anything at all. And
the war just drags on year after year and when the snow
leaves fast and summer is fast approaching it’s because
we know the snow knows something horrible is
always coming after it.

4) In Russia the czar is being overthrown because the
people all are dying; back home the king rules but we
fight on the same and die as the Russians did before,

and some are given power because of wealth, others
birth, others by the brutality they wield but we all go
down into the fields, lie silent after death of all we did.

Bright anarchists throwing bombs or dictators doing
the same, a little man named Lenin or a billionaire,
and here we are all fighting all the same, and I know
why we are fighting; because they all tell us to.

Part II.
1) On the ramparts of the Western Isle handmaidens
of the sun descend all from heaven to earth on spider
webs woven by the moon herself, while the oak king

insensate in sacrifice of fire burns his son rather than
himself, crying “sit in the devil’s place awhile my son!”
While the boy screams “I burn and in the burning die

again and again and again throughout eternity, until the
end of time!” And now you start to see the other side of life.

2) There are a pair of dice, or rather were, for one was
lost before all time began, but the remaining one has
an infinite number of sides to it, to represent the infinite

number of choices in the entirety of every human life.
Angarad of the Golden Hand once held it before love
all claimed her on a different destiny, and the deadly

slow decline into life befell the vampire prince Machado
who wanted greater power than all eternity. Very well
lost of knowledge the ignorant keep their own counsel

most of all, so gods and goddesses have come to ruin
playing the game that is no game at all. Absolutely
dripping with irony a poor lost soul sought to send

a beast, a manufactured killing beast into hell, but what
is hell to a beast who never had the choice to be virtuous?
And so it finds itself in a paradise for it can never kill and

so never satiate itself, nor find something to hate for nothing
is there to hate, and so at least his request was granted. Others
were less fortunate; consider the fate of Chaiara.

3) There is a book with an infinite number of pages to it,
save its first and final pages, and taking a clue from this
ancient work Chaiara used the die and sought to be as

lovely as ulexite roses of the sun, as malachite spiders of the
moon, and be the lord and master of the Sunflower Empire.
But more than this; she wished Utanet her handmaiden

be so transformed into a worm, a were-worm in mockery
of a more monstrous thing. And the wish was granted, a city
all of petals, golden soft, and she quite literally a flower

sitting on a throne of flowers orange violet, warm August
orange blossoms, and the whole of Creation in what were
now her hands. But then the gnawing, almost as a

beast would moan, almost as a beast would wound or
scream, and suddenly too late Chaiara felt Utanet feeding
upon the roots of all her worlds and upon her flesh in the

deep ground below where Chaiara could not reach her even
as Utanet could so easily reach Chaiara. It is always thus.

4) By the dark oak river stream there is a flurry of delicate
feathers of glass as riding on delicate bone wings of ivory
the frost maiden Raphina flies from her lover the shepherd

Lel. And he pursues, each touch of his enough to burn her
skin but still the boy hungers after, like raven-bait ripe for
the crows to eat, til the poison drips within their bones

and their souls are all set free. He mounts his horse and
rides, fights all within his way, to the northern clime he
comes and the fiddler on the arctic snows, and there frozen
utterly she collapses in his arms; at last the two can touch.

5) Belin Waxwing is a knight and his quest is but to find the
book, the die, and the gun. He has been told in a prophecy
where to go but the signs are all wrong and the farther

afield he goes the more confused he becomes. And he
passes thru lands of kings inbred to fools, lands without rules
of any kind where all have died or not quite dead are closer than

they all suppose, or places of the dark elves, the Svartelheim
waiting for the end to come, which never does. And he comes
to Malchalra, the witch of amber, who says the prophecies are

all undone and he a fool to follow any of them as they have led
him unto a desert nameless where dragons of the deep still dwell.
And so in the hut of the amber witch the knight, his armour

tarnished, his sword useless sat and pondered why he had used
any prophecy at all. And that was when she killed him. And
awakening her name became Belinda.

Part III.
1) There is an artist who, taken to another consciousness,
spent his time on stage, singing for all the world to hear
and though they did the poor man never remembered what

he sang afterward. Others spent their days looking over
past tapes of themselves, lamenting every mistake they made

while never understanding that by doing nothing else they
were making all mistakes old and new again. And there was
the telescopic man, able to look through all things at once,

but when he turned a mirror to his attention he never saw
his face; in fact of course he saw nothing at all.

