Hawk Circle

From Whence the Spirit Grumbles

2010-09-07T17:14:00.001-06:00

I called you from
the road

from

someplace far out
in my desolate
little universe
behind the wheel

I was out of audio books
to serve as opiates
and distract me

from

the lack of solace
I was feeling, the
unsatisfactory time
spent, the slipped
gears of a life gone
down into a gully and
disappeared

from

the planet of four in
the morning, chilly
pre-dawn of northern
Nevada

where

cell service is like
the shrunken habitat
of an animal close to
extinction, with wide
places of

nothing; where

I pace in the parking
lot, explaining myself
to your answering
machine

that

you don't know how to
use, and never check,
but only unplug to
get the flashing red
light to abate

that

western ideal of
leaving the disease
alone, so long as the
symptoms will go away
for a while, and
that is good enough
for us

so

my words travel across
the wide, barren places
to ultimately die without
having been heard by
anyone but the bleary
eyed trucker

who

sits on the fender of
an old International
Harvester, slowly
chewing down his second
egg and bacon muffin

while

I confess to machinery
and rail across the
cell tower networks
bouncing my fruitless
words from satellites

until

it comes back around to
the wheel once more, and
the long drive, and the
dreary eventual
destination.

Patrick M. Tracy
9/7/2010

The Complex Physics of a Simple Thing

2010-08-23T13:31:00.001-06:00

What makes it easy
in that moment
when the feathered
thing flies true
hitting the center
coming to a stop
with deadly ease

But is it ever easy
this complex motion
the turning of one
solid around the
other, the stacking
complications of
leverage and acceleration,
of air pressure and
the dispersal of
standing waves,

This minor miracle,
this expression of
stored energy, of
my own energy as it
is transmitted downrange

And is that energy an
element of spirit, are
my arrows in some way
imbued with an incalculable
element of myself

And if so, if I am what
my arrow is, and I go where
my arrow goes, what of the
errant shot, the flinch
at the moment of release

Are the components of my
spirit in turmoil, are there
minuscule wars between the
warp and weft of my essential
energies, or is that affixing
esoteric thought to a thing
that is, in essence

Simple flight, a moment of
bravery in the face of
universal forces, then a sudden
stop, and let us hope that the
stop is where we wish it, and
that our shot finds home.

Patrick M. Tracy
8/20/10

The Year the Fimbulwinter Didn't Happen

2010-06-14T19:10:00.000-06:00

Haikus

Things go slower now
the sound of plaintive guitars
sun mixes with rain

The warmth that threatened
stalled summer hiding beyond
the lip of the world

Now wet to the skin
from here the salt sweat is born
into morning's chill

Here's the way forward
through the valley's keen anguish
emerging cleansed, new

From the killing floor
I have returned spent, different
lost in my own skin

Dust and lassitude
thundering, trackless vistas
circular searching

Like dogs, we have howled
aching for the light of day
now half blinded, mute

All my troubles now
are candles before the sun
snakes without their fangs

Beneath a tree--rest
as Spring turns to Summer, choose
any path will do

Tame the Dust

2010-06-03T15:26:00.000-06:00

I am the revivified tissues
the strengthened flesh
the hardened bone, the
new skin around this
old chassis brought back
from the darkened
barns of rusted doom

I am not healed of all
the ills of the past
nor purified of the
poisons of long gone
days, but new fuel
cooks the taint of
the old slowly down,
slowly down into
the weedy lower
bowels of this
machine, and roads
long forsaken
once more beckon
from the blue
of late spring
twilight

I have reached the
turning places on the
odometer twice now,
once broken in and
twice nearly broken
but I am not gone,
not decimated by
the rough sand of
the track to this
parking lot where
I now idle

There is one fewer
in the caravan now
and we are moving again
moving across the
unknown meridians
and into lands where
something green may
grow, where the rains
will tame the dust.

Snapshots of Attrition

2010-05-07T13:11:00.001-06:00

The survivors have definitive proof
those lost in the battle shall
forever be indistinct and
at the edge of abstraction

The living ones, who have shown their
measure and gripped the sides of
reality with whitened knuckles,
iron in their eyes and copper
in the blood, have known evil
and run one step quicker

The triumphant ones have clenched
their teeth and allowed what
can't be saved to slide from
the decks and be swallowed
by the deep, killing yesterdays
to feed the hungry mouth of
tomorrow

The pictures we have seen in
the mirror, hollow eyed and
uncertain, wan as sleep eludes
us again into the heart of the
night, snapshots of our own
battle of attrition, our empty
hands in the wash basin scrubbed
once too often but still feeling
sticky with the substance
of abstract folk we have lost
upon the road.

Busy as Rust

2010-04-28T16:57:00.001-06:00

We have put many things aside
in these bitter years, so
slow in turning, so much like
eons in the dusk, time
churning slow as broken
gears suffused with
coagulated grease

We have put our own hopes
by for days we began to
doubt would ever arrive
watching rapt as the
titanic and poisonous
flower grew up from
the blood between us
hiding our eyes and
what remained to sparkle
in its penumbral shade

We have lost grip on
our own souls, forgotten
what we desire, doubted
what we once knew so well
that there never needed
to be a question, because
the cruel mechanisms of
despair never quit their
toil, busy as the disease
process, busy as rust,
productive as termites
as they chew through the
underpinnings of all we
hope to hold

And now, no longer shackled
to the shadows, we are pale
and strange to ourselves,
unmade in the process of
sublimation, no longer the
people we once hoped to be,
gone soft and aimless with
the darkened year, grasping
to remember the chemical
fires we once burned on our
own behalf

Places Beneath the Cloth

2010-04-28T13:12:00.000-06:00

(A Circular Breathing Poem)

Here is wisdom
to which we must
give only the
substance of the
day, the dust
shaken from the
shoulders of our
traveling jackets
and poured out
from our worn
shoes, blown out
at the seams

And the seams in
our skin, like
shoe leather as
we are worn away
by the wind, so
fatigued that we
can be poured out
into these supportive
chairs that have
become like unresolved
dreams, and our
jackets hang slack
at the door, always
ready for future travels,
ready for our shoulders
to occupy their familiar
places beneath the cloth,
all the dusty substance
of us only giving respite
when it must, its words
small wisdoms soon forgotten

And what are these forgotten
voices, these wisdoms without
sacrifice when clearly there
must be, for what respite
can exist in all these
dusty miles, the substances
cooking out of us beneath
the cloth of our own demise,
these grave-windings within
places half familiar, these
coffins too slim for our
shoulders and wheeled for
the long travels to which
we are bound, always
standing at the threshold
and looking outward, our
jaws slack with dreams
unresolved, ambitions
poured out upon the
earth and spent, our
last mighty efforts
gone now into the twilight
of fatigue, the wind of
our loud railing against
the meal of dirty leather
between our teeth,
a pig's raw skin, the seams
of a child's discarded
toy the grist for this
mill, now fallen into ruin.

Astride the Earth

2009-11-06T17:26:00.001-07:00

Even in casual conversation,
her hands are drawn upward
unconscious

Into the shapes of the
penitent, into the gestures
of prayer

And her eyes, though she's
young enough, have that
serenity

That absence of tenseness
that so often marks those
on the downslope

And even her smile is somehow
slow, ineffably soft in that
dimness of her room

Everyone she talks to feels
just for that moment, that
he's special, chosen

As if, as she regards you
you become alone and unique
on the earth

Plucked up from the rank and
file, the gray phalanx of
trudging similarity

Given, just for a moment, a
ray of something pure and solid
out of the great ephemera

And she, like goddesses are,
is unaware of it all, in her
bliss the illusion

The mirage of normality, such
that, from afar, even those
looking wouldn't see

And her days come and go, just
as ours do, and she has her
small successes

And even her setbacks are minor
miracles, for they allow all
the smaller creatures,

We who scuttle about in the
dust at her feet, a moment
in her presence

A moment when we can act as
savior to one who stands, colossal
astride the earth

Patrick M. Tracy
11/6/09

In the Vestibule, Where They Do Obiesance to Tiny Gods

2009-10-27T21:16:00.002-06:00

Bent things
crimped down
eyes turned
ever toward
their handheld
digital gods

the small gods
best worshiped
in lieu of experience
in the easy turning
away from the real,
the actual, the present
and accounted for

whole flocks of
ghosts, caught
somewhere between
the tangible and
the ethereal,
unaware of each
other as the
world swoops by,
tethered to
existence only
by their thumbs

and in me, the strange
impulse, the thought that,
with a single, violent
motion, I could sweep
them all from the
stage of life,
that they would go down
like blind fish crushed in
tunnel collapse,
unknowing, having perhaps
never known, and only
really half alive

but that is a rogue thought
a moment of my own madness,
this desire to awaken these
sleepers, to enlighten in
blood these many drones that
so blissfully serve the hive,
and perhaps I am one, and have
been, and this febrile wakefulness
serves only to torment me with
that failing that hits so close to
the heart.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/27/09

True, but for the Details

2009-10-16T11:36:00.000-06:00

Thin, tall, still awkward
with those long legs and
feet that have grown
like slender birds
always diving groundward,

the virgin turns away
and holds a match
to the pipe mouth,
fragrant smoke
surrounding her,

obscuring her thin
shoulders, her round
spectacles, her
face, pale from long
hours presiding over
the business of books
in the darkened library,

and she is unaware of
herself, of her body as it
moves like an unfettered
young horse, not quite graceful
but full of the new energy that
will slowly fall away as Autumn
comes onward,

but then she speaks, and
everything is changed, for
her voice chirps and whistles
and grinds, like the muttering
of a raven upon the split-rail fence
and of these narrow things, these
arcane pursuits within the pages
and curled paper--

of these things she is sure, and
she will hold forth about these obscure
articles of faith, which are built strong
and populated well in her sheltered
valley, and we older ones, shirt-tails
dirty from our long journeys, from
the fording of many rivers, from the
frequent times when we have crawled
upwards from the dust--

we wonder, wonder what will become
of her, this young, book-fed girl, so
sure, so stern in her own small way,
as the weight of winter falls upon her
and if she'll be lonely in the sheltered
valley forever, too narrow to let anyone in,
or will she walk past the walls of
sheltering stone, exchanging surety for
doubt, exchanging knowledge for wonder,
turning in that sweet, endearing clumsiness
for the slow, trudging step under the unrelenting
sky filled with the soot of bitter remembrance.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/16/09

Stoplight Season

2009-10-10T09:18:00.000-06:00

It was a nicer place
before stop light season
and all the useless
motion while awaiting
the rise of the striped
barrier that held us
away from the train
tracks

Before we were trapped
by the slow and creeping
wait, our small dreams
deferred unto oblivion,
our plans and well-imagined
routes across the surface
of the world halted,
stymied by those who
would protect us from
our own flawed
ambition

But that was before, and
we are now bathed
in the red of the flashing
caution light, stuck
behind the locked turnstile,
awaiting change from an
unmanned toll booth at
which we are forever held
in limbo

For this is stoplight season
and any progress we had
once hoped for has been
disallowed, for without
the velocity of the road,
there can be to tragic
accidents, no catastrophic
impacts, but rather a slow,
sedate, predictable crawl
further into the guts of
dismal, postponed hours,
tires checked with dry rot
and gone flat at the
clogged exit of our own
driveways.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/10/09

As Chill Sets In

2009-10-05T18:50:00.000-06:00

A Haiku Collection
By Patrick M. Tracy

Dark castles up there
vapor-houses for the rain
Autumn thwarts the sun

Rediscovered coats
thermal vests against the chill
slow drip from the roof

Out with these old things
break with all that's been deferred
before Winter's teeth

A day's useless deeds
pushing indoor air about
death abides, unmoved

The feel of these rooms
familiar like half-known songs
treasured, long absent

The echoing place
has drawn in and gone to brown
limits invented

A long "is" departs;
wide oceans of "what will be"
confront us this night

These Songs of Quiet Falcons

2009-05-22T01:05:00.002-06:00

In the sticky heat of the evening
all these sounds around me, all
that surface static keeping me
from the chasm of being alone

Between the records that I
fill the night with, after
the television has ceased
to blare and rumble, when
only the tidal noise of
the dishwasher and the
river's run of the traffic
on the highway are there,

When the slow mutter of
my ancient dog as he
looks, half blind into
the indistinct night,
and I am still within
myself, considering
the strangeness of
existing within this
flesh, with its oddities
and unknowns,

I consider these sensations,
wonder if one of them is
a harbinger of sickness,
of the clinging infirmity,
that slowly eats us,
pride first, and makes us
mute, unimportant, forgotten
over time,

And again, I think that these
thoughts are only insecurity,
only incipient moments of
hypochondriasis on my part,
after all, perhaps it runs
in the family, over and above,
I'm moody, and these things
tend to catch one out without
the noise to block them,

But falconry then drifts in,
after the radio story, and
the longing to be so honed,
so beautiful in form, so
well-suited to the purpose
at hand, instead of being this
great, undetermined creature,
more brain than body, more
thought than flesh, but yet
tethered to the mundane at
every turn,

Yes, falcons come to mind,
and their bloody games, the
quiet of them when they are
hooded, the simplicity and
grace of their dream-like
faith in the wind,

But dreams like these move
time but slowly forward, and
it is a hot night, and what
little noise there is will soon fade,
leaving only the half made man,
bound to the keyboard, struggling
with these concepts just slightly
beyond his reach.

Circular Breathing 6:

2009-04-20T20:39:00.003-06:00

(And to these travelers, nothing)

And with that, we entered Wonderland,
and all the curses of dreams gained
and found wanting were bestowed upon
our heads, all hopes crushed by their
simple fulfilment, the taste of
something long yearned for and yet
all wrong somehow on our tongues,
for we had changed upon the road--
what we imagined to be Eden catering to
dead and ghosted versions of ourselves;
catering to dreams wished into the
vanity of truth, betrayed by that
which kept us alive, and what
screams against the falsehood of
dreams attained, knowing that
is the road of the dead and
those who wait to die and are
worse than dust.

But the biting sting of the dust
is not the worst, for we have
waited, even when we said we'd
rather die than ache a moment longer
because we knew that attainment of
our dreams was out there, that
all the falsehoods of the road
and the legerdemain we'd perpetrated
while the sirens screamed had
allowed us to live, perhaps kept,
perhaps whored, but never betraying
the truth of our vanity--that we
would win in the end, that a
version of ourselves, or perhaps
only a ghost in that Dark Hereafter
might one day attend that catered
feast, but on that long road, with
all the diesel fumes and grit
upon our tongues, all that time we
were wrong, yearning long for
fulfilment damned, our minds
turned simple, our reason crushed
under the myth of a Wonderland
we could never truly survive to
enter.

Circular Breathing Five

2009-02-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Alive in this rocket powered utopia
the body is remade for sport, for
play, for the sake of something new
to look upon in the mirrors of
our wholesale paradise as it
slowly becomes us, and we are
gradually transmuted into
marketable wares, commodities
to which others may aspire, all
chromed corners and surgical
improvements, all tidy and doll-like,
unencumbered by the tiresome
humanity we wiped clean and
sanitized, as we would a
crumb-covered table in the
stale aftermath of the
afternoon's lunch crowd,
resetting to zero, forgetting
everything, becoming new and
if not innocent, at least fresh,
at least delectable in our
artificial, wholesome beauty.

What beauty this wholesome image
rendered in artificial line and
color, delectable only to those
least discerning, those fresh,
willful innocents who crave
the new meat, everything before
forgotten, zeros in their eyes as
the lunch rush begins in the aftermath
of morning, tables and hearts
sanitized, empty of humanity,
empty handed as discarded dolls
sterile as surgical chrome, all
aspirations delegated to others
the commodity of their wares
transmuted into abstraction
only to gradually slow,
paradise sold wholesale, at
least faded mirrors of it,
new from the look but recycled
suited only for play, the body
of truth unmade, utopia unbound
as life's last rockets struggle
to darken the sky.

Patrick M. Tracy
2/26/09

Circular Breathing Four

2009-02-06T15:08:00.001-07:00

Lingering in the uncomfortable
hours before the medicine
sets in, we grow and shrink
like sickened plant life in
the coastal seas, bitter
waves of pain and alternating
stomach upset, ugliness
blooming gray at the corners
of our eyes, parts of us
derelict and rotten, rusted
and unsound even in the
rough seeming of a darkened
mirror.

And what mirrors are these,
dark, rough sheet metal,
rusted and unsound, these
derelict cheeks of our
unsound machine, battleship
gray in twilight, an ugly
bloom of failed machinery,
upsetting the coastal scene,
a sick stomach, alternating
between bile and medicine,
uncomfortable as we linger
for hours, waiting for some
moment worthy of remembrance.

The terrible memory of those
moments when we felt worthy,
now long gone from waiting for
rebuttal, leaving us without
any hope for comfort, sickness
and clarity alternating, and no
medicine can redress this hellish
shore, all the mechanisms of
our failure colored ugly gray,
and we have become derelicts
upon the highway, unsound
beasts gone rough and feral,
such that we no longer respond to
our own image in the mirror.

Patrick M. Tracy
3/6/09

The Settled Dust, Part 24

2009-01-26T20:17:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Dusk had nearly surrendered to night, the passing merchants and masterless warriors only blots of ink upon the dimness. The town was quiet now, those who could consolidate power having done so, those whose best chance lay down a dusty track already absent.

A woman and a boy stood beside their camels as the light failed, stuffing the last of their provisions into their saddle bags. The woman reached with her unbandaged hand, touching the boy's cheek, bringing his face against her side for a moment. Just as quickly, this small gesture was broken, this token of affection passed into the stream of moments.

"We should ride straight through until the dawn," the woman said. "Our tasks are done here."

"Where will we go?" Haike watched her, standing in the way he had, that unaccountable stillness.

She gave a slight smile. "There is a place. I know it well, and I am its mistress, now that my own master has gone away. We could go there, if you wish. It is near the mountains. There is snow in the winter, and summer days are fresh and pleasant."

"Does it lie where the road ends, where the wilderness begins?"

She nodded. "It does. Does that suit you?"

"We will go there. For a time. There is another place I must visit again. You know where."

"That road is one you must walk alone, Haike. No one could follow you there, into the lair of the Dolgurs. I'm not ready to be without you yet."

"Don't fear, Mistress. I won't leave you alone until we're both ready. There is yet healing and learning to do."

"The wisdom to know yourself unready means that...I will not have as much to teach as my own master did."

"I've had rare opportunities, that is all."

"No. You are the rare thing. The opportunities were forced to manifest by your very nature. If you believe anything I say, believe that."

Haike turned his eyes away, looking back at Mima, who watched from the periphery, tears standing in her eyes. "I believe everything you tell me, Mistress. As much as I'm capable of such things, anyway." He turned toward her again. "We'll take Mima with us when we go."

The woman furrowed her brow. "Will we?"

"She was our only friend in a bad situation. We shouldn't leave that debt unpaid. In any case, she knows more than she should, and I don't have the stomach to kill her."

"You wish to go with us, Mima? The road will not be easy, and we are not kindly folk," the woman asked. Though bruised, scarred, and battered, her beauty was undiminished, the command of her dark eyes as solid as stone.

"I've never belonged anywhere, Sorcereress. With you, I feel as if for once I've done something important. Please, allow me to come with you. I'm not fragile. I don't need pampering. If not...if you must slay me for the secrets I've learned, at least I will die avenged."

The woman sighed. "We won't kill you, Mima. For our people, there have always been two, a master and an apprentice. These are unusual circumstances. We will try three." She handed a bag of coins to Haike. "Go buy another camel."

*****

In the dark, the road was a bright ribbon through nothingness. The quiet step of three camels was but a whisper, the dust of the day settled. Unheralded they went, and the night swallowed them up, the whisper of their fell deeds already dying upon the wind.

Through fire we came
the pain we carried equal
to that we dispensed

All that came before
ends tonight, without glory
the deed itself stands

Now rises the road
empty before us, trackless
whispering of hope

The End

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-Three

2009-01-16T09:45:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

No wheel may hold true when its hub is blasted away. The shattered ends of spokes grind together like white and visible shin bones, sundered parts where a whole thing once existed. The hub, unsupported, sags and wanders a moment before succumbing to the pull of the dust.

In this way, the fortress failed. Panic turned to anger, anger to distrust. Petty disputes and unspoken ambitions kindled aflame without the benefit of leadership. Soon, the shouting from the compound grew into a roaring, and what blood had been spared the previous night was spilled in the haze of afternoon. In the muddy aftermath of the deluge, the streets were scattered with dead warriors, badly planted crops doomed to never grow.

Haike peered down from the peak of the fortress roof as all hands turned against all others. Only now did he understand how deep their cut went, how utter their destruction of the warlord's realm had been. He would not forget this wisdom. In true works of carnage, the bloodletting did not cease with the initial act, but persisted, every wound festered, everyone nearby consumed in the agony of the deed.

He lay back, the uneven tiles below him, the cold dampness of his clothes hanging against his tortured skin, a pit of hunger and thirst blooming like wild roses at his midsection. One after another, he flexed his muscles, moved his joints, tested his energy. Weak, still in great discomfort, he was not dead, not doomed. He had allowed himself to be swept away on the currents of despair before. That would stop. Though he was bereft now, he would live somehow. Perhaps Mima, the scullery woman, was still within his reach. If not, he would go on alone.

On one rough, ill-layed course of stonework, Haike placed his hopes. His body had only just the reserves of energy to try such a decent, his fingers and feet still torn. As he climbed down the low corner of the fortress, blood seeped from beneath his blackened fingernails, and he could feel the last of the skin peel away from the inside of his feet. His jaw clenched so hard that his face peeled in a rictus of pain. The climb seemed to take an eternity, a whole lifetime of difficulty.

The foot that finally touched the ground was like an old man's foot, the slow trudge Haike was capable of, an old man's step. In a city with its heart cut away, no one cared to notice one dishevelled and bruised boy. They didn't look into the uncanny iron of his eyes, didn't examine the slow drip of blood from his tortured fingers.

All the solid things had become permeable, all surety turned to doubt. Perhaps some other group of thugs and warriors would take over where the warlord's men had been. Perhaps the place would be lawless and wild, falling prey to bandits and other hazards. Without the brutal core of hatred and steel, the city could simply fade, becoming a ruin.

Haike, barely able to supress a groan with each footfall, knew that he would not be here to witness what came next. None would know his hand in things. He stopped, holding himself up only by leaning a shoulder against a rough wall. An ox cart came by, splashing mud on him. He was all but invisible, and that...was good. Knowing his own story was enough.

Perhaps he had once hoped for wide-flung glory, but that was before wisdom had arrived. Glory is an obstacle, a difficulty to be avoided. Only the quick and unknown hand can write such terrible verses in the book of years. The full weight of what it meant to be of the Ghost Society now came to rest upon him, a dark bird with a great beak and silent wings.

"Close now. Not far," he told himself. A hurried merchant bumped into him and nearly knocked him down. Haike didn't feel confident that he could have pried himself from the earth. He walked on, ignoring the merchant's fevered spate of insults and rude gestures. He was frightened, and frightened dogs bark. Even out of the corner of his eye, Haike knew he wouldn't act.

Close now.

A whole town may die
curled around deepened wounds
all backbones broken

The awful courage
of the living, this burden
this road of cinders

I renounce glory
given instead the power
of silent doom
*****

Haike stood before the door, just breathing, trying not to think of anything. Had the crushing fatigue not hung on his neck like a ship's anchor, the worry would likely have been a greater, stronger thing. As it was, he sighed, pushing in.

Mima. She sat on the low sleeping mat, her head cradled on her chest. She blinked at him, shaking herself.

"You...you're..." She leapt to him, gathering him in her arms, lifting his feet clear of the floor. "You lived. You lived." She said this many times, as if she couldn't believe it.

Mima sat him down in the single chair, kneeling at his side. She took stock of his condition, cataloging all his hurts and gently squeezing his limbs to search for those she couldn't see. For a moment, this brought a pang of rembrance for his own mother, long since slain and gone to the Coriyat.

"Do I dare ask you what you did up there, how you contrived to escape, what horrors you've seen?"

He shook his head. Her dark eyes couldn't hold his gaze. "If only my mistress could have lived," he mused.

"Oh, but...she did!"

"She..." Haike tried to rise, but once seated, his legs wouldn't hold him. He nearly toppled to the uneven floor.

Mima caught him, helping him back down. "She's resting in the next room, hurt but alive. She found me, and I brought her here."

"I have to go to her." Haike's small chin grew obdurate, his pale eyes flashing out of his exhausted, filthy brow.

"You have to get out of these muddy clothes, get a hot bath and a meal in your stomach. There are hurts that need binding. Let me help you, Haike. Your mistress is resting. If the sun falls a bit further toward the horizon, it will make no difference."

A knot within his chest that he hadn't been aware of suddenly loosened, the last strength of his limbs ebbing away. The room pinwheeled around him, and Haike could only sit very still, holding tight to the chair. For a time, he was only dimly aware of his surroundings, only half alive.

From within a world of shadows, he could hardly feel his body move. Mima coaxed his ruined clothes from him, scrubbed the worst of the soot from his body, helped him eat a small dish of cold gruel.

"I...want to be with...my mistress," he whispered.

Witness my return
delivered out of Hades
torn but unbroken

Debts I paid in blood
hopes once renounced now kindle
a light in the dim
*****

Valila floated in the deep, cold water, and there was no direction upward, no surface to swim toward. Something held her, something made of many slim arms, some great, warm mouth against her back, and she felt herself go limp, pulled ever further from the light. She let her air go, and drowning was a comfort. In death, the mouth of the leviathan felt like a warm body, embracing her gently. Its breath touched her neck, and the unanswerable questions were revealed to her. Through the darkness, the cargo of her soul rode into the Coriyat in the teeth of the great dragon.

She didn't know what to make of this knowledge. It changed nothing. Perhaps there were no answers that would act as panacea to the woe of the living world, only going into the tornado of souls and becoming nothing. In the end, realizing that there was no great wisdom to be learned--that lesson was all she had really taken away from her life.

But why did she feel warm? Why did relief come like a clean wind from off a mountain lake, seeping into her as if she were a wide leaf with raindrops still lingering from the morning rain? Why, alone with the leviathan and hurtling across the unknown void between flesh and spirit, did she feel as if he was with her again?

Her eyes opened, and she returned from the deeps, from death, from the in-between numbness of dreams. A real hand against her hip, a real body against her back, a real face tucked against her neck and breathing steadily in slumber.

He lived. She lived. They were together after all, and against all reason. Those tears she had long scorned returned again, this time in joy.

In the dragon's teeth
I go to become nothing
having never learned

I am born once more
the daylight world returning
at his small hand's touch

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-Two

2009-01-09T17:08:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Valila's breath came rough and desperate. She put out her hand, steadying herself against the door frame. She'd just killed three more warriors, but she was cut and bleeding freely from her shoulder, her ribs, her thigh. The light lulled and guttered in her vision. So tired, so hopeless. She had lost him. Only her own life remained, and that prize had never seemed so cheap as now.

A shout, the rush of some missile turning in the air. Sudden pain. She looked to her off hand, now pinned to the wooden door frame by a slim dagger that pierced through the center of her palm.

Running footfalls, coming ever closer. She gripped the knife's handle, wrenching it from the wood. Blinding agony, then the turn, pressing her back to the wall. Valila ducked, and the stone wall scored with the impact of the heavy mace where her head had been.

A sudden surge as her attacker suffered the mindless overswing of his heavy weapon. His eyes, suddenly wide as the blade tore through his skin, his liver, his lung.

The strength withered within his eyes. He asked a question in blood, and the language of his own decent to the floor answered. Valila, cupping her pierced hand close against her chest, faded away and down into the dimness of the cellars.

Winter of failed dreams
icy winds blow across me
in wordless lament

In blood I escape
turning from the reeling fight
a backward dawning
*****

Valila staggered, the effort to lift her feet and take another step all she could manage. Down in the cellars, the servants cut her a wide berth, in no mood to tempt a bleeding warrior who yet carried a crimson blade. Never mind that she was lost now, without the strength to do them any harm.

She came to the doorway of the storage room. A woman's strong hands grabbed her. Valila gazed at the woman's face, ruined by beatings on the one side, her beauty robbed by hardened knuckles of mean men. She felt that she should remember this woman, but couldn't.

"Where is he? Where is the boy assassin?" the woman asked.

