Millstone

To err is human, to forgive divine

But I’m no god, no angel, and therefore

I’ll own the frail humanity that’s mine

Eschew forgiveness and admit that flaw

Amazing grace is offered, but you know

If what you did was part of His great plan

Then call on Him, for Him to mercy show,

For He’s amazing.  I am just a man.

A Light Motive

Old demons never die, they simply dim their flames

And decompose through all the crime scene stages

Righteous hatred stiffening in the rigor of history

Prodded and examined, Questioned and challenged,

The images of fire debated and heat’s meaning discussed.

Then decomposition sets in and infernal foulness

Mulches down in parody and meme's rich loam

And makes of slicing stamping real, a simple word

A name to slander any, every, thing disliked,

Dust, then, to dust in sleeping eyes and demons wake

Unnoticed and unjust they change their name and sing

The same old songs, bright torchlit rallies seen anew

Men in rows, coloured spectacles where e-books burn

And the old fire kindles and liberty turns to face

The dawn with open, readied, leveled arms.

Jody Call

Drumbeats tonight and every night

Distant enough that you can lie to yourself

That it’s within you

Hypertense blood fleeing the pounding rhythm

Corpuscular refugees surge and rest, surge and rest,

Fading, flagging, carried in the current panic

Until depleted coming round again, again, again

To the drump, drump, drump

Of the remorseless heart and its everlong cadence,

Drum of the body politic, marking days gone and going

Bye, Koo.

Counting syllables

Does not make a haiku, pal

There's much more to them.

An exposition in verse of conditions, both meterological and biological, experienced during a daily commute from home to work.

Inside fire, and mist outside

Unpleasant, lengthy, morning ride

In Support of the Land of Crasti

They were here, right here, I’m sure

Last night before I slept I’m sure I left them here

By the bed, by the alarm clock

Ready for me to pick up in the morning

I almost babble with panic as fingers scrabble

Over throat lozenges and fake wood veneer

Filled to bursting with the stuff I picked up in school

And added to with things I shaped myself

(haphazard and unwieldy though they were)

Shining and polished, and so so many of them

All ready to use, right here, I’m sure they were

Where did they go?  

Could they have been so carelessly mislaid

Or did some thief, clever-creeping come to my room

In the night

In the silence

And take them away?

My years.  Where have they gone?

(in response to Studio30Plus prompt "Babble")

Anathema Drumbeat

In the dusty caverns of the temple, in the burned out ashes of the hall

In the empty echoing of ages we stand and smile and silence takes it all

Through the endless empty march of seconds, Through the days so brilliant and bleak

Through the nights and through the days so foolish, are we quite so foolish as to speak?

Where’s the voice that once proclaimed the sunlight, Where’s the hand that framed the tyger’s fire

Where’s the blood the drowned a deadly serpent?  Who’s the fool who dares to thus enquire?

We will raise our voices in the silence, we will raise our hands to show our cause,

We will shed our blood if blood needs shedding, fear and fright will never give us pause

We have something shining and surpassing, We have life that quickens every heart.

We have that within that passeth knowledge, We have light and darkness. We have art.

(For Studio30Plus and their prompt "Anathema")

Here is wisdom.

“Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

Transformation

An alchemist scowled and he said

While gloomily scratching his head

Perhaps I’m too old

To turn self into gold

I guess I’m too easily led.

In Response to Studio30Plus' Prompt "Guess" or "Reckon"

The Watchers on the Wall

An extract from a manuscript discovered in the ruins of Lughdunum in the early 24th century following the great Barcode Wars.  It appears to have been a satirical play, author unknown.

This extract is from Act III of the play and takes place in Adlerstan on the Great Border

Guard 1 (entering):

What news my friend?  The waste beyond the wall?

Guard 2: 

Remains, unchanged. A desolation still.

Guard 1:

This watch is wearisome to me, and is

To each man of renown a burden bleak.

But needful, so they say, our pleasant land

To save and to preserve from evil days.

Guard 2:

What days more evil than those days we have

Could come upon us?

