A Shade Of Solecism

In the process of understanding this wide world, a strange inner transformation comes to fruition. Just like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the expenditure of energy in observing something changes the observation. The world we learn about is only the world that includes us, and the world there is is made up of people who change it continuously. What we can learn is what it is, but the mistake would be in trying to teach ourselves what it could have been instead of understanding it for what it was.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Rites of passage"][/caption]

I learnt of the world outside my window by writing. When I write things and hit "Save", an exuberance sweeps over me that signifies that something has been said and set in stone, that something cannot be changed and for every moment that comes after it, it is embellished deeper and deeper in the murk of history. For that reason, I can't let anything be wrong. I want my footprints on history's pages to be picture-perfect. It's not something I'm pretending to be - it's only something I know I can be and am trying my best to be so. In order to make correctness a habit, I read, I discover, I interpret. Reading and discovering can happen over and over again, without interpretation they will remain useless as time passes. Our mark does not lie in understanding that darkness is darkness and the light is the light; it lies in being able to light a candle without regard to whatever winds may be blowing then.

However, as the writer writes more and more, there is more and more about the world that is new, that is there in the now but wasn't in the then. If this moment has been prepared for, then disillusionment can be spared in favour of understanding, as has been noted that to attempt to learn is futile if understanding is absent. The prevalence of a loss of context forces a delineation on the matter of "understanding": to say that one understands is to not have integrated the ability to recognize, disintegrate and recreate, but to have only remembered the meaning encapsulated therein.

As much as contributions are expedited, so much is the world changed, and the world of the minute before understands its retirement just so. I, who have learnt much in this process of writing and self-discovery, am now a different man than of the minute before and have cast over my understanding of the world then a shade of solecism. The greatest lesson, therefore, does not concern the contents of our learning but the methodology itself: not what we learn, but how we learn. By integrating the idea that the spinning top spins so because tops spin so, we do not graduate from being fools. We must learn why it spins so. A top spinning the moment past will grind to a clumsy halt, but in setting another in motion is our learning vindicated.

Blackbird's Egg

Ephemeral and lasting these sons of constant attention remain, swimming seas of white and seeking like brave fools the short-lived happiness that words bring. A bloodied chest of rubies with a curse screaming above their head, and I am pushed away, slowly, steadily, and I deliberately forget to fight as noiseless wonders fracture to an unforgiving life. My hollowness has been stolen and in its place is a black bird.

[caption id="attachment_819" align="alignright" width="420" caption="Broken sky, wholesome rain"][/caption]

A dreaded wall climbs high and lifts magnanimously on its bank a small green frog. The calendar is moving away, tearing slowly across the lines, the numbers are released up and down both at once. Ripples settle down in silence and the moon comes to watch a storm gently falling asleep in the morning. Jan-jan-jan, one by one, push the sun out. Was-now flaps its wings in a blur but white lingers, a black sun rises in the north, and the morning blooms now-was.

Dissension and debate rage on the outside while a sharp illness pricks within. Give me your promise, broken at birth, and exploit my choices as a preference. Blood on the world's hands and scratches on the queen's back, the marauder runs into eternity behind the pillars of creation. Reason gives fast pursuit but the catch is never done. Why must it be when the end is the end is the end? Raindrops slither down the damp wood and our fires won't burn for any bribe. The crime is only slavery... not you, my darling.

I'm a radioactive toy filled with evaporating purposes. Keep my right to freedom and keep my right to the skies. Give me the freedom to give up when I longer can, give me the freedom to throw my arms up, give me the freedom to shed a tear. To cry shamelessly. Dark patches of dried blood flake away into the wind while the sun sets slowly beyond the mountain, and sunflowers meet the Earth whence they came. The leaf, is airborne, skyward, as a souvenir of the true day.

The Persistence Of Vision

There was once a little man, a man of short stature and quick to temper, who lived somewhere in the suburbs of London, weathering cold weather or a hot summer without smile or frown. He had a quick and crisp moustache so fiendishly red that it frightened away the children who wandered into his wide front-yard, and they would run and they would run lest he spot them trampling his leaves. The neighbours did not know much about him nor did they have any complaint, and the little man kept his house and his nose quite clean. While he wished they would only leave him alone and not suffer the pains of company, he would decline tea and biscuits completely politely.