Valila's head hung on her neck, she felt the darkness rise from the floor like clawed shadows, pulling at her, stealing the last pale vestiges of her strength. She no longer cared enough to stop her tears. "He's gone. He came to save me, damn him, and he's gone," she whispered.

"Then we'll have to go without him, sorceress, and we'll hope that he died in a way he thought worthy. Though he was but a boy, he was mightier than anyone I've ever met, perhaps too much for this faded world."

Valila could only sag against the wall, losing blood and tears, broken.

The woman hoisted up the weapons and got her shoulder under Valila's arm. She leaned on her, and no one they passed dared to look long upon their faces. Through the kitchen, and out into the dusty allyway behind the fortress they went. A cook was slaughtering chickens and did not look up from the chopping block as they went by.

Valila could no longer isolate the movement of her leaden body, picking out her own footfalls. The woman held her up, keeping her going. Finally, she was dimly aware of being dragged, heels scuffing in the dirt and over rough stones.

When she dreamed, she pictured Haike, pierced with arrows, hacked apart, his small body destroyed by the implements of war. Even so, his eyes, those pale orbs that held such quiet strength, continued to regard her. There was no damnation, no blame, only the stolid regard that even after death would not be broken. At last, he opened his mouth, but his voice spoke only the grumpy complaint of a footsore camel. Utter dark took her, and she lingered in oblivion.

Wither goest thou?
these empty, wounded questions
this aching regret

She who has been least
gives her shoulder unto death
and becomes mighty

As leaves, he's fallen
speaking in a beast's language
consumed by the fray
*****

Heat and smoke burned his lungs. His eyes stung, nearly swollen shut against the assault of the wet wood fire. Haike's hands, arms, knees, and lower legs were abraded to the flesh, and every upward inch cost him wicked torment. The ascent had long since lost its grander meaning. This was no longer a chimney, but a wicked tunnel into some unimaginably horrid afterworld.

Blind, choking, diminished by agony, he kept on. When his hands closed over the lip of the chimney, he scarcely understood that the trial was at last at an end. He swung a leg over, finally collapsing on the tiled roof of the fortress.

Each time he coughed, the contraction of his body sent a shiver of dull fire through his bone and muscle. Blood filled his mouth, his windpipe tortured and torn, his lungs ablaze. Haike tried to rise, but his body wouldn't respond. It had given all it could. No discipline of the mind could make it rise and go further.

Out of his one eye that had not swollen utterly shut, he watched the dim lamp of the sun behind iron clouds. His whole body was blackened with the sharp pitch of creosote, and every place it coated a scrape or wound, the pain radiated outward like poison in his flesh. He wondered if the escape had only been an empty gesture, if he would sicken and die up here, unknown to anyone. Had he forgone the sudden and irrevocable death of battle for a slow and fevered passing, his flesh torn away by the carrion birds, his bones adorning a roof where no man would walk?

He lay there, the pain too great to simply fade into sleep. Sometimes shouts drifted to him from the residents of the fortress, but they were weak, distant, and meant nothing now. The darkness of the clouds grew ever deeper, and a chill rain drizzled down on him.

Shivering, Haike held close to the slight warmth of the chimney. The rain fell freely now, huge drops pelting him, small rivulets running beneath him on the roof. He let rain fall into his mouth, but the pain of swallowing was so sharp that he could bear to do it only a few times.

After the first eternity of smoke and fire, this second of chill water and swirling wind threatened every fiber of Haike's being. Echoing vaults of madness opened within him. For a time, his fondest hope was gaining enough strength to crawl to the edge and throw himself from the roof. The pavement below, he knew, could save him from the trial. It was the only thing capable of such a feat. The strength was gone, though. There was nothing.

Haike, still clinging to the chimney, fell into himself, into a deep black cauldron of hopeless pain.

Upward into hell
this agonized ascension
this road of the torn
*****

She swam upward from the depths of a maddening well. Opening her eyes in the shadowed confines of the caravansarie room ranked among her most difficult trials. The spirit within Valila was dead. Only the dumb urge for continuance made her heart beat, her chest rise, her fingers twitch.

Her limbs were all attached. Dull pain coursed through her from all quarters, but her body had been adaquately bandaged. She sensed that she would be hungry and thirsty at some later time, though her body had yet to admit that it might recover from its punishment.

The other woman, whom she now recognized from earlier, stood over her, wet cloth in hand. "You're awake."

Valila moved her head in the smallest of all gestures of acknowledgement. Her voice was still locked tight, and would not make a sound.

"I am Mima, in case you wished to know. Though you sent me away, I came to help the boy in your absence." She reached down, gently wiping the cool cloth across Valila's face and neck. Mima smiled vaguely. "You see...he enacted a vengeance I could never hope for. The pale eyed boy killer--a savior to me, laying low all those who had tormented me and ruined my dreams. And though I felt that kindness was not natural to him, he hoped, perhaps, to save me in the end. He...loved you. It is not a bad reason to lay down one's life."

The tears returned to Valila's eyes. The roaring emptiness within her brought pain she had never imagined. Mima gave her small sips of water until the grating croaks of her dessicated voice began to resemble the sobs of a normal woman.

"He was my one hope...for real purpose in this world," Valila whispered. "I spent him on a fool's errand, and now I'm forever cursed."

Wordlessly, Mima stroked her hair and cooled her brow. Her sturdy, prosaic hands brought the twilight of unconsciousness again, and a respite from the pain.

The dead leaves gather
all bright colors departed
'neath uncaring skies

We cannot know love
till it is sundered and torn
born through agony

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty-One

2009-01-02T10:12:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

"Dawn is coming," Mima said. "Were this a normal night, I would be getting ready to awaken the morning workers for the kitchen."

"How long?" Haike asked.

"Long enough to sweep and mop this room, were it empty of barrels."

Haike ducked his head out of the room, listening. It was dead quiet yet. The high, small windows were still dark as obsidian. "If you don't wake them, will they rouse on their own?"

Mima shrugged. "A few might. Others would remain in their cots for a while longer. My absence won't hold back the day, though. As soon as full dawn comes, the fortress will become active again. This place is a huge and terrible stomach, and letting it go hungry is no good for any of the common people. If you hope to make an escape, it will have to be soon."

"Yes. Soon. If we're to survive, we will have to be gone by daylight. What I need from you now is a quick sketch of the main floor of the fortress." Haike fished out a lump of hard charcoal from his pocket. "Draw it out with this."

Mima frowned, marking rooms and hallways on the floor. "I'm bad at drawing. I can't see how this will help you."

"I'll need to know where I'm going when I get up there," Haike told her. He studied the sketch on the floor carefully, ignoring Mima's shocked expression. He asked her a few pointed questions. How many paces from one place to another? How many guards would be here? Would the fire be burning high at this time of the morning?

Mima frowned, but answered to the best of her ability. "But why would you go up there...when freedom is so near?"

Haike smiled, touching her face with the palm of his hand. "Do you know what a Dolgur is, Mima?"

She blinked, not understanding the question. "A mythic beast of some sort. Huge and terrible, one of the Dragonkind. They say that they have long since gone from the world, if they ever existed."

"They existed, Mima. They yet survive, mighty as an army and perfect as clear water. I have seen them, smelled their scent, touched them, just as I touch you now. I have looked into the eye of death and returned unharmed.

"When you asked me before if there was ever anything I couldn't stand to kill--I couldn't bear to kill a Dolgur. There has to be something greater than we are, has to remain some wonderful force that can cast our works asunder and doom us. There has to be that pinnacle, that natural element that can effortlessly be what we can only dream of."

"I still don't know what that has to do with going up there."

"Perhaps nothing. Probably everything. I'll return in shortly, or not at all. Should I not, I would advise escaping. There is enough coin in this satchel to give you a start." Haike gestured to the weapons satchel, where a small cache of money lay. "There are a pair of camels stabled at the drinking house called the Ebbing Moon. You could leave this town, find a place for yourself."

"I would rather that we both come away from this place, that we both have a chance," Mima whispered.

"That was never the likely outcome. Nothing's impossible, but don't hold out a foolish hope, lest you be marked a fool."

"What will you do...up there?"

Haike shrugged. "Nothing nice."

The world continues
no force can hold back the dawn
or the morning's work

We cannot know peace
after what we've seen and done
blessed, dragon touched

If given the choice
I choose to meet the dawn's light
with weapons in hand
*****

Valila was some distance from the stairway yet, and the sleeping fortress came alive with alarm bells. A bleary-eyed man appeared at the door to his chamber, bare to the waist. Valila punched him in the throat with all her strength, dropping him to the stones. She grasped the door, battering it against his skull until it made a wet sound.

A fully armed soldier came around the corner. She pulled free a dagger and threw it, piercing him in the meat of the thigh. Grunting with pain, he tried to rush her, but his wounded leg wouldn't hold him. He went to a knee, and she caught him across the face with a snap kick, breaking his nose and teeth with her hardened shin. Blood splashed up the wall as his head flung backward.

Valila leaped over his insensate form, running for a short burst and then ducking into a dim alcove to see how the soldiers would respond to the alarm. A few booted feet clattered on the stone, but the time of the morning--at the dead end of a long, seemingly pointless night shift--made the response listless at best. At least one voice from the front of the castle shouted, as if in awful pain. Valila's brows knitted. What could be...

A half-dressed warrior squatted on his haunches, trying to lace up his boots at the entrance to the alcove where Valila waited. She put a jambiya to his throat and pulled him into the dimmer recesses of the hall. One of his boots slid free, standing on its own in the hallway. Sloppy work. She chided herself. None of this had gone as it should. Had she been smarter, less motivated by a foolish sense of the theatrical, she and Haike would have been long gone from here.

"What raises the alarm?" she asked into his ear, her voice an icy whisper. "What have they discovered?"

The warrior grasped her wrist, trying to escape her grasp. Valila used her off hand to slam a thumb into the nerves in the man's underarm, simultaneously kneeing him in the groin. His weight sagged against her, his gorge rising and spilling across the back of her hand.

"Some...some madmen attack us. They are at the great doors, shooting men down with bows."

Valila's air departed. Haike. She had been too slow, and now he had thrown his life away. Her first thought was to do the same, to have her blood feed the same stones as his own, to make an ending of it and call all debts forfeit. She wanted to with all her being. Without her special gift, what was life?

Distractedly, she punched the warrior in the kidneys, then smashed his forehead into the wall. He toppled, but she registered none of that. She stepped out of her alcove, tears standing in her eyes. All roads led to twilight, all to the moaning, formless Coriyat. That had never seemed sad to her until now.

I have wasted time
on elaborate revenge
and now I am damned

The one precious thing
this life has ever given
slips from me in blood
*****

Liquid agony. That was the name of the poison. Mistress Namira had told him that. "Valila," he allowed himself to whisper. Her true and secret name, the name she should have only told to him after long and stringent training. She had honored him, despite his failings. He had never, in fact, been any good at following orders. If he met his death tonight, his mistress would at least be spared the ordeal of forgiveness.

A pair of warriors charged into the room. He had six arrows, and he gave them three. One missed, smashing against the wall. The other two found their mark, one high in the chest of the lead man, the second driving straight through the knee joint of his comrade.

Both warriors dropped, screaming out in abject pain. They writhed on the floor, shivering with the poison, begging their comrades to pull them back. Haike, hidden behind an overturned table, waited. As the first had been, they'd be incapacitated with the pain. Unlike last time, he wouldn't allow their friends to safely pull them back. This time, he'd let the arrows fly, and shoot to kill.

Behind the table, he wiped his sweaty hands against his pants and waited. He squatted on a wooden box that gave him the semblance of a tall man's height when he stood to fire. They had no reason to suspect he was just a boy, as he didn't give them long enough to get a good look at him.

The screaming continued. The poisoned men rolled about on the floor, foam starting at the corners of their mouths. Liquid Agony wouldn't kill them right away, perhaps sparing them altogether. That reprieve would only come after a long ordeal of indescribable pain, followed by a deep swoon and high fever. The fight, for them, was over.

A man ran into the room, still wearing only smallclothes and hair standing out in all directions. He held a clumsy bronze blade in his hand, his flabby belly heaving from his sudden run. Haike shot him low in the gut and he dropped between the two men he'd hoped to pull to safety. Three more men burst into the room, these fully dressed and grim of face. Haike launched his last two arrows. One caught a man through the left buttocks, the other skittered harmlessly across the floor.

One man hunched, grabbing wounded men and pulling them across the floor to safety. The other reared back and threw a javelin. The edge of the overturned table blew inward with the heavy impact, splinters showering all around Haike's feet. The man drew forth a heavy axe and ran forward, whooping a war cry.

Haike reached into the belt pouch he carried. He gripped his final trick, his one last gamble.

He hurled the bulbous ceramic flask at the feet of the charging warrior. There was a cavernous boom and a flash of fire, then the whole room filled with cloying, acrid smoke. In the chaos of alarm bells, screams of the wounded, and pounding boots, no one heard the light pad of a boy's fleeing footfalls.

Perhaps she is dead
and I save no one this morn
with my fool's hope

The bold always dare
holding nothing in reserve
deadly to the last

The Settled Dust, Part Twenty

2008-12-27T13:46:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Blood erupted from the wound. She was blind in one eye, her hair suddenly sticky. She could feel the blade scrape against the bone of her scalp. Khalid's weight pressed her to the floor, his eyes flashing with hatred and the ecstasy of battle. The pain bloomed, bright and sharp. Her pulse raced, quickening the flow against her face. Valila could wait no longer. She drove her fist into Khalid the Younger's side, targeting his liver.

The air blew out of him, the strength of his limbs suddenly stolen. They rolled once, twice, a third time. The blade dropped from his fist, his hands clamped against the side of his neck, trying to keep the fruit of his veins from spraying against the rug. He was not successful.

Valila rose, stepping over him as he died, the sucking noises of his slashed windpipe subsiding after a few moments. She pulled the sheet from the bed and balled it in her hands, holding it against the steady flow from her own torn flesh. It was done now. Only the matter of escape remained, and that had always relied more on faith than planning.

Of desperate strength
these final throes of madness
in the lion's den

The killing complete
bloodied, we hope to escape
snares we long taunted

*****

The woman, Mima, returned from hiding bodies. Her face hung slack, the shock of seeing death up close surrounding her as a funeral shroud would. Haike understood that he had asked her to do a difficult thing, and that he could be cruel to others without being aware of it. As he had been cruel to this woman. The deed had needed doing, however, and the fatigue clung in his muscles, reaching so deep that he wondered if he would ever be rid of it. Regardless of anything, he had needed the help. He would remember Mima's frailties, however. It wouldn't be fitting to be unnecessarily mean to her. She had suffered enough of that.

"Will the bodies be found?" he asked.

She shook her head, sliding down the wall to sit next to him. She stared at the wall across from them for several minutes. Haike waited. He thought that she would have questions. He had questions of his own, though they were only asked within his own mind. He wondered if he would need to kill her at the end of this. She had asked to be part of this, and the knowledge she'd gained was of a dangerous sort, perhaps deadly.

He hoped he wouldn't have to end her, though that would solve the awful knot of pain he could see in her eyes. If it came to it, he wouldn't tell her. It would be quick. She would be within the Coriyat's grasp before she knew what had happened.

"How is it that you can..." she began to speak, but her mouth wouldn't frame the question. She rested her chin on her chest, not looking at him.

"Kill grown men as I do?"

Mima nodded. "You showed no more emotion than if you'd cut a limb from a tree."

Haike blew air out his nose. "I was born...strange. I do not experience the world as you do."

"Have you never met something that you couldn't stand to kill?"

Haike nodded. "I value things, cherish people. I experience love and sadness, worry and hope. I have no more fear or guilt than an eagle, however. Those are emotions I don't suffer."

"Never?"

Haike shook his head. "Not in the way that normal people do. There are parts of me missing, Mima. I sense that there is a richness, a whole fabric of meaning that I cannot know in this life. For what I lack, I am given this--if it's within my physical capability, I can do it. There are but few deeds from which my mind would recoil."

"So you could, say, slit a woman's throat as she slept?" Her eyes were suddenly full of fire, finally meeting his gaze.

"If it were important that I did so, yes. I know myself to be capable of it. I would, of course, prefer not to."

"Did you kill...everyone in the barracks?"

"To a man."

Mima covered her face, hiding it from Haike's eyes. He could hear her breathing roughen. She wept. From the angle he watched her, the broken bones of her face were hidden, and she was comely. "You didn't cherish any of those louts, did you?"

Her body shook, and her hands clenched against her cheeks. "I hated them all," she whispered. "They..."

Haike understood. It didn't matter, but he understood. He didn't need a salve, didn't require another reasoning behind what he had done. Good men or cruel, they had been in his mistress's way, and their lives had been forfiet. The pain in Mima would not go away because the authors therewith had been sent into the Coriyat. He expected no thanks.

He didn't recoil, however, when she took him in her arms, squeezing him tight. "I hope they died in agony."

Knowledge of myself
this crippled, granitine soul
this chill observer

She, the consequence
the benefit and danger
of our reckoning

*****

Valila grasped the back rails of the chair and tried to keep from screaming. The pain of the styptic powder blasted across her nerves, blood and tears mixing into a pink flow against her cheek. No sound arose from her. The powerful salts slowed the flow of blood from her torn scalp, finally stopping it altogether. It was an effective coagulant, though the pain of it far exceeded that of the original injury. It was of no consequence.

She rose, using a wet cloth to get the worst of gore off of her face. Her legs felt weak underneath her, and the pain of coupling with Khalid thudded steadily at the crux of her legs. Roaring hollowness spun within her spirit. Whispered on this internal wind, the idea that nothing anyone did mattered, that all the pain she had borne and caused was to no great purpose. The tears stood in her eyes once more, but she pushed those poison thoughts away. Those were the voices of exhaustion speaking. She had heard them before.

After several minutes, her hands were steady enough to hold the needle and thread. She stood before the silver mirror and mended the long cut on her head. It started an inch above her left eye and went well into the hairline. It would scar, but it was a straight cut. It would leave a pale line pointing into her dark hair. One among many, but the first to her face. She smiled at her image in the mirror.

"You're eroded away like a sandy hill in the constant wind, aren't you? Best to leave the vanity of your beauty behind, for this life will make a hag of you, if you live it long enough. You'll cease to mean anything, only the whispering remnants of your deeds echoing through the empty rooms of a castle you can no longer inhabit." Now the last, exhausted remnants of her energy spoke their discouraged words with her own lips. She met her own eyes in the mirror and forced all superfluous thought to a halt.

When the stitching was over, she cleaned herself of blood, only to take the clinging mud from the warlord's boots in her fingers and apply an artful amount of filth to her skin. She slipped into the shabbiest of Khalid's clothes, a rough pair of trousers and a stained tunic. The clothes hung on her, hiding her shape. She secreted all the weapons she could lay hands to on her person.

She went to the high, thin window, looking out at the gloom of city as it crouched against the ground like a giant, dead insect. It would be dawn soon, and with dawn, Haike would slip away. The one marvelous thing she'd ever had would dissappear, and she would be captured, tortured, killed. A vast ocean of regret flowed between her ribs, filling her body cavity with its chill and turgid waters.

But that would be the better of two choices, that he go. He would make it on his own. Such was the strength in him that he would find a way. What she truly feared was that he would come for her, his sense of duty trumping what she'd instructed him to do. Even as a boy, he was his own. He followed her way, but only up to the point that it conflicted with his own steel-solid will.

Valila stepped back from the window, looking at the corpse of young Khalid at her feet. This whole dangerous adventure seemed a foolish and unnecessary risk now. She couldn't...couldn't leave it undone, but she hated that part within herself that had been unable to bend, unable to keep her special gift safe.

Her special gift. Haike. The one person who could look into her eyes, encompassing all that she'd done, all she'd seen, and never blink. She had to live, had to find some way to get him away, whole and unmarked.

Within agony
life's sense is lost; purpose fades
faith insubstantial

Chasms of despair
exhaustion digs them below
success tastes like dust

If only for him
I must press ever onward
beyond the nothing

The Settled Dust, Part Nineteen

2008-12-03T10:12:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

Twenty-seven. Those were the warriors, mostly reclining and sleepy around low tables at the periphery of the big room. Valila scanned across them as she danced to the dull rhythms of the drummers. Some hoisted cups until the sour-smelling wine dripped from the corners of their mouths, others attacked the goat meat and flat bread with all their brutish gusto.

As a dancer or serving wench would near their table, some of the warriors would pull her aside, putting their greasy hands and mouths against whatever exposed flesh they could reach. Some pulled away, and some were allowed to do so. Valila danced well, for it was not so different than the deadly movements she'd locked within her muscles in her training. Deftly, she kept a perfect distance from every table, every grasping hand. She was neither seen to shrink away nor to be close enough to grab.

The feasting hall grew smokey and rank with sweat and passion as the party wore on. By now, many of the men were drunk on wine. They plied their rough and inexpert love play to the serving girls and dancers, sometimes in shaded alcoves made by rough curtains, just as often at the side of their tables, amongst the discarded remnants of their dinner. Only a few warriors, older and more temperate than the others, sipped at their wine and watched the remaining dancers.

Valila saw that the finer dancers were yet present in the center space, canny enough to avoid molestation by the lesser warriors. Though some of them were good to look upon, they were soft, and the dancing had spent out most of their vigor by now. She chose this time to put her full effort into the enterprise, moving in all the most provocative angles, sweat gleaming on her skin, her raven hair flowing all around her.

The warlord's son gazed at her, his eyes alight with a malignant sort of lust. He lacked the great physical presence that his father had wielded as a younger man, but his face had a cruel beauty about it, and he had the air of both quick reflex and wickedness about him. He sat forward on his throne-like chair, stroking his chin beard. He waved away a servant who offered him wine, only looking, looking. When one of his remaining men would move as if to snare one of the girls for their pleasure, he would glare a line of liquid fire at them, forcing them back to their seats without a word.

The other dancers, avid to be chosen by the warlord's son, danced with abandon, their breath coming in hoarse gasps as they tried to keep up with Valila. They were too soft, too coddled to put forth such an effort. One by one, they dropped to the floor, gasping, until only Valila remained, spinning and leaping, bending like the blade of a thin sword.

The young warlord, masterful, rose from his throne, gesturing the drummers to stop their music. The hall fell quiet, only the snoring of the sodden and the sighs of those yet coupling audible over the heavy panting of the dancers.

"You," the young warlord said, pointing at Valila where she stood, her breath slowing, the sweat cooling on her skin. "The harem master said there would be one woman among these cows that had some fight left in her. I offer you this bargain: should you leave me spent this night, I'll take you to wife. I warn you, though, I am as mighty a bull as walks this world, and no single woman has ever satiated my desire."

"When I'm finished with you, you will want for nothing," Valila called out, a hint of challenge in her voice.

The young warlord grinned. "We shall see." He motioned, and Valila followed him out the back of the feasting hall, into a dark, silent hallway draped with expensive tapestries from the west. He put his palm against her lower back, steering her as if she couldn't manage in the dimness. By his touch, she knew him to be well schooled in the sport of the bedroom.

"Your strength will give out, and you'll beg me to finish with you before the end. In that, you will be the same as all the others. That spirit? I'll deprive you of it long before the night is done."

Valila merely smiled, allowing him to push her into his bed chamber, where no man would come to his aid.

Inexpert drummers
love-sport and smoke covers death
that lingering smell

Who but the weasel
dances with such wicked glee
every eye gone blank

I am gone within
the false lamb with fangs so red
you the choice morsel
*****

Khalid the younger collapsed next to her, shivering with the weakness of pleasure. Valila lay still, saying nothing, studying the dark smudges where the smoke from his lanterns rose to the ceiling. Her breathing gradually returned to normal. The pain decreased, but would not subside any time soon. Any hints of noise from the feast were gone now. The hour grew late. Both warriors and slaves had taken to their sleeping mats.

"I will...stand by my words in front of the men," Khalid whispered when his breath had returned. "You...would bring forth sons fit to conquer all the known lands."

"You would wed me, young warlord? A woman who you saw dancing, about which you know nothing?"

He rubbed his rail-hard belly, grinning up at the dingy ceiling. "Yes. What do I care what you've been up to before now? Clear enough--you've lain with a man or three before this night. All the better, for I can abide only so much soft crying and protestations about the pain of coupling. No, I have found you, and I plan to keep you. I need a strong woman, a woman with too much pride to ever weep."

"Hmm. To many, that would be a tempting proposal. You're in the fullness of your powers, and there would be no sense in denying your...gifts, but I didn't come here to find a mate."

Khalid rolled to his side, looking at her with some interest. "You would deny me, going back to the harem master rather than bonding with me?"

"It wouldn't do to marry a dead man, regardless of the comely angles of the corpse's face."

Khalid blinked. "A dead man?" He recoiled from her.

"Your family owes a debt payable only in blood. Had you been a base braggart who spoke loudly of his prowess to cover a shortcoming, I would have freed your blood in the moment of your apex and watched you die of your own pleasure. Because there is something of regal wickedness in you, and because you can sometimes produce an honest response, you deserve better than that."

"You...you're that Ghost Society witch!" Khalid moved to leap upon her, but he was accustomed to fighting in armor, trusting to cuirass to cover his vitals.

Valila lashed out, kicking him low in the belly and sending him sprawling into the corner of the bed chamber. She sprang up, catching the weapon belt from the young warlord's trousers. There were two fine daggers hung there. She took one, throwing the other so that it would stick into wall next to him. "There. You are dead now, but you may yet come back. If you can fight past me and reach the door, your life waits for you there."

The young warlord pulled free the blade and stood, now uncomfortable with his naked state. "Why? Why come back here? Alone, you cannot imagine that you might escape. And...this madness, laying with me as a whore?"

Valila flexed her legs, feeling the carpet beneath her toes, preparing. "Insults to my folk are always repaid, Khalid. We are not immune to death. We aren't superbeings of the Coriyat. We choose to always pass from this world with our principles intact, however. As for our tryst, does it not deepen the impact upon your spirit? That I've come to you unmarked, knowing you in the absolute way of the flesh? And what shame is there in a whore? We are all paid to do something. What I do this night is done for free."

Khalid shook his head, his black hair falling over his shoulders. "You've shamed me, witch, but I will live. When the door behind you opens, I will be the one to exit this room, and I'll nail shut the door behind me."

"Perhaps. But there will be no keeping the secret of what I've done here."

Khalid leaped forward, faster than Valila had guessed. The whistling of blades parting the air was the only noise. The carpet rolled beneath her feet, and suddenly she thudded to the floor, the young warlord above her. She grasped his knife hand, but he was stronger. The point came nearer, nearer to her face, hovering just a hand's width from her eye.

The known and unknown
we, close with sweat, blood, and seed
yet still mean strangers

Bodies acquainted
striving now for death's purpose
wed by the dagger
*****

Haike heard the noise and swung out into the hallway, hugging the wall. He drew the short bow back, holding three fingers an inch from his ear and aiming the arrow. He had expected them from the other way, but it didn't matter.

The woman he'd seen before, the kitchen worker. She stood there, face pallid with fear, but standing resolute. Haike did not ease off the bow.

"Is it true?" she asked. "What the sorceress said about you?"

Haike felt the strain on his arms as he held the bowstring taut. "True enough."

"Your touch will kill me outright?" She walked closer. "I'll just fall to ash, and be gone?"

Haike allowed the bow to unbend, tucking the arrow back into its quiver. "No. There'd be blood and pain, just as with any violent death."

"If it were like that...painless..." she turned her face to the ceiling. "I'd ask you for that boon. I'm sick with the cruelty of this world."

He put his hand against the handle of his machete. "If you held still, the blade could make short work of it."

The kitchen worker moved near to him, her eyes shining with tears. "You could simply kill me, without a moment's hesitation?"

The boy nodded. "If you wished me to, I would. That isn't why I'm here, however."

"You're..." The kitchen worker reached out, touching his face gently, smoothing his hair.

"Only a boy? Some have said as much."

She shook her head. "Different. Different from everyone."

"Yes."

"I want to help you."

Haike focused his chilly eyes upon her. Without any comment, he touched her wrist, her upper arm, her waist, her calf muscle. "Mima, is it?"

"That is my name."

"You seem sturdy enough. Perhaps you could aid me."

At that moment, the noise of two warriors coming down the stairs floated across the dim underhalls. Haike pushed Mima back into the storage room and nocked an arrow. The men, both sodden with drink, staggered closer, laughing at some jest or prior adventure. "You need at least two wenches for a proper..." one continued, leaning on his comrade.