2) A grey pebble-spider crawls over a dead soldier named
O’Bannion taken to extremes of life and thought. And after
death O’Bannion finds himself in an afterlife of sorts.

There was Bastet leading some souls to her while others
swam Death’s river and perhaps they were no more, while

tyrants, or at least some, were reincarnated to fight as foot
soldiers before they first died, fight in their own armies to
be lead by themselves and slaughtered out of hand.

Others obsessed with wealth went to heaven where there
was no wealth of any kind and others driven by paranoia just

stayed stock still, waiting for hell to come to them. And this
place it was a kingdom, country with a dark oak river, but
no sun, and yet no darkness, nor even a shadow anywhere

at all for what is a soul if not a reflection of a shadow and
what need were reflections here in the country of the mirror
without need of mirrors?

3) There was Semiramis who killed her husband to found
an empire whittling ‘pon her sanity by always coming back
to the same spot each time she died again, playing the role

of seer, whore and tyrant, til uncertain of her mask, her role
she just sat amongst the stones of the under-country, seer

and sage, whore and tyrant no more. And there was Barsisa
in hell, holy man corrupted by Shaytan while the band
Waxwing played on and its lead singer Raphaita told the

story of the man. “He was righteous til he thought it a sin
to love a woman, righteous til Shaytan told him to kill

his child, the mother of his child, and then bowing low to
Shaytan when asked to, to escape his sins, Shaytan flew
away laughing and they hanged him.” “And where is

Shaytan?” O’Bannion asked. “Fighting in the war in
the world above.” Raphaita answered him, and grinned.

4) And asking why the band was there Raphaita answered
him and said “when we lived it was a different age than
yours, and drugs flowed freely. I would stand on stage

and sing but always forget afterward what I had sung and
when the fame grew too much we all killed ourselves and

came here to this hell to play for all eternity and remember
every word I ever sung, or ever said.” “But can a person be
infinitely punished for a finite crime?” O’Bannion asked.

“No,” she replied, “unless we want to be so punished.”

5) Some people reach Sheol and spend their days in grey
desperation and a fitful finality, while others wait for
Ragnarok which never comes, not even in the halls of the

blood-touched gods. Some achieve transcendence and others
disappear into nothingness at death, but it’s all the same,

and O’Bannion asked to be returned to earth so he was
reincarnated as Belinda’s son, born when the hero returned
from the war. And he forgot all he learned, even his old

name, in the under-country of the human soul.

Part IV.
1) And Daddy came home with his gun
and Mommy looked on it lovingly like
it was something she was looking for
from another land. And sometimes, just
sometimes they’d fight about the gun, but
not often, and Mommy and Daddy used
to take me on walks to the park, but Daddy
was always sad, like he was missing a best
friend, and Mommy couldn’t remember
where she’d come from.

Epilogue

And the war ended and the plague began.
Long cold plague, in flew Enza after
poor young boys and obsession was man’s
own garden, his own private place, or her’s.

Some leaders were born, some made and some
unmade. Revolutions happened amid the plague.
Politics made fools of us all, become
the seat that unseats us. And if we lag

behind or die why then it all starts
over again, all waiting for the end
which never comes. And if the states pull apart
what then? Does a nation have a purgatory, bend

into another after-shape? The 20th century
came and went and no one really noticed it.
Thus Belinda was born. Mar 28-April 2/11.

Book 112

SIXTEEN ROSES

Sixteen roses laid upon my grave
at dusk or early morning light
and here I sit and count them all,
one by one, each petal falls

toward each other like vortices
or swirling clouds of galaxies
or gaping maws of beasts
devouring me. Crimson petals

become my witnesses, reveal their
testimonies in small rotten patches
where I have touched them
or remain brilliant and bright

as days now lost to me. At any rate
I rise from my grave, put on my
business suit, prepare to go back to
work, and then just prepare to leave. April 11/11.

ALTERNATE HISTORY HAIKU

Torquemada on a rack
for the heresies, the
hypocrisies he made. April 11/11.

AYIRYNA

An orphan is rewarded in the world,
her loss compensated by wealth, for
in this age of ours we balance

all accounts and those with
nothing receive more and those with
all keep whatever they have. Ayiryna

I hope it is enough to lose me and her
and gain the whole world instead. April 12/11.