Once it so happened that, returning from the grocer an evening, an old man walking the other way tipped his hat at him, and the little man was overcome by a sudden but freakish curiosity, and so stepped up to enquire: "Good evening, sir!", quoth he, "The sun is too high in the sky although August is nigh gone. When is winter to come?" In reply said the old man: "Good evening, sir, to you! The chap on the radio said winter would be here, quite strong and bleak, before the week after is done!" The little man thanked and set off once more, thinking of the weather to himself when the old man called: "Have a day as wonderful as you are, sir!" The little man, now, he was swift to anger, and turning back, he called in reply: "Why, sir, why! What have I said to earn that curse? What have I spoken to deserve something as terse?" The old man knew not what dragon he had poked and stood so still as to surprise winter before it arrived. In receiving only silence, the little man finished: "As wonderful as I am, you say to me, but the town knows, oh, the world knows, I am no wonderful man but as devilish as they come to be! Lest you fear anything, sir, let us have it clear. Speak not to me again for a madness is here. My madness of your futile attempts at persistence is here."

[caption id="attachment_785" align="aligncenter" width="277" caption="All those who wander are not lost"][/caption]

The Accidental Herbert Pearl

For lack of a smart post-its app on my laptop's home-screen, for the sake of an obsessive need to sort issues out then and there, for an upcoming quiz that had me scrounging through Wikipedia's pages looking for odd trivium, for my suddenly-increasing respect for sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert, for my more-than-occasional fandangos with the writer's block, I have to make note of the following quote on my blog.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.

- Frank Herbert

There's no difference on paper between the two. I know I sound like an idiot who's only just latched on to something that was common knowledge all this time, but I don't care. There's a time and a place to realize things. You can't do it sooner, you won't understand it in its entirety. You can't do it later, and if you do, you might as well not have realized it at all.

This is the right time for me to integrate the choice that there's no difference on paper between the two.

Damage Assessment (EWP)

Note: This article is part of the EWP

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Creative spark

The escalation of commitment can be quite a dreadful thing. Just a little more than a week ago, I set out to write a short story simply because I felt like writing fiction. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Against The Day’ and the names of particles in the Standard Model of particle physics (along with a working knowledge of the LHC at CERN), I first set out a simple header-plot (which is what I call the template from which I work upward). Once that was done, I checked it to see if it read well. It did.

Great! The next step was to define the characters’ personas, which, for me, doesn’t take much time because I ‘wing’ it (yes, you read that right), as I do the plot itself. The only things I decide beforehand are the only things I really enjoy deciding in the short-run: the names of the characters and the locales. Anyway, on the 7th of March, I began to write my story. (Download: session I)

Incomplete inspiration – hallucinating an abundance of opportunities – willingness to experiment – hesitation to lay out full plot

Reality hits

After two days or so, I realized to my horror that my narrative was going full speed ahead while the dialogue and character and plot developments were going nowhere. Back then, I had recently been criticized for indulging myself with too much prose at the risk of turning the whole endeavour pedantic and droll-like. In order to set it right, I scrolled back to the top of the page and began to edit what I’d written.

You see, I don’t edit my works much. I understand how an article or a story can be polished again and again and how there are so many techniques for that, but I’m a hesitating pacifist – and that means I get angry first and then calm down. So, if I gave myself time to calm down, I’d probably come up with something extremely blunt and literarily non-penetrating. Now, since I was editing this story, I began to have a bad feeling about it. My ideas and my intentions change so much within the same ideological bounds that there was a chance for a paragraph to turn out like a semantic singsong. (Download: session II)

Celebratory indulgence – brakes applied suddenly – improper attitude towards editing – thinking faster than writing

Battle for revival

The third challenge, and also the last one, I was left to confront now was the scripture of dialogues. I’d sucked at it in the past and had always strived to keep it at a minimum. Now, however, since the story seemed to be going good even though an indication of sunk costs was beginning to present itself, I decided to go for it.

