Filed under: Uncategorized
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.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