A BLAND AFFAIR

Into the vanity woods I’d often go
seeking for some love of any kind
at all and when love fell in the
shadow of my gaze I’d hope she loved
me too, though she never even tried. April 13/11.

NICK GLADSTONE

A litany of scars upon my back
for the country that I loved. Fate
all intervened then, set me on
another track, a palindrome of paths
seeming to lead perfectly toward
each other, instead leading me
opposite to who I was. They call me
a traitor for things I never did. But call
any a traitor when fate comes to call. April 13/11.

THOSE THAT CAN’T

Those that can run don’t
and those that can’t run
try to anyway.

Those that can fight don’t
and those that can’t fight
are slaughtered in any case. April 13/11.

JONAS HOLTZ

He decided upon a simple experiment
and gaining five pounds a day for forty
days reached the apogee of his plan.

He ascertained people’s reactions, various
questions, slurs or comments, wrote it all
down in his notebook to review it all for

later. Finally he had made his experiment
complete when he killed a man as he would
have killed him anyway. The weight didn’t

make him a better or lesser man; it just made
it more difficult to gut his enemy like a pig. April 13/11.

THE LENS OF PERCEPTION

The lens of perception opened wide
and suddenly I am standing on the floor
of the world and above me hang continents,
angels and demons all, a litany of crows,
a scientist amid his long dead beasts,
a few children crucifying each other on a
dare, and myself staring back at me,
smiling crookedly as if the mask were
bent or broken slightly, or wasn’t even there. April 13/11.

HATEFUL IN ITS VERY BIRTH

Hateful in its very birth the arcane mysteries
of the human soul are seared and bent-broken
for being there at all. And some claim it
better if we had no souls at all but I think not.
Better bent and broken then not there at all. April 13/11.

THEY CAN’T USE THE MONEY
THEY EVEN HAVE

They can’t use the money they even have
and yet they’re always wanting more, looking
for something greater than they are or than
they yet possess.
But money slips and pours
itself to every hand but ours who seek it not; no,
even we are sheltered by the wealth we almost
have. Yes
money owes no loyalty to any but
itself and they can’t even use the little fragments
of it that cling and grip to them for now
which later it’ll forget. April 13/11.

MANY YEARS AGO (The first line
is my father’s, April 12/11.)

Many years ago when I was just a boy
I shoveled snow and my father was so
proud. But years pass around where
they began and now I’m out on the snow
proudly watching as my boys go where
I’ve already been. April 13/11.

ALAMDREA

“I want to play someone other
than I am Alamdrea. I want to
scale the heights of other men
and plumb the depths of other

women. I want to hold a ring
of Gyges, become invisible for
a time, or perhaps better create

a ring of individuality and
give it to another so I won’t be
who I am.” “And what then?”

“Perhaps I’ll go to sell my soul
at the crossroads with a name
I never had, dear Alamdrea, dear.” April 13/11.

ON SLOAN’S URANIA

It was a butterfly that died out in 1908,
dark green lined wings, slender body, almost
too beautiful to imagine laying now in some
collector’s glass case or a museum’s box
beside other lesser strains like pieces of
a jeweler’s art who hadn’t bothered to give
his piece a proper, perfect name.

It lived in Jamaica and if I had lived then
I could have traveled to the farthest Southern
shore and seen the bones of the Ona people
lying in Tierra Del Fuego, for they had been
wiped out and almost exterminated in 1903,
mostly bones between the lives of few
survivors left, leading to a final sharp
decline from one to none in 1974.

Perhaps someday the museums will be
museums to others, creatures who will dwarf
the tender mercies of leaving lives in boxes
or glass cases or pinned to walls, some great
thing who will barely notice all the efforts
done to preserve the dead when all are dead
and gone save the titans standing at the end
of time, crushing all things underfoot without
ever noticing they dared commit a crime. April 13/11.

GENGHIS KHAN AND ALEXANDER

We had this argument you see, over who
was the greater lord of men, and I said
Genghis Khan and my friend said Alexander.