Now, there are two kinds of dialogues that I’ve observed in stories. The first is between two people who are both active participators in the contents of the talk. This is the easiest to write because all you have to do is a conversation with yourself (which writers and philosophers do a lot) and then break it into two halves, one for each interlocutor. The second type is when two people are talking but only one of them is actually paying any heed to what’s being discussed, a type that is very important in most books written because if everyone listened to what was being spoken, there wouldn’t be a plot worth expounding for reams on. If you read the draft, you’ll be able to easily deduce that I struggled at writing the lines. (Download: session III)

Over-analysis – struggling to generate "flow" – very systematic approach

Desperate experimentation

The two ensuing sections of the story were actually written in the neighbourhood of 00:00, March 13, and opened up my eyes to the mistake I was doing: it seemed that if I started to script the dialogues, I was reluctant to take up the narrative, and if I started to script the narrative, I was reluctant to take up the dialogues. This resulted in conspicuous fault lines appearing all over the text – discernible easily to the reader to the point of him being able to read my mind, to the point of my work of “fiction” becoming transparent to his eyes. Also, in order to mask my own logical proclivities – which are strong enough as it is – I took the trouble to NOT be aware of the whole plot myself. This, in turn, awarded me with the liberty to experiment with what the two characters were saying to each other. This is a risky way to go about writing anything since, with the sunk cost fallacy being a real possibility, it could drain you of your creative faculties. (Download: session IV)

Retaining the option of "killing" a project as need be – consumed by occasionally trivial fears

Surrender

The last few paragraphs are what speak truly and openly of my defeat: the sentences are too long, the choice of words defer to a subconscious lack of precision, the uneven amount of attention paid to different parts of the same setting hint at the absence of decisiveness. Game over. (Download: session V)

Sunk costs – fractional kill – diminishing returns

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Fog index: 16.72

Water, Sacrosanct

Deep down in the understanding
of the instance of resistance
there is a sleeping fire not waiting
to be awakened but eager to consume
in the process marking a fine line
between the wise and the knowing

Cautious would be those waiting
to throw a stick into it
to empty an ampoule of ghee into it
for its tongues of heat are infinite and eternal
never having once known the fatigue of toil
or distance, and in that truth, it became a power

Of the labouring masses because of its strangeness

Between each of the self-indulgent embers
and the next is an acute space of demand
and vice that act together like willing prostitutes
but never compliant to achieve a common goal
individually, and through pores that open and close here
is an osmotic pump that mobilizes the arrogance

Of those doused in blood into a different hell
that is only silenced by humiliation
Their every breath rises and falls with some terrible purpose
that they blanket themselves with in order
to seek comfort because freedom is a strange thing to them
In fact, it is the eyelessness of their masters

It is the very thing they have chosen to destroy

For the sake of their children not because
it causes physical harm – even though it does
for in knowing that blood is thicker than water
they know what causes pride and what kills it
dissolves it into an ocean of wisdom that is never
never permitted to come together in a war for food

If time healed all, then revolutions would become moot
and the Fire could be ignored till the day it went out
with an ostentatious “pop” only to remind its wardens of
the opalescence clouding their judgment, only to remind
its keepers that the time has also come for the shells to crumble to dust
money cannot ever buy happiness nor can be it traded

For another life, but in the absence of marked and ratified paper

What buys bread and what buries the dead
what is the memory of effort and what was left unsaid
It's important to feel the pain brought on
by one’s wounds not because it's a mistake to learn from
but because it's a reminder of the lessons still remaining
to be taught only because there are mouths still waiting to be fed

Desires must be procured, wants must be attained
but the needs must always be earned, and that's where
we all begin before an inner corruption seeps through
the oil that feeds the Fire only to leave us lashing out
against the Universe of humanity that's agreed to be our refuge

History's taught us less than what it could've by not teaching us anything at all

48 Suits

Seven seas south
Sail six ships
Singing silent songs
Sowing strange seeds

Seeking some siren
Saving some sops
Sleeping sans spectres
Sinking spare sods

Scourges slowly surround
Some sinning sailors
Seizing sleeping souls
Spelling sensual salvation

Soon severing sums
Sequestering sanity so
Sailed sallow ships
South seas seven

The Blog Pact: A poem

What’s the use of a blog pact /
When no one will blog /
They always say they will /
But no one has blogged /

The weeks turned into months /
The months turned into years /
The pen has run out of ink /
But the canvas is empty and in tears /

Like a brave warrior with sword /
Turned away from his destiny /
I blog like a lost weapon /
Craving for a just adversity /