The thrumming of a bow string sounded twice in the dank air. Arrows appeared in the drunkards' bellies, stealing the strength from their legs and toppling them to the ground. Twice more the bow muttered, sending arrows into their flesh once again. Haike shot across the floor, his machete flashing, the warrior's blood spraying across the stone as they died. He bent, skimming the gore from his blade.

"Now, if you wish to help, haul these two away and hide the bodies. I'll wash down the worst of the gore."

Mima grabbed the first warrior by his feet and strained to pull him away. His cape soaked up much of the blood, but there would yet be a blood trail. Prepared for this instance, Haike put aside his bow and carried out a pail of water, a coarse brush, and a large towel. The fatigue of the day began to creep through his muscles, and only iron willpower allowed him to continue unabated. Where was his mistress? The hour grew late, and he dreaded the thought that, at the coming dawn, he would be forced to slip away alone.

Insects to the torch
we slouch forward into doom
crying for release

Ever and oft used
the timid one now bloodied
with oppressor's gore

Let dawn's light tarry
let not the sun orphan me
in this savage land

The Settled Dust Part Eighteen

2008-11-26T12:15:00.002-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The stink of slow death hung in the warlord's room like smoke from a wet wood fire. He lay there, breath labored, eyes wide and staring as he struggled to go on another turn of the glass.

Valila stood over him. Finally here, this felt strange. She had never been one to argue inwardly about the symbolisms of death. She trusted in it, was a believer in turning the soil of the world and releasing souls back into the Coriyat. She had no qualms, no fear that she wouldn't be able to finish this part, but...it felt different from anything else she'd ever done.

"You...Namira, of the Ghost Society," Kahlid whispered. His face was slick with sweat, his body a flabby, shapeless remnant of his former power.

"Yes, it is I, though Namira is not my name."

"What do I care what your real name is? You, whose business is poisoned daggers in the dark--I wish I had never seen your face."

"You called for one of my kind, Kahlid. You dispatched me to do your dirty business, though you always planned to use me badly in the end. You betrayed me, warlord. You sent your soldiers to slay me in the wilderness. Of all your misdeeds, that is the one I cannot excuse. My own outrage is unimportant, but you've disrespected the Ghost Society, and that cannot stand."

"You needn't excuse me of anything, bitch. I lay here, free from guilt in this and all things. I did what I had to, what I wished to do. In all my years, I ever had my knee upon the neck of this worldly life. Did I make mistakes? Of course. I should have sent more soldiers, so I would have been spared another glance into your soulless eyes."

Valila shrugged. "Perhaps, though I am worth any number of your brutish soldiers, and would simply have slipped away from a larger force. You should have trusted to my discretion. I never planned to share the details of our arrangement. Killing me bought you nothing."

"Peace of mind, assassin. The most expensive treasure of all. I didn't want you coming back and giving my son any difficulty after I went into the Great Nothing."

She smiled vaguely. "It would never have occurred to me, had you stayed true."

Kahlid coughed. Something dark stained his lips. "Stayed true...did you do as much? I wonder if you really did kill a Dolgur at all. Perhaps you led my men into its lair and doomed them."

Valila's heart clenched, but she allowed nothing to show on her face. "You will have nothing more to fear from that Dolgur."

"I'll have nothing more to fear from anyone, since you plan to snuff out my life this night. Go ahead, assassin. Dampening your blade in my flesh will save me a span of discomfort."

Valila put aside her dagger, straddling the warlord's chest in the noisome dimness.

"You would lay with a man half dead, whore? Sorry to disappoint, but I'm too ill for such sport."

Valila put her full weight down on the warlord's ribcage. "You misunderstand, Kahlid. I intend to smother you like a babe, like a rat caught in a snake's squeezing coils. You don't deserve the honor of a blade."

The warlord fought weakly, struggling to hang onto his breath, but it whistled out from his parched lips at last. His sick body shook, bucking a few times as the nerves fired throughout his wasted system. It took some minutes for him to succumb, his eyes losing that last feverish light, his lips going blue.

Valila swung her leg off of him, feeling the tinge of illness upon her bare thighs. She would have to wash. She gripped the hilt of her dagger, driving it down, smashing through the dead man's breast bone. She left the weapon protruding from Kahlid's body, but the blood oozed listlessly from his corpse, barely staining the sheets.

"One more to slay before the night is over," she told the darkness.

This human Autumn
the killer suffers strange thoughts
the kill tastes bitter

All great creatures die
slow and by aching degrees
their passing ugly
*****

The young guard idled in the hall, whistling a tuneless snippet over and over. Not thinking anyone looked on, he dug a vigorous finger into his nose, examined what he'd exhumed within, and flicked the finger at the wall. Valila waited for him to hold still in a suitable position, then leaped in to attack, silent as a sleeping breath. The weighted pommel of the Jambiya thudded against the back of his head, dropping him to the floor with only a strangled gasp.

She gritted her teeth, pulling him into the dead consort's room. Leaving him bound to a chair and gagged, she studied her appearance in the long mirror. The clothes she'd found were tighter than she would have preferred, but that very quality made them seem more appropriate for a dancing girl. She spared a moment to cover the newest of her bruises. It would have to be good enough. The idea that she'd been beaten by the harem master was not completely implausible, after all.

There was only one problem. There were no killing daggers of appropriate size to secret in her outfit nearby. She would have to traverse the castle, would have to count upon Haike having managed to complete his part of the task. She sighed. He had assured her that he could do it, but...

Valila didn't allow herself the luxury of terrible fancies. She flicked a shawl over her shoulders and skimmed through the castle, purposeful as as a circling hawk in the sky.

I cover the wounds
ever onward into night
death's freight to carry
*****

"What butchery! Whoever was here, they killed Muklo and this boy. By the Dark Hereafter, but look at the blood! The whole place is filthy with it, and the tables look like a whirlwind has come through here." Two cooks stood at the entrance to the lower barracks, squinting at the remnants of the battle.

"Do you think we should tell someone?" the woman asked. "Fell deeds have been done down here before, but this feels strange. I've never known this room to approach quiet, with all the mean cackling of the men as they drink and boast."

The young man, stunted and lumpish after some childhood ailment, shrugged his round shoulders. "None of our business, so far as I can see. How often have these bastards bedeviled us? I've been beaten a dozen times, just because they were bored. You..."

"I'd have liked to geld them all, but this boy...this is below even their standards, Bamek. Anyway, it could be a danger to the fortress, someone coming in to attack us in secret." Her face, pretty from the right profile, was ruined with a badly-set cheek bone on the left, a remnant of a beating that Muklo himself had given her. The number of times she'd been raped far exceeded her ability to count.

"Who would have the wherewithal to do such a thing, Mima? How would they enter the fortress?"

"I don't know. Still..."

"Still," Bamek put his hand against her arm, "let's make it none of our business. Let the warriors see to their own fate, is what I say. If the night sees them face great peril and torment, it is no more than they deserve."

"Perhaps..." Mima's statement was lost in a shriek as the dead boy struggled to his feet, all the blood in his thin body spilled all around him. Only his pale eyes, clear and merciless as a wolf's, were unstained by the gore. He raised a machete before him.

The two cooks stood, rooted to the spot, the weight of the silence squelching Mima's scream, turning it inward where it died away like an unfulfilled dream.

"It saddens me that I must slay you, for you are not warriors, but simple worker folk." The boy stepped forward, jaw set. Though he was smaller even than little Mima, the cooks turned from him, frightened as those who had confronted the spirits of the dead.

We, the unknown ones
who have known hate and cruelty
shattered, we yet live

Arisen spirit!
some ghoulish remainder stirs
a thing dead yet speaks
*****

Valila caught both the cooks by the neck and held them still, their eyes wide and glassy with terror. "You'll say nothing of this. Go on about your business. The boy has become as death itself, and his mere touch would cause you to fall apart in smoke and ashes. Do you understand?" These words were given in a rasping whisper, seemingly louder than a shout in the gloomy underhalls of the fortress.

"Nnnggg..." the stunted man whined.

"Don't let him kill us!" the woman begged.

"Will you do what I say?" Valila asked, her eyes boring into them.

Both cooks nodded, tears springing from the woman's eyes. "We'll do as you say, sorceress, I swear."

Valila smiled slightly. Of all the many names she had been given, sorceress was new. One never knew what advantage there would be in a creative lie. "Good. Go now, and forget all you've seen, if you know what's healthy."

The sound of their feet slapping the hard stone floor disappeared in a moment, and she turned back to Haike. "Honestly, boy, there's no need to be so gruesome. We don't take strange pleasure with the kill. In the end, the death is not about us. It doesn't prove our valor or change our fate. It's the churning of the earth's farm field, and we the harvesters that assure that the seasons of the Coriyat move apace."

He nodded, but didn't appear abashed. Valila imagined that he didn't even have that expression in his lexicon. A strange child, both beautiful and terrifying in his way. Everything that stood in the way of the kill in a normal person, all those weaknesses that most imagined to be the composition of the human soul--all of those impediments where missing from Haike. The frozen river within him contained deep, wide channels, but they were unplumbed depths, and Valila could only guess what they might contain. She forced herself to leave those thoughts aside. The chances of them both surviving the night were none too good. In an hour, none of her postulations would be of any greater use than the twittering of the sparrows in the morning trees.

"Is the way clear?" she asked.

"Yes, mistress Namira. All who would stand against us in the lower barracks died this night."

"The poison worked well, then?"

"Except on that one. He came later." Haike pointed to the burly soldier, dead of slices to foot, gut, and neck. "I was knocked cold in the fight, and just recently awoke. I'll wash up."

"First, show me where the weapons are cached."

Heedless of the itch that drying gore would surely cause, Haike took her to a room filled with barrels and retrieved the weapons. She selected a thin knife no longer than her index finger. It would only do the job if jabbed into the neck veins, or perhaps the big ones on the inside of the thigh, but it was easy to secret inside her brief dancer's outfit.

"You know how to string the short bow and fire it?" she asked.

"You need only show me a thing once, Mistress."

"Good. Clean yourself up and put the barracks to whatever rights you can manage, then drop back to here. Watch for soldiers coming this way," she pointed toward the stairway up to the ground level of the fortress. "I will make the sound of an owl before I arrive. Anyone else's life is forfeit. Understand?"

Haike nodded. "I am yours. Ask it, and it will be done."

The way the boy looked at her made Valila tingle all over. She touched the back of his shoulder, one place that wasn't encrusted with blood. "Perhaps we will survive this night, young Haike."

He smiled. "We have lived free and done as we wished. If we fall, I will have but few regrets."

"And those..."

"Let them be. They would not help you this night."

"I will see you soon, perhaps in the Coriyat," she whispered in his ear. "If someone comes asking for your life, be sure you sell it at great cost."

Queen by my own lies
my sorcery-woven words
whisper infinity

We, soon to depart
share one last, tender moment
before tempting doom

The Settled Dust, Part Seventeen

2008-10-25T17:18:00.001-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The warlord's soldier pulled free his blade and stepped into the barracks. "What goes on here, boy? Where are the men? At this hour, the barracks should be crowded with the ill-tempered lot of them, yet here is quiet, and a strange boy eating at our table."

"A strange event, I'll give you that," the boy said. His smile was cheerful, if tinged with a hint of chilly fatalism.

"So, explain yourself. I call you to account, rascal!" the thick-set soldier boomed. His dark, wide face formed a scowl, his forehead knotting around a deep, whitened scar.

"The men of the barracks stood to cause me difficulty later, so I killed them. It was not personal, and I take no glory in the deed. Such are the bloody ways of men, eh? I'm sad to see your face, my friend. Had you remained absent, you may have lived through the night yourself. Now I must kill you, as well." Haike slid out of his chair and grasped his machete, careful to keep the table between he and the soldier, who was a big man with rippling arm muscles.

The soldier blinked several times, the strangeness of the scene too gigantic for him to grasp. "You..."

"Yes. Just as if the very hand of death swept across their eyes," Haike agreed.

The big man shook his head, his laugh ringing forced and false against the quiet. "A strippling lad? Killed these evil louts and brigands? A likely story! Did they leave you here to play me for the fool?" The soldier moved quick, trying to come around the table and close with Haike. The boy slipped away, keeping his distance.

"I play no jokes today, but remain here to speak for the departed," Haike said, overturning a chair to slow the soldier down as the man lunged for him.

"Quick little bastard, you are, but I'll have you, and I'll use you like a woman for this foolishness." The soldier's face grew dark with wrath, and he abandoned trying to snare Haike with his off hand, instead swinging his short, broad blade through the air. He connected only with the corner of the table, shearing off a chip of the grease stained wood. Haike led him on a frantic chase back and forth across the barracks. Ragged breath, heavy footfalls, and the screeching of chairs against the hard floor drifted up into the vaulted reaches of the basement room. Wild brawls and grim oaths were not uncommon noises in the dim recesses of the fortress. No one appeared to ask about the current troubles.

"You can't seem to catch me, you lumbering oaf. I can't see how you'd pin me down long enough to rape. The way you're panting, I doubt you'd be able to produce the requisite timber to get the job done, anyway," Haike taunted as he leaped over a chair, skittered across a table, and kicked a plate of cold, greasy porridge at his assailant.

"I'll cut your hands off and geld you when I catch you, you wicked little creature!"

Haike grasped a bronze flagon and threw it at the soldier, hitting him on the knee. He turned and dashed away again, and the soldier slewed into a table, crashing to the ground. He scrabbled up, covered with the remnants of a dead man's dinner, swearing so vigorously that Haike stopped for a moment to look back.

"Well, if you're that upset, I suppose it would be cruel of me to keep goading you." The boy flourished the machete. He'd been traveling with Namira for many weeks, and he had learned much about handling a blade.

Wiping oily gravy away from his face, the soldier shook himself. His whole frame vibrated with anger. He gave an inchoate roar and launched himself toward Haike, sword arm cocked high and fists clenched to paleness. Haike stood his ground, his foot hooked on the leg of a chair. At the last moment, he kicked the chair across the floor and into the soldier's legs.

The big soldier almost managed to vault the chair, but one foot caught on the obstacle, and he fell, tumbling and sprawling past Haike. The boy slashed at the back of his leg as he slid by, giving him a nasty, bleeding wound. Not enough to cripple the leg, though. Shrieking in almost inhuman wrath, the soldier surged up again, now bloody about the mouth and wet to his boot with his own red life. He hoisted a chair and threw it at Haike.

Haike flinched away, but part of the chair caught him on the off shoulder, knocking him back and over one of the tables. He let the momentum carry him, rolling beneath a second table and out of sight. The soldier came nearer, cursing wildly and kicking chairs and tables out of his way. His left foot came down no more than a hand's breadth from Haike as he raged and bellowed through the barracks.

Haike slashed across the top part of the man's foot with all his strength, cutting through boot leather and down to the ankle joint. A scream of pain shot through the barracks, loud enough to hurt his ears. The table above Haike disappeared, and the man's face, now purple with madness, leered down at him. With both hands, the soldier reared back to swing a cleaving strike to the boy's head. The soldier's gulped breath came free at the same moment that the rope of his guts felt the outside air. Haike surged up, having sliced him low on the belly, and jammed the razor-honed blade into the man's neck.

Slaughterhouse gore sprayed across him, blinding his eyes, flooding into his mouth and nose. Something hard and unyielding smashed against Haike's forehead. Filled with peals of crimson thunder, his head reeled. He wasn't aware of taking blind, halting steps away from the dying man, or collapsing to his knees, or slapping against the filthy floor of the barracks.

Amidst the squalor
we two toil unto death
falling blind, nerveless

*****

The fine-boned woman's wavy hair showed the first frosty signs of age, but her figure had not deserted her. She held a wide, curved jambiya in her left hand, cradled close against her belly. "I know all the servants. You are no chambermaid."

Valila nodded, releasing the last of her facade. She stood straight, letting the clothes and bed sheets fall at her side, leaving only the dagger. "Few are so perceptive."

"I haven't lived this long in the jackal's den by luck alone. I suppose you're here to kill him, then?"

Valila gave a faint smile.

"You've nearly left it too long, assassin. He has journeyed down death's road apace already. Slaying him now would probably be more mercy than vengeance."

"I dispense neither. He made a mistake. I need to show him the gravity of that error."

"So you have been used badly in his service, is that it?"

The savage sparkle in the woman's eyes told Valila that she'd ingested some powerful drug. Red spice, she imagined. "How I am treated, in itself, is unimportant. How this reflects upon the Ghost Society, however..."

The warlord's mistress gave back a step. "He never told me that he would have dealings with ones such as you." Her eyes searched the floor at her feet. "Then again, Kahlid always thought he could control everything."

"This does not have to mean your death," Valila told her. "If you were to leave now and never look back, I would turn my hand aside from you."

"The father--him you cannot deprive me of. He is all but dead. My son, though, must live. It is only for my son that I must strive. If you could..."

Valila shook her head. "From the root to the branch, the tree must fall."

"Then I can't stand aside. I couldn't stand to walk the dust of this earth while my son is sent into the Dark Hereafter."

Valila gave a slight bow, dropping into her practiced fighting stance. The warlord's mistress did the same. They circled, tested, and finally leaped together, barely a whisper rising from their movement. Valila caught the jambiya before it fell from her adversary's nerveless hand. She cradled the woman's head as she whispered her last few words in blood. "My son..."

"Will soon join you in the Coriyat." Valila pulled the mistress back into her bedroom before too much blood pooled in the hallway. She hoisted her up onto the thick feather bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin.

"Such a woman as you was wasted upon Kahlid." Valila eased the door closed continued down the hallway. She stopped before the final door, a thick portal with a crude image of a bear carved into its surface. Kahlid's personal chambers. She exhaled and pushed the door inward.

Before the darkened
portal, we strive for one half
rotten from within

All these blood-made works
the lies and damage rendered
let it fall this night

Will we never wake
the fevered madness fading
with the coming dawn

The Settled Dust, Part Sixteen

2008-10-17T10:22:00.001-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The presence of sickness is shunned. Valila had long known this. The old warlord lay in his bed now, noisome as the deep illness gnawed through his guts. Seeing the man of such cruelty and proportion reduced to the indignity of a slow death was an unwanted vision. It reminded them, from greatest to least, that they would all walk the same route. No earthly strength of arm or richness of coffers would stay the hand of death. The whole quadrant of the castle hung silent, muted with the nearness and reality of death. She walked boldly, allowing her feet to slap against the stone floor. Valila had shed her scanty dancer's garb for servant's dress. No one questioned her, not even when she stopped at the harem master's apartments. Snapping his neck was a mistake, but an enjoyable one. She would just have to work faster.

She rounded a dim corner, her arms loaded with random laundry she had grabbed to complete her disguise. A soldier paced listlessly there below a burning torch, spinning his mace by his side. Little more than a boy, this dull and seemingly pointless duty fell to him. She approached with the uncertain steps of a chambermaid in the midst of warriors. He spun on his heel as Valila made a small sound in her throat. This way? Would this way be the easiest? Complex plans were not her way. She took opportunities as they arose.

"It is late for laundry, maiden," the boy soldier said, a grin creeping onto his face.

"It's late for maidens, but laundry knows no time."

The soldier's face hung slack for a moment, then sparked with understanding. "A saucy one, then. Come here and let me disport myself if you're no maiden."

Valila bent, setting the laundry on the stoop where the soldier could rest his feet. "You're a handsome young brute, but I must serve at the feast later, and I can't be sweaty and covered with a man's musk. I'll please you, but we must be quick about it."

"I'll have no difficulty with that, wench." The soldier came closer, pawing at her, grasping at her dress and pulling it roughly upward.

Valila caught his wrist. "My way."

"Any way I choose," he responded, continuing to pull at her clothes.

She grasped his manhood, already awake with the prospect of action. "Hush now. You're young, and there are things I might teach you, if you're wise."

"Very well. Should I dislike your way, it will be mine. Mark me, wench, I'm young, but I am no boy to be led."

Valila knelt before him. He gasped, reaching out to hold the wall for balance. He would be led, and easily.

By muscle and hate
guile and pleasure given
dark victory nears

*****

Haike found it easy to slip away from the busy kitchen staff. They didn't know his face, and he scrubbed clean of the dirt that had veiled him at the start. A pilfered cap drew close over his ears and partially hid his face. A paltry disguise, but it would serve. He carried the bag full of weapons to a storage room crowded with barrels, hiding the package in a nook where it wouldn't be seen. He withdrew only an earthenware jug filled with fine peppered brandy, worth the price of a boy slave, as he'd once been. The boy he'd beaten earlier had told him about the lower barracks, and it took him only a few minutes to find it.

An old man with only one ear met him at the door, grimacing. "What's this? I don't know you, boy." His voice grated like a knife on a whetstone.

"I brought this." Haike hoisted the jug, which held close to a half gallon.

"What is it?" The old man squinted at Haike's pale skin.

Haike shrugged, not meeting the warrior's eyes. The old man wrenched the jug away with a curse. He removed the cork and sniffed the aromatic liquor.

"Very well, then. Be off with you. Thank whoever sent this. Perhaps we won't be there for the feast, but we'll have some merriment tonight." The old man kicked out at Haike, but he dodged the blow and skittered away.

"Look here, boys!" the soldier's voice echoed. "We'll drink like kings and conquerors tonight!" The rumour of shifting chairs and the clinking of cups followed.

"It's the good stuff!" someone bellowed. "Damn me to rot if it isn't the warlord's own! Perhaps the Kahlid the Younger will be more generous than his sire." The sound of men gulping down the fine draught and slapping backs and shoulders echoed through the deep parts of the castle.

Haike turned from them, satisfied that they would drink deep and, indeed, be damned. Back at the room with the barrels, he crawled into the same void where the killing tools waited. The poisoned brandy would take some time to weaken them and still their tongues. He closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax. If they were successful here, he could close the book of the past. No one who had wronged him would draw breath. Haike wondered what he would feel like afterward. It didn't matter. He and Namira...or Valila, her true and secret name...would go away together. He would learn her ways and always be near to her. It would be good. If they failed, it was only death. To die like an eagle--with talons sunk deep into your quarry's flesh--was nothing to fear.

When all of the soldiers had been given a chance to partake of their doom, Haike came back, looking in on them. A few of them struggled to rise, while others were already insensate. Haike hoisted a flanged mace from the table and stepped into the room, weighing it in his palm. Cleaner than his machete, if somewhat less efficient. The smoky air swirled as he swung a sharp downward stroke. The old soldier, poison sick, put up a weak hand in defense. One of his fingers snapped backward a moment before the mace fell upon his skull. With hardly a grunt, he fell to the floor. Haike hit him a second time, feeling his temple crush inward. All further movement on the soldier's part was only the clattering of the death-coach's wheels along the road to oblivion.

Putting an end to the warlord's soldiers was no more difficult than the slaughter of hens. Dragging the bodies back to their bunk room and hiding them beneath their beds wasn't so easy. Sweat coated his brow and crawled down the center of his back by the time the men were hidden and the worst of the blood sopped up from the untidy floor.

The mace was an imperfect hammer, but he managed to nail the armory door shut at four places along the casement. The enemy's flank was open, his gate unhinged. His mistress and he would have a way clear once their task here was completed.

Now, he'd just have to wait for any stragglers. He unsheathed his machete and set it beside him at a table near the door. Any he faced now would possess their full strength and wit. The slaughter, for him, had ended. The fight would now begin. Haike picked up a roasted hog leg and ripped off a mouthful. Its previous owner would have no need of it.

In sickness they fall
poison drunk and doomed to rot
within their sanctum

*****

The old concubines were already sleeping, but for one. Valila peered in at them. Chalking the door shut would have been sufficient, had they all slept. She didn't relish the thought of killing all the old hens here--they were not targets, and their deaths would merely mark the venture as sloppy. The wakeful concubine's eyes snapped to the intruder. The chambermaid's clothes did nothing to fool her, and she drew out a slim dagger, her teeth in a rictus of fear and determination.

Valila stepped all the way in, closed the door, and dropped the pile of linens against the threshold to muffle the noise. The concubine rushed her, dagger held high. "Intruder! Murderer!" she shrieked. The warning cry echoed about the room. Valila hoped the thickness of the walls would consume the noise.

The concubine had once been a beautiful woman, but her looks were beginning to crack like old pottery. She swung a clumsy stroke at Valila's neck. The assassin twitched to the side and caught her wrist, forcing the momentum into a deadly arc that ended within the old woman's heart muscle. Valila pushed her down, the light already fading from her eyes.

The other concubines surged out of bed all around her, five of them. They tried to grasp at her, to drag her to earth. They were strong in their panic, fierce. Valila felt one of them bite down hard against her wrist. They mauled her, and the strength in her legs nearly faded as one of them punched her repeatedly in the small of her back. The rough sound of labored breathing thundered in the quiet room. One of the concubines smashed something hard against Valila's head, and the dimness shook with vibrant colors.

The knife clattered to the ground beneath them. One of the concubines squeaked in pain as her bare arch caught upon the blade. She recoiled, and Valila regained the control of one of her hands. She punched a tall, fleshy woman in the throat, forcing her to relinquish her grasp. Valila bit down hard on the collarbone of another woman, this one so close she couldn't see anything more than a blur. One of them went for the door, but fell hard on the pile of linens, the breath coughing out of her as her body slapped against the floor.

Valila shrugged off the woman who'd been punching her, spinning an elbow back against her jaw. She lashed out at the hobbled woman, knocking her senseless with a fist to the temple. The big concubine hoisted a stool and swung it with grunting effort, but Valila ducked and the woman behind her fell to earth in a hail of splintered wood.

Several sweaty moments later, Valila surveyed the room, now a chaos of unmade beds, overturned furnishings, and senseless women. The dead concubine's blood pool was small. She'd expired in only a moment, the heart's action brief and weak. Valila hoisted her onto one of the beds and threw a sheepskin rug over the blood pool.

She used the dagger to rip free segments of cloth, binding the concubine's bleeding foot then tying the women together, back to back. She gagged them last, and none too soon, as they were beginning to stir. She found a mirror, examining herself for obvious injuries. None of the bruises were visible. She could cover the ones that her maid's clothing hid if she had to. She washed away the sprinkles of blood on her face and hands. She could do nothing about the torn seams on her shoulders or the dark stains of fight sweat across her torso.

"The darkness will have to aid me, for the killing's far from done," she told her reflection.

Valila knelt beside one of the concubines, whose eyes were wide and rolling beneath her dark brow. "You did yourself an honor, defending your master so well. I applaud your loyalty, though he doesn't deserve such consideration."

The killer reached out, smoothing the older woman's hair. The concubine screamed into her gag, trying to recoil from her touch.

"I'm not here for you. You'll be injured no further. Tomorrow, though, will dawn strange for you...for this place and for miles around."

The concubine's eyes clouded with tears, her chin sagging to her chest.

Sometimes they know, Valila thought. Sometimes they can tell when things are beyond saving, when no one can stop the bloodletting.

Loyalty too great
makes the tender hand grow fierce
in the damned's defense

The fist unlooked-for
an old man's tired harem
clings to hopes forlorn

Bound--hope scatters like leaves
in the Autumn of her eyes
only tears remain

By the felling of
one great and sickened timber
the forest must change

Interruption of Play

2008-08-29T15:13:00.001-06:00

1.
She came
with the burning
crimson violence
of the dawn

The booming of
her mighty wings
set the crowd reeling

and the high school
football game
came to a sudden
halt

A boy who'd just
caught a pass
into the flat

stood

chin strap unbuckled
chewing his mouth guard
the pigskin in
his crooked arm

forgotten

2.
The grass reached up
craving for her feet
as she settled to earth

a dumb and wonderful
desire for this new
thing, this alien
miracle upon the
evening air

ablaze

with the faultless
grace of eagles
upon her

and as sweaty
linemen knelt before
her, helmets doffed
as the knights of
old might do

as the hoarse throated
bully of an assistant
coach at last falls
silent, flummoxed for
once

everyone knows that the
game will not begin again

that the score will
forever be 13 to 6

and that there is no
normalcy left to go
back to.

Patrick M. Tracy
8/29/08

The Settled Dust, Part Fifteen

2008-05-20T20:38:00.001-06:00

A Continuing Cycle of Haibun Poetry

The four camels slipped into the city, drawing no notice. A woman, a boy, and two pack animals were of no consequence. The guards allowed them by with only a cursory examination, enough to see obvious weapons or contraband. They didn't take time to dig through the grain and dried meat, however, nor did they check the saddlebags for concealed items. This was a trade road, after all, and the two riders were less than threatening.