“He united half the world,” I began, “ended
torture in his homeland, gave the Mongols
literature and an ability to surpass centuries

of inner conflict to reach the farthest lands.”
“And he slaughtered millions,” my friend
replied. “Your favourite slaughtered as many

for the times.” “True but he also brought so
many wonderful things like art and science
with him in his wake my dear boy.” We

sat and drank our coffee and stared across
at each other for a time, thinking a bit, I how
Alexander had spent his life trying to outdo

his father in all things, even leading his men
through the desert as punishment for never
claiming India and my friend thinking over the

Khwarazm Empire and the Tenguts who were
slaughtered out of hand for defiance against
the Khan one time too many, or simply

one time then we both ordered some nice
soup and read the papers about the new tyrant
murdering millions as if it weren’t a crime. April 13/11.

IN THE COBRA’S LAND (Original version.
Recorded April 17/11.)

Deserts like a sea of sand flow with glowing
ecstacy as soldiers with their bleached white
helmets and brown mustaches march
across these seas of thirst.

The delta lands of emerald grass flow with
the calm, calm wind as farmers wearing flesh
and blood masks plant their crops and watch

while the fertile mud turns to hard clay. In
the courtyards of their homes women sweep
up the dust as it shines like jewels in the
evening sun.

Soldiers with their fire sticks race across the
valley floor like wild fire and the wind. Men
with stern faced looks cry with secret pain,
as their country is no longer the same. Women

still sweep away the dust and men still plant
the crops but for those years not matter how few
another held the land and took away a people’s pride
just for sake of a water passage way leading to
the lands of the sun.

THAT TREMULOUS APPLAUSE

The tremulous applause of the masses comes
to me in waves and through their unseen glances

I can still discern the methods, the madnesses
that come of seeing life through other eyes

than ours have ever seen and in their unseen
hopes and in the hopes of others I know my time

will come, has come, has passed us all behind. April 15/11.

THE GREY SKINNED WOMEN OF BRAZIL

And they seem so out of place and yet not out of place
at all, there in the slums, the suburbs, the halls of office,
whispering like silent toads or sirens or the maws of

darker beasts. They stand taller than the tallest man
and if I could see them eye to eye I doubt I’d look them
in the eye and they are so intimating to anyone they meet.

And where do they come from and what names do they
call themselves by? No one knows and no one cares to
ask. Instead they move like wraiths or shadows but

they are not so out of place at all in the country of
the immigrants, the jungles, the cartels and the malls. April 15-17/11.

AN IRON OVERCAST SKY

An iron overcast sky and the storms
are all splinters of steel and the rivers

run with nails and the streets with skin
for when the skies are iron the very

world is skin and flesh and eyes. April 15/11.

ALONG THE EDGES OF MY DOMAIN

Along the edges of my domain Satan and God
sit and debate what is to become of me

but I fear no hell nor heaven, I have both
stranded in my heart, to linger and to languish

and to praise and to be blamed. April 15/11.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO

It’s not what you do it’s how you do it,
it’s not assailing heaven or making the
geography of hell complete,

it’s to do it in my own way, at my own
time, lest I am less the hero and more
the bureaucrat. April 15/11.

THE CAVE

Beyond the mouth of the cavern
after traveling through darkness there
opens light and beyond the light the

jungles all violet and crimson and
vaguely stained orange and a tower
and a city beyond this

where the bones of the gods still lay.
And beyond that? No one can say. No
one has yet ventured into the cave. April 15/11.

THE SCIENTIST

It becomes a cliche, the mad scientist
in lab coat, developing the ability to travel
back in time, gaze upon the dinosaurs in

primordial countrysides. But it is a cliche
for a reason. Who would not first view the
titans of the world before checking

upon the mice who became the men we are? April 15/11.

THE DAGGER PLUNGED DEEP WITHIN

They live in forests neath a foreign sun the colour
of dried leaves or autumn green dawn and they look
almost human save for the green skin, blackened

eyes of coal, a perpetual smile on their lips. And
being fools one thought to shoot one and did, only
for the bullet to collapse upon his chest, and smiling

they explained to us it was always so, and every
force exerted would always be countered back. So
now we are sent as emissaries and warning; what

they did to us can never be taken back, to know
we can do nothing in that country all of theirs. April 15/11.

PIETY

To argue piety is not to argue
morality, for moral action always

differs from the actions of the crowd.
No, instead piety is the clothing

by which morality conceals itself,
else morality were naked and we all

saw how little was truly there to
conceal, or clothe, or wear. April 15/11.

