Echolalia

KASWAYL

I. Her name was Kaswayl. In her true form she was bald,
almost grey skinned, but that grey was tinged with a light
bronze shade making her appear almost as if she were born
of white cliff sand.
She came from an island somewhere
in some lost sea and her people were cannibals, what would
be known in polite society as ogres.

Her eyes, her true eyes were black and empty and her
fingers ended in claws, sharp as the talons of some bird of prey.
In her lifetime she had killed and consumed over five hundred
humans, almost all of them criminals. Such was her nature.

Her name was Carolyn Smythe. In her false form she was
blond, with green eyes the colour of malachite and as her
husband once said, was possessed of soft features. Her
voice when she spoke in such
a form was calm, reassuring and as
soft as her form. When she had sex with her husband Richard
she would make herself appear slightly more desirable to him
just because she loved him. And he loved her too.

II. They had met years before though he didn’t know it. She
had been an avenger then, a hero of darkness, a daughter of
worms and shadowlands. She had saved his life
by devouring his attacker. In that moment
in the alley after the evening she saw
something in him she hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t afraid
or angry at being saved, or disgusted by her justice, or even
concerned at being alone in the dark

with a monster, and the creature that was eating the monster
alive. There was but the calm reassurance of a man who had
seen death and liked her face better than the mask of life.
She fled away from him, uncertain of her soul.

The next day she took her false form and followed him.
They met at a small café, had coffee and discussed absolutely
nothing of importance at all. They were married the
following week.

III. The man was named Richard Smythe. He had two
children, aged seven and five from a previous marriage,
and she become the second mother to those children.
She cooked breakfast,
washed dishes, combed the brown
hair of her two small friends and settled down to the
suburban malaise one might expect of anyone else in

the world. Then her husband was murdered and her children
taken away, by a stranger who ended her husband’s life. She
walked in and found him bloodied, and his final words were
“find the children,” before he coughed up blood and died.
And Kaswayl was reborn again.

IV. Her other form slid off her like a chrysalis. Her nails
grew sharp as daggers and her eyes grew black. There was
no anger in her voice but gone was the calm reassurance of a
loving wife. The avenger in her
awakened and she answered it. Weeping
tears of blood she left her home and followed the scent of her
children wherever that scent led.

To any who saw her there was more than the taste of
venom in her gaze. To any who saw her there was a palpable
aura about her, a deep violet blackness that had no edge.
It was as if light bent and was broken by touching her. It
was the monstrosity of a demon awakened by its own lust.

It was the sound of a wailing enfant caught and petrified.
It was all the nightmares of the Time’s ending rolled back upon
itself. She moved but did not seem to move at all. She was a
wraith. The very earth recoiled at her touch.
And far away two children huddled in the grasp
of another kind of monster.

V. His name was Calvin Karst. He was a man, looked
normal, even handsome by most accounts. Paid his taxes
and was good to his mother. He also raped small boys.
It had been a good hunt.
An unimportant man dead and two
boys to feed upon. He whetted his lips and thought about
the things to do when midnight had grown old.
And then there was a knock at the door.

There was no scream, because she did not want to
frighten her two sons. There was no sound at all. With
a single step of fingers along his throat she clasped
his life carefully,
as a moth is clasped by fire.

Later, hours later she walked out with her two beautiful sons
after she had returned to her false form. There were cries of
“where’s daddy?” but she couldn’t answer them. Later,
days later she called the police,
after a portion of her rage had subsided
and she felt Calvin had suffered almost enough. The police
went to his house on a beautiful suburb

surrounded by fences and willow trees. They opened
the door, went inside, found the usual paraphernalia of the sick
and twisted mind, and then later they found him. A few of
the rookies threw up, and a few

of the veterans as well. Calvin Karst was scattered over his
basement floor, pieces of him bloody and raw, lying like a
perverse puzzle waiting to be assembled.
But it wasn’t until he spoke and cried
and begged and begged and begged for someone to stitch him
back together again that the nausea began, and wouldn’t stop.

And in her house, her house of mourning Kaswayl
tried to believe Calvin’s suffering was enough to replace the
man she loved, and the father of her sons. Feb 26/09.

IF HELL WERE REAL

I’m like a fella at the crossword
puzzle. I don’t know what cross
I’m in. (A saying of my father, Feb 22/09.)

I can imagine it. Hell. There are so many depictions
of it after all, in film, comics, even in the old cartoons
the place of fire dominates the mortal mind.

It becomes such a sad conceit, so often the last refuge
of the horror film-maker trying to breath a little life into
a project that wouldn’t scare even the tiniest puppy.

