The Place of the Living Part 2

 The man sipped his water slowly. 

Wise, Quil thought. Used to the hardships of a salt-water life.

"You will need to eat a little, too" Quil said.

"Yes," the man rasped. 

"Do you know your name?" Quil asked, passing a small piece of dried fish from his ragged pack.

The man ate the fish first, then took another draft of water.

"Elsen," he said. "Elsen of Lacfell." 

He paused a moment, taking another drink from the skin, and passing it back to Quil.

"Thank you for pulling me from the water," he said.

Quil said, "It is nothing. I was here, you washed in with the tide. It was only a moment's work to drag you to my poor fire."

"Then just for the water and fish," Elsen answered.

Quil smiled.

Elsen watched the old man feed the fire with driftwood. The dry fuel brough the campfire to blazing life, and Quil chuckled a little.

The flames threw shadows about the craggy face and made his beard seem longer and darker. The soft cavern of Quil's toothless mouth, made to seem bigger in the dancing light, worked constantly in a soundless, one-sided conversation.

The water and food had done its work and Elsen was standing now, thinking of climbing the grassy berm to see the land beyond. He just didn't feel quite ready yet.

He wore only the breeches and linen shirt he'd washed up in, his boots, hat and longcoat a memory of the sea. Much like his sword, he lamented. He was in a strange land of which he knew little, and who knew if Quil intended to sell him to some bandit or slaver.

Of course, he saw little threat from Quil himself. It was just his own ignorance of the local custom. After all, if someone had washed up outside of Lacfell in his condition, they'd likely have been murdered long since. Especially if it was the hobgoblins who found them.

Quil had settled onto a log and was looking contentedly out to sea. It might have been as if Elsen wasn't even there.

He turned to the berm and began making his barefoot way through the sand.

"Oh don't do that," Quil said, without even changing his expression.

Elsen paused.

"Why not?" he asked.

"The stones in the grass will cut your feet," the old man answered. "I'll make you a pair of sandals in the morning. In the mean time, it will be supper soon."

"Oh? What's for supper, then?" Elsen asked.

Quil lifted and shook his shabby pack.

"Ah," nodded Elsen.

Crossing the Bridge

Here 

BY NICHOLAS GOODLY

There is a moment

on the bridge,

piles of clothes

along the margin.

The pile

is behind you,

the moment is

you looking

in the rearview.

Somewhere,

a clean white

minivan,

a family

gathering

fallen luggage.

You are

the margins.

The moment

is looking

back at you.

The bridge

is between

you and

the moment

you look in

the rearview.

It is only

the bridge,

it is in the shape

of you, the bridge.

The bridge is you,

you a part of it,

somewhere.

The bridge

is nothing,

only

the shape

of

it

now.

It is behind you.

I Love You, But

 BY RICARDO RUIZ

Mi Jefita looks distraught,

oscillating between

her own history and my soul.

Hours, days, months with her knees

bent pidiéndole a la virgin

Que me cuidara as I fought in

Afghanistan.

Now she’s staring into hell's image,

Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil

groping with each spin of the

wooden spoon

as the red paste rises to a boil,

splattering her apron

with my childhood favorite meal.

I love him, he’s my best friend, the

one who slept on my couch

when I wanted to put my AR to

my mouth and be another dead vet.

I would have died for this country

because I believe it’s for me and

him.

I may have to marry him,

I tell the most important women in

my life.

                                 My Fiance

                                 My Mother

I will marry him,

cause we ain’t goin’ nowhere.

2,572 miles separate Moses Lake,

Washington,

my place of birth

and Colima, Mexico, his.

Neither of us had a role in how we

got here.

Here

Crows in a Strong Wind

Here 

Crows in a Strong Wind

BY CORNELIUS EADY

Off go the crows from the roof.

The crows can’t hold on.

They might as well

Be perched on an oil slick.

Such an awkward dance,

These gentlemen

In their spottled-black coats.

Such a tipsy dance,

As if they didn’t know where they were.

Such a humorous dance,

As they try to set things right,

As the wind reduces them.