MISJUDGED THE DISTANCE THERE

She misjudged the distance there
and fell to hell. Would any have it
any other way, the thought that

torments were caused not by choice
but a sole misstep? And of course
I hear you say only the guilty

demand punishment, well, why is
that, for are the righteous the only
ones who receive praise? April 15/11.

CONCEPT ALBUM

My idea of a concept album: first we have the
artist being crucified and the first four songs

reflect the fact. Then the man goes backward
in time and explains all his policies, his visions

and his dreams. Two more songs reflect that.
Finally we see him rape a woman. Half a line

of the opening act is mentioned as almost
something he did. Once we know what kind

of man he is we listen again to the album to
see what kind of audience we are, as we react. April 15/11.

TEMPORAL OCD

There is the statement often made that if we
could go backward, fix our mistakes, then the
better life we’d lead for having corrected what
flaws we made.

I wrote thousands of poems and destroyed
many more than I ever kept, made works and
ideas that could set the world ablaze, but if I

had the opportunity to regain all I had lost why
would I stop there? Would I not then try to redo
and redo every act again, correct each point of
my life like an

artist transforming
a few crude brush strokes to every school and
method of art til the original work was lost?

If we seek perfectly to set all things right we warp
and twist ourselves along the path of never knowing
the mistakes that shaped our souls for better, for
worse, or not at all. April 15/11.

SHADOW’S REQUIEM

And the opera plays and there in his palace king
Parikchit awaits Takshaka and the sound of waves
is heard for the tower and the palace sits within
the center of a lake and then the monks arrive,

each adorned with the strange mysteries and runic
scenes and signs of magic which conceal their true
forms to the king but not to us. And finally the
golden insect comes and lights upon the king,

transforms all to a golden savaged crimson
dragoned thing and in the flames of poison he
sings out a final aria, laments his own mistakes,

his own brief fate, and perishes. Then Takshaka
and the nagas gaze across the audience, watch our
mockeries, our sad pantomimes of action, the weaker

goals of lives less celebrated than Parikchit, and Takshaka
begins to applaud and the nagas but follow after. April 15/11.

THE PULP MAGAZINES

In the pulps the heroes are always white, middle class,
loved by women from many worlds, hated by some vast,
usually asian but not always, seeming menace,

and that was the sole entertainment for some.
Well why not reverse all things, a nice asian woman
loved by other women from many worlds, (and men too,

why not?) battling the evil forces of some vaguely cacausian
foe, wielding swords with the space suits for swords can cut
and do more damage than projectiles in the void anyway.

But is that enough to alter six decades of the public
imagination? Why not? Most people can’t remember
what happened in the news six days ago, or less. Changing
people’s views of things is such an easy thing to do. April 15/11.

SUBJECTIVITY

If I curse a man it is objective but if he
responds well and laughs than something

I did was done wrong for I had hoped

to destroy him, though I never did. And
learning this I realized it is not the words we

say but how they are interpreted; threatening
a man is hit or miss, unless I hit his face. April 15-17/11.

NEVER AT EASE

Your mind is never at ease until it’s done,
til all labour is finished, all wars won, then

finally, but finally the days can all wind

down, the nights all stop like the gears of
a clock broken without a single sound. April 15/11.

IN THE KHWAREZM EMPIRE

And the messengers and emissaries were all dismayed or killed
and the great Khan, after seeing the carnage done against his name,
offered one last chance to the Shah to apologize but the man would

not bow or bend, so the great Khan bent the world about the man
instead. The horses were faster than thought or wind and within
days across the deserts they had come, and the Shah, proud man

that he was, stationed many to fight the rabble that came from
uncivilized climes against the heart of the civilized world. And the
cities, mighty cities of stone and glass and the glaziers and the poets

fell and were destroyed and none lingered after them, no not even
the thoughts they ever were. And where the children cried and wept
they cried no more for they were slaughtered out of hand, and their

very moans stilled and broken down to less than they even were.
And where soldiers fought against the Khan they died and where
men fled they were cut down and if any surrendered they were taken

to places they did not know, made to labour and build new cities for
the new lords of all the world. And when all was finished, cities
murdered, millions lost or scattered, spent like the wind is spent

when turning mountains to dust, the Khan did not weep, did not cry,
did not rend his clothes. He had already turned his eyes westward.
His honour had yet to be satisfied. April 15/11.