And what becomes the point of hell, especially in such
works? They become but the stopping place of their
villain, the intermediate road between victim and victim.

But then originality was never an accusation made against
a film-maker so why should we be surprised when hell
becomes less the torment of eternity than the halfway

house of the uninspired killer. Oh, and dead, but every
one already knows that. And what if hell were real? A
country with its boundaries and currency, a nation state

whose history extends beyond the pyramids of old?
What then? I can almost imagine Satan speaking at the
UN (as if he doesn’t live there already,) addressing the

plight of poor unemployed demons, begging for reparations
against the libel of Christian fundamentalists, or the ignorant.
(Actually that’s the same thing.) And what must be the

machinery of hell, the bureaucracy of it? How must hell
be run, and for whom? In all the fictions and the fears hell’s
terror comes only by not wishing to go there. But like any

country not our own it loses its terror when the language breaks
down, when the unknown path opens and opportunities arrive.
It would be so easy if hell were real to immigrate there, to

throw off convention and start over in a new place, whether
it be of fire or not. In this world now what isn’t hell after all?
Only heaven I am told and no one ever seems to care what

awaits us there at all. I think it is because in hell everyone
has their own choices, however flawed, and in heaven no one
has any choices at all. Which makes heaven itself a hell

to some, and even to those who’d long for such a place how
do they know God is not just mocking them by leaving them
alone somewhere beyond the clouds, while He journeys
down below and celebrates eternity with his better son? Feb 26/09.

THE CHURCH
(The poem is my father’s.)

Where they put the church
they put a parking lot,
where they put the church
they put a tavern.

Where they put the church
they put a song choir,
but not a Christian one. It’s
all for the sin of redemption. Feb 24/09.

THE TALE OF SVAL-BRAGI

Sval-Bragi was a Svaltalfar, a dark elf, and raised in
the caverns below the roots of the world he grew strong
for he knew no fear, nor understood fear’s meaning.

Across the blood seas of wine and sorrow came the cry
of one in distress and Sval-Bragi took up his father’s
scythe and wandered through the twilit world to the

shores of the blooded sea. With his father’s twin
bladed scythe, (each blade at one of the staff’s ends,)
he carved himself a boat of rotted stone and sailed

himself across the tears of sorrow to the other side.
There seven ravens greeted him and begged him for
some meal, and all he had was mead, which he gave to

them. Then they rose up from the tree’s corpse they
had rested on and flew above the cavern into the elder
space beyond all seeing. Sval-Bragi went on and soon

found a colony of ants, great beasts large as him
which complained of being unable to find any food
in the world. Again he took up the challenge of his

kindness and led them, those black armoured soldiers
to one of the entrances of the outer world and told them
of a village full of humans they could eat. Off went

their thousands and tens of thousands, thanking him for
his kindness, and pointing him in the direction where the
dark cries came from. Up before him a long way from

the ants’ home of labyrinthine streets and the smell
of human flesh was a great tower leading upward into
night. From here the cries came, and so here the brave

one went, his father’s golden scythe beside him as his
companion and his brother, both fashioned by their father,
both honed by the tender steps of a mother teaching them

to be servants of their world. He threw open the great
doors of shale and there within a poor dragon lay, badly
wounded. She cried to him and with the scythe of his

father cut away the wound, leaving but healed skin behind.
Then he asked and inquired of the dragon who had done
this terrible deed, and she cried it was Wassersprung,

Caspar Wassersprung of the deep valley in the world above
the world of Svartelheim. So up must go Sval-Bragi, up to
face the tyrant of a dragon, and after he had climbed the

tower, after he had climbed the cliffs into the darkness
beyond all darknesses he clutched the roots of the world
and pushed himself through, like a moth pushing through

the bodies of the buried ones. There in that upper world
he searched until the tyrant of the dragon was found, and
with his father’s scythe Caspar was slain, so that the dragon

would have her peace again, to roam the places of men
unmolested in her feasting. Then downward he went,
back to the country of his home, as the seven ravens

transformed themselves to demons and went hunting in the
worlds above, where gods linger when they fear the worlds
below, that they do not control, or attempt to understand. Feb 26/09.

THE COWARD

Stone quiet, painting with the shadows
the coward waits. He has no moment to
consider bravery, no time to pretend

the hero’s part. All that is left of him,
all that remains is the compulsion to sit
in the dark and wait as the dragon passes

by, and maybe as the old stories go some
luck will rub on him and he may get the
upper hand of the rumbling thunder

passing by, but he thinks not. And
afterward, oh afterward he may brag all
he wants of feeling the dragon’s breath,

of seeing her black bladed teeth, but
now there is only the fear crouching with
him by the blasted stump of a tree by the
cave of death. And this is
all he feels, as anyone would. Feb 26/09.