Such a sorrowful dance.

How embarrassing is love

When it goes wrong

In front of everyone.

The Moon and the Yew Tree

by Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness —
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness — blackness and silence.

Hunger

 

That sense of spinning, shredding doom you feel when you are hungry and sleepy?

That’s a survival mechanism.

You are in danger.

Take it seriously.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is the danger.

It’s social control.

Don’t accept oppression.

Your anger is yours.

Don’t let anyone take it from you.

 

If you are hungry, only eat if you want to.

(If you can.)

If you are sleepy, only sleep if you want to.

Make your own damn decisions.

---

Did you see that shitty neighborhood under the bridge back there?

The judgement just rolls off you as you speed by.

How do you think it got that way? Bad people live there, right?

Bad people

Who have no money

No grocery store

No car to get to the nice, tree-lined avenue, in the pale, new addition where the store is.

No grocery store, because there is no money, no money, because there are no businesses. No businesses because there is no money. No money, no groceries.

And it spins and it spins.

And they are hungry and sleepy and doomed.

And you want to take away their anger with your condescending bullshit.

You want to talk at them with your deep and beloved ignorance.

Drive on, and fuck you.

The Place of the Living, Part 1

 He drifted for a long time. Days, perhaps, though consciousness was only an occasional companion. He knew the sun, relentless and oppressive, and sometimes the stars. He once heard the stirrings of some great beast beneath his little raft of debris, but hadn't the energy to react. 

Consciousness surfaced once more in the night. The now-familiar swaying of the sea was gone, leaving a heaving in his belly, unaccustomed to stillness. He could feel the cool of the night, though his eyes were crusted shut. Sand at his back, in his clothes, seemingly in his mouth.

He opened his eyes, and the stars above spun wildly. He shut them again, rolled over and heaved the nothing from his guts.

"You'll need more water," came a voice, male-seeming and quivering with age. "And food when you can."

He panted through the end of his spasm, fell back on his shoulders. He wanted to move his mouth, ask questions, but instead he drifted away again.

Quil warmed his hands at the fire, glancing over at the sleeping man. Not a young man, by any means, more of middling years. His face was lightly pocked, likely from a bout of spots in his youth. The nose was heavy, arching low over a thin mouth hidden by the scraggle of beard. Quil could tell the man was used to shaving both face and head, but stubble stood heavy upon his pate.

The paleness of the man's complexion told Quil he likely came from across the water. Not a common thing, but sometimes ships will wreck too far out, and drift will wash upon the beach. 

It's not often that drift breathes, though, Quil chuckled quietly into the salty breeze.

The man woke again, and this time was able to sit up. He extricated himself from beneath a makeshift shelter, made of a ratty cloak and some sticks. Nearby, a driftwood campfire smoked its last, and before him, beach and sea. The sun was high in the sky, but seemed dimmed by a haze. 

He looked behind him. Whoever dragged him here had set up camp near the edge of the beach. Just a few steps away loomed tall brown grass, obscuring whatever land lay beyond. From the position of the sun, he knew that land would not be his home. The sea on the north of him told him that, right enough.

Just as he was turning away from the grass, an old man's face emerged from above it. Gray, bearded and dark of skin, the man was thin and a little stooped. He stopped when he saw that his charge was awake.

"Welcome back to the place of the living," he said.

The Prince and the Goldfish

 Once upon a time, there lived a handsome prince. He was surrounded by all things beautiful and wonderful, and never wanted for anything. His every need was attended, his every whim granted. He was an exceedingly spoiled prince.

                He was prone to tantrums, and would blame his own short-comings on the people around him. If he missed a target in archery practice, he blamed the god of the winds. If he read a word of which he didn’t know the meaning, he had his tutor flogged.

                Once, he had his rooms redecorated, and before the work was done, he lost interest in the scheme. To compensate for this, he had the decorator and all of his assistants put to death. He started redecorating as the executions were taking place, having no stomach for such spectacles.

                The only creature he had any warm feelings for was his pet goldfish. He admonished the slaves taking care of his precious fish that if anything happened to it, something bad would happen to all of them.