ON THE COBRA’S ISLAND

On the cobra’s island sits a paradise of scales
and fangs and claws for those beasts the snakes
devoured.

I’ve often
wondered why I was spared the shipwreck and
the waves but to arrive in the jungles of the

serpent-kind but I was never one to yield to
god or storm or demon. The cobra sits upon his
throne but soon that throne is mine. April 15/11.

INFINITE VARIETIES OF INFORMATION

Infinite varieties of information and if I said
the sky were blue each soul and eye has a trillion
shades to colour their experience by, or crimson,
violet, green or gold. Are any colours, thoughts
or words uncoloured of the mind? I hope not,
else my words are barely enough to satisfy. April 15/11.

THE KESTRELS

Husband and wife: detective agency.
Place of work: South America, Miami, LA.
Average fee: whatever their wealthy patrons
can afford to pay. Time between a case is
presented and solved: forty-five minutes,
a day at most. Reason for work: the only
excuse that keeps the pair from a divorce. April 15/11.

AGENT VEIMHS AND AGENT WOLENSKY

And it’s the war again and Johnny Red is trying
to retake the USA and the only thing preventing
the total collapse of the free world is Sarah
Veimhs and Chad Wolensky, so off they go

to fight and stop the evil monsters from taking
over. And after they are given all the gadgets,
quirky one-liners, chance to defeat their
counterparts they get the luxury to leave,

go home, away from each other and pretend
that there is no one else and they can play at
the notion that they alone deserve the praise. April 15/11.

THE JACKHAMMER SAGA

All muscle bound and full to its own limits of violence
the comic, or rather its ideas dissolved, distended outward
like war ravaged orphans, and there beneath it all, the guns,

the over the top violence, the useless sex that never seemed
mature enough to stand alone, all that lay at the bottom of the
work is a man scribbling out ideas hoping a few will stick,

finding himself a multitude of one, en masse groveling
for inspiration from someone else, which never comes. April 15/11.

THE CASTE

They were grey skinned insects who had amassed
a great civilization among the stars and later I learned
they were divided by castes. Some spent their lives

labouring to build but never did enough so always died
bereft of their “chosen” fields, others were warriors,
their armour toughened by their time in the hearts of suns

with no one left to kill for their work was done. Still
more were artists who had devoted themselves to every
artistic pursuit which wasn’t that many for they had

no tongue. Still more were explorers but they had searched
through fifty trillion worlds and save the Earth they had
found no one. Some were religious who taught the way to

be saved but because castes were divided they could
only preach to themselves. Finally there were politicians
whom no one obeyed. They needed no leadership of
any kind. I turned away dismayed. April 15/11.

THE NEVIDIANS

And here it seemed evolution could not explain the
Nevidians at all. They were tall and short and round and
thin and wings adorned them or no wings at all. And some
were wise and some were fools, some had fangs and

others pincers like an insect would, and some had tails
and others no tails at all. And they looked at us and
wondered what we were, who had only one shape, one
form, and laughing or crying asked what we had learned. April 15/11.

IN NEWFOUNDLAND OR LABRADOR

In Newfoundland or Labrador the ocean
swells the shoreline and women look seaward
bound where their loves are drowning as waves

are tossed across the ships and they bring up
the ocean’s wealth, then turn their doomed ships
shoreward bound and even dead they are reunited. April 15-17/11.

THEY WENT INTO THE WOODS
(From a dream I had on the morning
of April 15/11.)

They went into the wood and first he died but
then reality altered herself and she lay dead.
As for him he wasn’t there anymore.

And in the country of the dead she met
her friend who offered her some blood and
her own features changed, that friend of hers,

rings under the eyes and a face all torn of blood,
and then it was all altered and we were standing
in the morgue and they were putting her

together, setting heart again to run. And
suddenly she is back, and suddenly gone. And
by the cave the police found her body and her

photo and the photographs of her dead family,
her father, her mother and her dog. April 15/11.

THE INCA (A dream I had on the
morning of April 14/11.)

They were Inca and the wires came from their
eyes and suddenly all were the same, same braids
and long brown hair til the Europeans arrived.