Guard 1:

Soft, and speak no more.

Such words as those are barbed, and pierce and tear,

And risk enough to hear, much less to speak.

There’s men enough to bear a tale for coin

And not for me the prison camp offshore.

Captain (entering):

What ho, what ho, you sturdy men and true

Guard 1:

Captain, good day

Guard 2:

Good day my captain bold.

Captain:

Good day indeed, dear lads, for I have news

Today our watch is brightened from above

For to the wall there comes to see our watch

And I predict on us to praises heap

Our leader, the eternal ruler Trump

Preserved by Art a century and more

Oh glory, glory and such glory thrice

To see our leader, why it’s…

Guard 1:

Very nice?

Oh Captain do we have the right to see

This wondrous Trump, the first of God’s decree

This paragon of triumph and of will?

This golden one?  Oh may he rule us still.

Guard 2:

Your irony is showing friend, back off

Captain:

What did you say my man?

Guard 2:

‘Twas just a cough.

Captain:

Stand to, good men and true, stand to indeed

And every buckle shine and button close

Your halberds and your crossbows polish all

I’ll go escort our leader to the wall

(exit)

Guard 1:

Great God in heaven is this not enough

To insult heap on this injurious toil

To have to smile and fawn on this… on this..

Bewigged, befouled vainglorious old boil!

Guard 2:

Peace, he comes, peace and speak no more your mind

(enter Captain and TRUMP an iron-lung on tracks, a bouffant blond wig blowing on top of it)

Captain:

Hail to the chief, good men, and Hail Indeed

Guard1:

Hail Trump, oh steel encased and mighty one

Guard 2:

Hail Trump, Lord of a time now spent and gone

TRUMP:

GOOD BOYS GOOD BOYS THE JOB YOU DO IS SWELL

TO STAND AND GUARD THIS BORDER WALL OF HELL

FROM TIMES WHEN LIFE WAS SMOOTH I CHOSE OUR FATE

AND AS I SWORE I MADE OUR COUNTRY GRATE

Captain:

Haha, good one, a double meaning there

Guard 1:

Good one my lord

Guard 2:

and is that really hair?

TRUMP:

YOU’RE DOING GREAT.  THAT’S IT I HAVE TO GO

AND RULE SOME MORE THE SHEEPLE DOWN BELOW

SOME GREAT NEW LAWS WILL SHORTLY BE ENACTED

TO SCREW THE [RACIAL EPITHET REDACTED]

AND SOON YOU’LL SEE MY PLAN WILL BE COMPLETED

DAMN THEM [RACIAL EPITHET DELETED]

(he trundles away followed by the Captain)

Narrator:

And so our tale must end this shocking scene

Of futures bleak, that current moods may presage.

And so, your humble narrator I’ve been,

I'm Thomas Marlowe – I endorse this message

(exeunt omnes)

In answer to Studio30Plus' prompt "VAINGLORIOUS"

Sneaky bug(ger)s

What would you do if you were a tiny insect and prey to those swooping swirling creatures of the night that can track you by sonar?

Obvious isn't it?

You learn to jam the sonar.

Bertholdia trigona, a moth native to the Arizona desert, emits ultrasonic clicks at a rate of 4,500 times per second to blur bats' acoustic vision

Next question.

What species are moving amongst us now that have the same jamming capabilities for our senses... and how would we ever know?

"there were never such devoted sisters..."

Some things just cry out for backstory, even though I know in my heart of hearts that the truth of the situation cannot live up to the possibilities.

I like to think that this wasn't some one-off dispute that had got really out of hand, but evidence of a subculture of devoted-duellists who would travel Europe seeking to settle doctrinal disputes the old fashioned way.     One red bead on the rosary for every confirmed kill as a badge of rank.

Romanian villagers: Why investigate vampire slaying? We know what we're doing?

Typical government sticking their noses in where they're not needed.