                The prince’s little pet eventually died, goldfish not being especially long-lived creatures. The young man threw a royal tantrum and, of course, made good on his promise. Not only did he have the caretakers of his little fish put to death, he also had their families punished.

                That night, still distraught over the death of his pet, the prince went to bed. He lay awake for what seemed a very long time, mourning his dead and only friend.

                Finally, he drifted off to sleep. A few minutes later he began to hear a voice calling his name. It was a voice he didn’t recognize, but it was familiar all the same.

“Prince,” the voice called from the splendid room in which he’d kept his precious goldfish. “Prince, what have you done to my friends?”

                The prince awoke in a sweat. He called a slave to him, and told her to go to the room from which the voice had emanated. He told her to tell him everything she saw there, or else.

                The little slave did what she was told. She searched the room, and found nothing amiss, save for a large puddle of water for which she could find no reasonable explanation. She returned to the prince.

                “Well?” demanded the Prince. “What did you see?”

                The little slave, whose name was Mara, could see the prince was very upset. She didn’t want to see him throw a fit like he had the day before, so she told him that all was well, and made no mention of the puddle of water.

                In a few moments, the prince calmed down. He went about his day just as he always had. His mood was even more foul than usual, but there were no executions that day.

                Night came, and the prince settled down into his bed. This time he slept almost immediately, worn out from the day’s bad temper.

                Again, he heard the voice from the goldfish’s room: “Prince, what have you done to my friends?” The prince covered his head with his blanket, but still the voice came. Over and over it said those same words: “What have you done to my friends?”

                Finally, with a great cry, the prince woke. He again called Mara to check the goldfish’s room. Though the puddle of water was now much larger, she returned to the prince with the same story: all was well.

                This day, the prince’s mood was even worse than the previous day. He had a slave flogged for not rinsing his sponge properly after washing a pot. Another slave was beaten for making the prince’s bed with the wrong color sheets.

                Again, night fell. As the prince was preparing for bed, he called Mara to him. He told her to stay in the goldfish’s room and to report to him what she saw there. He admonished her not to sleep, or the consequences would be dire.

                The prince went to sleep. Again, he heard the voice: “What have you done to my friends?” He called to Mara, but the girl didn’t come. He called again, but still she didn’t show.

                Anger at the slave’s disobedience drove all fear of the voice from his head, and he rose from his bed, and strode into the hallway between the rooms. When he arrived at the room, however, fear once again overtook him.

                Again, the voice came, more loudly than ever: Prince, what have you done to my friends?”

                Mustering all of his meager courage, the prince pushed open the door and stepped in. Mara was nowhere to be seen, but in the middle of the room, as if it were full of water, floated a giant goldfish. It took up almost the entire room, and it was looking right at the prince.

                Exceedingly frightened, the prince turned to flee, only to be met by a locked door. He pounded on the door, crying for someone to let him out, but no one came. Finally, he turned back to the fish.

                “Prince,” boomed the massive voice of the giant, “what have you done to my friends? Did you kill my friends, prince?”

                “Th- they let you die,” the prince stammered.

                “I was old,” the fish replied. “It was my time.”

                “But, you were my fish,” the prince squeaked.

                “One creature does not own another,” the fish replied, and swam closer to the prince.

                Panicked, the prince tried the door again, and this time it gave way.

                He woke up screaming. He called all of his slaves and attendants together, and told them they were all free. Then, as the newly freed people stood there stunned, he turned away from them and fled his palace, through the town outside, and into the forest.

                Once he was gone, Mara emerged from her hiding place behind the prince’s bed, and said the words once more to herself: “Prince, what have you done to my friends?” and laughed.

                For many years after, people would tell the story of the Old Man of the Forest, who lived in a cave in a remote place, and cared for and communed with the animals.

Who are the Aliens?