Thus, two members of the Ghost Society entered warlord Khalid's walls, two that had suffered betrayal and lived to tell.

"Sloppy work," Haike whispered, his lithe camel matching pace with Namira's larger war steed. "Any fool could have found our weapons, had he taken the time."

"We appear harmless, do we not? Simple travelers, merchants?"

Haike nodded.

"Men will believe what they wish to be true. It's only necessary to create a facade that allows them to come to the assumptions you require."

"We are without a full grown man. They could have taken it in their hearts to rob us, or to rape you. What of that?"

"There are men who would rape a boy, Haike. Don't forget that. I took the chance because Khalid wouldn't put such a man on the gates. Merchants could swing wide of this town. If they were ill-used long enough, they'd do so, and Khalid's men would go without rations and goods. That's no good. You see my point. In any case, we have no full-grown men at our disposal, and bringing another into our fold would be far more dangerous than the small risk of trouble at the gates."

They rode further along, Haike dropping back behind her and keeping an eye on the pack animals. It wouldn't do to have beggars and cutpurses steal their bags. The trade goods were unimportant, only a disguise, but the weapons beneath would be vital to their cause.

Like needles through cloth
we defeat the mud-brick walls
about your sanctum

*****

"You're not like the other wenches," the old harem-master said. "You got good, smooth flanks, and it looks like you could run apace."

Valila nodded, saying nothing. Her voice, if nothing else, would give her away. She had used all her arts with body makeup to hid the scars of her profession, and she knew that her form presented nothing untoward. Men would salivate over her. It had ever been so, and would continue until time or injury stole her beauty. Like her Ka'Javiila or her killing daggers, it was a tool. Any impulse to vanity had long since subsided. True beauty was in the action, in the effortless perfection of a moment's violent and final motion. The preoccupation on form alone was the province of the weak-minded.

"You don't say much, girl. Are you mute?"

"No, I can speak," she whispered, knowing that her one failing was that of her surety, her stern disposition. Her master had often remarked that, had she been capable of the easy submission, the coy allure of a dancer, she would have been his finest student. She had tried, but that way of speaking, that way of holding her body--they had not come naturally to her. She had learned to be satisfied with being the Master's most deadly student, if not his most artful.

"Huh," he grunted. "Not much of a singing voice, then?"

"None at all, Master."

"But you can dance, eh? And you possess knowledge of pillow play?"

She nodded.

He put his pudgy hands on her, feeling the sternness of her muscle, the firmness of her flesh. He touched her in a way that, had it been in the least personal, would have caused Valila's anger to explode to hatred. With the old harem master, however, it was naught but business. He had done this work so often that he was inured to the arousal it would cause in a normal man.

"You've done some heavy work in your time, girl. I would venture that no single man could exhaust you in bedroom play."

"None have ever shown me stamina so great."

The harem master laughed. "Khalid's son may well yet. Not the fighter his father was, but he has the attributes of a buffalo. In him, I think you'll see your match and more."

Valila nodded, knowing that things would never progress that far. They had invited death into their ill-built palace, and many eyes would stare, dark and glassy in the moonlight, before long.

"I'll need to search you further, girl. One can't be too careful. I'll have to check that you haven't secreted any weapons in...within yourself, if you understand my meaning."

A cold tendril shot through Valila's belly. She had hoped they wouldn't be so thorough, but had acknowledged that they might.

She pulled her thin skirt upward to her waist and stood wide-legged. The old harem master looked into her eyes as he searched. It took only a moment, but that moment was as difficult a trial as she had faced in some time. This, she would never tell to Haike. This weight she would carry alone.

On the long backtrail
all the innocence I lost
blades for all my scars

Intangible things
lost parts of what we once were
debts carried alone

*****

Haike sat upon the other boy's chest and pummeled him until his face splashed blood and his struggling became vague twitches in response to the painful barrage. In the alleyway behind the palace, no one paid them any heed. It was simply another mute struggle in the dust, unmarked as tryst or assault.

He tied the boy, bigger and older than himself, with a short length of cord from his pocket. He pulled the boy into a darkened doorway by the armpits and sat him up against the corner of a dusty room, stacked with sacks of grain and the like. It would be no good to have him choke on his own blood. Haike squatted down and waited for the boy to recover his wits. The grain stacks were high enough that no casual observer would see them.

Waiting, Haike scooped up a handful of the dry dust from which the floor was composed. He rubbed it on his knuckles, removing the worst of the blood. He rubbed some of the dirt in his hair and across his bare arms. Finally, he obscured the paleness of his face with a light rub of the same dirt. He could do nothing about his eyes. He knew they would mark him, if he got too close to anyone, but a dirty lad helping to hoist and carry at the palace's kitchen entrance would arouse little suspicion.

The boy came around, starting to cry for help. Haike hit him hard in the gut. Still, the boy tried to utter a muffled shout. Haike gritted his teeth and drove a punch into the boy's groin. He folded in half, tears falling from his terrified eyes. Haike produced a small knife from beneath his trouser cuff. "Make no more noise, or I'll start cutting you in ways which won't heal."

The boy, pitiful, blood-spattered, with a broken nose and eyes swelling shut, nodded. "What do you want?" His voice sounded odd from the smashed nose.

"Tell me of the operations here behind the palace. Tell me of your tasks, the kitchen workers, and ways into the palace. Withhold nothing. Tell me only the truth. In this way, you could, perhaps, survive this incident."

The boy nodded. "I'll tell. Everything."

"Good. Do it quickly."

The boy's eyes had no fire as he told a fragmentary and elliptical tale of how the work entrance of the palace ran. In some dim part of his mind, he had already given himself up for dead. Haike saw this, and was momentarily tempted to smother him. It would not have been difficult, and he could have stacked grain atop the body, hiding it for more than long enough for what Namira had planned. Still, she had said that there was no honor in killing needlessly, and the boy was nothing to him, merely a point of leverage to take advantage of.

Haike punched the boy on the temple without preamble, knocking him senseless. With the time he had available, he tied him hand and foot. He used the corner of an empty grain bag to create a gag to keep him from crying out. Hoisting him was no easy task, but the dusk all around helped Haike stack the boy amongst the refuse on the wagon heading out. Rotten vegetables and other detritus heaped above the unconscious boy, but nothing heavy enough to harm. By the time he awoke, he would be trundling far away.

Haike continued to work the back entrance, fetching and carrying with the rest of the low help. One of the kitchen staff squinted at him. "I don't recognize you, boy."

"I'm the new boy. Bucho's replacement."

"Where goes Bucho, then?"

"To the Great Nothing, I guess. Or to the Coriyat, if that is what you believe. He fell before an ox cart and was crushed, just this last morning." Haike found it easy to make up such stories, and had no guilt for telling them. What matter, the words of a ghost, anyway?

"What do you call yourself, scrawny pup?"

Haike's pride moved within, asking him to stare the kitchen functionary down, but he knew that he couldn't. This wasn't open war, but secret and decisive slaying in the night. His own preferences would have to be put aside. He forced himself to be pliant. "I care not. Scrawny Pup is as good a name as any other."

The man sniffed. "Scrawny Pup, it is. Since you're the newest, it falls to you to scrape the tallow from the frying vats. Do you think yourself capable of that."

Haike nodded. For a short time, he imagined that he was capable of putting up with any appalling condition. He set to work scraping the noisome sludge from the cooking vats. The smell and feeling of the old, congealed tallow was alarming, but he consoled himself with thoughts of dead men, their flesh gone cold and rigid beneath the waning marches of the night. The thought of having no man who'd wronged him striding the surface of all the earth assuaged any disgust, any obstacle along the winding road.

Rough, merciless touch
the language of the balled fist
quick-spoken and clear

The trial is naught
pain and toil but shadows
across glory's road

New "Settled Dust" in the works

2008-05-14T00:13:00.002-06:00

Hey there, readers:

Just thought that I'd let you know that I'm digging in and getting some good stuff written for the next episode of Settled Dust. I'm not absolutely sure that it won't be the last one, but it's probably, in point of fact, the penultimate episode.

I know, I know...I said that ep 15 would be the last hurrah, but I'm not entirely in control here. There are confluences of factors at play that I can scarcely understand...either that or I'm just not able to properly outline. Not sure which. Either way, we'll see how things turn out.

Thanks for coming by.

The Settled Dust, Part 14

2008-04-20T23:13:00.003-06:00

Haike appeared as silently as a ghost, stopping Valila short. All the blood seemed to rush toward her face. Her eyes clouded. Dropping to her knees, she gathered him against her, squeezing hard. The boy touched her hair, leaning his bruised cheek against her shoulder. She could feel the cool of his machete against her thigh, something he'd gained since he'd gone with the Dolgur. It was all she could do not to weep, though she'd thought those tender emotions long dead within her. Aware that he couldn't breath within her clutching embrace, she relaxed, pulling Haike down to the earth with her. They sat close, between the huge roots of an ancient tree.

He reached out, touching her face with his fingertips. "Do you forgive me?" he whispered.

The breath caught in her throat. She turned her eyes downward. "You did all I asked. It was I who couldn't strike."

"I'm glad you didn't."

"It was weakness, and oathbreaking on my part."

"Better the small dishonor of letting the Great Mother go free than the great shame of laying her low. Besides, it seems that we are also betrayed with a death order." He smiled, those steady, fearless eyes flashing with vigor.

"I see you've armed yourself," Valila said.

"Only because men are fools, and the unlooked-for strike hurts the worst. The other scout is up ahead, following your false trail, Mistress Namira."

She leaned close, her lips at Haike's ear. "It is not done, but I will nonetheless do it, for I owe you this. Do not speak it until I'm gone, but my real name is Valila Farrah. Do you understand me?"

Haike held her face in his small hands, kissing her gently on the lips. "I understand. Now, we may walk the wraith-chill verge of death together. No others shall know us as we know each other."

Valila smoothed his hair and pushed it behind his ears, unable to say anything. He looked gaunt, half-starved and exhausted. His eyes, though, were like a wolf's, undiminished though all his struggles. He took far too many liberties with her, and his mind raced far ahead of his body. Still, her heart clenched with pride and just a bit of fear. Despite all her efforts, she loved him.

"The Dolgurs will be coming upslope, Mistress. We had best kill the other scout and make our exit before they are all mad with blood scent and hunger."

Valila's eyes widened. "Dolgurs? How many?"

Haike shook his head. "Pehaps as many as six. I didn't wait to meet them all. The wind is carrying the death blood from the other scout down into their lowlands. I'm sure they'll come."

Valila pulled free two of her throwing knives and put them in Haike's palm. "Then you'd better go and kill that other scout, eh?"

Haike tucked the throwing knives into the back of his trousers, brown with collected dust, mud, and blood. He turned back, grinned, and was gone. Some moments later, there was a surprised exclamation, then a wet gurgling noise. Haike returned to her, handing the throwing knives back. He now had a long, thin dirk, as well as a sling and a pouch with smooth stones. He opened his mouth and spit forth nine silver coins, giving them to Valila. She looked at them, heavy and worn in her hand. She couldn't tell what country had minted the coins, so long had the rubbed together in a succession of pockets. She gave Haike back three. "Until you're grown, I'll keep two of your three. Acceptable?"

The boy nodded. "So long as I am able to remain busy."

She ruffled his hair. "Come on. Let's away before the Dolgurs appear." She handed him a stick of dried meat as they went.

One returned from death
back from the horizon's end
sharp-eyed, unbroken

With a kiss, these pacts
binding as manacles, sealed;
two now walk the verge

These nine silver coins
payment for a death order
bounty for cheap blood

*****

The war camel laid its head low and allowed Haike to rub behind its ears. It made low grumbles when he hit an itchy spot. They were five hundred paces beyond the war party that had come to kill them, waiting. They had been loud in the afternoon's waning, but with the gathering dark, they fell silent. The moment when the harsh words and agonized screaming started would shake the forest. Haike's belly finally felt full, and his eyelids hung low. The fatigue of the previous days weighed upon him.

"I grow weary, Mistress. I don't know if I can stay awake."

"Sleep. The noise of battle will rouse you when it's time."

Haike settled back, cradling his face against one arm, and immediately fell asleep.

In dreams, he sat sat astride a Dolgur, watching as the hillmen attacked his people. Men, half asleep, pulling their trousers on yet, were sent to the earth, blood spraying from livid wounds. Women cried. Camels and oxen broke free of their bindings and ran wild, knocking over tents and turning wagons on their sides. A hillman with only two fingers on his shield hand held a women down and raped her until her thighs were slick with blood. The bravest of his kin formed a knot between the multitude of hillmen and the remaining children and old folks. The hillmen released spears and sling stones, wounding many.

His uncle screamed and went to his knees, a bronze-tipped spear through his groin. His father ran forward, dashing the head from a hillman and kicking another one down. His mother drew back her horn bow and shot a charging hillman in the throat. Furious fighting raised the dust high and hid much. As his close kin fell, his mother and older sister raped and assaulted by many filthy hands, the scene was but vague. He saw himself, only a shadow in the dirty gloom, as he kicked and bit at his captor. The many raised something, perhaps a short club, and beat him to the ground, turning the scene dark.

He yet remained, though, still astride the Dolgur, now riding through the destruction of the village where he'd been kept to thrall. The ravens and vultures had only the wild dogs to concern themselves with, fighting over the rotting corpses, roosting on the charred skeletons of houses burned to ash. For a moment, he saw himself, pinned by the Dolgur's chin, there by the fallen-in woodpile. He saw himself rise, then Mistress Namira--Valila. He followed her upslope.

His dreams filled with a vision of the sky, full of stars. The sounds of fear and dying filled the ears of his dream. Just as when the Dolgur had found the refugees upon the road, there was the sound of token resistance, then the ripping crunch of flesh parting, bones breaking, and life escaping from the wound. It all came back 'round to death, the beginning, the end and the material between. All life was a wild gambit, a pitched battle within the clouds of risen dust. When, at last, all that dust fell to earth and settled, his journey would be over, his soul re-joining the argent whirlwind of the Coriyat.

Haike's eyes snapped open. The dream sounds were still there, now real death, echoing through the forest air. The Dolgurs had come.

"Ready yourself, Haike,"

"As you say, Mistress." Haike slid the thin dirk inside his waistband at his lower back, easing the machete where it was strapped to the outside of his right calf. He placed a sling stone in the throwing pouch and stood ready.

The sounds of a rout soon neared. Many of the soldiers were running blindly toward them, just as Namira had said. The first to appear took one of her throwing picks in the ribs, but the second one veered, hit a tree, and moved no more after Haike hit him well on the hip joint. The Dolgurs would feast tonight, and all the warlord Khalid's soldiers would breathe their last.

In dreams, they all bleed
all my folk like fallen leaves
seasons slipped away

I have watched myself
along this road of ruin
spat back from death's maw

Conclusions in blood
long march to oblivion
panicked steps their last

New "Settled Dust" upcoming

2008-04-14T16:40:00.003-06:00

Hey, folks.

Yes, I've been pretty quiet on Hawkcircle lately. I've been spinning a lot of projects around, going to writer's conventions, and otherwise trying to have a life. I have a new "Dust" segment in the works, and I just wanted to say hello. Rumors of bears eating my hair are to be ignored.

Hope everyone's well, and I'll be back sometime this week with something creative for you to read.

The Settled Dust, Part Thirteen

2008-02-28T14:23:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The scout held his long knife close to his thigh, creeping forward through the underbrush. His garb, close-fitting, quiet fabric in dun colors and light greens, made but a whisper. Escaping notice, however, didn't depend on moments. It depended on being, over the course of a whole afternoon, deadly silent.

Valila watched the scout, the second that had passed this way, creep away, with his soldier's best imitation of stealth. A moment later, he put his hand against a branch so that it shook. Soon after that, he swore as he knocked against something. Birds erupted from the foliage in that area.

This one, as the first had done, would find her camel, foot-tied to a tree and eating placidly. They would find her small fire pit and those sundries that occupied her saddle bag. The scout would find the track she had purposely left for them, the one that came to the edge of the Dolgur's domain and then curled in upon itself until it faltered and faded to nothing. She had made much of that trail while walking backward, but these scouts were likely too dim to realize that from the dim impressions her boots had left for them.

Valila caught a droplet of sweat as it fell from her chin, wiping it on her opposite sleeve. Most, even when they tried, couldn't be silent for long. They didn't have the mental or physical energy to do so. Keeping silent took more patience and fortitude than they could summon. It was difficult work. One had to become inured to it.

So, she thought, Kahlid sends his troops to be sure that I don't live to speak of the deed. She was not terribly surprised. Her old teacher had warned her of this betrayal when she'd told him of the work she would accept. No matter. It assuaged her soul to some extent, really. Neither side, it seemed, had shown honor in the bargain. She'd defaulted on her oath, yes, but the pretense had been there from the start on the warlord's side. In the end, there'd only be one of them alive to argue the magnitudes of those malfeasances.

With the scouts well past her, she slipped down from the high branch of the tree. It felt good to stretch her legs at last. It would feel all that much better to get back to the job she knew well—darkening the eyes of men and freeing their souls from that fleshy prison of the body. A Ka'Javiila in her hand, she moved downslope and circled outward. She'd have to see how big a complement they'd deemed necessary to finish the job.

From just a few feet away, she heard the noise of liquid hitting the ground from a short drop. Valila halted, waiting. A third scout? She hadn't expected that. Perhaps they were more respectful of her than she'd imagined. Like a dark wind, she knifed through the brush to the source of the sound. The man, holding his mating stick in one hand, jumped backward at the sight of her. He didn't have enough time to open wide his mouth and give voice, nor time even to stop his stream of urine. The Ka'Javiila spun through the air and gave a sharp crack as it penetrated the center of the scout's forehead.

The scout toppled, twitching. Urine sluiced up through the air in wild arcs. His hands beat at the earth for a moment, then he quieted, his soul gone from the turmoil of life and returned to the argent cyclone of the Koriyat.

Valila stood over him for a second, considering her options. She hadn't intended to kill any of the scouts. It was far too great a clue, too much of a risk. Now, her options were curtailed. Pulling her weapon free, she pressed her lips together, making a decision. It was clear enough. Her tool had been surprise. Now, with this kill, fear became her new weapon of choice.

The scout wasn't a large man. No more than Valila's weight. Still, his dead form made it hard for her to travel with her accustomed silence. The booming of her heart crashed in her ears. Her muscles strained, and she soon sweat all her garments damp with the effort. In a tiny clearing just within earshot of the squad of men, she put the scout down. She squatted in the tall brush, waiting for her body to calm itself.

From hearing, there were no more than twenty men. A few camels, but only enough to carry supplies. No fire, but these were normal warriors, and they couldn't keep quiet. Idle, they bickered, laughed, kicked stones, coughed, and knocked about. The volume of sound made it easy to gauge the distance. Still, she crept closer, just to be sure.

Her eyes merely took in a visual confirmation of what she'd heard. A platoon of warriors, traveling light, but with blades and axes aplenty. Perhaps enough to kill a lone assassin. Probably insufficient for a Dolgur, though they would not know this or accept the fact if it were told to them.

Valila went back, cutting the scout's head free from his shoulders with her killing dagger. By now, the blood had settled and thickened in his veins, and wasn't so much of a mess. Back at her lookout, she smiled faintly. This might be her last mission. Each one held poisoned flowers that could kill. She was, however, proud of what she'd done, in the end. If killing had to be done, let it be visited upon these war-men, or herself, even. Companions in the breaking of an oath, perhaps they deserved each other.

She gripped the greasy braid at the back of the disembodied head, spinning it like a sling, letting it fly. The head came to rest with a plopping thud, bouncing through the clearing where the warriors idled. After its first rolling bounce, it was greeted by shouts and the noise of blades coming free of scabbards. The thump of running feet began, then a stentorian voice called for order. This all faded as Valila abandoned stealth and ran with all the haste she could claim, up the rise and over, into the shadowy realm of the Dolgur.

Long journey of blood
new season yielding up death
back to work at last

We have lost our grace
the anger of broken oaths
darkens the forest

Let these wounds sing out
let the cage of fear hold them
just as night holds me

*****

Haike watched the scout for several minutes. The man had become wholly involved with ground tracking, and it would have been easy enough to pick up a stone and throw it at him. The soft ground made it simple to follow him and to wait for his moment. In following the man, it was clear that he was tracking Namira's steps, not the Dolgur's.

Haike squinted, wondering why she'd left such distinct markings. He had been with her for some time, and she left little behind her in most instances. Haike's own trails were dim and hard to follow, provided that he could move with care. He didn't think she'd been careless. This had to be a false trail.

The man was dressed as a woodsman, in simple browns and greens. He carried a machete, though it hung idle at his side. He dragged one foot slightly, so that he was never totally silent. The tell-tale of his track was clear, a deep ridge at the outside of his left foot, a worn boot heel, the uneven length of his stride, always turning slightly toward the bad leg, favoring it. Haike guessed that the man had an old and stiffened wound, so well entrenched that he was no longer aware of its effect on his progress.

Haike looked at his small, dirty hands. He held up two fingers together, stiffening them like a little blade. He suffered a moment of doubt, but only a moment. Easy enough to slip past this tracker, easy enough to remain hidden and safe. Easy choices would not lead a man to any destination of distinction.

Haike cleared his throat. “You, there. What are you doing?” he asked.

The tracker spun around, his machete at the ready. He was an ugly man. His pocked cheeks were florid and filled with broken veins near the surface. A scar ran across his lips, and it had healed badly, giving him an unsettling half-smile. His eyes were a weak brown, almost yellow. He continued in his tense crouch for a moment, then relaxed.

“Just a brat,” he breathed to himself. “Just a life-cursed brat.” He wiped his palm against his leg and spat on the ground. “You gave me a start.”

Haike stood there. It occurred to him that he could feign fear, act as normal children would act. He determined that he lacked the guile to properly show an emotion he couldn't feel. “You didn't tell me what you were doing.”

“Never mind that, you little piss pot. It's me who's gonna ask the questions. You seen a woman around here?” The tracker approached, standing straight, unguarded, confident.

“You're the first person I've seen in days. I've only seen Dolgurs.”

The tracker's face froze for a moment at Haike's proclamation, but he laughed it off. “Dolgurs! Sure. I seen magic mountains of gold stacked to the ceiling of the sky, too.”

“It's true.” Haike stepped even closer.

“Shut up about that!” The tracker lashed out with his left fist, slapping Haike to the ground.

Haike's face burned and sang with pain. Blood trickled at the corner of his mouth. He rose up from the ground. “You won't do that again.”

“Oh, won't I? Who's to say what I will and won't do, you little seed-squirt?”

“Me.” Haike shot his hand forward, fingers tensed as hard as he could manage, and hit the scout as he leaned inward to threaten. The soft place in his nerves gave way before Haike's strike, though his fingers nearly bent backward with the impact. The man's eyes widened, suddenly aware that something had gone awfully wrong. His legs slumped under him, and Haike stepped aside, letting him fall to the moist earth. A weird sigh passed his lips as the ground's impact forced the air from his longues.

Stepping to the tracker's outstretched and nerveless hand, Haike scooped up his machete. He gripped the hilt with both hands and swung with all his strength at the scout's neck. It took two swings to fully dislodge the head. Blood thundered out of the body for a moment as the heart raced against the inevitability of death. Killing was quite easy. Simple. A matter of nerve and proximity.

Haike bent and untied the man's belt pouch. It contained a handful of dried meat, which the boy needed in the worst possible way. There had been precious little for him to eat since he entered the Dolgur's forest, and smelling the food now caused his hands to shake with the desire for it. He tied the pouch to his belt, inured to the pain of waiting.

Haike stood next to the body as the last of the death blood soaked into the loam of the forest. The enemy was overcome, and lay upon the earth. He was of the Ghost Society now, and this was the expected outcome. No element within him quivered or looked away from what he'd done. Accepting the truth, he became yet more like what he knew he must be.

Haike wiped the blood from his hands and his new blade. He walked on the roots of the big trees, obscuring his tracks as he followed the false trail further on. The scent of blood would bring the Dolgurs up from the lowlands, and he wanted to be well away from their dinner.

Swallowed by the task
forever looking downward
all our roads walked blind

Harbingers of flesh
giving way before the blade
future gone to black

New "Settled Dust" in the works

2008-02-25T20:44:00.003-07:00

Hey, folks. I know, I know. I haven't been giving you much to read here at Hawk Circle lately. There is reason to take heart, however. A new segment of "Dust" is in the works. I just got the first part of it written tonight, and hope it continues to flow properly. If it does, it may be out and ready this week. Let us hope that this is the case. I'll give you a few small teasers, however--in this episode, a betrayal that has been brewing since the beginning will come to light. Plus, you'll be able to see our assassin character use her weapons of war in anger, at long last.

Hope you're all well, and I'll keep plugging away at the upcoming episode (and no, I haven't been on strike, just swamped).

The Settled Dust, Part 12

2008-01-29T18:16:00.001-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle
By Patrick M. Tracy

Haike only had to pull the Dolgur along for a moment. As soon as they reached the tree line, it took off, trotting through the open vaults of the old forest quick enough that he had to jog to keep up. It never occurred to him that he could stop, that his intended task was finished, that the journey was over. He kept on, even as his legs ached and a painful stitch burned in his side. As with so many other discomforts, he ignored them. The pain itself had little power. It was only the fear of that pain that paralyzed the soul.

The forest's damp corridors smelled of long decay without benefit of the sun. The great trees, far apart and spaced evenly, seemed almost like columns of a great castle's hall, though they were far larger and older than any building of man. The cool and loamy ground beneath his feet made hardly a sound as Haike's feet churned away. Even the Dolgur's heavy trot wasn't enough to raise more than a dim noise. It seemed forever twilight here, a world without time, without days, without the frantic noises of wagon wheels and straining oxen. Here, there were no ill-tempered camels, no harsh words of men too drunk to be civil. This world, a quieter one, existed beyond the reach of society.

Even ignoring his body's limitations, Haike began to find it hard to keep pace with the Dolgur. Her mouth wide, the Dolgur's great fangs were coated with foam, and her breathing was like a turning wind. They had run for many miles, the country falling ever lower, until the trees had changed and the ground was soupy with moisture. The insects buzzed and rattled around them, but they ran too steadily for the bugs to bite at them much.

Haike thought that he would hurl up whatever remained of his last meal if he didn't stop, and at last, they did. The Dolgur's trot ebbed to a walk, and finally came to a halt. She looked out across a wide, shallow, algae-filled lake. Haike went to his knee, the breath coming hard into his lungs, the drum within his chest beating out a time beyond all rowing.

The Dolgur let loose a whistling, plaintive call, punctuated by a series of clapping gnashes of her teeth. She waited for some time, then did it again. From far off, across the lake and beyond Haike's view, he heard a similar reply. After a moment, yet another call answered, this time from somewhat closer.

“So you are home, and will meet your kin after the long journey,” he said. “So your voyage is done, all the strange luck of the winding road has left you intact. The Superbeings of the Coriyat are with thee, Dolgur, for the Ghost Society has marked you, and yet you live, shepherded by wolves, given mercy by the merciless.”

The Dolgur swung her eyes in his direction, giving him an odd little toss of the head. She nudged him, knocking him to the muddy earth. She took in his scent again, the wind of her breath against his hair, the closeness and power of her profound. She grunted and gave him a push, sending him tumbling across the ground. Haike found himself looking back up the gentle slope, back in the direction of his mistress and the human world. For a moment, his heart ached, wanting to be here, in the silence and purity of the wild, in the slow and eternal twilight of the trees.

This world, though, was not for him. He did not yet draw breath by some accident. No, his soul still had some dealings to do before he entered the Coriyat. He had been chosen, spared the convenience of dying, and given the chance to walk the perilous road another day. He had sworn, too, that he would expunge the debts of futility he had accumulated. He would learn the red arts of the Ghost Society, and he would be an instrument of their will. He had disobeyed his teacher once, but it would not happen again. The glance of a human eye could not bring about such frailty as the Dolgur had.

Haike arose. He put his hand on the Dolgur's snout, feeling the smoothness, the warmth of the armored scale. “As you wish, Dolgur. I will leave you. This world is yours, and I don't belong.”