If only someone would write /
I might have something to read /
I write and I write and I write /
And it’s become like a selfless deed /

One thousand pages are filled /
One hundred quills have withered /
Twenty thousand eyes have been pleased /
Only two have witnessed any work /

It’s your choice to write or not /
It’s your word to give or take /
There is no oath ever levied /
Although it helps if a promise is made /

The eyes are lonely and the road barren /
Each day’s demands are a sullen pique /
The pages are many and the ink awaits /
I must write now so you can read and sleep /

Related Articles

• Poem: God May be Out There, But Very Busy (fmpoetry.wordpress.com)

Alive With A Colour Of Death

Solo winds of loneliness /
Neutrons fly alone in the wind /
Lust you can always trust /
Even after lakes crumble to dust /

Eagles fly around me /
Call it death trying to surprise me /
I bleed a new colour today /
Day after night after day /

We shall sail for ever /
Fie upon the sad wings of destiny /

The eagles have come to find us /
Find us where we will always be /
I don’t know what to say but shout /
These are the tidings of failure beyond doubt /

Please let’s let the fire go /
The cloudy skies of the dreamer /

Have an old rain to pass on to the solo winds /
Why have you achieved nothing amongst the gold /
Did you fall again amongst grasses tall /
Do the stars not seem to care at all /

Should I have sorrow /
Return my soul instead /
You’re still wearing that smile from yesterday /
How do you separate the night from another day /

How do you know the prospects are all gone /
A day went by and fooled /

I thought that you could strangle me /
Wake me from these sleepless dreams /
Atlantis is drowned and now lost /
And the purple stalker continues his quest /

Can you hear the saints weeping in Hell /
Out in the cold and run of the mill /

When the stars fall in a blue rain /
I stand alone in the purple haze /
A prisoner of your eyes /
Of your eyes in the morning light /

Ode To An Ex

Found in an old chat log.

--

I'm always wrong and you're always right,
When I come looking you're out of sight!
I could be done with your rapidfire crap,
But I'm only waiting for the jaws of the trap!

When you talk so much you fucking blink
Like a skunk let loose a quick fucking stink.
You think you're a smart and pretty lass but
Your birdbrain's buried in yo ex's horny ass.

Throwing pillows like you're a cute little girl
Show babydoll your bra and she's gonna hurl
We're waiting to yell when you walk down that street
Reply beetch! Reply beetch!

A Suicide Note Inspired, Ironically, By A Strange Dream

I'm...

Becoming more and more lost by the day.

Do I need a lover?

Maybe, maybe no.

Actually, I don't need anyone.

I just need a cistern of depression.

I need to have conversations that might lead elsewhere from time to time.

I just need someone to enforce my fantasies upon.

To find appreciation for my effort.

To be the centre of attention.

It's not that I would do anything to get there.

I'm not a psychopath.

At least, not yet.

But it does seem to help from time to time if I receive the amount of attention I think I deserve.

I know I'm not asking for much.

When I know that there's so much to be given.

My peers tell me that I dance so well.

But I don't think any of them mean that honestly.

They've taken the notion of friendship, even of familiarity, quite too far.

They've mired it in their own need for politeness.

For gentleness, for care.

To be paid attention to.

Mired it so much that if another being were to ask for the truth, they wouldn't know what it meant.

They'd think that they were saying it.

They'd think that they'd all be like them.

That what was the truth for them would be the truth for everyone else.

It's not the truth anymore.

It's one very big lie.

There was this woman I... loved... some time ago.

She appreciated me for my dreams without even understanding them.

I know it is to be expected, to say the least.

I have to concede that some of my cantatas are astounding.

They are.

But judging that all of them will be is stupidity.

Or is it? I don't know.

It ought to be stupidity.

That's what I think.

If you don't think I dance well then tell me I don't dance well.

If you don't think I'm doing it right then tell me I'm not doing it right.

Why tell me I am doing it right?

Why egg me on?

That's not going to teach me anything.

It's only going to drag me deeper and deeper.

Lower and lower into a spiral of mistakes.

At one point from which I will not be able to recover.

And who will I have to blame?

Only myself.

I cannot blame those who lied to me.

I can blame only myself because I gave their opinions and judgments any weight.