FAIRYTALE

The hero must always be without wit
or intelligence, courageous, or more aptly lacking
in the knowledge of fear.
The heroine must
always suffer in some vaguely S&M fashion, be
it Snow White raped

by the Prince while asleep (which is the
original version of the tale,) Red Riding Hood
devoured by the wolf,
(a fine metaphor for sex
or rape according to some psychologists of the
modern age,) and my personal

favourite, the conceit of Rapunzel letting
her hair down to bring up a man, for anyone who
has had their hair
pulled knows this is more
agony than bliss.

Finally of course the villain must be an
outsider, either in morality or taste. Ogres, evil
step mothers, fathers
who want to have sex with
their daughters, mother-in-laws who want to devour
their own grand children, lawyers.

All of this is fed piecemeal to a child in
their earlier years, all the more perverse elements
locked away, the hero
rendered less immature and
more brave, the heroine less humiliated and more
fair. But the villains always remain the same.

You see you can always trust the villains
to be who they are, and to know who they are.
They’re monsters and they love
the knowledge that that brings.

This and only this a child deeply understands
while torturing insects, soiling themselves on purpose,
or plotting, however briefly in the
middle of the night to kill their parents
for not giving them want they really, really want.

The fairytale is not that the hero wins.
The fairytale is that the monster lives in us.
And we love the knowledge that it brings,
like any child would in a world locked away
from them, in a world that isn’t theirs. Feb 26/09.

KILLJOY

There was a man in the machines of a darker
world, and a woman who turned into a swan
at night, and a boy who could become invisible
whenever he really, really wanted to.

The world had fewer freedoms then and the
man decided to change the world, and when
your friends are a woman who turns into a swan
and an invisible boy there is a lot that you can do.

Bank machines started printing out “I love you”
to everyone they met, and the streets became filled
with fun-house mirrors, mocking the secret police
by following them everywhere they went.

At night flocks of swans and crows flooded the
skies everywhere, dropping poems and satires of
the leaders of men. And still the campaign was
not finished. The killjoys were not dead.

Oh there are many terrible ways to kill I’m told,
and ways I know that no one had to tell me. But
the worst is when you plunge headlong into
what you fear the most. One day all those shining

men and women of the elite who blasphemed by
saying laughter was a sin began to laugh and couldn’t
stop. It only ended when they pulled their revolvers
and shot each other on the spot.

I heard that afterward the machines all started singing
some opera in mourning, and mingled with those
haunting melodies there was some biting irony I guess.
Or maybe it was just a taste of things to come. Feb 28/09.

RHANA II.

The world was a dome of diamond steel, surrounded
on all sides by blistering black lands of acidic thunder.
All mankind was gone and in the city only a single
woman was left, the colour of steel.

She had been made out of some desire for love
because in that age before the end men had other
desires and women other desires, and so many took
lovers of stranger skin; I think it was a fad back then.

Now only she was left. She wandered from street to street
until she reached the world’s end, and gazing at a door she’d
never dared to see before she opened it, and went outside.

There was only the harshness of the world. There was
only the biting scream of storms that could not end.
And still she wandered farther and farther until the city
was a memory and the thought of man a memory.

At last she stopped and let herself fall upon the country of
regrets. And then she rose again and stood without moving.
As she had fallen she longed not to fall. It was a conscious
need born in the touch of the ground’s rough edges.

She stood and waited. In time she would feel something more. Feb 28/09.

LAWYER’S CREED

Ignore all the jokes, please.
I’m being serious after all.
But if Satan is the father of
lawyers, if Satan created

lawyers than what did God
create? The obvious answer
is everything else, but then
I always thought God

created lawyers too. Let the
facts speak for themselves.

Although if lawyers are an
affront to God than what is
the opposite of a lawyer?
I’d still like to know. Feb 28/09.

MAN WITHOUT MAN

The ghosts of the ammonites are speaking
to me again of man without man,

swimmers in the seas of fate lost without
a grave to call their own, lost in the metaphor

of the game. Ticking away the hours til
they come children in mens’ clothes stand

at the edge of no man’s land, left with
but an accumulation of words to understand

what they’re saying one to another, a pile
of words scattered along razor wire

and black winds searing acid like into
each other’s scarred and ruined flesh. But

I do not often want to think of that. Then
there is the idiot’s rainbow in the sky

mocking us with its brightness above the
terror of the ground, then there is the laughter

of the bayonet and the bullet’s brief song
echoing through boys’ skulls. Then,

and only then the ghosts of the ammonites
rest. Once they too held all the world

and now only as I clutch at the sounds
of sand are they at peace amongst themselves.