She made a small sound, pushing him with her chin. Haike could feel the bulges where the venomous spines nestled, bolts more deadly than any arrow. The Dolgur made the small sound again. From nearer than it had been, another Dolgur called out. The sky waxed toward evening, and the dim green of the shallow lake painted the shoreline a weird color, like the magic of a forgotten race.

Bone tired, Haike made himself jog along the bank of a tiny stream. He could make hardly more than a quarter of mile before he slowed to a walk. As full dark fell, he threw himself at the stream's edge and thrust his mouth into the water like an animal. He would have a long trudge ahead of him at dawn. He had to return to Namira before she gave him up for dead. He knew that he could make it on his own, but he no longer wanted to.

In this silent world

where we will never be kings

lies a greater realm

Would that I could stay

far away from the harsh word

and the screech of wheels

Denied death's comfort

we must square the debts of wrath

from mercy, foresworn

The Settled Dust, Part 11

2007-12-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

By Patrick M. Tracy

Hesitation is death. The killer stood at the periphery of the wood, weapons in hand, watching the place where the Dolgur and Haike had been. A pang wracked her being. She had never told Haike her real name. He knew her only as Namira, as many others had done. Just a ghost name, an evasion. She had been trained to do just that, trained to trust those dim instincts from the low parts of her brain. This day shook every minute of that training, growing doubt and regret where there had been only surety before.

The killer put her weapons away and let her shoulder blades rest against the rough bark of a tree nearby. What of her instincts now? What of this, a third road she had never anticipated? Tantalizing, Haike had been given over to her by the hands of fate. Now...she didn't know. She had hesitated. Just this once, she had been conflicted about a kill. Looking back into her own reaction, she didn't fully understand why.

“Why could you not strike, Valila?” she asked herself, almost flinching at the sound of her true name upon the air. It had been a long time since anyone uttered that sound. She had become unaccustomed to the way it felt upon her ear.

It had been a manageable kill. The angle had been good enough, the strategy sound. Valila shook her arm, feeling the tautness of the muscle, feeling the responsiveness of her nerves. Had she been afraid of missing her target, of hurting the boy?

She sighed, sinking down to her haunches, finally sitting on the rocky ground, in the lee of the wind and shaded by the pine boughs. No, she'd felt the target, known she could hit it true. Just the back of the front leg, piercing the muscle that bore the weight of the Dolgur's steps. She'd succeeded at much harder throws, flouted steeper odds. Hand empty, she pantomimed the act of throwing her Ka'Javiila. A simple throw, really...

Valila's mind created the rest. The Dolgur spinning about, one leg held clear of the ground because of the pain. She'd throw the piercing dart she'd coated with the most powerful poison known to the Ghost Society, targeting the soft tissue of the beast's chin. The Dolgur's mighty constitution would allow it to chase her, but she'd be slowed. Melting into the deeper woods, Valila could have waited for the poison to sink into the Dolgur's heart. Weakened and half blind with the venom's rigor, it wouldn't be able to fight when Valila returned. Her killing dagger, sharp enough to part silk with only its own weight, would have opened the big neck veins and put it to rest.

It would have worked. Just as she'd promised herself, she had let the Dolgur return to its home range. It would have been easy enough for her to shepherd the little ones the final few miles. She hadn't been contracted to kill them, after all. They were beyond her mandate, and she was not disposed to harm them. The world needed them, needed what they would furnish.

The folk of the cities and towns reviled the thought of the unknown, of the shadowed depth of the forest. They reviled fear and that which brought terror upon their dreams, but they yet required it. Without the giant steps of creatures greater than they, without some force, if only an idea, that would chasten them when the sun passed from the sky, they would become as their own monsters. Perhaps there would be a day when only the prosaic trudging of men's feet down a muddy track would remain, but the magic of the elder ages, of the Coryiat's Superbeings and their storied might, of the glory of the fallen Reptians...these remnants kept the world from tucking its hungry maw back upon its own breast and beginning to eat.

Valila and her kind knew that death was not the worst thing. Nay, it was a necessary thing, a beautiful thing. Only death and its purveyors kept sacred the beating of the uncounted hearts. Death and the fear of that ending blackness kept humanity churning forward, searching for some method by which to transcend a lifetime of years. Without creatures like the Dolgur, without the killers of the Ghost Society, there would be no one to remind the successive asinine generations that they were not forever, that they were not in possession of the great, dark wisdom of the end. Perhaps, Valila thought, there was no difference between the Dolgur and herself. She could not have killed it without symbolically killing herself.

Valila swallowed her spit and waited for the next thought. She touched her own face. Tears stood upon her cheeks. For the first time, she had elected to leave a mission incomplete. The fact that she was unconcerned with letting the Dolgur go free was only one revelation. The greater one, the awful fear for Haike, spiced with unreasoned pride for him, swirled within her like dust cyclones on the dry plains to the east. She was both more and less sure of everything.

What I didn't do

now defines me more than what

I have always done

The sharp edge of all

I planned, all this ordered death

now gives way to doubt

What darkened magic

shall remain after the last

monster is destroyed?

This monster I am

the pale, altered reflection

of darker ages

Bereft now of pride,

I am yet proud of he who

walks into twilight

*****

The fire had long since fallen to coals and dimmed. Above her, the stars made the shapes of the Superbeings of old and told the tale of what would come in the unseen ages of the future. Valila had slept briefly, but the image of Haike's small shoulders retreating into the forest, his little hand hooked underneath an armored plate on the Dolgur's cheek...this image kept coming to her. He hadn't looked back, not once. In her dream, though, he would, some deep wisdom in his eyes that frightened her.

The stars above her told both fools and wise men many things. For Valila, they told her only that it was a clear night and that the air atop the hills was clean of the smoke and filth of the cities. She would wait, of course. How long? She didn't know. How long does one wait for a boy who leads a Dolgur away into its forest realm?

If Haike returned, they would have to travel somewhere far from the warlord Kahlid's realm. She would not attempt to collect the second half of the killing fee, nor would she return to him and attempt to explain her actions. Neither was necessary. He would soon die, eaten up from the inside. If the female Dolgur chose to trot through his domain again, it would be years before she did. Kahlid would be busy in the dirt by then, and there would be no one to remember the secret deal he'd struck with the Ghost Society.

If Haike returned...she would teach him all she knew, all she'd hoped to know, even. It would take time. The teaching wouldn't be easy with a gifted, willful student, but every effort would be worth it. If she could only make him live up to his promise. For a moment, she wondered if, in the end, she would even have something to do with it. He was not like she had been—lost and broken, needing anything to hold onto, any code to make the turning of the world sensible. The awful, beautiful strength within him wasn't so needy. No, she was still the one who needed, who required another to complete some hoop of metal within her.

Her breath weighed heavily in her chest. Like as not, he wouldn't return as anything but a spectre in her dreams, haunting her with things not done, words left unsaid. Bereft, she would go on. Hollow, she would continue her work, though perhaps it would cease to mean anything in the absence of her one great opportunity. In sparing the Dolgur, her own soul, maybe, would be forfeit.

Valila's war camel grunted behind her. His long neck uncoiled and he peered into the darkness. She grasped her Ka'Javiila and rolled silently to her feet, putting her back against a tree. A scratching, scuffling noise came closer. Valila hoped hard for Haike's pale eyes to meet hers, but it was other eyes that did so, other little ones who came upon her camp in the night.

Unafraid of her fire, the Dolgur pups came into the light and watched. She could smell the blood on them, see their heavy bellies. They had taken their fill of the doomed caravan of town dwellers. They sniffed at the air, recognizing her scent. The boldest of them came and peered at her from just within hands-reach. The camel behind her bellowed, but they paid it no heed, looking only at her. They knew a predator on sight.

One by one, they sat down together, uttering a few gurgling hisses as they sorted out who would sit where. Valila put more wood on the coals. As the fire rekindled, they watched it, gurgling louder when a knot would pop and send little sparks into the night air. Soon, they had all fallen asleep save one. That one kept his eyes on her, inching closer and closer still. Slowly, she reached out, touching the cool, hard scales of his neck. He made an interrogative, but didn't pull back. Roughing at his neck, she touched him as she had touched a friendly dog in her youth.

Without warning, the Dolgur cub turned, taking her hand into its mouth. The breath caught in her throat. Even at that size, it could snap a hand off in a single impulse. The mouth closed, and she felt the jagged, ripping fangs, as well as the heavy, grinding teeth at the back of the jaw. The cub didn't bite down, though, only mouthing her for a moment before letting go. With a squelching grunt, he retreated a few paces, pushing the other cubs apart and nesting down in their midst.

Valila breathed out. Her heart beat hard in her chest, more afraid than she'd ever been of a chosen target. She watched them, these small ones upon whose imperative their mother had shed so much blood. She watched them until her eyes sagged shut. In the morning light, only the impressions of their bodies on the grass assured that it had not been a vivid dream.

What dreams await us

down the road of settled dust

and shadowed struggle?

What do we become

when surety gives way to

desolate longing?

Harvesters of death;

yet absent a man's malice

these sacred children

Circular Breathing III

2007-12-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

These heavens we
have made half-real
with our wanting,
with that swirling
vortex within us
that aches for
some completion,
some rationale behind
the wheels of
misunderstood motion
whirring in the
background of the
louder grind,
suffusing the space
within our heads,
within our hearts
as we tread the
gears of these
machines.

Machines, awake--
the gears of our
hearts and heads
suffused, spacing
outward into the
silent grinding
of the universal
engine, our small
whirring background
noise adding to the
motion of the life-
symphony, misunderstood
but grand within the
giant wheels of rationale,
incompletion's ache
over eons of wanting,
half-real as heavens.

Heavens, unfounded,
incomplete eons without
wanting for some logical
rationale for our grand
but misunderstood overtures,
the motion and noise of us,
our whirring entrails
small against the background
of the engines of the universe,
those grinding moments of
digestion outwardly silent,
the gears of our head
and heart awake and
yet dreaming.

The waking dream
assails the head and heart,
gears spun outward
into the quiet and
ruminant universe,
making us small,
our hurried motions
without consequence,
irrational and without
logic, such great
wanting, yet doomed
to be forever without,
to be incomplete
throughout these
eons, our heaven
left, at last,
un-found.

The Settled Dust, Part 10

2007-11-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

“This will require some courage on your part, Haike.”

The boy blinked at her, waiting. Somehow, she had found him, this anomaly, this marvelous spirit. Perhaps once in a generation would there be someone like him born. Even looking at him—still small and lacking the rugged muscle he would grow as he came to be a man—she found it difficult to think of him as a mere boy. To one with eyes to see, he was far more than that.

Namira clenched her teeth, momentarily losing her resolve. Her technique, her plan—she wanted to change it now. Putting Haike in so much danger wasn't strictly necessary. It was the easiest way, but she hated contemplating what would happen if things didn't go to plan. It wasn't her job to shield him from all dangers, but this...a Dolgur? If she lost a student with such limitless potential, one of such keen perception, one that knew nothing of fear, she'd search forever without finding his equal. All her other mistakes would pale in comparison.

“What is it, Namira?” He reached to her, putting his hands against her ribs, looking up into her eyes. “You have only to ask, and I will do your bidding.”

“Haike, I...”

He smiled. His pale eyes, incapable of showing kindness, encompassed her soul. Haike's gaze felt like sharp ice pushed through tender skin, and she felt that he knew her to the core, deeper even than her master ever had. He could no more gaze into her with empathy than a falcon could, but he could see inside her and feel her indecision. He was too familiar, too forward, too much her equal in resolve. If he lived, Haike would be a man people would obey. He would be a man people would fear more than the pain of a bad death. For the sake of the Ghost Society, she had to keep him alive.

“My life is borrowed from the Dolgur. If she wishes to take it back, this is her privilege. I have many shames to atone for in this life, and I would prefer to live long enough to wash them from my soul. If I cannot, dying well will have to suffice.”

Namira sighed. It didnt' fall to her to keep him alive, perhaps. Already, Haike did that for himself, standing or falling on his own. “Very well. Listen to my plan and remember it well, for timing is of the essence.”

With a sharp stick, she drew out the flow of action upon the dusty earth. Haike squinted, asked a few questions, and nodded. She asked from him that which no seasoned warrior would agree, and he merely accepted.

This marvelous thing
so full of promise and skill
rough—death's prodigy

The untested steel
is worthless, its gleam and edge
pale dreams in the dusk

Onward and into
fire, spend out the stolen
gold and set the odds

*****

The Dolgur dipped her head low and turned her small, baleful eye to him. She scented the air, then chuffed out a low roar. Fifty paces down from Haike's position on the crest of the rise, she still seemed tremendous in size. Still, seeing him, recognizing his scent, the Dolgur didn't immediately charge. Better, she didn't launch one of her chin barbs and impale him on the spot. He had sufficient courage to do this much—he'd stood and watched her approach. He'd done it before. He'd been closer. He'd felt her chin press him to earth and nearly crack the bones within him, and yet he lived.

Now, however, would come the difficult part. “Talk to her. Keep her attention for as long as you can. The longer, the better.” Namira's words.

What to say? He clenched his teeth and tried to think of something. Namira was the only one who understood him, the only one he had ever spoken to without feeling clumsy. With so many others, he didn't express his thoughts, knowing that they wouldn't understand him.

The Dolgur turned side-on to him and walked to the edge of the scanty trail. Tender ferns grew in the shadow of the old trees, and the Dolgur pulled most of them up in a single sweep of her mighty jaws. She continued to regard Haike from that distance, the grinding noise of her fist-sized molars clearly audible.

Haike cleared his throat, collecting his resolve. Anything but talking to the creature would have been easier. His tongue moved easily only for Namira. He imagined that he had fallen in love with her, and that explained things. No matter. He needed to do this because she had asked it.

“I...”

The Dolgur's head swung up from sniffing at an old stump, her eyes baleful.

“I want to commend you for destroying the village back there and casting the hill folk to the winds. I had no love of them, since they had killed my kin and kept me thrall.”

She swung to face him, head held low. With one huge claw, she tore a furrow in the sward. The depth of the trench could easily have sufficed for burying a dog.

“Namira tells me you're leading your little ones back to the hunting grounds up here. She tells me that it's not uncommon to see a Dolgur clear a swath of territory before her cubs come through. I think you could have probably slipped through without it, but I've never had young ones of my own. I haven't been...”

The Dolgur started to trot toward Haike, the distance between them evaporating in a moment.

“...Never been a Dolgur, is what I mean say, and so I can't advise you on the best course. All I know is that they've sent Namira out here to do you in, and that's probably a bad sign, even for something so...”

The Dolgur slowed, but she stood close enough to smell, nearly close enough for Haike to feel her heat. She moved to the side, her great maw open just enough to see the blunt, arm-width tusks.

Haike smiled. “I hope to meet the Dark Hereafter well, Dolgur. You've had a chance at me once, and you'll surely crack my bones this time.”

Knowing it to be madness, he reached out, stepping closer. The Dolgur's hide was rough and warm, unyielding as the corner of a stone wall. At his touch, a growl built low in her, shaking Haike to the entrails, but he didn't step away. He closed his eyes and waited for the moment when her head would surge toward him and he'd be torn asunder.

“It's said that the first of the dragons, back in the old times before men stacked two stones or plowed a furrow in the earth—that they were Superbeings of the Coriyat. They came to this world, spun off from the Tornado of Souls at the center of all things. The lore-tellers say that they changed the earth and sky, that they gave rise to society of the Reptians, who have now fallen to the dust of ages.”

Haike felt her relax, felt the Dolgur begin to calm. He didn't open his eyes, but he started to stroke his palm across the rough mountain of her flank, trying to calm her as one would calm a camel or an ox. He continued to talk, speaking out the words of lore-tellers, wise women and old mariners of his people. The Dolgur's breath sounds changed, forming something that could have been a pleased noise.

Haike told the Dolgur of the attack that had destroyed his family's encampment and sent him to thralldom. He'd resolved to never speak to anyone about the events of that day, but he supposed that the Dolgur would not hold him to his oath, nor would she divulge any secrets they shared.

The Dolgur's head nudged him and knocked him from his feet. His eyes opened and his gaze locked with the Dolgur's. If such a creature could give a kindly look, he saw it there. It reminded Haike of the leaping whales that frolicked in the bow spray of the Leonen ships at sea, their sense of being absolutely alive, not mired in the doubt and foolishness of human toil. In that moment, he didn't want the Dolgur to die. He didn't care to be a part of it, even were it to gain him the glory that men need in life. He wondered why Namira had not struck the creature already. He didn't think she would change her mind. Perhaps the killers of the Ghost Society were not allowed to do so. Haike only knew that his mind had shifted, and he had ever listened best to the whispered voices from within.

He rose, touching his palm to the top of the Dolgur's huge snout. She had an outcropping of iron-hard scale at the edge of her mouth, and he could get his fingers under the edge of one big furrow. Gently, he pulled her, as if to lead her over the hill's crest and beyond. She made a low noise, almost quavering. A small noise for so great a beast.

“Come on, Dolgur. You gave me my life when you could have taken it. Let me do the same for you. There are no more villages out here, no more people to trouble you. All in your way have been defeated.”

He pulled again, not expecting her to respond. She did. Together, they walked over the rocky cleft. The old forest beyond was open, filled with echoing vaults of dappled light. He hadn't done what Namira had asked him. Not exactly.

He would have to ask her forgiveness if they ever met again.

Wolves and braver lambs--
gone beyond the killing floors
at last, awakened

Let's be away now
into the darkened arbor
and the secret realm

I Haven't Fogotten...

2007-11-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been wondering, "Will Patrick ever come out with a new Settled Dust Haibun, or is he a good-for-nothing bum?" I just want to assure you that I haven't forgotten the project or abandoned it. No, I've just been consumed by other things for a few weeks, and it's been on the back burner.

I've just finished another segment, and I'll probably post it on Monday, after it sits for a few days and I can look at it with fresh editing eyes. I hope you're all doing well as the holiday season begins.

"Ephemeral Empires" featured at Pens On Fire

2007-11-06T18:52:00.001-07:00

Hey Folks,

Sorry for the slowness of my writing process of late. I've been deluged with projects, and I've just returned from the World Fantasy writer's convention in Saratoga Springs, New York. I just thought that I'd tell you that one of my poems is being featured at Pens On Fire this month. This one's called "Ephemeral Empires". I wrote it back in '03, just as I was starting at the library. I spruced it up and submitted it a while ago. Happily, it was accepted. It's the first poem I've gotten published in a while (haven't been submitting much--bad me!) Anyway, I hope you're all well. I'll try to get something up on Hawkcircle within the next week or so.

'Tis the Work of Leviathans

2007-10-17T14:24:00.001-06:00

Out of the quotidian
depths of days undone,
of mountainous terrain
upon the silent weekend
desk, forlorn of effort
and doomed to never ending,
sudden sickness on Monday
morning,

out of the sussurant
obscurity of the midday
snack that becomes a long
lunch, the long dreaming
of the tropics from atop
the porcelain bowl,

out of the
chiseled hour and the
fudged time sheet, the
blown deadline and the
artfully crafted excuse,

out of the somnolent
wilting, unseen within
the cubicle as hours
pass with head on
arm and eye fast roving
behind the closed lid,

out of the
hours spent down the
rabbit holes of the
internet and all that
weedy learning to be
had at the price of
a careless moment,

out of the
milked clock of late
evening when the day
stands mute at its own
yawning lack of import,

I call you, these old
and hardy workmen, eating
their lunch upon the
high steel girders,
hands roughened and colored
the rust of their work,
eyes wrinkled from
squinting against
the glare, skin a
hard, dark shell of
incipient cancers
against the early sun,
but sure, so very sure
and easy in the mind
that, yes, they would
point to tasks done,
tangible results as
the work bell sounded
and they moved off,
riding the twilight
home.

Circular Breathing II

2007-10-08T19:27:00.000-06:00

There's a cobweb on the wall
and I've been watching it for
weeks, thinking about it as
the television's noise and
light enter my mind, quickly
again entering oblivion,
becoming nothing, created
and destroyed in the moment
it takes to travel a circuit
and become a light wave and
diffract against reflective
walls, breaking up like
the nonsense syllables of
a madman's dying breath.

The dying breath of another
nonsense episode breaks up
against the walls, merely
wave diffraction, light
traveling in random orbits
destroyed before it can
create the pattern, damned
to the oblivion of the
theoretical, a moment of
noise and light from that
television song that we
know well but never watch
the show beyond, and that
cobweb still remains at
the periphery of the
screen, shaped like Idaho
on the western maps, were
it to be sharpened to meaner,
sharper points.

The point of all these sharpening
gestures against the western
wall at sunrise, all this shadow
play against the screen, can
only be grasped at the cobwebbed
periphery, the unknown but familiar
ringing in our ears, all these
imagined noises and lights within
the slow oblivion of this life,
hoping for patterns but finding
that all our hopes diffract against
the walls of our own consciousness,
breaking up somewhere between our
birthing cry and our dying breath.

Notes: You can find the original Circular Breathing poem HERE. Also, I'm still working on the next "Dust" piece. I'll post it as soon as it rises to the surface. Thanks for your patience, everybody!

Aaaahhh! Everything Looks Different!

2007-09-30T16:54:00.000-06:00

Folks,

Yes, I have moved away from the old, cherished layout you're used to at Hawk Circle. The reason...well, that's an interesting story. Primarily, the change is to move my overall online "look" into convergence.

But...what does that mean?

It means that I'd like at least my Blogger pages to look as if they belong together. The color scheme has been designed to go hand-in-hand with my new professional website, http://pmtracy.com. The layout, on the other hand, seemed to be the best option for easy reading for everyone out there in blogland.

Now, before you ask, let me say that I don't intend to destroy Wolf Steel, my original website, any time soon. It'll still plug along, but will probably be updated less frequently. Please let me know what you think of the new look, and the new website. I hope you are all doing well out there!

P.S.: Be on the look out for the next "Settled Dust". I hope to have it for you within the next week or so.

The Settled Dust, Part Nine

2007-09-19T12:57:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

At the top of the valley, they squatted and watched the road. It wound toward them as if the crew who'd lain it had been drunk on wine. As with many things at the bare edges of civilization, it had been done without supervision, and done badly by uncaring hands.

Haike and Namira had seen a few people, trudging by an overloaded ox cart or toting all they could stack upon their own shoulders. The road no longer led beyond the ranks of hills. It hadn't gone through for twenty-odd years. The way came to an abrupt end with three fallen trees and a following profusion of new brush. Desperation drove the refugees down the dead-end trail nonetheless. Into the mouth of a Dolgur home range, to walk those silent forests for a few weeks perhaps, before the mother Dolgur came home at last, her ravenous babes in tow. They all marched a forlorn road to nowhere.

“Is it better to run and live, or stand and die?” Namira looked back at him. She'd said that she would teach him, but she'd asked questions far more than giving answers. Haike reached for the easy response within him, the trained answer, but hesitated. He was supposed to think about things. Her questions were meant to focus his mind and challenge his notions of the world. He had to find the difference between what he truly knew and what he only thought he knew.

“Run or fight, you have to know why you're acting as you are. If you're running from a fight that can gain you no glory, a fight that spends life to no purpose, then so be it. If you're running because you lack the courage to fight a just battle, then it's an ill deed. Though it hurts my heart to say, there are times when battle is not the answer, boldness not the clever path. There are times when even a brave man must run. Whether you decide to run or fight, you'd best do it well once you've put your feet upon the path.”

She nodded. “And what of these folk?” She pointed down into the valley. “They could not have slain the Dolgur.”

Haike sighed. “No. At first I wished them ill because of their essential nature. They are not fighters. Fighting, for them, is folly. It's better to run. In running, their only recourse to danger, they have shown no cleverness. Had they a brain between them, they would have doubled back and followed the river along the bottom lands. They'd have lost their possessions and oxen, but their lives would have been safe enough. Now, only a few sturdy woodsmen among them have a slim chance to survive as they strike out across a rough wilderness.”

“Perhaps, were we to dispatch the Dolgur, some of them could be saved,” Namira pointed out.

Knotting his brow, Haike looked down at them, mere specks upon the ascending road, toiling ants. “Is that the business we're in? They are not ours to rescue, I don't think. They have chosen their road, and must walk it.”

“Your soul doesn't overflow with compassion, Haike.”

“These are people who have held me to thrall. Though I blame myself as much as them for that, I yet dislike their ways. I feel sorry for them, dying without renown, doomed as much by foolishness as circumstance, but that's as far as it goes. If it's your task to save them, if that is what you wish to do, I'll help, but I won't plead for their lives.”

Namira smiled at him. “In this tornado of souls, we did not meet by accident. We two are meant for each other.”

Haike nodded. Coming to her side, he sat on the edge of the ridge and watched the oncoming stream of refugees until the dusk hid them. In the shadows when the sun had gone away, he could hear the roaring of the Dolgur and the answering screams of camels, oxen, and men. Looking away from their fire, he listened as souls were ripped from flesh and sent upon their journey.

“Second thoughts?” Namira asked. By firelight, she was even more beautiful, the sparks dancing in her dark eyes.

“I fight for only you, Teacher. My heart doesn't beat for them.”

“We will hunt the Dolgur tomorrow. It's possible that we shall both be slain.”

“Perhaps she will find us in the night, and we won't see the dawn. It's fruitless to worry.”

“May we both sleep soundly then.” She reached out and ruffled his hair before pulling her sleeping roll up to her chin.

Haike looked at the stars, uncounted pinholes in the velvet of the night. The faces of the honored dead, the Leonen folk back to the first generation, swam out of the endless profusion. Under their gaze, he curled closer against Namira's bedroll and closed his eyes. In dreams, he heard folk speaking of him as they speak of long-dead heroes, of how he freed the blood of many warriors, of how his mind was a blade as sharp as any steel, of how his resolve could not be turned by anything short of death.

The fire died low, and the noise of the Dolgur moving ever closer did not rouse them.

These meaningless steps
ill taken, down dead-end roads
into gray autumn

There is no rescue
fools and kings die equally
alone and forlorn

Onward beckons death
run to greet him, worry not
spring fades like stars at dawn

Sorry for the long lay-off!

2007-09-10T19:36:00.000-06:00

Sorry that I haven't been updating Hawk Circle with my usual alacrity. I've had a few irons in the fire, so to speak. Let me run down some of the stuff that's been going on. Well, I wrote a novella called "Dayhunter", which I'm really proud of. I think it'll eventually see print, though it's possible that I'll have to amplify it into a full novel in order to make it so. I wrote it for an open submission call, but it didn't turn out to be exactly what the publisher was looking for. I'm acutally not that unhappy about it being passed over. I don't think that particular publisher was right for my writing style, in any case. So, that totally erased a month from the calendar, not to mention the fall-out of being tuckered out for half of August.

I've been hustling to get my short stories published, as well. I have, in point of fact, gotten three of them "over the fence" this summer. I had a story featured in both the first and second issues of an online horror magazine, The Open Vein. The names of the two stories are "Among the Remnants" and "The Damaged Drums of Our Souls". I've been talking about them like an insufferable ass on my other sites, but I don't often delve into my fiction over here at Hawk Circle. In addition, my story, "With a Dancer's Grace" will be featured in the upcoming issue of The First Line, a quarterly literary journal. They're a tough market, and I'm happy to get in. I've had several stories passed over by them already.

In addition to those pursuits, I've been hammering out flash fiction for Nasty, Brutish, and Short, my horror/dark fantasy flash fiction site. Though I always tell myself that I'm going to drop back to a posting schedule of every other week, I seem to be posting at least three of my mean little stories a month. I'm up to 19 stories, and I only started in April, so that's not too bad!

Anyway, that's my excuse. I hope you'll check out some of my other pursuits, if they sound interesting to you.

Cheers.

The Settled Dust, Part Eight

2007-08-20T18:32:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

“When will you start teaching me your ways?” Haike kept washing his hands in the frigid water of the stream, not allowing any of the discomfort to reach his face. The dried rabbit blood was proving intractable in the chilly water. He would have to scrape it off with a stone.

“When will you teach me yours?” she asked.

“I am but a boy. I have little to say that would bring wisdom.”

“Is that right?” Namira asked. “How long could you remain submerged in water this cold, if your life depended on it?”

He studied her, his pale eyes sharp, thoughtful. “Without breathing? Only a turn of the quick glass. The chill of the water wouldn't factor in, though it would make it more of a challenge to the mind.”

“Not the body?”

“Discomfort doesn't challenge the body, unless it injures. It's the mind that decides to give up, the mind that relents,” he told her.