I want to be paid attention to.

At the same time, I want valid attention.

I want truthful attention.

And for that, I will have to be valuable.

I will have to be credibly valuable.

I will have to be incredibly valuable.

And for value to come to life, life must be devalued first.

Devalued first...

The Voice

There are many different kinds of voices. Some you can hear, some you can't, some that seem to boom into your cavernous head from all sides, some that seem to sprout from the centre, some that come and go as they wish, some that you bump headlong into like an innocuous but ubiquitous lamppost. Then, there are those voices that are not inside your head at all, but at the other end of the phone call you're attending to right now.

These voices have bodies, I'm given to believe, something to which a head is affixed to, and through the head, words are spoken. For the record, I don't like spoken words. One moment they're there, the next moment they're gone. I hate that kind of indecisiveness - unless of course they're forced into a small box called a "voice recorder" or if they're carved into stone by a manic engraver. The voice in my earpiece is now telling me about what a bad morning it had.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Early morning... blues?"][/caption]

How do voices have bad mornings? Are they blown out into the world through a snot-smeared windpipe? Or do they bear messages as murky as the mind that conceived them? Actually, the voice in my ear seemed to be suffering both maladies: expletives four to fourteen letters long were clamoring for an audience with blatant disregard for the Doppler effect, and the immutable moss-green of the phlegm I could almost hear.

Whether voices can have bad mornings or not, I can. I was having one then and there. First call I get in the morning is from a "friend" complaining about how her HDD crashed and how I could be responsible for it. I was stupefied when I heard that, and when she went on to inform me that the catastrophe befell her after I forwarded an email from Reuters, I snorted. That was the signal, I'm thinking, for the barrage of mucosal sludge.

Even so, I don't like being looked down upon or frowned upon for hitting out at a messenger who's brought me bad news. That is unfair, to expect a receiver to receive all kinds of glop and remain silent. Come to think of it, that'd be the psychopathic silently-thinking cold-bloodedly-conspiring contemplatively thumb-twiddling Mephistopheles down the hall. An honest man should be allowed to lash out, to have it over with. The mistake lies with the dolt who set the messenger on his journey. He didn't sponsor any armour.

What can you do against voices? What can you do against something that seems to come from a head far, far away? You can shout back, sure, but that's head versus head. Can you trap voices in small black boxes? I don't think so. What's going to be in the box when you reopen it later is a rant without beginning or end, eviscerated neatly out of a morning it had sought to destroy but now, doing nothing to the evening.

How do you knock the serrated stiletto out of a voice that's waiting to stab you in the back?

The Miracle Worker

A car zipped past a few inches from his head, the quickly vanishing blue metal having all his attention. Bradley Johansson couldn’t believe his eyes.

Someone jolted him out of his reverie, and he came back to his senses, the subdued clamour of his environs rising up around him once again. The whores of the night mistook his incredulity for awe, feeling him up as he dodged one after another as he spanned the alley. Once on the other side, the walls fell off on either side to a long road, the sea frothing and foaming on the other side, beyond the low grille. He turned to his right and maintained his pace, not letting the wondrous decadence of New City turn him from his path.

The cars continued to shoot past him with their screaming blue and red lights, the buildings were also unfortunately aglow with similar hues. Stars were no longer a sight to behold, perhaps to even have romantic walks under, and the enchantingly platinum light of Anarion was nowhere to be found in the hearts of blacksmiths and poets alike. This was the misbegotten anarchy of an ill-advised nuclear holocaust, but nothing could be done now.

Or so they had thought, the gypsies and nomads of the world, agglutinating like sticky oil stains simply because nobody was an urchin if everybody were urchins. A smile lit up on Bradley Johansson’s smooth peachy face. He kept walking, but the more and more he thought about his task tonight, the less and less became the pain in his calves, the greater the eagerness to keep moving.

A cold but salty draft wafted his way and he breathed deeply, the saline pungency cloying at his lungs. Without missing a beat, his nose wrinkled as he reached within his coat, looking for the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d remembered at the last minute to bring along. When the cigarette was found, the lighter was not; frantic, he stopped and looked around, and just then, his gaze locked with a young girl’s, standing a few feet behind him.