A benedictine rose blooms and no one
notices it. I remember the story of Ijarym,

the cat of Genovese I read when I was small
and the world was smaller with me then.

A bullet seems almost an acid trip for
children. They never bear the brunt of

perceiving it comes for them; they can’t. Such
logic is as perverse as the thought of seeing

the universe through the eyes of the ammonites
or through the memories of old men. But

what does it matter now? Man is without man. Mar 1/09.

NAVIGATING THE SIDEWALKS

Navigating the sidewalks
unknown even to myself
I trail the lost echoes of
other footsteps where they
fell. I feel as a chameleon

feels imitating grass or the
shapes and ghosts of trees.
Yes, I alone. I am lost in the
city of echoes and no one is

left to comfort me. But still
I am not finished with this life
I lead. Still I navigate the
sidewalks and know that I can
walk on where others walked before. Mar 1/09.

THE DEATH OF THE DRAGON
(Based partly on a manga image
by the creator of “Idle Minds.”)

I. She lied to me. Of all her kind she was
the one whom we trusted and when the
death knell came her betrayal cut deeper

than any other. They had wanted our
world, our lands, and I was cast some
where out beyond the boundaries of

the world I knew. It was a desert, but it
was colder than any freezing lake of ice.
There was no edge to it, and no beginning.

I wandered til my flesh fell away and
my bones rotted off and still my spirit
did not rest. High above me somewhere

I felt great ships moving, harvesting ten
times a trillion worlds, and I knew it was
not the work of man. Finally, after my soul

had bled thin I fell headlong into the sky
and unnoticed by those great wasp-bronze
ships, those insects perverted to some

unnatural design I followed them to where
they kept the sum of each vessel’s prize.

II. It was a great sphere, larger than a star,
and there within it’s gaping maw were the
wreckage of countless species from across

the stars. They were laid like statues,
haphazardly arranged, all but my people,
destroyed in fires unquenched by the taste

of flesh, by the screams of the dying ones.
I walked among row upon row of petrified
creatures, staring at oblivion with living

eyes. In the years that followed I watched
for her, and finally when I found her I had
a final punishment in mind. I knew that

she could see me, they all could, and though
my flesh was gone my will was not. I reached
into her and began to strip away her skin,

but only at first and only because I could. Then
and only then I began my true revenge. I grew
large as a dragon, a creature she had once

whispered to me about when my bed and hers
were one. She spoke of the legends of dragons
devouring beautiful women, virgins, although

that part of the myth would not be true now.
And she spoke of the hero who would come
along and save the woman from the dragon,

as I had saved her from the beasts of my country,
a country that was no more. When I had finished
my transformation I showed her that I had no

heart, but instead a gaping hole, black, that
led into some abyss or pit where light could
not escape. Then I reached for her, lovingly

as lovers do, and placed her inside of that
gaping pit, and closed myself over her. But
I was not finished with my prey. For after

this I led tendrils of sinews envelop her, at first
by the effort of my will, but then, as her flesh
and mine coalesced I became more real,

as she slowly was devoured into the shape of a
heart, her skin, her beautiful skin growing rough
and coarse, her heartbeats which grew as she

slowly awakened from the alien sleep mingling
with the echo of my heartbeat, until there was
but one rhythm and one source of life coming

from my chest. And I heard her muffled scream
and an almost inaudible beg for mercy. But by
then I was restored to the shape of a living being

and rested on the body of one of her kinsmen as an
alien I had never seen before approached, with a
syringe held in some parody of an outstretched hand.

Let them petrify my flesh, let them leave me here
in a garden of lost bodies. I do not care anymore.
So when my heartbeats began to slow as the

syringe dug in my flesh and released its strange
poison I simply sang a song of mourning for my
people, as the sounds of a muffled scream became

sadly slurred, and I looked upward into the black
unnatural sky where trillions upon tens of trillions
also were left trapped by being left alive.

And as I froze away I smiled one last time. At
least I had some company now. Her scream froze
upon the air as the alien complacently passed by. Mar 1/09.

SHE HAS DRUNK DEEPLY

She has drunk deeply of the nectar of desire
and still she is unsatisfied, my bride.
There neath corpse street lights,
there neath every smile which

she breaks I wait, content in the naive
optimism that yes, she was my bride.
And so am I left, waiting
for the shadows til they come. Mar 3/09.

NEATH A CAST GREY IRON SKY

Neath a cast grey iron sky
there is a scent of ashes in
my nostrils,
as the moving
thunder of a thousand crows
engulfs me body
and soul.