“Are these common phrases for your people, Haike? Did your folk teach you these wisdoms?”

He shrugged. “I came by some of them in watching. More of them, by doing. In the battle when I was taken to thrall, I had a choice of things. A knife lay near me, outside my uncle's tent. Had I grasped it and fought as men fight, perhaps they would have killed me, and my soul would not have known the shame of bondage. Then again, I could have slashed my own throat and accomplished a quick exit of this life. I could see in the warrior's faces, in the way their bodies moved—those who would submit and those who would fight. It was a decision in their minds, even if they knew not.”

Namira smiled. “You see? You are the teacher sometimes. We learn together. Everyone has wisdom to impart, for we each walk a separate road.”

He arose, his hands red and stinging, but clean. “Secret for secret, then?”

She smiled for a moment, then nodded slightly. Namira's body blurred, springing forward like a whip. With two fingers, she struck a point near his shoulder and the nerves of his body flared. He fell to earth, feeling nothing, paralyzed.

Namira stood over him, watching as he slowly regained the feeling and strength in his body. He sat up after several turns of the quick glass.

“That felt strange.”

“You were not afraid?”

He shrugged, a vague smile on his face. “How is it done?”

“The body is a web of nerves. If you can strike one of the nerve centers, you can disable the body. Can you still feel where my strike landed?”

Haike nodded.

“If you were to hit me in that nerve, where would you strike?” Namira asked.

Haike reached and touched a place on her shoulder, just inward from the joint.

“Close,” she said. She took his hand and moved it a finger's width. “There.”

“If I hit you there, you would fall, as I did?”

“Try.”

Haike put out two fingers, squinting at them. Without warning, he leaped forward and struck. Namira's legs buckled. He caught her as best he could as she fell. Her one arm clung to him for a moment before she was able to stand again. She touched Haike's brow.

“Good. Good. Mount up, today's lesson is done.”

There is no Student
no Teacher, only the great
world's-knot of learning

If I am a web,
so too, I am a pale loom
the threads half woven

You watch me falling
but when you buckle, my arms
hold you from the earth.

Sic Transit Gloria

2007-08-06T19:53:00.000-06:00

The empty silence of victory,
when the adrenalin has all
run dry, when the efforts
and the incidental pain
are faded into only ghosts
beneath the skin,

then, then you can tell
me if it was all worth it,
if the monumental struggles
brought you high or brought
you low,

when the restlessness and
ill humor of hours spent
idle weigh hard upon you
and the crown you strove
for begins to tarnish,

when glory has turned to
salt and ash upon your
tongue, and the initial flash
of adulation has turned to
mockery, to questions of
the tactics used to win
the day,

when the mantle they deified
you with is stripped away,
revealing that you are,
beneath it all, still
human, still flawed, still
so often wrong.

The Settled Dust, Part Seven

2007-07-30T20:49:00.000-06:00

(A Continuing Haibun Cycle)

In the morning, Haike chafed his arms and stamped his feet to get his blood moving. His body ached, but he said nothing, getting the fire going again and moving down to the small stream to get the waterskins filled again. The woman whose name was not Namira sat still, her eyes focused on something he couldn't see. She had not spoken to him since waking.

Haike warmed his hands as the fire flared up. He had become used to people ignoring him. Even before falling into thralldom, none had coddled him. His father had been a restless and hard-eyed man, as likely to slap a child to earth as to hold them on his knee. His young wife, not Haike's mother, had sometimes doted upon him, but her nature was changeable, her temper flaring. He had not been surprised when this new benefactor had forced him to run beside her camel for many hours.

“Can you hunt, Haike?” she asked at last. The sun had moved a thumb's width above the trees. “Can you find edibles in the forest?”

He nodded.

“Without making a mistake and poisoning yourself and others?” Her eyes were dark, nearly black. Though beautiful, Haike could see that people would be afraid of her. Fear had never been a concern for him, but he had a vague understanding of the role it played in others.

“I have yet to sicken myself with the wrong sort of food. If I don't know the plant, I leave it alone.”

“What if you're starving?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I scratch myself on the arm, rub some of the plant on the scrape, and see if it grows numb, painful, or swollen. If it doesn't, I eat a very small amount and wait to see if I feel badly.”

“Who taught you this?”

“The women who foraged in the wood did it thus. I watched.”

Namira stood, handing him one throwing knife and a small sack of rough cloth. “Go and see if you can find some breakfast. If the sun travels more than another thumb up the sky and you haven't found anything, return empty handed. Know that I will be displeased if this is so.”

Haike took the knife. He returned a short time later with blood on his hands, the sack bulging. Dropping the food beside her, he noticed that she had taken the time to bathe while he hunted. Her dark hair still hung damp against her brow. She had her many shining weapons arrayed on an oiling cloth. The cost of them would have bought the village they had left behind, even before the Dolgur had razed it.

Namira nodded. “So you're useful for something. Now let's see if you can cook.”

He could, but not well. After sending him to the river to clean up, she lifted him up and put him before her on the camel. The animal's gait made his head feel strange, but feeling Namira's body pressed against his made any discomfort worth it. Haike knew it would be a handful of years before he would be mature enough to lay with a woman, but this didn't stop him from considering the idea. He had seen the act—the sighing and the sweat of it. He was glad that his captors hadn't elected to geld him. If he survived, if he served his purpose well enough, perhaps one day, he would learn the sensation of a woman from Namira. If not her, someone. He would be a man one day, unabridged and without need of apology.

Find the hidden thing
bring down the beast of the wild
rekindle old fires

Ask of me one thing
and I shall accomplish the task
now, without complaint

This body, in Spring,
but Summer will soon unfold
rampant, wild as wind

The Settled Dust, Part Six

2007-07-16T18:49:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

“You run well.” The killer poured a few drams of the purest pale alcohol over the kindling. She struck the flint stone against the handle of a throwing dagger. Sparks showered across the pyramid of sticks and it came alight. The flames danced, throwing shadows outward. Behind her, the camel groaned as he lay down and prepared to sleep.

Haike didn't speak, only drinking slowly from the water skin. His cheeks were flushed, but he held himself straight. He had removed his boots, surely a remnant of when he hadn't been a thrall. After running beside her camel for many hours of the night, he had no complaint. He simply let his tired feet dry and replenished himself. His cool, pale eyes watched her, inscrutable, without the shame that would make most look away.

“Do you have food?” he asked. “They fed me poorly in the village.”

She nodded, getting into one of the packs and finding some dried venison. She handed him a chunk, then a marble-hard piece of unleavened bread. He ate the meat, taking very small bites and chewing each piece thoroughly. He had learned to stretch a meal.

“You do not speak much,” she said.

He shrugged. “What should I say?”

“Were you always this way, or has your ill luck caused you to be morose?” She crossed her legs beneath her and chewed a bit of dried meat.

A tiny twitch near the corner of the boy's eye revealed a moment of suppressed emotion. “I am unchanged.” His gaze hardened. “My captors and their poor treatment have only hardened my resolve.”

“What are you resolved to do?”

“To live free. To redress the dishonors I have upon my soul. To be subject to no man for as long as I draw breath.”

The killer smiled softly. “Haike, I wish you to be my initiate, my student in the ways of the Ghost Society. Do you accept my proposal? If you do not, I will allow you to go on your way. If you accept my tutelage, it will be many years, and not without danger and hardship. You will need to renounce all countries and clans, with loyalty only to me, just as I have loyalty only to my master.”

“The Ghost Society are killers of men, dark winds upon the earth.” There was neither judgment nor questioning in his voice.

“That is how we are seen. The truth is somewhat more complex,” she told him.

He shrugged again. “I will go with you and learn your ways.”

“You don't wish to know more before you swear your word to it?” She leaned forward, watching him closely. He was nearly as blank as rock. She couldn't divine what his thoughts were.

He shook his head. “I will swear, upon the hard crust of the earth, the blue veil of the sea, and the tornado of souls that awaits us all when breath ebbs away.”

She nodded. “It's settled, then.”

“What are you called?” he asked.

“You may call me Namira, though that is not my true name. You shall only know that when I am dead, and you are the master.”

Master and student
Two hawks upon the dark wind
Swear the hunter's oath

Update

2007-07-06T17:08:00.000-06:00

So...

I said that I'd be coming out with another "Settled Dust" piece right away, huh? Well, it may be a while. I've elected to write a novella "on spec" for a deadline that's just way, way too close. I'm probably going to be fairly quiet on the Hawkcircle front for the next month. For that, readers, I apologize. I'll make it up to you somehow, I suppose.

I'll try to squeeze in a poem here and there, if I can. I'll probably be early next month before another issue of "Settled Dust" comes out. In the meantime, wish me luck on the novella. I'll need it.

Publishing Note

2007-07-01T14:18:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are interested, an online magazine called The Open Vein just came out with its first issue, and I have a story in it. If you'd like to read the magazine, it is available here. I hope you'll check it out. The Open Vein can use all the patronage it can get. (So can I, but that's another story.)

Sorry for the slowness of my posting schedule, folks. We've been having a pretty serious plumbing issue at my house, and it's sucked up all my time of late. Then there was the internet outage, my cousin Bob in from out of town, big projects at work...I won't bore you with the litany...oh, wait. Never mind.

Out of All Reckoning

2007-06-18T19:22:00.000-06:00

(Not part of "The Settled Dust"--don't worry, I'll post another segment soon enough. I just had a standard poem ready, so I thought I'd post it. PMT)

The distant features,
those blurred images
of the crowd upon the
shore,

and we, the departed,
those lost to the
world and held only
in the loose grasp
of memory,

and we who put our
tender hands to the
rough wood of the
capstan, turning,
turning as the
sails raise up
against the azure
of the midday sea,

and we cannot see
the hands raised
in farewell, or
in final salutation,
but only turn away
to meet the coming
waves,

the ship pulling
well and biting
at the deep green
flesh of the rollers,

taking us into
the west and out
of all reckoning.

The Settled Dust, Part Five

2007-06-10T18:23:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun cycle

The Dolgur was upon him in a moment, coming up the rise like a stampede of buffalo. Close, it checked its speed, turning its head to catch a good glance at him. This close, it couldn’t see directly ahead. The boy didn’t move. He’d seen the Dolgur run. It only looked ungainly. For all its size, it could run a quick man down on open ground. Even if there had been a chance, it had passed by now. He would have to stand, regardless of what came next. Up close, the Dolgur smelled like blood, dirt, and some exotic spice he didn’t have a name for. Perhaps that was Dolgur-scent.

Down by the road, a shriek broke the momentary quiet. Almost close enough to touch, the Dolgur swung its head around, knocking the woodpile to the earth in a hail of dislodged bark and splinters. The wood it had taken the boy two days work to stack was leveled in a single gesture. The strength of the creature, its awful warcraft of such a gesture—if he was to die, it would be no mean death, no coward’s death.

Beside the muddy track, a young woman had her hands raised to her face, looking down at one of the dead. She let loose with another piercing cry. The Dolgur recoiled from the noise, squinting its eyes. A rumbling growl emanated from it, a hundred times the intensity of a spotted lion’s. The boy’s whole body shook.

The screaming girl looked up, her wet eyes locking with the beast’s. Her mouth worked, now muted to silence. She turned and began to run. The Dolgur grunted, peeling back its thick lower lip. It tilted its head for a moment, then twitched its chin upward. A spike of some sort shot outward, hitting the fleeing woman with unerring accuracy. She flopped to the ground, twitched once, then was still.

The Dolgur swung its titanic head back in the boy’s direction. He stood still, his hands grasping against his tattered trousers. He met the creature’s eye with his own pale orbs, his little jaw set.

Pushing forward, the Dolgur sent him sprawling to the ground with the smallest fraction of its strength. The air pushed out of him as he landed, nearly ten feet back from where he’d been. The Dolgur took two thundering steps and was over him, its massive jaw lowered against his abdomen, holding him still against the muddy ground of the hillside. Its nostrils dilated, pulling in his scent. One breath, two, three.

The sky began to darken in the boy’s eyes. He couldn’t draw a breath while the beast pinned him so cruelly to the earth. His pulse raced, to little avail. He would die, smothered like a babe.

At least I did not run. The creature did not enjoy the pleasure of my tears. At least…

The weight lifted from him. Gasping, he rolled onto his side, holding hard against his bruised belly. Color filtered back into the day. The noise of the Dolgur moving off in pursuit of the stragglers came to him.

“It was not your day to meet the dark hereafter, boy,” a voice said. A woman’s voice, though cold.

The boy looked up, seeing the high black boots, the dark, skin-tight trousers, the shining weapons of steel. Her face was beautiful. Beautiful like a statue in an ancient temple. Beautiful like the plume and crest of a hunting falcon.

She stepped closer. “You are alone here, yes? No one left to care for you?”

The boy shook his head. “These,” he swept his hand across the valley, now a slaughter. “These were not my people.”

She offered her hand. “Would you come with me, then? I’ll warn you that kindness is not my way.”

He turned his pale eyes up to hers. “I have no use for kindness, either. I will go with you.” The boy took her hand, rough as any working man’s and just as strong.

She put that rough hand on the back of his neck, leading him up the hill and toward the ridgeline. “What shall I call you, Boy?”

“I am Haike, after my father.”

“You’re of the sea people, yes, the Leonen?”

He nodded.

“Well, that is behind you now. You are now of my folk. You are of the Ghost Society.”

A slight smile touched her lips when he neither flinched nor asked a single question.

Stand me on falling
Ground, where blood runs deep and moist
Where death swoops like birds

If I am to fall
Let me fall undiminished
Beyond fear’s shadow

Not dead, yet a ghost
Once a slave, now a student
Unafraid, deathless

Update!

2007-05-30T21:16:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the long absence, folks. I’ve been having a tough time freeing up time for blogging lately. First, it was craziness at work, then too many things planned for my vacation (which is, sadly, waning down to nothing as I type this).

Let me give a quick update of things that have been going on in my life:

1) I’ve been doing a great deal of stuff around the house. Primarily, I’ve been doing a lot of concrete work in the garage. I found that big areas of the walls were actually sloughing off. When all the “punky” concrete was knocked away, some of the voids were upwards of five inches deep. I was concerned about this, since I didn’t want the garage to fall off the end of the house. Then there’s trying to put the house back in order, as we’ve been re-organizing everything, trying to get the stuff that belongs in shed #1, shed #2, and the garage in the right place. I have a bad feeling about the grammar of the previous sentence, but I’ll soldier on regardless.

2) Also, I went to the local Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention, CONduit. That was a great three days, albeit an exhausting one. I met several local writers, gamers, and hobbyists, all of whom were very cool. I listened to readings by Brandon Sanderson, David Webber, and Paul Genesse (who was hyping his story in Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms, and is my best bud from college). I went to panels that featured guys like L.E. Modesitt, Dan Willis, and the aforementioned worthy individuals. I also got to talk to the delightful and talented Julie Wright, who is another Utah writer. Overall, CONduit was a good con for me. I was hyping my website Nasty, Brutish and Short, for the most part, hoping to get submissions for that venture. Also, I was acting as “wingman” for Paul Genesse while he tried his hand at doing readings, signings, and panels. It was a great learning experience. In writing, it is often about “who you know”, so conventions are great for making connections. Lest that sound too cynical, let me also say that, in the main, writers are kind, approachable, giving individuals who are always happy to share their experiences in the industry and help newbies get started. It’s a tough business, and no one gets very far without help. If you’re interested in becoming published, you’ll want to get to as many conventions as you can. Just attending, being in the company of all the like-minded individuals, will often jumpstart your productivity. Okay, my con-plugging speech is now complete. You may start to read again.

For those of you not interested in “fluffy” news about my personal life, please note that I’ll be posting “real” stuff on my sites as soon as I’m able. And yes, folks, this one is going up on multiple blogs. You may pelt me with rotten fruit if you wish, but that’s just the way it is.

I hope you are well, and I apologize for not patronizing your sites more frequently of late. I don’t know when I’ll be less busy, but I hope to free up some blogging time from somewhere. Do I really need to sleep, after all?

Take care, all.

The Settled Dust, Part Four

2007-05-06T15:06:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

A young woman ran around the woodpile and nearly collided with the boy. Her dark face was pinched with fear and sweat stains circled low from her underarms.

“What are you doing back here, boy?”

He turned his pale eyes to her and said nothing.

The woman shook her head and ran past him, gathering up two wood axes, a splitting wedge, and a heavy bronze maul. She could hardly carry it all under one arm, and the boy thought that she'd end up dropping an axe on her foot if she weren't careful.

She came and grabbed his hand. Her sweaty, muddy palm clenched against his and he set his teeth. She pulled, but he crouched low and dug in his heels.

“Well, are you coming? There's a monster coming up the road!”

The boy shook his head. She smelled like fear, like someone who would die soon. He wouldn't go with a person like that. He didn't run when others ran. “No. I am no goat, to run away, bleating,” he growled at her. He bared his teeth like an animal.

She released him, spitting in his direction. The boy ducked, the spittle flying beyond his right shoulder and landing against the woodpile. “Fine! One less fool for the world when the dolgur eats you!”

She ran down toward the road, ungainly, nearly falling twice. The boy left his hidden seat behind. There was a commotion at the far edge of town. Seeing the action was more important than remaining hidden. Hiding from fate availed a man nothing. His people spoke this maxim, even to the young. It had never occurred to the boy that it may have been untrue.

He could see nothing but the dust rising into the air and settling further down the valley, but he knew that there were a dozen men down there, armed with whatever weapon they could put their hands on. At this point, he could hear the faint mutter of bowstrings. He had seen the fletchings on the hunter's arrows. Sloppy. Their arrows carried flint tips and were no good against anything larger than deer.

A roar shook the valley, the roar of something huge and formidable. The men of the village were not great warriors. They would have run, had they been afforded time enough. As it was, they would have to fight the dolgur off and try to give the others time to flee. They would all be killed. Their warcraft would betray them to their deaths. He shook his head. How had he come to be thrall to such as these? If he lived to manhood, he would have many dishonors to put right.

Those not in the fray were loading wagons and leashing oxen to them as quickly as they could. One old man tried to batter his ox into the traces, hitting the beast about the shoulders and back with a heavy stick. Bellowing, the ox turned, knocked him down with one wag of its shaggy head, and stepped down on his groin with all its weight. He shrieked for several moments before passing out. The ox trotted away up the road and was gone. Others ignored the fallen man, leashing yearling camel hardly large enough to pull the car and clattering off at walking pace.

Many of the townsfolk had no cart or camel to ride, and so were jogging up the road with their few valuables in hand. The boy didn't imagine that they'd get far. Beyond the town lay a lawless frontier, with towns far apart and roads hardly more than timber trails. If the dolgur didn't hunt them down, they would fall to brigands or the rigors of the wild.

The noise from the edge of town transformed into shouting. The shouting lasted a very short span before it turned to screaming. The defenders, all three who remained able enough to run, came pelting down the road, joining the retreating refugees and urging them to greater speed.

There were a good number of oldsters who couldn't move quickly enough or walk far enough to make it to the next town. They hid in their huts and houses. The boy could hear the sound of the dolgur as it smashed a tanner's hut to flinders and sifted the debris for the old man inside. He could only see its dun-colored flank, but the sheer strength and mass of the thing fascinated him.

“So it's a dragon,” he whispered to himself. Somehow, he did not feel compelled to run. He had been born aganan ven jula. “To be without fear.” Amongst his people, it was considered a special sign from the spirit world.

The sound of the tanner's screams lasted only a moment. The boy saw what looked like an arm or a leg fly upward into the air, and it was over. The body of a man seemed solid, but came apart as easily as a wilting flower sometimes.

With all the calm and patience of a craftsman, the dolgur went from one house to the next, smashing them to bits and killing their occupants. The boy thought that the creature had to be the weight of four or five camels, a squat, heavy creature with legs the size of oak trees. Its blunt head was so armored that it could rap its chin against a thick door and knock it flat. The unskilled warriors hadn't done so much as scratch its hide with their spears and dull axes of bronze.

The boy was so intent on watching the dolgur's deliberate massacre, he forgot to hide behind the wood pile. When the creature had done for the ox-maimed man down on the road, it swung its blunt head in his direction. At that moment, he remembered that he was part of this, part of the village, like it or not.

“Spirits of the Leonen, let me go with my grandfathers,” he prayed. “Let me not be alone in the dark hereafter.” Even now, there was no fear. His little hands clenched.

The dolgur walked toward him, each footfall shaking the earth. Its snout was streaked with blood, its small eyes regarding him with predatory interest.

These are not warriors
their sweaty hands clenched against
sure and sudden death

Ignore their bleating
these dead goats, still on the hoof
all purpose thwarted

We are not solid
ephemeral as flowers
dead between each breath

In life's grasping claw
we cannot be spectators
but only actors

The fearful and brave
both find homes within the dark
finally equal

Quick Note

2007-04-29T21:00:00.000-06:00

Hey folks,

Just dropping in and saying hello. I'll be working on a new installment of The Settled Dust over the next few days, but for now, you can view the previous installments in a handy, dandy collected page. You can get to it by clicking the link called "The Settled Dust, Collected" on the side bar. I also changed the "Collected Links" area's name. It's now "Blogroll and then some". Check it out to see all the new links I've added. Also, it provides an easy way to peruse my whole web dominion, which now includes an embarrassing number of projects, really.

In any case, hope you're all well, and I'll be back soon with part four of "...Dust".

Cheers.

The Settled Dust, Part Three

2007-04-22T20:52:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The ox had died quickly. Its remains were still held by the bridle strap on the other side of the overturned wagon. One hoof stood upward like a sundial. It was beginning to stink, and the flies had come, even in the cool of the evening. The people had suffered fear and tried to run away, but had been likewise killed.

The killer knelt next to a well-preserved track. She measured it with the span of her knuckles. Four spans of her hand wide, six long from the middle claw-tip and the bracing claw behind. The track was easily a palm-width deep.

"You're old and huge, aren't you?" she asked of the two-days-gone Dolgur. "What are you doing on the road?"

Dolgurs, from what she knew, were not migratory like other dragons. They tended to find a remote territory and stay put unless another creature pushed them out. A dolgur this size would not need to worry about such things. Even a whole pride of spotted lions would give it a wide berth. Humans didn't encounter them unless they were pushing into new territory, or the Dolgur was an adolescent looking for its place in the world.

She sat back on her heels and thought about it. The Dolgur was attacking prey and only eating a small part of the kill before moving on. It was strange. Other animals had come and had their fill, while still leaving food aplenty to rot on the bone. She didn't see the sense in it. It lacked the faultless logic of animals.

A scraping noise, then a low animal call arose from the woods beside the road. The killer waited, listening. The sound of strong jaws came to her, the sound of flesh tearing. It was more than one creature, she decided. Not big, but powerful, by the sound. She didn't recognize the snorting little interrogatives that passed between the scavengers.

She stood without a sound, easing her Ka'Javiila in its belt loop, then checked her three throwing daggers. Across her back sat a scimitar that would part sailcloth like silk. She had just oiled it that morning, and it would come free of the scabbard with a flick of her wrist.

"I am of the Ghost Society, sending souls upon that road that I must one day walk. Gods of the earth and the dark hereafter, I am your instrument if you wish it. I am a decider of fates, I am a killer, I am human."

She walked to the edge of the wood and moved inward without hesitation. The brush had been trampled down and broken by the Dolgur's passing, making it easy to track the progress. The trampled flora made it hard to move without snapping twigs, though. She slowed. Her quiet was animal quiet, her steps falling with practiced grace.

A little girl's dress, stained with blood, hung in a thorny bush. The fabric was torn, not cut. The garment had parted under pure strength, not sharp claws. A bloody drag-trail moved deeper into the wood. The snorting of feeding animals grew louder as the killer walked. Her hand touched the throwing daggers that hung against her belly. It wasn't wolves. She would have recognized their yips and growls. Not lions either. It was far too quiet. She came around the bole of a large evergreen, wondering what she'd see.

There were three of them, each the size of a large dog. Their blunt snouts were coated with human blood. The little girl's remains were virtually gone--the tenderest bits go first--but another body offered a few meals still. The killer allowed herself to look at the torn body, allowed herself to feel this death, and added it to her understanding of the world.

They turned to look at her, their eyes sharp but unconcerned. Those eyes that would look tiny and myopic in a full sized dolgur looked large and expressive in these small pups. Their hide was already heavy, though they sported stripes of dull green across their flanks. These stripes would fade away to a dull, mottled brown as they grew. They were heavy-legged, with outsized claws that would probably make it impossible for them to do more than trot. Each one weighed as much as she, wielding twice her strength at least. They examined her for a moment, but didn't show any urge to attack or chase her away. They were young, well fed, and ignorant of danger.

Two of them went back to eating the dead the other dolgur had left. The killer nodded. These were the pups of the big dolgur, her babies. She was moving them to new lands. The bloody swath served to ensure their food supply as they went, and it would mark a route if they ever needed to return to her home ground.

One of the dolgur pups, a little larger than the other two, approached her. It stopped a few feet away, sniffing. Up close, she could see the big bunches of muscle on the sides of its blunt head. It could sever an arm, even at this size. After sniffing for a moment, the dolgur lay down before her, putting its chin on the ground and watching her like a hunting hound.

"This will change things," she said. The nearby dolgur pup picked its head up. "Erk," it answered, sounding like an owl with a sore throat.

When they were finished with their feed, the three dolgurs lay down near each other and slipped off to sleep. The killer went back to her camel and mounted. She'd have to ride into the dark part of the night. The camel looked back at her with a baleful eye, bellowing out one of his characteristic complaints.

"I know." She urged him onward and into a trot. The evening was clouding over. She'd be soaked before long.

This trail of the dead
this massacre of still flesh
what purpose is served

Winter of one life
brings on the spring of the next
life's eternal trade

The monster's children
the milk of her teat so red
their fearsome birthright

Darkness deepening
and a long night's ride ahead
beneath weeping clouds

The Settled Dust, Part 2

2007-04-14T21:49:00.000-06:00

A Continuing Haibun Cycle

The runner stank of sweat. Mud from the road coated him to the knees, and there was blood dried on his face and hands. His eyes rolled white in his sunken face, and he collapsed to the earth, holding his stomach as the breath ripped in and out of him. One of the woodcutters dropped his bronze axe and moved to the man’s side. The woodcutter, a big man with only the wisps of hair remaining on his wide head, listened to the runner’s rasping, an ear close to the blood-flecked lips. After a dozen breaths went by, the woodcutter’s eyes grew wider. He leapt up from the earth and bellowed out a single word.

“Dolgur!”

The village burst into a panic as the noise of his shout rolled away toward the broken hills beyond and to the west. The boy watched all of this, his small hands clasped before him, his pale eyes taking in the frantic movement of these, his captors.

He didn’t know what the word meant, but that was not unusual. These folk had a strange dialect, and he had only been here a few turns of the moon. The woman who kept him as thrall went careening across the road, gobbling like a giant, wounded bird. The boy thought of how she gave him short rations at night and made him sleep outside in the chill darkness. Her frantic behavior continued as she grabbed the dirty shirt front of the bread baker and yelled into his face. Spittle flew from her lips and hung in his straggling beard.

He slapped her hands away and pushed her. Her worn boot heel caught on a stone and she sprawled to the muddy ground. Her face went red, and a new tirade of unintelligible nonsense spewed forth. The bread baker did not stand by to hear it, ducking inside his cooking shed and coming back with a massive cooking knife. The boy smiled slightly.

“Dolgur,” he whispered to himself. He moved behind the pile of deadfall kindling he’d brought back from the forest’s verge. He was not tall enough to easily peer out from this shelter, so he set to work, laboring to pull a chopping block into a good place. He pulled with all his strength, hoisting the fat log, though it weighed nearly as much as he did. Dropping it behind the woodpile next to a natural peep-hole space in the kindling, he settled his narrow hind end and watched the growing mayhem.

These folk, my captors
Make them mad, consume them all,
I bless this Dolgur

Give me a good seat
To watch the coming mayhem
A view to their doom

Bring me the next dawn
Free, whether escaped or dead
A thrall no longer

This is my 150th post on Hawkcircle!

2007-04-05T10:25:00.000-06:00

Hey, everyone. Hope you are all well, and having a nice Spring (unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case, I hope you're having a lovely Fall.)

When I started this blog, mostly as a lark at first, I never expected that I'd still be at it, posting my 150th blog entry. I became hooked, however, and it's been a great ride. I hope it continues on for a long time to come.