She couldn’t have been more than 16 even though her height said otherwise, the depthlessness of her eyes being a giveaway. Or, he thought, she’s psychotic – they were quite common these days, what with crime being a pleasurable pastime for a small fee. Before he could ask, she reached a flickering Zippo to his lips, and he partook of the flame. Not a word spoken, not a word offered. He drew a deep breath, the fumes billowing in translucent clouds as he held himself from blowing into her face. Not that she would have minded, though.

She was wearing a tight T, the sleeves rolled back to her shoulders, slender bony arms tucked into the waistband of her beige hotpants. Muttering a word of thanks at someone who looked eager to begin a life of being a spoor, Bradley Johansson turned and began to walk again, toying with the damp cigarette while his mind began to whir again with a hairtrigger expediency that only came with indifference to one’s health.

Reflected in the mercurial faces of a hundred mirrors draped over the shoulders of a prostitute, he caught a movement of gold just behind him. Turning around suddenly, he saw it was the Zippo girl. Had he looked at her for longer than was necessary?

“What do you want?” She didn’t flinch at his sudden volte-face.

She said nothing as her hand slowly uprooted itself from some diamond mine at the meeting of her thighs and rubbed over her crotch, the grease from her fingers leaving a slippery track of peevish nights behind, like she didn’t care much for what happened there if only it brought a strange smile to her face.

“Not tonight.”

His eyes quickly sharpened into slits of anger, not quite appreciating the touch of milky white skin against his own, and the backhanded slap caught her squarely on a breast. She only smiled more, the mischievous glint of some bygone pain visible all too clearly. Bradley Johansson had an idea.

“It’s not just me tonight.”

She nodded. He continued to walk as if he didn’t give a damn – he didn’t – and was not surprised to notice the now-conspicuous tapping of her porcelain heels behind him. She could be a fitting gift to the man who was waiting for him at the end of this road; after all, there was some gratitude due him. A spar of doubt that had been spinning across his mind now came to the fore, but he dismissed it: none but he knew what he carried in his pocket. A minute more, the trees were already thickening on the seaward side to adorn a lush facade of blue-green tassels.

He sashayed mindlessly across the road, drunk drivers yelling after him and his consort. There was a subtle cleft in the sidewalk that pointed into the woods, and he turned into it. He should have known when she didn’t hesitate that she’d been here before, but it slipped past him as the tension in his guts tautened perceptibly when the shack became visible. Well, it was not so much of a shack as it was an old man sitting under a tarpaulin sheet that was strutted skywards by four wooden planks nailed into the ground.

“You have something for me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Plural.” She stepped out of his shadow, still as callous as she had been under the neon beams, the grease visible even under the dull glow of a bulb that hung from a wire that seemed to emerge from Hell. The old man smiled toothlessly, impetuous strands of spittle dribbling past his jowly chin. Voiceless in her obeisance, she stepped past her procurer and towards the “residence”.

In a second followed the stack of micrometre-thick mirabilium crystals, glowing with an electric blue shade of iconoclasm in the night’s grey tones, turning the skin on his fingers purple and the old man annoyed.

“What’re you doing?!”

Smiling, Bradley Johansson dropped them back into the bag that had held them and handed them over to the “party”, known only as Nigel in the trade. The mirabilium would be ground and recrystallized to erase the quarry-signature that would be etched into it by nature’s machinations, and then packed into the core of plastic explosives. Then, they would be redistributed to terrorists across the globe to be used as biological weapons going by the name of “blue bombs” – one blast and all things living would collapse dead in a quarter-mile radius.

With one last nod at the girl, already scarlet and perspiring with extraterrestrial anxiety, he turned around and walked back, slower this time, to the heart of New City, fumbling once more for another cigarette. Again, the need for a flame presented itself, but he was sure he’d find someone in a minute or so, someone who could never understand the pleasure of starlight but knew only the coming and going of nights by the coming and going of irreverent relationships. Soon enough, he was offered a light.

On her lapel, a sham of a red cross was stitched with a border of black. He smiled as the brand came to life, throwing a dull orange glow across her lips. “Doctor mirabilis, indeed!” Tonight, miracles would be worked to restore mankind’s stature in the eyes of the Captors, a deluge of death was going to descend on the non-believers, and the name of Bradley Johansson had to be screamed into the night with fitting ecstasy.