And afterward, yes afterward
it still tastes like ashes on
a hot summer wind,
suddenly
cooled in the rustling embrace
of autumn’s red and grey
burial robes. Mar 3/09.

TRYING

Trying is not the same as succeeding,
for it is preferable to try than to
succeed.
Victory is too easy if the
cost of failure is never met and
returned two-fold to the giver.

And why is this? Because life is
but the attempt to try and outrun
the utter and implacable
success of death. Mar 3/09.

PIGEON

I scattered corn on streets and
pigeons came, ungratefully
cooing as I threw up my hands
and welcomed them as best
I crookedly could.
Then back to church,
the grey dull church, listening
to sermons no wiser than
a crow’s mute song
while outside still I hear pigeons
eating, and then I feel them starve
all over again. Amen. Mar 3/09.

DRAGONFLY REQUIEM

There is a dragonfly requiem and still the
wrath-dog growls, still the bonobo prince
surrounds himself in the language of sex,

still the hunter bares his neck and his wife,
ever ready, releases him from the bonds of
flesh, with the chitinous tongue of a knife

held in the hunter’s hand. For his wife has
not the strength to stab him or ever ease his
pain, in one life or the next, if the next life

comes. I don’t believe it will. Dragonflies
have no souls, how much less has man? Mar 3/09.

TALE OF THE BODY THIEF

I burn and in the burning die,
then long to forget again that I am
a body thief
whose flesh is not
my own. All that I am is gone in
the body of another man,

while I, the parasite, am left
in another’s skin, left victimized,
vacuumized
because the thief is
left with only the profits of his
trade. I can take all the wealth

of the world in my hands but
my hands aren’t mine anymore.
For I am dead,
or rather the body
of who I was is dead, leaving
but the ghost of the thief, til only
the thief is left, not the man. Mar 3/09.

IN THE LAUGHTER OF THE DAMNED

In the laughter of the damned
there is hope, and only then
despair. In the hope of the damned

and their laughter there is the rational
conceit of knowing even in hell
there are worse souls in torment
than you, even in hell. Mar 3/09.

SKELETAL REMAINS

Skeletal remains of trees
in the evening sun of arctic

shores by the edge of
ice-burnt seas of frost,

and lust. Here I scatter
dreams that I may be. Mar 4/09.

HELL-LAND AND THE DIAMOND PLANET

The greed of the world is summoned up in
the diamond, so when a man enters the land
of hell, if he has been especially wicked he

is sent to a planet, forged of a single diamond.
It seems a world unto itself, somewhere in the
fiery realm of hell, and perhaps it was the

fire that forged the diamond whole. In
punishment men go there and are given
back the remnant of their flesh and

in their greed too soon they forget hunger,
thirst, speech, companionship, til they
are but maggots crawling on a long

and shattered mirror. As for the rest of
hell it is no better, or maybe worse, but the
devil gazes so intently on his diamond world

I’d almost think he’d let himself fall to that
temptation too, and that is hell of a different
kind I am sure for the child and father
of man’s ambition and man’s strife. Mar 3/09.

THE PARABLE OF THE CRABS

Put a thousand crabs in a bucket
and even if they could work together
to climb over the top and escape

all they’d do is drag each other down,
reaching for the top that they’ll never

reach. It’s an old cliche I know
but true nonetheless; the self-made
man does not exist. We are all

but stepping stones one upon another,
together reaching upward to some

mutual destiny, or not,
depending on the nature
of our lives and dreams. Mar 4/09.

DR. SVALGI

Dr. Svalgi amputates first the patient’s
heart, before any other thing. Only

then does he begin the operation.
And after the dead man or woman has

been fixed is the heart replaced and the
body like a machine turned on as

a switch would be turned on. Dr. Svalgi
is the sum of so many other men, so

many women, for when the heart
is taken out he places it in his

own chest, and only after this
can he know how best to fix the

bodies of those around. But it’s not
the same thing as fixing another man’s
bleeding soul, or
a woman’s grieving mind. Mar 4/09.

YELLOW SALAMANDER

A yellow salamander crawled along my gravestone
bleeding poison from a thousand tiny spines. I
shuffled and turned in the boundary of my coffin

and felt the scent of a subtle toxin perfume the
air. Later I am sure someone may come, hear
the bell tolling by the foot of my grave,

for this is the sixth time I have found myself buried,
living neath this charred and blasted spot of my
family’s resting place. By now it has almost

become routine, my foot pulling at the string
leading to the bell above in the upper world. The
yellow salamander crawls down, poison on her

tongue. And the ringing of my bell suddenly stops. Mar 4-5/09.