To everyone who comes by and makes a comment now and then, please know that it's the comments that keep me going when I'd otherwise wander off and do something else. Thanks for your time.

You may have noticed that I changed my screen name from "Firehawk" to "Patrick M. Tracy" recently. The longer I blog, the less I'm worried about hiding behind made-up names and so forth. I also finally got on the ball and put my picture up, so you'll now be confronted by my odd visage at all my blogs. Joy, right?

In the last post, the secondary tag line said "First in a Haibun Cycle". I'm going to try something a little different here, in that I'm going to attempt to tell a story via haibun entries. These may not be every post, but they'll probably be a significant number of the posts over the next few months. I hope you like them, because you'll be getting a lot of them. I'll also collect them and post them on a page on my website in a choronological array, so that they're easier to read as a whole. Big plans...always big plans.

I've been rooting away at the computer, coming up with new additions and changes to my web arsenal. If you'd like to see how my evil empire has grown, go to Wolf Steel to check it out.

Well, it's my birthday tomorrow, and I plan to have new stuff out on Hawkcircle, but one never knows about these things. I'm working on a new project that I have high hopes for at the moment. Keep your ear to the rail, and I'll tell you more about it when it becomes a reality. For now, take it easy, and remember, you shouldn't try to eat something larger than your own head in one bite!

The Settled Dust, Part One

2007-03-30T17:44:00.000-06:00

First in a Haibun Cycle

The killer sat on the bench outside warlord Kahlid's chamber. She thought of her implements, stowed safely in a hay loft outside the borders of the hastily-built fortress. She heard the warlord's booming voice inside, swearing oaths to the dark hereafter about something. It was not her concern. She had not been given a mission. Even if she had, warlords and even kings didn't yell at someone from her order. Not without a brace of bowmen to hide behind. In any case, her sort did not survive to tell tales of failure and defeat. That was not their way.

The door opened. “He'll see you,” an old man with his left eye gouged out told her. He held the doors wide. A soldier, stabbed through the tender area under his arm, was dragged out, dying quickly from a pierced lung. He made a bad-death noise, rattling low in his throat. His eyes were blank as his head lolled toward her. The killer stepped over the blood and did not give the man a second look.

The warlord had been handsome once, and big with rolling muscle. He had run to fat and been twisted by his indulgences. He was now unpleasant to look upon. The killer looked him in the eye nonetheless, her expression a careful void.

“You have work for me?” She was aware of how melodious her voice was, how inviting. Her master had told her it served as a fine counterpoint for her enforced sternness, that it would keep people off balance in their dealings with her. It would make it harder for them to lie well. They still lied, and lied badly, of course, but that was only to be expected.

“Yes,” the warlord said after a moment of staring and shifting on his throne. “This business in the southern hills. A Dolgur has been blundering into towns, killing off the peasants. I want you to track it.”

“And?”

“Kill it, of course,” he blustered, waving his bloody hands at her. He had delivered the killing stroke to the soldier, then.

“Very well.” The killer turned to go.

“Wait, Namira,” he called.

Namira was not her name. She turned toward him and waited, one hand resting on her Ka'Javiila, her throwing pick. She decided to smile, a small and demure smile. It would get her out of the room, with its putrid smell, more quickly. She imagined that the warlord, Kahlid, would be dead by midsummer. Something was eating him from the gut outward. Even above fresh blood and the dying lapse of bowels from the soldier, she could detect the rank, cloying odor.

“Don't kill the thing where anyone sees. Kill it out in the wilderness. Announce your business to no one. Tell no one you're contracted to me.” The warlord coughed heavily and blew his nose onto his sleeve.

“More will die if I wait.”

“So be it. I want no mention of the Ghost Society in conjunction with me. I want to be able to congratulate a squad of my intrepid men for hunting down the beast. Your order has been paid. It needs no extra acclaim. Agreed?”

The killer nodded. “Fine.” She walked from the room, and from the sloppy pile of stones making up the fortress. Astride her war camel, she swayed easily between its two tall humps. A Dolgur. No fee would have been necessary to take that contract.

A death-run engine
this world of blood and shadows
this land filled with graves

Perfection in death
killing instrument so keen
horror of beauty

It is best to kill
most human among all deeds
our darkest birthright

The Mutterings of Avalon, Departed

2007-03-16T15:49:00.000-06:00

We left the faintest hints
of Avalon behind that night,
and the road rose away
from the misty coastline,
up into the green hills,
and beyond to the mountains,
rising wild into the
indistinct purple.

We felt the old dreams die
from our saddles, but we
knew enough to ride onward,
never looking back into
the eyes of the night,
into the eyes of the
places we'd once called
home, for dead dreams
don't go quiet, but
haunt the place of
their passing, haunt
in small hours the idle
minds of all who remember
their broken promise.

Even on the downslope
of the darkened and
foreign mountains,
even as we enter the
unwholesome shade of
this twisted forest,
these, the faintest hints
of our bold dreams, doomed
never to persist, cling to
us as the morning
dew clings to the
overgrowth next to
the muttering river.

Part VII

2007-03-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

I remember the good times,
and not just with the glasses
colored rosy shades, not just
with those sloppy reminiscences
of a night in which we drank
too much and laughed too loud
and said things we thought we
meant with all our hearts.

I remember the good times,
when I believed in people
and ideas more than I've
come to do in recent years,
when the values that have
been made hollow were as
solid as structural beams,
and never seemed as if
they would buckle.

I remember the good times,
when I never would have
judged a person for
voting preference, or
even thought to do so,
when the things that
the powerful people told
us sometimes seemed true,
when the little guy would
occasionally win.

I remember the good times,
when people meant more than
money, when loyalty was the
highest ideal, when being
kind and living a decent life
were all you really wanted
out of your time on this
spinning blue marble.

I remember the good times,
the innocent times, I guess,
when we knew little enough
to hope, when we trusted
well enough to sleep easy,
and thought every problem
would, eventually, yield
to our irrepressible
enthusiasm.

--This poem was inspired by the piano solo “Part VII”, and also suggested by the title of a further piano solo, “The Good America”, both from Keith Jarrett's recent release “The Carnegie Hall Concert”

Shadows of the Gist

2007-03-01T18:52:00.001-07:00

Turning,
turn the unleavened
shadows, as clock
gears mesh and
spin, as they
accumulate and
relieve their
tension on tiny
springs and
mechanisms for
which I have
no name,

turn the space
upon which we
come to exist,
come to refute
the idea that
we are linked,
coincident,
contiguous as
the nameless
parts of the
chronograph,
parts and parcels
of the interweave,
narrowly differentiated
elements of the
firmament,

turn the time
upon itself
so that it
flows impossible
courses, existing
as idea alone
in Escher-space,
on the inside
of a clear
reflective sphere,
providing its own
counter argument,
its own intractable
and constant
contradiction,

turn backward into
the invisible self
that has ever been,
the hidden gist of
things we cannot
quite understand
but feel so strongly
to be true, and
push the roughness
of a dying outer core,
of skin sloughing
from flesh and being
replaced—push the
wild essence of the
unguessed self into
the unmapped quadrants
of this terrestrial
cosmos.

Long Gone Days

2007-02-21T20:44:00.001-07:00

Here they are, these
travelers, old and
in pain from the
journey, promises
they no longer believe
hanging about their
necks like grinding
wheels, shouting
into the open
spaces of the desert
until their throats
bleed, until the
blood surges and
rushes in their
ears, until they
must cling to
each other to keep
from falling,
but there is no
answer, no ear
but their own,
blunted and
vague from the
years, ringing
with tinnitus,
and their hands
are like claws,
wanting and grasping
at the uncaring
day as it dies,
wishing only for
some small part
of the promise to
be true, knowing
now that, if ever
these oaths were
kept, if ever these
dreams were whole,
that day has long
since gone.

Untitled 2/07

2007-02-13T16:44:00.001-07:00

Drink deep this echoing silence,
the winds that touch us no more,
the curses of dreams, remembered
upon waking and terrible.

Those things we have not been,
ghosts clinging like dried
sweat upon our skin, sounds
we still hear when the voices
that spoke them out into
gloom are long since gone.

Personal Mountains

2007-02-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

This long walk, this
ancient road,
and we are at the
foot of the mountain,
at the brink of
the deep and
abiding snow,
looking upwards
into the eons
of the night.

This long walk, these
ancient travelers
within us, come down
though generations
of twilight, of
the first and
second worlds
beneath the earth,
now broken free
within us, we
who are the
latest iterations
of the spirit world.

This long walk, this
bitter chill of
knowing much, but
so little of keen
import to us as we
regard the vistas
ahead, the faster
windows of twilight
yawning open,
beckoning us
for a march far
greater than all
those we have
spent out our lives
upon, beckoning
like dessicated
trees at the verge
of volcanoes,
burnt but undying,
old and bent but
without conception
of capitulation.

This long walk,
and the empty road
behind us, where
raptors have circled
above and heat flashes
have dazzled our eyes,
where our feet have
swollen and bled into
the ungiving earth,
where the tough
grasses have been
filled with thorns
and the water
tainted with silt,
and we have known
suffering before
beholding the
face of yawning
infinity, the
mountains that
we may yet dare
to scale, still
ready to annihilate
the spirits within
us and make us
drown in our own
dust, all while
promising, promising
the unbending horizon,
the supreme force
of eternity.

Rumors

2007-01-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

At first, they said that

I'd died in Vegas,

stabbed through the

heart by a jealous

guy who'd once

been an admirer

found by the

concierge who

had been calling

up prostitutes for

me, a bottle of

Viagra in one hand

and a riding crop

in the other,

but that, of course,

was not the full

story, or even

substantially

correct, and

so we move on,

finding new

fictions to weave

upon the loom.

Later, whispering

drunkenly into the

ear of a gabby woman

at one of the bars

that's considered

tres chic, they said

that I'd been caught

with hard drugs in

Phoenix and locked

away, that my

lawyers had covered

it all up, and that

the movie I'd scrapped

last year would be recycled

from the cutting room

floor to fill the void,

but that, of course,

was not the full

story, or even

substantially

correct, and

so we move on,

finding new

fictions to weave

upon the loom.

Then there was the

story, two months back

in the rags, about my

collapse at a party

in New York, about

how I'd been depressed

and not eating, about

how I was back on

the sauce again,

and that everyone who

knew me was terribly

worried I'd go

completely off the

rails, maybe kill

myself because I'd

been so down since

that starlet I rode on

the elevator with

said that she thought

I looked like her

grandfather, and that

she'd only kissed me

because of the X she'd

been on,

but that, of course,

was not the full

story, or even

substantially

correct, and

so we move on,

finding new

fictions to weave

upon the loom.

And really, what does

it matter what is true,

or what I've been doing

with my time, or if I'm

about to go off the rails,

because I'm a stranger,

someone who will

ever be unknown and

unimportant in all

but my own mind,

and the weaving

upon the loom is nothing

more than idle chatter,

talking about the weather,

talking about things that

are safe, away from the

awful world filled with

death and horror and

injustice, I am a shield

against the uncanny reality

of the evening's hard news.

Invisible Snapshots of the Noonday Traffic

2007-01-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

In a restaurant filled with

the smell of curry,

I have become invisible

to everyone, invisible

to myself, outside

the reach of the

wall-mounted televisions

playing the daytime

trash,

something

about white rappers

and their girlfriends,

as vainglorious and

asinine as this hour

warrants,

and

the uncomfortable

young man who

looks vaguely out

into the haze of the

winter inversion,

perhaps waiting for

someone who will

not arrive,

and

the businessmen who

speak of car leases

and gross profits

for the year,

one in bland tones

of native speech,

another tinged with

some other land,

unknowable and

distant, close enough

yet for this conversion,

this incidence upon

the face of the day,

and

the blue uniformed

workman who say

little and move

back and forth

between their table

and the buffet,

especially the one

who is sharp eyed

and wears the round

spectacles of an

inventor, hunching

down to his

Mongolian bowl

of noodles, studious

as a monk,

and

the harried

waiters who slouch

from table to table,

pale beneath their

eyes and hollow,

and

all these people,

all invisible to

themselves, all

moving in darkness

as albino eels in an

underground lake

would do,

and

it is but one

day, one moment

of a day, and then

the time is gone,

the circle broken

the call of the

inaudible bell

atop the imagined

steeple calling us

backward, inward

so that we become

aware again and

pick up those worn

tools of our disparate

trades, the grim

work of killing off

the last of Friday

the freight upon our

shoulders.

In Miniature

2007-01-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

I am full,

filled up

with these

small mutterings,

this wind,

these fans

whirring,

this clock

as it runs

its circles

and spends

out the days,

I am full,

the low

singing of

Persian music

in the background,

of Sitar and Oud,

the high tone

of the fluorescent

lights above

in their

shrouds,

the sounds

of light evening

traffic, blunted

by the falling

snow.

I am full,

the world

without and

within enough

for living

this small life.

Circular Breathing

2006-12-31T19:42:00.001-07:00

The time has slipped away, fallen as
water does, to the sea we cannot
grasp or fathom, and only ghosts
of these moments can return.

The time has slipped away,
moments run out, ghostly
remainders falling fathoms
down to the sea and darkened water.

The time has slipped away,
darkened seas beneath us
as we fly beyond the remaining fathoms,
ghostly as moments in dreams forgotten.

The time has slipped away,
forgotten as dreams upon waking,
unfathomed remainders of flight
below seas, darkened with
the eternity of yesterday,
and we turn and turn back,
looking in the shaded direction
of these abandoned beaches
before going onward
into the golden dawn.

The Language of Structures

2006-12-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

A Haibun

The old house is not a dead thing. With our breath, we spin forth spent shells of our previous existences, shedding fragments of the coil, exuding what we lose. Its form is changed, but it remains. The rough board of the floor, the ancient and powdery plaster, the great beams underpinning it all—these are brought slowly to sentience as we spend out our finite time and energy into the air, as we are sheltered from summer’s heat and winter’s chill.

Generations of us, bleeding out upon the canvas of the structure, making it, changing it.

When it sings its groaning song at the apex of the storm, it is singing with the voices of our ghosts, the voices of our yesterdays, now hazy in the memory and changed with the year. It sings the domicile history, of joy and tears, of unremarkable days of doors opening and closing, of light and darkness, of work and idleness.

When the child drops a bouncing ball and it exits the room, it is no wondrous thing that the ball is never found. Houses like these, living ones with the memory of years, can sometimes find uses for such things as a child’s toy or a baseball cap, for that cork puller you’re sure you once had, for that screwdriver that was on the table the last time you looked. The old house is not a dead thing, and it has its small wants, its small desires.

In the lexicon of squeaking floorboards and loose steps, in the vocabulary of scuttling noises within the wall, in that one room that will raise the hair of your arms on a dark winter’s night, it speaks. In the constant tapping of the leaky faucet and the whisper of the ancient pipes, it speaks. Alone, when our eyes open in the dead of night, we can sometimes hear the words. Alone, we sometimes know that we have nested amongst the spectral skeletons of all our earlier iterations, and the breath stops in our throats. These structures slowly become the amalgamation of us and what we have been. They will carry the seeds of us forward, abiding often long past the day when we, ourselves, have flown. These structures, like the abandoned and fallen nest of the robin amidst a winter’s thaw, will hint at us, whispering from that place of permanent absence, should there be one to hear.

This living timber

these places where we exist

living ships of time

All these little deaths

seasons spent away in dust

now take root and bloom

Now the timber sings

its lungs the wind, its song our

half-done chronicle

Give it what it needs—

these boards have sheltered us well

let them have their due

Missing tennis balls

and sundries escaped into

the void between walls

It is not theft, but

remuneration of debts

we would never pay

We have heard the voice

a thousand times before now

never listening

The screech of every

floorboard, the squeak of each stair

the noises of home

Hearken to them now

in the depths of winter’s night

gasp, finally knowing

Our structures remain

whispering tales of ages

in tomorrow’s ear

These ghosts that abide

brick and mortar, wood and nails

windows painted shut

When you think of me

think of me here, in these rooms

at this high window

At the Canyon’s Edge

2006-12-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

(A Haibun)

Dancing back from the edge of the abyss, we winked at each other, falling to the dust, laughing at the distance, laughing at the doom of the fall and our own avoidance. We lay in the dirt, amongst the rocks, heels beyond the edge, looking up into the uninterrupted blue above, and the sound of the engines far away was like the noise of mosquitoes, like the pale shadows of glass towers just after midday. Our hands twined together, we knew that things would not continue on like this. These things are perishable, as seasons are perishable, as quick as the flash of serenity across your face before your eyes open, and you are awake again. Quick as these imperfect hands, always holding too loosely, letting you slip by, letting dreams filter down into the well until they are empty.

We rolled together, making uncomfortable and make-shift gambits upon each other’s skin, making the noise of spent breath upon the verge of oblivion, forging make-believe infinities for ourselves as the small planes labored to and from the airport on the mesa. As ever, the great hopes remained unassuaged, unassailable. As ever, the hopes to kill the pain came to naught, twisting like frozen fish hooks inside us. We walked home in sweat and grit, acolytes of the blooded knee and sore shoulder, inchoate in the knowledge that we were frail, incomplete things, that we were incapable of the depth we hoped for and pretended to. Insecure in the understanding that we were human, and young, and not truly in love after all.

At the canyon’s edge

churning water far below

we dream of the fall

Bodies like engines

distant silence swallowing

all aspiration

Seasons divide us

touching, we are yet alone

pretending to love

What we have proven—

inside, the ache still festers

bitter as old snow

In a Silent Demesne

2006-12-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

(A Haibun)

The palace of a hundred bells stands open, wind pushing against the unshuttered windows, sunlight filtering inward from cracks in the façade. If you stand close, you can hear the sound of the ancient ropes creaking in the belfry tubes. If you walk within, you can see the holes in the floor where the fire ate away at the wood, smell the faint char even after these many years. The mice scuffle in the corners of the rooms, burrowing through the remains of all these artifacts, once fine and gilded. Where once the battlements bristled with soldiers, there are only birds, their sharp little eyes upon you as your steps echo against the abandoned quadrangle. The statues of ancient men have been toppled and sent to ruin, as if injury to the stone could erase them, and you do not recognize their faces or their names, so perhaps the supposition is true. Saplings grow out through the wreckage of the great gates, now only rotted wood and bronze turned a sooty green. Perhaps if a single bell muttered and clamored against the silence of the winds, perhaps if a single scion of these walls remained, obdurate against the ages, this place could be saved. There is no one, no brave, toiling presence in the echoing remainder. There are just we two, we invaders of tombs, we gawkers at incidents long gone, we listeners for chimes that will not come.

We have but a short

season; from spring to winter

in and eye’s blinking

All strength is empty

the gesture of grasping fools

fighting spectral foes

Bitter injury

in time is only grim fact

yesterday’s brown fruit

Even the loudest

voices grow hoarse with shouting

whispering at last

Seven For Hell

2006-11-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

(Haiku Cycle)

Untidy creatures
all the scars on the inside
unlearn-ed of peace

Noise amphetamine
stinking, darkened streets we pave
oblivion, come!

Out of the debris
once human, we are broken
'neath forests of steel

Dim seasons of guilt
wicked, we become that death
we have long denied

What was once kindness
has sickened, become slow hate
flaming corrosion

The smell of cordite
on the chill winds of autumn
the death toll rises

Let the world be killed
we have no more use for it
if we are not kings

--Note: So there's your feel-good poem of the week, folks. Enjoy! (P.M.T.)

What Yesterday Begets

2006-11-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

The morning is quiet,
and we yet retain some
of the fine things we
once possessed, when
our kingdoms stretched
further, when the sun
found it difficult to
set on our dominion.

The morning is quiet,
sun bright if not strong,
air crisp if not clean,
the eyes we meet at the
mirror alert enough and
only a little bloodshot,
and the pain in our joints
is no worse than the
average as we climb the
stairs and set off to
work again.

The morning is not now
quite so quiet, but it is
serene enough for our
purposes, outside the
retail grind, outside the
press of overenthusiastic
deficit spending that seems
the way of the year, and
yes, we can be content
with the remainder, with
the quiet death of the
work week and the half
empty office here, the
small and repetitive tasks
we must engage before
we show them our backs.

The afternoon slower than
morning, yet again quiet,
and we eat the food we can
afford the money and time for,
but not before the inevitable
trip to the money machine,
the inevitable erosion of our
funding, the dollars dying like
brain cells within the minds of
lending institutions.

The evening is quiet, and we
yet retain the vague outlines
of our birthright, the twilight
going down to autumn's
harbinger spikes of frost as
we navigate the roads
homeward, minds not contained
by our bodies, souls not contained
within our lives but still
flying the easy air of our
ground effect, and though
the best territory for us is
confined to the theoretical
magic of sleep, we retain
enough to be thankful.

Aural Snapshots

2006-11-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

1.
A cold darkness has fallen
and the sound of the dogs
barking from down the block
sounds thin and thready,
a hoarse sound, quickly
dying into the thick-lying
leaves of brown, into the
skeletal trees pointing
stubbornly skyward and
into the deepening iron
of overcast.

2.
There is a scuttling noise
behind the woodpile, a
furtive movement beneath
the stacked lawn furniture,
a residue of pulverized
concrete at the corner of the
empty room in the basement,
filings that time’s rasp leaves
upon the dusty corner of
a car that hasn’t run for
many years, and its tires
have cracked, sagged,
annealed to the floor over
the seasons let slip and now
forever gone.

3.
The telephone pole cants
toward the cracked pavement
of the access road just a bit more each
year, eaten away at its base,
pressure treatment and
creosote worn away, unremitting
weight of the frozen power lines
pulling against weakening wood,
waiting for the day when the
gods of morning spit up a
tempest fit for the task, fit
for the falling, fit for spitting
high voltage against the
roughened black top.

4.
The old, red-painted brick of
the house across the street has
weakened to powder, weakened
to chalk, and the woman who
lives there, hardly walking, the
sole survivor of her generation,
the single bastion of another
age, rarely appears at the window
or climbs the rickety steps, and
the house belongs primarily to
a brindle colored cat who looks
black from a distance and would
cut the back of your hand, should
you reach to pick him from his perch
on the dry-rotted fence, and the
younger neighbors park their cars,
too expensive for the houses, next to
the falling façade, next to the unkempt
lawn, next to the fire hydrant that has
not given forth water since the ancient
ages of the earth.

5.
And beyond the naked trees, beyond
the houses and the highway and the
railroad lines, the blasted remains of
the mountain stands, lit by the gas
fires of the refinery pipe, lit by the
purple reflections of downtown, the
cast-off luminance of the people who
huddle and scuttle beneath their
shadow, scheming, each step blind,
each mile graveward, storms of
exhaust and wasted breath pushing
them ever further from what they
wish for, and the city remains asleep
and dreaming badly, and the desert
move a restless step further outward
in every direction.

New Stuff!

2006-11-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, Everyone! Be sure to check out my complete profile, because I have a new blog and a new website up. Both of these new areas have been built to house my fiction writing and the journal I'm going to keep regarding said endeavor. Now, these two entities are just recently created, and there are a lot more features I plan to add as time goes on, but they're fairly spiffy as things stand now, if I may be so bold! It would be great if you came over!

Patrick M. Tracy

Farewell, These Ancient Thrones

2006-11-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

I bid this solitude, this place where
shadows have been my companions,
where the great and enclosed empty
spaces echo with orphaned thoughts
and years of dust accumulate on
every upturned space, every face
in the spanning caryatid against
the horizons of past and future---

I bid all this, my kingdom of unfinished
deeds and dreaming dark

Goodbye

And in the old ways of speaking,
perhaps God Be With Thee is
appropriate, because the scales
have fallen from my eyes,
the dust blown clear of my
flesh, all the ancient, unknown
reaches of these castles consumed
in the cleansing fires, and

I step, new-made and without
artifice, into the universe at last.

Paralytic Response

2006-10-19T19:29:00.000-06:00

We’ve dreamt these unopened phases of the moon,
these covenants of silence where our words once
tried to dwell,

but we cannot bridge the distances with such frail
efforts as these, the hands we hardly move from
our sides as the moment passes, the critical time
fades away and we are left having failed to try,
desolated by our own paralytic response to the
thing we hoped so hard to capture,

and all the unopened mail on the kitchen table,
these quorums of unfulfillment, these methods
by which we avoid our lives and instead abide
in the chill crucible of detachment—

they pickle the juice within us and leave us
husks, prisoners to time spent trying not to,
hoping that the journey would somehow
take place with our feet rooted firmly to
the sad, familiar ground we’ve always known,

and we’ve grown to almost love the disappointment,
the loathing as we push all our hopes away in
a deepening wind of wasted breath, too
old now to remark well and truly on the
news of the day, too old for our shop worn
traveling shoes, ancient folk in the clothes
of children, our vampiric dreams spiraling
ever backward to those jumping-off points
when we sought to act, when we ought to
have done so, but were weighted down
so heavy with our freight of doubt and
apathy that we could scarcely raise a
hand in the direction of our own dreams.

Roaring

2006-10-18T19:58:00.000-06:00

Onward, these revolutions,
and let them come to their
pinnacle and fall like we
all are doomed to do,

Let them bring the water
from the distant river and
spend it out on the ground,
fruitless, finally, but proud
and unbroken by the futility
of their quest.

Onward, these grim voiced
angels, desolating all they
once wished to save, love
turned slowly to hate within
their flesh like thorns broken
off and festering beneath the
skin,

And we, their charges, who
have grown to hate them for
all the times we've been saved,
grown to hate the unearthly
beauty of their countenances,
because envy never dies,
and they lay claim to heavens
we will never know, we
heathens, we intransigent
masses, yearning for the
peace of solitude, when
all higher purposes are renounced,
when we have filed ourselves down
to the base nature, when we have
done away with the mysteries of
hope, and we are alone in the
roaring silence of the abyss.

…And These Dreams, Too, We Must Renounce

2006-10-12T21:08:00.000-06:00

Alive,
we move though the ink cloud
of all the others’ retreating steps,
the dust of reaping the dry ground
in autumn when only scanty stalks
of unwholesome wheat stick sickly
up from the damaged earth.

Alive,
hands moving upward into the
frowning sky, the withholding
sky that withstands all our prayers
and our slow suffering.

Alive,
bruises bone-deep, and rembrance
of these wars given over, given up,
re-fought a thousand times as we
sit upon the benighted stoop of
our rotting houses and think of
things we may have done better,
had we only known, had we only
been different, but we are doomed
to never change, to always be ourselves,
and that misery stings like sweat
leaking into a cut.

Alive,
we squint at the dim stars above,
thinking all the same of dime stores
of the elder forgetfulness, of raspberry
malts and bicycle spokes, of pick-up sticks
and Lincoln Logs, of lying quiet upon
the green lawn where it was safe, and
the things we knew seemed true,
and parents, leaders, gods, even,
seemed to have the answers.

Awakened, and Lately Wrathful

2006-10-04T19:50:00.000-06:00

Not like before,
we hear these
ringing bells
and cease to
salivate, the
training broken,
the enchantment
shattered.

Not like before,
we look up from
our hand-work,
our computer
terminal, our
lunch hour with
the same sandwich
as the three days
before, and see
that it has been
rusted away,
faded down,
adulterated until
our own dream
is unrecognizable
to us.

Not like before,
we fail to eat all
the slop they've
dished up on our
account, but spit it
back, and perhaps
it is too late, and
all our secret faiths
have fallen, and
we have been
robbed blind and
swindled poor,
but these last few
steps toward the
edge of the precipice
of damnation will
not go easy for them,
and they will
not look clean or
antiseptic of our
blood...

not like before.