Their gazes locked, and he blew the smoke into her eyes. She smiled.

The Dreaming Grey: A poem

Mildewed in cold February were the leaves and grey
In the evening winds where they gently lay
        In pursuit of some joy forlorn
        Whereto the sands of time had never yet gone
        A winter’s fey, a winter’s fey
Mourned the mildewed leaves where they gently lay

Cloaked in dreary snow were the windows today
Overlooking streets where children ne’er played
        Forever lost in a neighbour’s dreams
        Lending an indifferent ear to our silent screams
        A winter’s lay, a winter’s lay
Called the windows unto the streets empty and insatiate

Unborn and nigh loveless were the words left to say
Yet hope remains for a callow to endure the starved clay
        When leaves may know their green again
        And windows may live their dreams under the rain
        A summer’s day, a summer’s day
So the children may remember the vaunt it is to play

A Story Through Ten Images

An old draft, warm with all the years of our acquaintance, edged conveniently off the table. Outside, the world was up to something, it was always up to something, but I never bothered. It was up to no good anyway. Such evenings always made me smile, not in the cocky way some old fart smiles when his midlife crises hits him in the face, but in the cocky way an old soldier is allowed to feel, is entitled to feel. Those were the days... when the world was up to worse.

[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Of all the many journeys I was a part of, the Kohrin Expedition comes to mind now - not always, it's too special to be wondering about on any evening except this one. The Kohrin were an ancient people who civilized slowly, deliberately, accruing for themselves a foundation for their future so strong, so unshakeable, that they automatically threatened anyone they dealt with, whether by accident or by measure. In the fourth year of the twelfth solar cycle, a secret expedition was sent forth by an affluent Kohrini thug named Brull; I was conscripted along with four other pilots to deliver resources to rebel factions coming together to topple the ruling council of ministers. Brull wanted the crown for himself, the kingdom for his house."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_149" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A 17-hour journey later, I was at SR-71 to meet with the faction titled Bazlac. To cut a long story short, they weren't there. The place was desolate, the wooden struts had been blasted off with undue force, pocks littered the face of the earth. Some of the spots were still smoldering and a wet track led away from them, deep in the squelch, a heavy vehicle of some kind had been here. Keeping the shuttle low, I followed it north for as long as it lasted. Then, in the distance..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A Citadel of Light, unmistakable from this distance, with its rounded ramparts and domed crowns, with the blue flames of necromancy climbing into the sky out of the blast-capillaries, hot as Hell, cold as Hell, webs of some strange silken cord hanging in strands from its facade. The mound of land on which it stood seemed still loose, which meant it was new, a "fresh" acquisition. The Drasil were cannibals, morally decadent spawn detested by the kinds of Brull even. The Bazlac were done for, I knew, but what the Drasil were doing so far outfield I didn't, so I decided to pay them a visit. A secret one."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_151" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Drasil were very religious, which meant taking to the skies was equal to defying the airspace of the "Gods", so getting to the other side was easy. Perching atop a hill shrouded in mist, I found a vantage point after cloaking the shuttle, took my post and waited. Beneath, a sea of green light, within which boats were being scuttled. This was strange, there was no enemy army in sight, no threat, no chance of one either as a great army encircling the camp came to be seen under the dim light. Why were the boats being scuttled? I heard a noise behind me, and turning to look, saw it was a dunkke."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_152" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A dunkke was a proselyte with the Drasil camp whose arms and legs had been cut off and substituted with electromechanical limbs that enhanced speed. They argued that, over the years, this left the brain to focus more on other activities, such as strategizing or backstabbing. Two red bulbs glowed bright on the bosom of this woman, which meant she had been deactivated. Her activation signals would gradually die out, leaving her immobile and starving to death. I walked up to the figure, dragged her to near the craft, and fed her some energy from the engines. She was obviously a traitor to the Drasilhani cause."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The first words out of her mouth and I prepared to disconnect her, but her arms were exceptionally strong. She was some kind of a warrior, absorbed into the cult through blackmail and torture, to dive beneath the seas and awaken the Purge. Brull had not sought to bring down Kohrin, at least at first, but instead sought to repel the Drasil. The Bazlac were planning to awaken the Purge themselves to quench the fire of the Kohrin and the Drasil had intervened. But why? The Drasil needed life to kill, fertility to blight."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Purge was an antediluvian cabal buried midway between the outer crust and inner mantle of three planets in the entire galaxy, conceived and gestated since time immemorial by some Kohrin overlord, commanded to rise and be born as a machine with unimaginable power, with the sole purpose of melting and consuming whole planets within days. The one in SR-71 was named Red Hand. The three Purges were the ultimate weapons of the Kohrin, unstoppable, reckless in their hunger for metal and stone. Now, I understood the answer: the Kohrin had allied with the Drasil to eliminate fringe rebels, but the Drasil had grabbed the chance to reactivate the three Hands of Oblivion... against the Kohrin."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_155" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This here's the construction site behind my home. They're building some sort of an office, although for what I don't know. My planet's exactly one parsec away from SR-71, which means it will be another six years before Red Hand gets here. They don't know yet, or they'd be over their sorrow already and holding some sort of celebration, calling for world peace and brotherhood, what melodrama! I can't stand that. If they let me be, I'd let them be. That looks impossible all the time. Cancer's going to take me in another four months, so I figured, hey! Let's not tell them anything. Keep the mystery alive, that sorta thing, get me? After all, anything's possible!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anything at all."][/caption]