SCHRODINGER’S CAT

In the grass the cat has begun to stir.
It is strange to watch my cat and her
shadow crawl along the grass,

to know that she lives, but her
shadows does not. It somehow
is dead, but not stationary,

or mute. The dead shadow moves
of it’s own accord, tied to my cat
only by the slenderest threads.

I enter the box I performed
my experiment in. What
conversations would you

have with your own shadow if
your shadow could answer back? Mar 4/09.

THE WICKER BASKET

He sought some form of escape. There in that
basket sealed black the world went away. They

found him curled to a ball, his head lopsidedly
placed on one of his upraised knees. But there

are some things you never escape from. Death
found him anyway, even in his airtight hiding

place. I suppose it was a suicide of the
uninformed mind, some superstitious

attempt to just lock death away from him.
Or maybe it was merely suicide; his

final realization that you can’t escape,
even when the whole world goes away. Mar 4-5/09.

LUCIEN DEFEYD

Lucien DeFeyd lacked a sweet disposition.
He was made that way. It had been his

father’s intent to break the boy of
compassion in this latest time of war.

So it came as no surprise when the father
lost his life neath the gaze of the young

sadist’s eyes. He had been made that way
after all. What lessons are cruelly made

and taught when the world is caught
in the logic of a father wanting to save

his only son from the wrath of an uncaring
world, or a wife who never said goodbye. Mar 4-5/09.

ROUNDED SOFTNESS

Rounded softness to a ball,
black as gall,
silent as sleep.

And all the terrors mute
and keep themselves pale

like children in the
seasons of frost and sun,
and on we run
into the blackness

of gall, a womb without
edge, to have the knowledge

of the unassuming bomb,
overtaking all
in mute and

horror-ridden obsidian fog,
consuming all to a rounded

softness, silent as sleep,
which never comes. Mar 5/09.

THE FISH CAUGHT ME

The fish caught me in its sea of
frozen dreams, and there beneath
the gaze of fire-insects blazing
brightly in their counties of fire
I froze as the bronze tarnished
armour of the fire-insects above
burnished themselves to a cool
sheen, and burst when I breathed
a winter’s touch upon their world
in the world beyond the boundaries
of this empty shade-encrusted hell. Mar 9/09.

AGENT GEMINI

He split himself apart, down the middle.
It wasn’t hard to do. I suppose the agent
wanted to increase the odds of his

success. And as two men I’m sure he’d
see it through. But then one of him got
shot, badly burst apart like a balloon

ruptured of air, and the other one
collapsed, then rose again, guns blazing
out to no intent. He died fifteen minutes

later to no one’s regret. Either way we
thought about it, one man or two he simply
wasn’t worth the damned expense. Mar 9/09.

ALL THE WORLD ARE HORSES

All the world are horses, all the
world’s metaphors are horses
stampeding into each other,
crashing into one another, til only
gulls and their echoes remain, cast
against the hoof beats of an angry
storm coated sky. Mar 10/09.

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

“On the positive side we have survived.”
So said the president of the United States.

“I am happy all the press has remained by
my side to see this victory fulfilled as I

promised it would be. That is another
mark to make on the positive side.

And let us not forget that our enemies
are dead, oh no, let us not forget that,

because otherwise victory could not be
assured.” “But we are the only ones left,”

a reporter said. “We are the only people
in the whole world.” “Well that’s

just another positive point to make,” he
replied. “You have me all to yourself.

Ask any question you like. I’m sure
I’ll give an honest answer to you now.

After all what’s the point in lying?
All the important people are gone

who never mattered anyway. It’s just
you and me from now on. And I’m an
optimist after all. Everything will be okay.” Mar 9/09.

EXO-MAN

Grafted bones on top of bones, on top of skin
until he is an Exo-Man, until he has the strength
of twenty men,
encased in spines and armour plates.

You’d almost forget with all that strength he can
never feel again the touch of his wife’s hand
or lips upon his face.
But that is war after all.

Someone has to take the place of guns and
tanks, and the walking wounded without end. Mar 9/09.

THE MODERN DAY HEADHUNTER

I. Telephone wire in the rain, black line
in a sea of blackness cast against obsidian
skies, mute shuffling of a girl’s throat
and the knife cutes fine, perfect symmetry,
the knife and the telephone line.

II. This is no ritual for better men, this is
not the feast gluttons dream. She savours
him but a moment and no more.
He takes her hand as a second prize

and the wind does not howl and lightning
does not sheen. There is barely the sound
of a dog barking. The night rolls on
and does not care why.

III. Another and another and another.
The graves repeat themselves. There is
but the mute consolations of the police
officers and the grieving.

There is but the newspapers bland
banalities and promises to catch the
killer. But nothing ever changes.