Capitalism creates aliens. Any sufficiently wealthy person, whether owner of the means of production, the owner of property, or simply the parasitic inheritor, is an alien in the sense that they are removed from the common experience of the rest of society. The more isolated they become from the work of survival, the less like everyone else they are. That is to say, they lose (if they ever had it) the ability to empathize with their fellow humans, and believe that everything they have they deserve; everyone else simply isn't worthy of success due to their own character flaws.

This follow-on effect of capitalism is dangerous, not only because it reflects the unjustifiable hoarding of wealth on the part of a small number of people. But, also because those people, especially after a generation or two, begin to feel like they are different from the rest of the population, better and more deserving, not just because they work harder (which, of course, they don't) but, because they are somehow chosen by God. This is the basis of feudalism and monarchy.

If this seems far-fetched, all one has to do is to look around the US at this moment. People who think this way are already here.  The whiny, over-privileged little boy who currently occupies the Oval Office is a prime example. He feels like he deserves whatever he wants, simply because he is who he is. This intense, maniacal gluttony for acquisition is precisely what makes people like this alien.

The seed of alienation is inside all humans, however. Anyone who becomes wealthy, by whatever means, is at risk of this unfortunate fate. We know this, because these people are still just human, with the same biology and underlying psychology as the rest of us. They simply have been poisoned, and transformed into something less than human, something alien.

I say unfortunate because it is a condition that, no matter how wealthy they are, cannot last. Eventually, everyone dies, and they have spent their short lives bent on getting more and more, and it is never enough. They damage society by removing resources that would be better used in some other way than just sitting in their coffers. They poison those around them by infecting them with the same psychosis. They damage themselves because they are never happy.

Capitalism is an alien god, and it creates aliens in its own image. We can do better. We can purge the alien influence on our society and rule ourselves instead. We don't need them, they need us. 

This

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Bowie

I'm a phallus in pigtails
And there's blood on my nose,
And my tissue is rotting
Where the rats chew my bones,
And my eye sockets empty
See nothing but pain.

-From "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" 

Oops

OK, so the poem everyday thing didn't work out. Surprise! Oh, well. Something is coming soon, though.

Days 4 and 5

I've already missed one, so I will write two today.

1.
A creaking mess invades my sleep
Lying like stone, rigid, unmoving but awake
A blank wall, unbroken until now
Silence like a deep river, shattered by a groan
Only a little like a tramp, fallen from the train
Less pathetic, but more worthy of pity
But, I do not rise to the occasion.

2.
However it may be
On and on
In and in
Inward and outward
Alone and crowded out
A universe, rattling and teeming
With a single thing

Who knows the self
Knows the rest
Who resides in knowledge
Knows how to rest
Call it what you will
Power or repose
It is a response

Day 3

Spittle in the road
Only a bit
Glinting in the fading sun
A tiny, wretched prism

Silence falls slowly in the dusk
Missing the point
And night receives
The final toast

Whisked away by new glow
Filling the wisest course
With tiny hazards
But just for a moment

Second Day

Dusty ray of sunlight
Makes a phantom reality,
Thinly veiled as truth
An open trough of shifting
Light, a seeming lucidity,
Broken streams of awaiting
Laid low by technicality,
A deranged blowing wind

A Poem A Day For 30 Days

Let's see if I can do it. Here's the first:

I lie in a stone chamber and wait
Unsure of myself
Less sure of you
Only a little convinced of the light beyond

Shadows flash across the figures on the walls
Leaving nothing behind
Giving no explanations
Barely registering with you at all

Drip, drip, drip of water, mineral rich and white
Hammers my brain
Is lost on you
A light caress of lunacy showing through a lie

From the Mouth of the River

It is from the mouth of the river that the sea takes its sustenance.

You sit at the table, cigarette in hand, drink before you, and you watch the door. In time, and in libation, nothing begins to matter to the exception of all else. There are comings and goings, conversations and arguments about less than nothing. It is the way of things. It's just you and the six billion. There are too many, you might drown in them. Closing in, they menace with yellow teeth and the sweet, tempting breath of the dying. Where does the time go?