The Blessing of Small Explosives

2006-09-21T18:43:00.000-06:00

--From true events

The sound a bomb makes
is easy enough to mistake,
easy enough to set aside
when there is work at hand,

and even as we step from our
offices and peer upward at the
higher floors of the building,
we are expecting to see that
something has fallen, because
that noise, that profound bang

seemed like a falling body,
a book cart, perhaps, precipitated
from the top floor and coming
to rest outside our door,

but there is nothing, nothing but
faces looking down at us,
asking the same mute question,
wondering the same thing,
not yet ready to consider that
we have been blown up,

and we go back to work, back
to mundane tasks until the call
to evacuate comes to us, and
even then, we walk calmly,
shrugging, into the open,
under the iron gray sky,

and we are directed to
cross the street, to get further
from the building, to establish
a safe distance and let the
gathering authorities do their
work

and we stand together in the
spitting rain and speak of it,
not knowing,

and it was only a small bomb,
after all, and no one was hurt,
so we joke about perhaps
blowing us up on a sunny
day, so that standing
on the public green while
police tape is spread might
be more comfortable,

and we forget to mention
it to friends on the phone,
because, perhaps, bombs
are not so unexpected to
us any more,

and it takes real blood,
real, smoking craters in
the earth and death tolls
on the nightly news to
crack our jaded shell,

and little enough sense
of violation when we are
blown up in only minor
and inept ways, after all,

for we have seen worse
than this, and expect worse,
and know that the world
is not nice, or kind, or
forgiving, though some
of us have still gotten lucky
sometimes, and remained
more or less

whole.

…As We Slouch Ever Outward into the Deepening Gyre…

2006-09-13T20:56:00.000-06:00

Within the light-reach
of our lasers,
it is always the burning
season, all iron
molten, all
tiny air pockets
popping into
combustion with
red and yellow
tongues upon
the indelible,
unassailable dark.

Within the light-reach
of our lasers,
we will always
know how to
flex and feel the
muscle pop taut
against the skin,
and we will never
have to think or
forgive or
render an apology
or sink, finally,
to a knee.

Within the light-reach
of our lasers,
we will always
simply
know,
and be,
and rule,
proudly unlearn-ed
of those virtues
we do not
value, forever
perfect in our
own madness.

Deathright: A Collection

2006-09-05T12:02:00.000-06:00

1. Accidents of Birth

We are born this way,
born hungry and
screaming, little fists
balled against the
harshness of the
light, born angry
with this birthright
of self awareness.

We were born this way,
splintered sprits against
the remnant of a world
too fragile for our grasping,
too frail for our tantrums,
too finite for our infinite
needs and neurotic
aspirations, and the
question of our own nature,
so awful and omnipresent,
is only important because
we are not happy to
wonder, but must know
and prove and be masters
of fact, and if we are
animals awakened, risen
a half step from the quiet
purpose of the others,
shown the power of
greed and hatred and
unreasoning destruction,
so let it be, and if we are
larval gods on our way
to our dark and eternal
glory, destroyers of worlds,
become death upon the
face of the gleaming day,
so let it be.

We were born this way,
and thus shall we live,
and so, too, shall we die,
passing from this world
screaming, unready,
still full of anger and
pain, and though we
have tried to fix ourselves,
we have only painted
over the rough surface,
only added momentary
sweetness to a roiling
and bitter sea.

We were born this way.

2. Tuneless Elegy of the Prosaic Faithful

One more,
one more,
one more,
and we will learn the lie
just as we’ve seen,
the sky is any color
and we can bring
these choices down
with us unto the blue
so you, one more who
learns to lie, and little
learning is involved
for it comes to us as
a thing forgotten,
these small betrayals,
and we misbegotten
sons and daughters
slouch ever onward,
the image of our
fathers, singing
tuneless anthems to
the dusk, we, grim
songbirds of the
dimness and the
oncoming hour of
twilight.

3. The Joy of Industry

We have been busy building,
oh, yes,
oh, yes, ye faithful funeral
marchers, ye pious drinkers
at the bar, ye quick handed
gunmen at the bank’s
quick check out counter, ye
smiling degenerates lingering
at the chain link fence
beside the school ground.

We have been busy building,
oh, yes,
oh, yes, believers.

We have been busy building,
and before ever there can
be a stone balanced upon
another, there has to be
the breaking, the mining,
the burning, the felling,
the leveling, the making,
the forging, the milling,
and we do like those things,
like them so well that we
must tear down and
build up the things that
are not broken, we must
place strategic flaws in
what we create, so we
will again have the
joy of the destruction,
because the only thing
better than watching
a tree fall, the only thing
better than seeing a
fine mountain crushed
slowly into chalk and
powder, is to see our
great houses, every
summation of our
labors laid to waste,
to see buildings
turn to ash and fall
to earth, so that we
may start again,
so that we may,
ever more, be
busy, building.

4. The Compassionate Monolith of Socio-Political Expediency

Blindness is a virtue we encourage
here on the ailing mother ship,
and it may be argued that blindness
is the highest among the many forms
of blessed calm, for what of all
ailments cannot be well countered
with sweet darkness, with the turning
ever inward of the eye?

Blindness is a virtue we encourage
in the great multitude, for the blind
are never troubled by the loss of
the light in the morning east, they
are not concerned with the barren
stretch of abandoned railway line,
they are fine enough to sit inside
and accept the crawling decrepitude
around them, as obedient citizens
should always do.

Unreason is a fine tonic, and also
apathy, and foolish preoccupation
with groaningly mundane commonplaces,
and especially an unwillingness to
learn, for learning is the way to
madness, sure as any statement
has ever been true, and we don’t
wish to find the way to madness,
but to make it, and to have the
multitudes walk it in calm
silence, ever slouching closer to
pure slavery, the world dying
a twitching, frothing death
at their feet, paralyzed with
concern for trivialities, loaded
like mules and moving in
the direction of the flashing
street sign.

5. A Litany of Our Good Deeds

“But we have done much,
brought light to the darkness,
done good, done the work
of whichever deity we chose
to follow.”

…and how can that point be
argued?

Light to the darkness,
we have brought this much,
for we are well capable of
making fire, and enjoy the
kindling of it, and the
wonderful hunger of it,
and the way it changes
things from what they
are into something more
consistent, something
more uniform, something
smaller and softer and
blacker than before.

Good, we have done so
much good, for the doing
of good must needs end
only when there are no
more to stand in our way,
no more to raise a dissenting
voice, no more to serve as
heretics to our cause, and
that day, may it come and
be peaceful and fine, is
a long age away, and there
are plenty still who would
gainsay us as to the nature
of God and Man, many who
say words we cannot understand,
and those people must be
convinced of the error in their
ways, must be transformed
to be like us.

There is so much light to yet
bring to so many dark places,
so that there is never any night
again in all the world, and we
have the proper candles hidden
in the ground, had we only the
will to use them.

There is still so much good to
be done, so many confused
souls to save, so many enemies
to contend with, so many lies
to erase and replace with our
own great wisdom, and let
God be merciful and just
enough to let us have all the
power we need to accomplish
such ends and accomplish
the mission of purifying the
ages and erasing them, so
that there is a new Eden, or
there is nothing, and even
if we few, we warriors of
the holy struggle, are the
only remnant of a decaying
culture to see it through,
let that be, and let our
good deeds be done through
the blood of the faithful and
the infidel alike.

6. God’s Blood Requiem

They say everything will change,
that we have changed it,
created consequences,
created systems of call and
response beyond our own
ability to gauge, laid the
groundwork for the massive
engine of the future with our
incremental actions, with
our building, with our
insatiable urge for industry,
with our unconquerable
desire for the new, the
improved, the advanced
formula with new stain-fighting
agents and a fresh, clean scent.

They say that we are dead,
yet walking and ignorant
of the putrid stench rising
from our rotting husks,
that there are armies of us,
locust-like plagues of us,
all busy dying, all doomed,
all engaged in the process
of being judged unworthy
by the planet and summarily
put to death.

They say that there is still
time, maybe, to reverse the
damage we’ve done, to
repent our sins against
the planet, but repenting
doesn’t come easily to us,
our necks stiff and our
faces red with anger at
the thought that we could
be wrong, that we have
wasted the best of all
possible worlds, that
there is ever and end
to the good fortune
and wealth, that we
ever have to own up to
being the ignorant
giants in the playground,
inelegantly smashing
anything that doesn’t
suit our purpose at that
exact instant.

They say that the only
saving grace is that we
will get our reward in
heaven, but what evidence
do we have of heaven,
what traveler’s story of
the far, good lands beyond
can we look at with critical
eyes and take as truth?

We know only this, as the
end of things slides further
toward screaming oblivion—
there will be no one left
when we go to compose
our requiem, no God’s blood
to salve the scarred world
and erase the scars of our
death throes, but only
silence, and the hope
that some hardy creatures
can rise in our stead and
find the serenity we were
never able to grasp when
they assume the mantle
of the new kings of this
tiny blue marble upon
the infinite dark.

Ramming Speed

2006-08-31T19:14:00.000-06:00

I have lived these lives,
spoken these words,
brought these empty
worlds to ruin with
my madness, and
yet I still recall
what it is to be
a child, to have
mind and body
and spirit whole
and unruined,
to retain some
greater aspiration
than to gain, to
win and win
at any cost, to
crush them all
and leave none
who can ever grow
up to be fighting
men in my wake.

I have spent out these
shells, burned this time
away with rack and ruin,
shock and awe of my
arrival only half so tragic
as the echoing stillness and
woe of aftermath when
I move along to the next
awful adventure, but
within there is something,
some hope that there have
been purposes to all of
these massacres, reasons
for these slaughters,
miracles behind these
sins, for if all is just
as it seems, then I
am left, in my old age,
with only meanness
and a staggering lack of
compassion, and this
like so many other
things, I don’t choose
to accept, so I make
reality where I
find it lacking,
mold thought so that
it suits my purpose,
and, as always,
destroy what I
cannot subvert.

Bonus Poems

2006-08-24T14:10:00.000-06:00

I wrote these poems in the response boxes over on MB's blog, and thought that I should share them with the rest of you. They're both inspired from reading MB's poetry, so consider this a big "plug" for her "Find Me a Bluebird" site. Here goes:

We begin

within

and are forever
in the brilliant,
screaming darkness
thereafter

without

wishing only that
perfect overlap
that deep connection
below the skin

that beloning

but we are bound
to this flesh
life-years damned

the same as the
portable tomb we
carry

forever without
wishing inwards
wishing to enter
the sweet earth
of another but
held away

corporeal ghosts
wishing for worlds
intermingled and
wishing blind.

As the Ship Naglfar Passes

In this air,
they say, it's
a better thing
to crouch within
our houses, to
linger 'neath
these blankets,
to give in to
gravity and
dream fever
dreams upon
the sofa,

In this air,
they say,
every act,
every breath
taken in
fully, every
step of the
morning jog
is a coffin
nail, and
it's a cheap
and evil fate,
this fog and
haze above us,
this tint of
red upon the
weather chart,
this nightly
news warning,
this sign of
things to come.

Into the Raven-Black Ghazals of Night

2006-08-18T15:41:00.000-06:00

Marching, we take these storms
with us unto the gloom,
laughing at the devils who
burn like the sparks in
dying campfires in the
eyes of our enemies,
this scorn they said
would doom us never
giving its death wound,
never teaching us temperance,
and so, laughing unto
further night and oblivion,
we went.

Marching, we take these storms
and devils burning within us,
these inborn enemies we carry,
our deathright and foul temper,
these seeds of the doom always
whispered at our backs as we
went, gloriously intransigent,
obdurate to a fault and yet
still fallible, great clouds of
nothingness upon our thundering
heels.

Marching, we take these storms
and tempest sparks, these
ungrieving wounds we ignore
until they are the death of us,
ever intemperate within the
ever widening sphere of night
and oblivion, going down to
further dusk, all energies
spent but scorn and bile,
passing bitterly from this
earth and into whatever
new realm will hold us.

Marching, we take these storms
of dying with a laugh, now
hollow, aching into further
night and oblivion, going
down to die like wild
dogs chained, feral and
broken, unequal to
surrender, damaged beyond
care or saving, yet still
awash with refusal and
the pride of the unbent,
doomed because doom
is our business and trade,
carried from cradle to grave
in every molecule and fiber,
eating ever inward in silence
until, like ancient suns, it
exhausts the fuel and burns
the vessel, and the marching
noise of boots and mean
laughter is finally drawn
to a permanent halt, and
we are reviled, then feared,
then wondered about, and
finally forgotten, even the
roads we walked faded,
even the scorched places
on the earth healed, even
the last generation of pale
progeny gone to dust, all
lands empty of the echoes
of our laughter.

Counterfeit Cosmos

2006-08-11T10:03:00.000-06:00

These things, wanted, leave a stain,
wanting revenge against the unyielding
dust of the centuries and all the truth
concealed by history, all the nameless
kings of twilight we don't know, all
these truths we've heard spoken and
yet have been ringing like false bells,
like the noonday clock when the shadow
falls far from us and at an obtuse angle
to the horizon, these constructions
perpetrated by the chroniclers of
history, these vaults that have been
stacked high, yet still echo with
sharp and clear noises from the
places where they’ve been robbed and
altered, and what purpose of these
stories and myths anyway, for we
pay little enough attention to them,
never learning even the manufactured
lessons set before us?

These movements, enacted, cannot be
revoked, they are not subject to the
backspace key or the delete button
or the quick revision of small facts,
and even if we agree to forget these
moments and never speak of them again,
we are still burdened by the knowledge,
of what has gone on, and more important,
the part we had to play in the whole
muted episode, these things that we
have done and then renounced, our
own contribution to the falsity of
the myth of the universe and
everything in it, all these people
who have rebuilt and created reality
and themselves.

These beliefs, inculcated, cannot simply
fade in the face of truth and alteration,
of new means by which the world is measured,
of sunlight poisoned by our own off-gassing
and industry, our false piety and unleavened
pride, these beliefs that turn upon us like
knives to the softest flesh and that we grind
upon while we turn and twist in our uneasy
sleep, haunted by that which we know
and that which we once took upon the
sacred, profane articles of faith misplaced.

These lives, lived, whether we think they
come to nothing or press their mark upon
the face of everyone nearby and even those
far beyond the distance of a stone's throw, are
only lives, strings of time collected and finally
cashed in for eternities of elsewhere and great
quantities of an unknown quantity beyond,
or perhaps nothing, and will we be so terribly
unhappy with nothing when it comes down to it,
and we are transmuted into dirt or ash blowing on
an a wind that wouldn't abate one single second
for us, wouldn't blow with greater force to spite us,
would never stoop so low as to recognize our
presence on the face of the earth, would we
really lie in our graves and agonize over
whether or not we were good in our days,
or if some superbeing from a higher vibration
of the universe disapproved of some
repeated failing on our part and wished us
to learn better in purgatory or hell,
or if we were sad spirits lingering in the ether
watching the lives we used to have?

These myths, created, written and spoken into
the corners of rooms by people down upon their
knees--perhaps they are on their knees at the
alter, or before that which they worship, or only
on bended knee before someone else's deified
flesh, but they each weave their pattern into the
fabric of the created universe, taking part in the
made truth, manufacturing the world every second,
and it's the cotton candy everyone's eating, this
self-cannibalizing fascination we call the world,
we ourselves fictitious and partaking of the fiction,
eating of our own lies and everyone else's equally,
and it is a beautiful, flawed, counterfeit cosmos,
billowing outward from us at the speed of a
carnival huckster’s roar from the gaudy, neon
podium, the big top’s faded canvas castle behind
us, the mighty, failing halo of the Ferris wheel
creaking, lurching its stationary progress above
our heads, we clever folk who manage forever
to bathe in the limelight of the stage and still
remain in the audience, slack jawed country
folk never managing to comprehend the
import of the play.

Similarly Perishable

2006-07-26T20:04:00.000-06:00

We are vulnerable
because the spirit
is rooted in the
body, the mind
contained within
the aging flesh
and brittling bone.

We are vulnerable
because, though
we invent time
upon waking and
forget it in dreams,
it forever etches us
like sand in the wind.

We are vulnerable,
we temporary angels
and makeshift gods
upon the spinning
face of a blue-white
marble in endless
space, mere specks
in the ocean of
all-there-is.

We are vulnerable,
yielding to the winds
and departing after
a fragment’s fragment
of a moment, but all
else, all things we
choose to love are
also momentary fancies,
and wouldn’t we
be the worse for it,
should we outlive
our place, and these
similarly perishable
fascinations of mind
and heart?

Being Primarily Absent...

2006-07-26T19:59:00.000-06:00

I beg forgiveness for my absence and silence, my friends. It seems that the summer's hustle and bustle has muted my poetic voice somewhat. I will endeavor as best I can to continue to write, though my pace, I fear, will be somewhat decreased. Do not give up hope, however. I am still here, and still thinking of all of you.

As an adjunct to this little apology, I will also say, "Sorry," to those people whose websites have been left unread and unpatronized by me. Rest assured, I shall return and make comments when time allows.

Well, then. I hope you are all doing well and keeping cool in this unreasonably hot summer.

Potential Energy Enthroned

2006-07-07T10:57:00.000-06:00

Haikus

This sanctified sweat
these hours upon the wheel
we will teach this flesh

This holy iron
the rumor of clanking plates
our steel communion

How much, how many
the catechisms of weight
this strength recorded

We are not alive
until the taste of death fills
our throats with ashes

We are not fulfilled
until the weight is too much
and we are vanquished

We cannot triumph
until the iron succumbs
and moves to our touch

Love, this metal war
this challenge the soul gives to
the mutable flesh.

Religion enough
we fall upon bended knee
before the loaded rack.

Faster

2006-06-19T12:28:00.000-06:00

The hot asphault shimmers,
giving them the air of the
mythical, the unreal, as
they approach the gasping
crowd, the open
whisper of the afternoon
falling before them
and their shreiking
steeds, this place
between purple
mountains where
dust rises from a
footfall despite the
thready barley
sprouting at the
verge of the track

And these armored
warriors charge
headlong at every
straight stretch, pulling
up hard and tilting
the horizon in their
frantic groupings
at the turnings in
the road, knees
skimming the ground,
elbows flung out wide,
drifting at the very
edge of control,
momentarily godlike
until one is overcome
by momentum and
flung from this
booming heaven of
speed, legs and arms
pinwheeling in the
flurry of dust,
steed bereft of
control and tumbling,
the ascendent shell
broken for a moment,
until the rider rises
from his cloud of
kicked-up soil and
is reborn, for a moment
mortal, but still great
and heroic upon the
earth, acclaimed
for his ride, his
fall, and his rise
from this dirt,

And we wish for these
things, deep in the
inchoate and unknown
cores of night when
fears overcome us
and we feel that nothing
we have done has
trancended, that we have
not become the heroes
we hoped we would
be when our heads
hardly overtopped
the stools at the
side of the breakfast
table, these moments of
bravery in the face of
danger, these intrepid
leanings into the callous
hands of fate, to sharpen
the tepid taste of the
everyday to such a
sweet ache of ectasy.

This Voice, This Arm, This Heart

2006-06-06T21:30:00.000-06:00

This voice, after speaking
loudly and long, unhinging
silence and throwing it aside

This voice, that shook the
trees with its sound and
force in its time

Has now reduced to a rasp,
a pitiful whisper of the
desert survivor with
blood dried in rusty
circles below his
nostrils, and skin
so burnt it will never
again regain its
pallor and the
hollow look of
wandering saints
in his eyes if that
can be called wisdom.

This arm, after swinging
the heaviest of hammers
upon the stone and breaking
it by the ton

This arm, whose prowess
laid in the roadbed and
guided the team of horses
across the wilds

Who stretched these thin
and winding ribbons further
outward, remaking the
horizon for those who
lacked the will of their
own, and who were timid
of this crushing burden,
and the stinging of
sweat rolling ever into
their eyes, and the
blinding sun at the
declivity between sky
and earth, whose very
point was ever his destination
until it turned into sea
for he was no sailor
but a landsman, the
waves with their
momentary gold
none of his concern.

This arm, upon whose
force has moved
generations of people

Is now weathered and
robbed of its power
and it shakes when
his hand grasps a
drinking cup and
brings it to sick and
purple lips in the
slow and pungent
afternoon, this
deathbed that
stifles the sounds
of children playing
outside and renders
their laughter hollow
and the quiet house
rings with a constant
echo of things past

But in amongst the
great deeds and glory
of this one who was
once mighty on the earth
is the aching salt of
those things sacrificed
and forgone, and no
less acidic for their
mundane scope

For if he can remember
the hard, slick, solid
haft of the hammer
against his palm
in better detail than
the tiny hand of his
baby daughter, if
he can remember
impersonal accolades
better than the
soft whisper of
his loved ones on
a holiday morning,
if he can have a
plaque dedicated to
his service in the
public square, but
lay here dying all
alone...

This heart, once having
beat as true and deep
as any marching drum,
loses its rhythm and
grows ragged, nearing
the end, regretful as
we all must be, frail
as anyone, his hour
upon the stage full
expired, and no less
left unfinished than
we timid folk who
have not striven for
such great heights.

Long Time Gone

2006-06-06T21:26:00.000-06:00

Sorry, everyone, for my long hiatus from blogging. Nothing earthshaking happened. I wasn't abducted by aliens, thrown in the poor house, or eaten by bears. Just that whole, pesky life thing getting in the way. Well, if anyone's still out there, here's one.

Cheers,

Patrick

Encapsulating the Horizon

2006-05-24T20:08:00.000-06:00

For the eagle,
it is easy enough
to rise up from this
mountain lake, to
soar above the
aspen and the
pines, encapsulating
the horizon,
from the blue
hills far off to
the peach colored
buttes closer in,
from the cloying
brush at the
water’s edge to the
bare rock of the
cliffside.

For the eagle,
the strong sun
at 8,000 feet is
only a warming
of the flight feathers,
the booming wind
off the ridge a
staircase to climb,
an easy hand to
keep him aloft
and far above
the business of
the tractor and
the pickup down
in the valley.

For the eagle,
this arid land
of jackrabbit and
mule deer, this
land long bereft
of the sea that
made it, is a
home just as
good as another,
his aerie in the
cliffwall a vault
of silence, inviolate,
impervious as yet
to our incursion,
and if he hears
the sound of a rifle
thudding its monotonous
tone from the arroyo,
so be it, and if he
sees us, making our
clumsy way on
horseback across the
slickrock, so be it,
and if he sees the
contrails of an airliner
crossing the cerulean
expanse of his sky,
so be it.

For the eagle, these
recent additions,
these temporary
alterations we have
made, our strange
search for comfort and
commerce—these
foolish things can
only intrude so much,
and he has flown above
the quiet towns and
their tall motel signs,
their liquor stores and
gas pumps, the hand-fed,
fat sparrows giving way
easily to his talons, a
feather floating down
atop the idle lawn tractor
for a moment and then blowing
into the irrigation cut and
heading outward into
spring green fields.

For the eagle, the
air is not the same,
but again, it has not
yet become so different
that he cannot soar, and
easily escape the earth,
with its empty beer bottles
and discarded rocking
chairs, with its diesel
noise and roadway
graters, with its gawking
tourists beside their
Subarus, with its
leathernecked locals,
embroiled in their
own slow tradgedies
in the backyard.

For the eagle, this
red land yet remains
wild enough to
call home.

Lightin' out for the Territories

2006-05-17T23:08:00.000-06:00

Hey All,

After spending half my precious week of vacation running around like a headless chicken, I'm off and out of town. It's been a long time, and I miss the canyons. They can wait forever for my return, but I am more perishable than that, so here goes. I'll be back around on Monday. Until then, please stay safe and be well.

Patrick

The Coast Road

2006-05-09T13:41:00.000-06:00

This road,
with its rising
verge of green,

and the dark
earth below,
strung with
seams of quartz
and granite,

and the patient
stand of maples
that abide atop the
ridge despite the
wind coming off the
ocean in winter,

and the silence of
this ancient steam
train, stopped and
entombed with a
twisting of grass,

with the smell of
creosoted wood
slowly turning to
powder on a damp
day in early spring,

with the coy sound
of a shy robin, the
quick twitch of its
head, the sparkle
of its dark eye, its
wingbeat as it lights
in the rough grass of
the field and pecks
down an insect,

and the clouds will
clot up and join
ranks as the day
goes on, blunting
the sunlight to a
silvery gray,

with occasional
rain spitting down
to hang in my hair
and darken my
shoulders,

but I am glad of it
and glad there are
no cars trundling
noisly by on this
dark and stony road,
but only the scenery,
and the audible hush
of distant trees, and
the phantom, sublimated
rush and retreat of the
ocean.

Glorified

2006-05-04T20:40:00.000-06:00

Here are these concerns--
the liquid and the dream,
all those who have been
composed of water, and
bonded to elements of
the earth, and powered
by the stellar fires of
that dark and airless
heaven above

Here are these concerns--
the sunlight and the tomb,
all those walking in dusk
and dreaming ever closer
to the coffins and urns of
evening, and as they find
their everlasting grasp on
this place will be their
entrance into the earth,
becoming food for another
thousand generations,
forms alterable, and the
afterlife means being
subsumed and consumed
and glorified in the insect's
carapace or the tree branch
or the flower's petal,
for every and ever, amen

Here are these concerns--
and small ones they are,
but we are, for this moment,
ourselves, made up of all
the millions of generations
and their dust, this glorified
husk, fearful of the moment
when we, too, will enter
eternity.

Zephira

2006-04-27T17:20:00.000-06:00

She pervades the place,
becomes the most important
thing, like the sound of water
in the desert, and even
stubborn animals would
easily take to their knees
before her.

She is a pleasure,
one that must not be kept
secret, but told in a furtive
voice to the next person,
spreading like rumors
in the market district,
spreading like sand
that comes in under the
space beneath the door
when the simmoom
rages and the camels
make their lament
by the side of the caravansary.

She is a dream, like the
smell of the ocean far
inland, or the sight of
a sea bird perched atop
the palm tree on the most
distant of all oases, like
the dimmer stars behind
the bright and obvious
points of light, only seen
when all the world is still
and quiet, and there is no
candle to light another's
face.

She pervades this place,
or perhaps, she only pervades
me, and this dream, this fever
of her is only bright and sparking
within the walls of this
one mind, only the diamonds
which glisten within this
clenched fist, held skyward
at the verge of the waters
where the violence of the
desert is thwarted.

Hatathli

2006-04-24T15:23:00.000-06:00

He rose up,
lined face like
old, oil darkened
wood,

shirt fraying at
the cuff and collar,

sweat-stained
Stetson hat the
color of dust,

long silver hair
drawn back and
clasped against
his neck with a
turquoise and
sliver broach,

and the sound of
his voice was
very clear against
the tapestry of the
oncoming twilight,

and the wind left the
sky and all was quiet,
clear as midwinter
without the chill,

and he sung the long
songs of ancestors and
eons, his boots kicked
off and shapeless with
wear beside the the
hand-woven rug,

and his feet were pale,
his ankles thin and
bony, his toes curled
with age and each nail
thick and hardened yellow,

and the movements
of his hands meant
things I couldn’t
put words to, but
I felt them, felt them
in the marrow of the
bones with each turning,
each phantom reaching
into souls of other
bards from another
generation,

and the speaking song
he told out against the
tapestry of the stars being
born spoke of the lost
things—of the ancient
worlds beneath the
ground,

and how animals
talked then, and how
we could understand
them, our ears undeafened
in the first lands of earth,

and how people once knew
the secret of breathing, of
walking in beauty and
needing nothing but what
the land could offer,

and how those worlds were
abandoned, always in the
quest for more, or better,
or different, and that perhaps
this place, too, would be
thought of as an ancient
world someday,

with different suns plowing
furrows in foreign skies,

and earth unknown to us
sifting slowly between our
toes upon the verge of
some vast and unknown
desert.

The Principle of Moments

2006-04-19T14:53:00.000-06:00

She is small, ephemeral as dry bedsheets stirring in a south wind, and gravity has never hung heavy upon her. She dips on her feet, bending at the knee to peer at the sun’s reflection on the surface of the water, and it seems that she could take flight and leave the restraint of the ground, and I say nothing, heavy limbed, half-sleeping, moving into the tedium of midmorning. I move forward one place in the line for coffee, or a glass of milk, or that chocolate mousse cake I always consider getting, but am never willing to pay the price of a fast food lunch to get, and also wonder if it wouldn’t make me sick to my stomach, and on the way back, with my customary drink that I buy because I don’t need exact change to purchase it, I see a woman in a leather jacket, kneeling on the carpet to peer into an oddly placed computer screen, and I consider the implications of kneeling, and the hidden, darker remembrances of another year, now hardly seeming as if those events ever happened to me. And then I am gone, and the morning is gone, and the beverage cup sits at the bottom of the garbage can, and the annoying song they use for commercials plays on the radio again, complete with all the insipid lyrics they cut out for that purpose, and all the people who hear it are tethered to the earth, and their desks, and their computer terminals, and a man with sandals walks an old Labrador retriever by the window, and they each are filled with a terrible pang of envy.