IV. In the last equation the killer is never
caught. There is just the suicide of a man
in the wrong country and wrong
time sliding the knife across his throat
in the act of auto-phagia, and becoming
his last, and finest trophy piece. Mar 9/09.

ZEDEK PRIME
(Suck it, Superman.)

Sent from a dying world, made to conform
to the couple that saved him, forced to betray
himself by pretending to be a man when he
isn’t human at all, Zedek Prime still grew

strong. He once said to that irritating
reporter how absurd it was to think two
such different worlds could produce the
same form for life; it was all a facade,

this disguise of a man which he was. His right
arm below the elbow was metal, and his left
palm opened to reveal strange death blossoms

which he fired and which bit into anything
they touched with their razor spines. His
stomach opened and out would come worms

with white sharp teeth, and the fingers of his
left hand broke into claws, triangular blades
adjacent to his fingernails, on the very ends
of his fingertips. And if that was not

enough his right hand had a spine
sharply pierce his middle knuckles,
and he used it to drain the souls of
those who opposed him. He went

further than this, robbing supervillains of
their wills, making his worst enemies collapse
to bodies prim and proper as lawyers before the

execution block. And if this were not enough
he saved the world once or twice by draining
away all the weapons of the world.

But at the end of the day he’d go to work, sit
at his desk and write and never stop penning
the memoirs of those he took whose pale
memories were all that was left for him

besides white hair greying to ashes in the
wind, and that was the only gift his true
parents gave, the gift of a stealer of souls. Mar 9/09.

LUCIUS FEYD

Give him the sunlight and he will give
back the shadow, take from him a slender
sliver of grass and he will steal back
a meadow, and all the world owes Lucius

Feyd for all the things which he has made,
like jealousy, hatred and deceit; from this
the world’s decayed just because we
often meet the shadows that we are

on black-touched streets in seasons that
have no edge while Lucius Feyd is there,
like spiders tangled in their webs with
nowhere to go, because they go nowhere. Mar 9/08.

INSOMNIA

Everybody’s asleep except for me.
I’m the only one awake because I’m
the only one who ever gets to sleep.

I have to pretend I never slept last
night or the night before. I have to
use eyeliner to cast circles under

my eyes. And if anyone ever
suspects I let a woman in my
apartment all night, just for

sex. It helps fulfil my disguise. In
the morning I just take a nap after
she leaves, but I always pretend I

never slept at all by the time I go
to work. If the office ever knew
I’d be ostracized I’m sure. Crazy
people do crazy things after all. Mar 10/09.

BONE LYRE II.

The prince came in at noon, and saw the
younger playing. And because he was a
prince it was expected of him to love her,
and perhaps in some small way he did.

The king was pleased by the arrangement,
but the older daughter of the two grew bitter,
and taking the younger to a field by the river
started playing. Then she pushed her sister

in, and as the younger girl begged to live
the elder walked away, and never looked
back. In the river as it tore her the flesh
came away til only bone was left, and finally

her remains washed up on the shore, and
there a minstrel came by, and took them as
his own. He carved strange lusting gods
upon the lyre which he made, and as the

days passed into days came to a castle far
from the shores he wandered, where a
wedding had just taken place. The prince
seemed idly pleased with his bride, and

the king and queen seemed joyous, if but
a bit preoccupied, as if something were out
of place, but they couldn’t decide just why.
Then the minstrel started playing, playing

songs of love and glory, and the bride
seemed most pleased as she hugged her
betrothed’s strong arm, but he only barely
smiled a little bit, and seemed perturbed

by the closeness of her touch, as if the
marriage meant so much only to the bride
and no one else. Then the lyre started
singing of it’s own accord for no one

played it as it hung above the air where
the minstrel gazed. And she sang of where
she came from, and she sang of her origins
upon the shore and within the castle,

where the daughter of a king was born.
Then the strings were suddenly torn and
the lyre spilled blood upon the ground, for
no one had remembered her, not even once

after the poor girl drowned. Instead they had
simply ignored such thoughts with a spare
girl to wed a prince even now, and the
prince, why what was he but a servant

of another king, sent to marry whomever
he could find, because love was paler than
than a son’s sad duty to marry whomever
a king had in mind. And now the marriage

feast is over, and now the spot of blood
cannot be cleansed. The prince is still
married to the murderess, but she is less
fortunate than any other I should guess.

For you see in the night and every night
which comes to call the princess’s face is
marred and ruined, cut and scarred by a
thousand claws, and in the morning,

every morning her face resembles what
a drowned face would, beaten by stones
and white drift wood, cast in a river
by a blood cooled shore. But it’s only
a story after all. Or maybe more. Mar 13/09.