Heading for the door, the poignancy of the scene left behind is not lost on you. Men and women, happy, enraged, sad, delirious, all sliding to their fate, slow as hell. You and the six billion. Where does the time go? The fresh air changes your direction. Suddenly, everything is fresh and clean. Now, its you who are menacing, belligerent and deadly. You see faces, repulsed, amused, fearful. Trying to become invisible, you trip on to your destination, such as it is. Rushing water sounds in your head.

Small Things

What I remember of her are the small things: The way she moved her hands, the sun in her hair, the way the hem of her dress curled up slightly. She would hold her hand over her eyes, shading out the sun, but letting the small breeze blow her bob around her ears.

"What are you doing?" She would ask, but not really expect an answer. It was a greeting, as close as she ever came to acknowledging that she needed someone else's company. We sat together often, usually during a lunch break or some such interval. I would munch the sandwich I brought, she would look around us, and comment on the people. I never saw her eat, which is curious; most relationships center, at least in a small way, around eating.

"I like that guy's hat," she would nod at the elderly gentleman with the fedora and long coat. "You should get a hat like that."

I rarely had a reply to that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly have meant it. I had seen myself in hats, and it was always ridiculous. At the time, I had long, red hair, past my shoulders. Hats just looked out of place.

"That woman is a racist," An unsubtle pronouncement, but when I looked up to see who she was talking about, I wasn't sure I could disagree. The lady did look rather disapprovingly at the interracial couple a few feet away from her. It could have been the overly-affectionate mannerisms they displayed, or the divergent skin colors. It was difficult to tell, and to point that out would be unnecessarily confrontational. I was never into an argument.

So, I let these little comments go, usually without a rejoinder of my own.

These are the things I recall, and little else. She seemed nice enough, and in the couple of months we played at a relationship, she displayed nothing abhorrent or terribly irresistible. So, finally, we simply stopped seeing each other. We didn't even say goodbye in any way. One day, she didn't show up for lunch, and I didn't go round her place that night to make love and examine her collection of novena candles again. I didn't see her again for another six months.

I was at a party. It was a rather large affair, held in a warehouse. Two friends of mine, a couple for a decade or more, were celebrating their anniversary. When they had a party, they tended to invite everyone they had ever known, so these affairs had long ago outgrown their apartment. One of them was an artist, and she liked to turn these parties into an art show as well. The floor was scattered with various heavy-looking lumps of bronze and iron, almost fearful to behold, in a Lovecraftian sort of way. The walls were littered with two-dimensional doppelgangers of them.

I was seated on a bench beneath one of the gigantic canvases, staring distractedly into a mostly-empty glass of gin. "That girl just had sex in the bathroom." She was standing a little to the left of me, gazing off into the crowd. I could see the woman she was talking about. She was the only obvious choice. The rest of the crowd in that part of the room appeared to have stopped doing anything remotely enjoyable years before.

"Her dress is wrinkled in the back, and her hair seems more accidentally disjointed than intentionally scruffy."

She looked down at me. Her hair was longer now, it was in her eyes, and I couldn't see the color of them. I didn't remember it. We smiled at each other for a moment, and she moved back off into the crowd. I never saw her again.

After Work by Gary Snyder

The shack and a few trees

float in the blowing fog  

I pull out your blouse, 

warm my cold hands      

     on your breasts. 

you laugh and shudder 

peeling garlic by the       

     hot iron stove. bring in the axe, the rake, 

the wood  

we'll lean on the wall 

against each other 

stew simmering on the fire 

as it grows dark

             drinking wine. 

This Is Morning

Where is the descent into the shadow?
Where the oddness of light?
This is the weirdness of morning,
the bleary-eyed stare into the middle distance.
A cacophony of uninteresting activity occupies the ears,
frustrating the brain’s attempt at lucidity.
Here is empty obedience to the body’s necessities,
and thank the Gods for that.
But then, the coffee is good, like confession and
screaming curses at the sky.
The drilling headache that follows is evidence of life,
and an opening to the news of the day.
So much for the shadow, forgotten; so much for soft light.
Bring the day’s fight! Open the Third Eye of burden!
I am awake, I am ready...