And it wasn’t Peru but British Columbia where
they must still reside, changed by the colonizers,

and then I stand in the deserts of Arabia, the plains
of India and learn how changed these places were

when the Europeans arrived, but India seemed to
have survived better than the rest. I wonder what it
means when the immigrants arrive? April 15/11.

ZATARTHA

Go to Zatartha and the angels there will guide you son
to where I am. Cross the bridge of sighs and look for me
in hell awhile, sit and chat and then turn back to heaven
where you surely long to be.

But before you go back to paradise at the pillar and the
caverns of Zatartha leave some coins behind. I may not
be able to take them son but the thought of them is mine. April 15/11.

THE SWAN

And there in Buenos Aires she investigates
the crime, subtle sins and crimes like men

being unkind, servants too friendly with their
employers, beggars who haven’t sense to

leave her well enough alone. Oh all kinds of
crime Bella Donnia investigates, except of course

for the reasons that have made her so unkind. April 15/11.

THE BALLAD OF THE JEALOUS ONE
(From an old Scottish ballad.)

“Go down to the water’s edge my
sister, dulce is there to find.”

“But will you wait for me by the tide,
will you wait for me by the tide?”

“Of course for we are family. I’ll wait
and I’ll abide.”

So down they went but the older jealous
one waited and took her time, and the
younger noticed not the coming of the tide.

Then up the elder went and the younger
fell behind, and the jealous girl married the
man who had been the younger’s bride. April 15/11.

THE LAST KILLER IN ALL THE WORLD

Killers in a land no more and here
is one who killed the king of all

the world to start the next war
and had he known he would have

done the same. It was the point of
course, to take a life, to end all

lives, but keep to him eternal
fame. And yet none live so none
can even curse him to his face. April 16/11.

THE ANDROID POET

And if a machine would pen a line of verse
would I cease my writing then? Why?
Anyone can create a verse, anyone can
forge a line of words. If we stopped
merely because another poet started what
faith would mankind have in us I wonder? April 16/11.

IN BRIADA

In the halls of Inbriada I beheld the girl
of shadows, in the eyes of the king I saw her

flesh uncoil. And I am laid bare as pillars
of stone are laid bare, meant to wait eternally

for the shadows to imprint their touch into the
flesh that I am forced eternally to wear. April 16/11.

THE IN-BETWEEN (The first two
lines are my father’s April 15/11.)

It’s not the in-between part that
counts, it’s the starting and the end.

If I cried out silently with empty, hollowed
or holocausted eyes or turned my gaze to

seven worlds of jungle each brilliant as a scale
caught in the teeth of some venomous thing,

if I prayed to the gods of Inlilah, Izanra, Izardra
or Gazrejh, the gods of shadow, light, words

and deeds, or cast back my days to the courts
of Dalriada, the celebrations of Hilaria

when Rome was king, would this matter if
I began poorly, or ended worse?

If I stood upon a world where all feared open
spaces though open plains were all the people
had to set their days all by, or cramped sat in

the cities where people feared closed dimensions
and in their endless anxieties closed themselves

in all the more, well would this matter to any

who began their lives in terror or ended them
the same, or would the beginning and the ending
be all that they remembered and all things in

between but a meager illusionary blur?
It is the ending of days that matter and the
beginnings always as well. Even hell or heaven
are forgotten before they were or after they are now. April 16-17/11.

SANITY

When day begins and I rise up from
my bed, shake off the dreams I had
and go to work. And I meet the
women that I meet every day and

sometimes hear them talking about
nothing in particular to each other
as if they stood on the other side of
the world and couldn’t quite

understand what the other ones were
saying. And I walk my dog on Tuesdays,
go to movies with friends, lust after the
pretty girl I see occasionally, but nothing

comes of it. And I listen to the radio
sometimes, hear the news, discover
places on a map stricken with sorrows.
I give to charities, go to movies, watch

tv way in the middle of the night, go to
sleep. I guess people might call me sane.
I don’t know what sanity is. I see things
of nightmares and welcome them in,

hear things of nightmares and write it all
down in the middle of the night when no
one is around, feel the rush of insanity

when the sound of my heartbeat, the feel
of my breathing gets too much. But I am
sane I guess. No one has ever told me
otherwise to my face, at least not yet. April 11/11.