NATASHA CAMWELL

She lovingly described everything
in time, every scar upon her face,
and mine.
And there in the abyss,
the sea of nothingness I have
become divorced of sleep
as Natasha Camwell
sips upon my soul as my
soul is forced again to scream. Mar 13/09.

THE MALACHITE BRIDGE OF ZALADOR

There on the malachite bridge of Zalador
I thought I saw you there, though it was
another world and another time

and you were lost to me. Still,
even lost as I am lost upon this
world that has another nature and

another shape we know each other
because we love each other, at least here
in this world where love casts a different shadow

even on the bridge of Zalador where
names themselves have died, and we
are known by stranger things. Mar 1-13/09.

PURPLE ROBES AND YELLOW EYES

Purple robes and yellow eyes
and the priest gathers round

with his obsidian blade. But
rather than a cruel sacrifice

he tears the jagged edges of
the knife along his own bared

throat. His suicide is alone
and it is enough. He has

more faith in his god than the
righteous palely have in mine.

They lack the convictions
to face death head on.

Instead they merely cast
others into the maw
reserved for them. Mar 4/09.

THROW AWAY YOUR CLUE OF WORDS

Throw away your clue of words
and live again, my friend.

Throw away the legacy of
unaccounted-for regrets; there

is nothing left to fear. She loves
you; this I know, because

she does not love me.
Throw away your clue

of words and embrace her.
My wife has never really been

my wife, as long as you were there
anyway, old friend of mine. Mar 5-9/09.

ALL THE GLITTERING CHARIOTS

All the glittering chariots running to
and fro, and all the world overpopulated
with knowledge which saves no one.

In the psycho-history of the world,
in the interpretation of one life piled
upon another what truth is left that

can ever still be told? Only that
old lie of never letting the facts get
in the way of a good story, only

the convictions of men and women
certain, oh so certain they are the apogee
of life itself, til the chariots crash

as they must crash, and wine is
cast out of bodies like crushed insects
paralyzed by the terror of children

as they wait to die upon the ground. Mar 13/09.

MORENJATHU

Morenjathu was an archer.
Anything he aimed at he
could hit.
So when
Il-liogi dared him to strike
the sun the archer aimed

and fired, and the sun
went dark. And afterward
that old demon said
“If only all
men were so powerful
what need would demons have
to curse the world of men?” Mar 13/09.

SCHODERGER

Schoderger had one single vice
which haunted him. He couldn’t
love.
Oh, it has often been
whispered of loves that cannot
be, or
failed romances, but in
Schoderger’s case he simply
felt no love.

So when Priges, that old
dog in men’s skin, went looking
for another woman
to seduce
Schoderger followed him,

and no one ever saw Priges
again. So I guess there is some
benefit
in having people
of all types in
the world after all.

One man won’t be missed.
One man unable to love doesn’t
matter anyway at all.
Unless you need a rival
taken from the world. Mar 13/09.

AHELYN

Ahelyn loves a single rose
which I destroyed. I guess
I must try harder,
take
more away until there’s
nothing left for her to
love but I. Mar 13/09.

THE MYRTLE TREES

He walked between the myrtle
trees and angels walked beside
him.
God gave him a plumb
line and he gauged the balance
of the world.
And Jerusalem
still remains, waiting to be
destroyed. The man of men
walks between
the myrtle trees waiting
for God Himself to die. Mar 13/09.

THE THORNS BLOOM

The thorns bloom at the old
foundation and the leper prince
gathers up his wounded ones.

Vengeance births herself anew
in the body of a leper prince
and all the world is cut by the

touch of thorns and ashes. No
one remembers anymore what
the castle was used for, and

no one is left who knows that
vengeance is just another name
for an empty, pointless war. Mar 13/09.

MR. AHENLIAN

“Good day. I am Mr. Ahenlian
of the Aheynal-jandria institute
of science. Today I will
demonstrate matter phasing

technology.” So said the
scientist on the podium, who
flipped a switch and passed
his hand cleanly through

a piece of cement. He died
twenty seconds later, as the
infection in the cement
ate through first his hand,

than his entire frame. But he
was not alone, as each and
every time the same thing
happened with every scientist

as they attempted this very
thing. Finally I whispered to
my colleague “Why don’t they
stop?” And he answered saying

“They’d rather die than admit
they could ever make a mistake.” Mar 13/09.

THE MIRROR

In the final analysis of life it seems
pointless only because we know not
what death becomes thru life.

If instead we emerged first dead
and at some point became alive again
to the dead our living state would as

alien as living is to death.
Life is the mirror that death
is gazing at. Mar 13/09.