The City Of Pity: A random poem

There once was a man
Who lit a fire
Under a balloon
And made it fly

He sailed the world
And the seven seas
He went places
He’d never known before

The balloon popped
Over the Big Apple
He gently sailed
To the ground

The fire was out
The weave was ripped
Cars and bikes and buses and trains
Still he was so terribly lost

He walked to a woman
Smoking in the corner
Asked her for a light
She didn’t hear him

He spoke a little louder
She stared at him
Her eyes were read
She saw beyond him

He asked her again
Politely this time
She handed him a smoke
And went back to sleep

He pocketed it
And went his way
Until he found a man
Reading the paper

He asked for a light
And he got a matchbox
He pocketed it
And went his way

Until he found a girl
Playing on the sidewalk
Crying so loudly
Because she was hurt

He bent down to help her
He heard someone run
He looked up to see
His wallet was stolen

He gave swift chase
But the man was fast
He lost his wallet
And now he was lost

The little girl cried
He gave her candy
And asked her this time
For a balloon shop

She pointed up a bright lane
He thanked her and walked
Until he came to a balloon shop
And a big one he bought

In return for the smoke
And back on the streets he was
As evening slowly came
He set up camp

He lit a small fire
Under the big balloon
It ballooned up big
Until it was all pink

He mounted it and waved
Goodbye to the city
The city of smoke
The city of pity

Persistence, That Fool

The imprints of little feet in a felicitous field of wheat
Know the weight on afternoon’s shoulders of toil’s burning heat

Fingers bruised and temples wrinkled from frowning
Till the reeds are low and the stalks are down

The master’s truck is waiting at that end with the ploughs
While a crowned father lies drunk in a faraway alehouse

That is the design of this precarious wold seen from distant fences
That have wept not for a callow limp, born now, dead then

It is persistence, that fool, that grants clemency
For such a small price as the surety of faith

Insofar as the loss of all doubt is guaranteed and the alliance
To piety and the fealty to grace is  native trait

Even as age lends maturity and borrows heavily
From innocence, it has only persisted in its duty

That ensures that the leaves of spring will wither without halt
And tomorrow the cold winds of winter will blow surely

A ripple on which rides the kingdom’s earth knows the pull
Of its mortal end, surrenders, and is pardoned as beautiful

Little droplets of immortal purity trickle with rancor
Into the ocean of solitude, in some City with ripening fervor

As schemers and conspirators, thieves and sloughs
As the wings of change and old broken boughs

The farm is readied and seeds made to rest in wombs pure
That endure, for money does not rest, money resists for sure

It is persistence, that fool, that lures hunters to their prey
Just as the prey to its escape, a calamitous charlatan of chance

Waylaying men already broken from the path of men
Spurred unto gold, woman, drink, nay, every mirthful dance

This is reward and reward not at all lest it remains idle
In his keeping and labors ceaselessly in your stone halls

For he who knows not what he awards must not award at all
He who bestows the prize must neither heed the receiver’s call