Before Toma Petre's relatives pulled his body from the grave, ripped out his heart, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it, he hadn't been in the news much. That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24587203.html#storylink=cpy

LINK

Debtor's Prison

“The trouble with the old stories,” said the old man, thick smoke clinging to his hair as he paused to draw on his cigarette and exhale luxuriously, “is that they never end properly.”

Since his audience consisted of two young drunkards in a Boston nightclub he didn’t get much of a reaction.  The two men, students by the look of them, lounged on the couch across from him and nodded wobbly heads for politeness sake.

“They have ends, but they don’t end,” the old man continued.   “They come back in different ways.   You should read some of the old folk tales from before Disney took his gelding shears to them.  Blood and fire, torture and death and no happy endings mostly.   They should have been allowed to rest in peace instead of dragged from their rest and prettied up.  Like putting a ribbon in a corpse’s hair.”

Another long draw on his cigarette.   “Still he ended up as a head in a frozen jar so the laugh’s on him.   Still awake from what I hear, frozen and aware.   Serves the bastard right.    Like Loki.”

Seeing no hint of recognition on the two listeners he explained.   “The god.   Well half god, half giant.  Chained to a rock beneath the earth, venom dripping on his face from a big bastard of a snake.   Frozen in place and aware of his pain forever.  Just like Disney.”

“Bullshit,” said the shorter of the two men opposite, but without acrimony.

“Probably,” admitted the man.   “Anyway my point is… my point is the stories should be left to end.  But they don’t.  Let me tell you about last week.

“A man came into this club, this very club.   He was a little older than you boys, tall and good looking in a don’t get too close sort of way.  Fair hair with a shine of red when he passed under the lights.   The sort of man that just stinks of skulduggery.   Don’t laugh, it’s a good word.  An old word.   Older than you think it is, that word.   Anyway he was a no good bastard is what I mean.   He bought drinks for people, he laughed and he joked and he flirted with all the best looking women.  Successful too, what we used to call honey-tongued.

“Anyway he ended up taking one of those girls, Sabrina or Selena or some such name, off by themselves for a little while.   And while he was out of the room someone else came in through the front door.   Oh she was something.   Tall and strong, long golden hair, eyes that burned blue.  Nobody could take their eyes of her but she didn’t look like someone here to dance.   Looked like trouble.  Looked like someone hoping to call in a debt.  And guess who she was looking for?

“The man himself was in the corridor outside the rest room, making out with Selena or Sabrina or whatever.  Getting hot and heavy.    Then all of a sudden she tries to pull away.   ‘Something’s burning,’ says she.   He just holds her all the tighter and then something screwy happens.   She makes this god awful choking noise and then pushes him away.    The guy’s lost all his swagger now, looks confused, scared.   He stumbles away and heads for the fire exit.   Meanwhile Sabrina or Selena stands up tall and straight, checks herself out in a mirror on the wall and smiles like she likes what she sees.

“Just then the debt collector woman comes barrelling through the corridor, and I swear to God she had a sword in her hand, a damn great sword.  Out she goes through the fire exit after Sonny Jim and she doesn’t come back.  Not that night anyway.   Meanwhile Sabrina, or Selena, or whatever the hell she calls herself now goes back to the club to drink some more and dance and get laid.   What do you think of that?”

“Still sounds like bullshit,” said the young man who’d spoken before, “how do you know what happened?  Were you watching them make out you sick old bastard?”

The old man drew on his cigarette again, “You know me too well,” he said.   Across the club he saw a tall woman enter, haloed in the light of the club entrance, eyes burning and a debt to collect.    He blew his smoke out across the men opposite, and the big guy, the more drunk one of the two coughed and looked angry.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his shorter companion, “I need some air.”   He pulled the other man to his feet and they turned to walk away from the old man, now looking confused and lost.

“Crazy old bastard,” said the short man as they walked past the woman who’d just arrived, not noticing her sudden fierce pace.  “Skulduggery huh?”

“Old word,” said his no longer drunk friend, opening the door and stepping out into the cold night air, “Comes from the Icelandic.  Skuldari.  Means someone who’s trying to skip out on a debt.   Let’s go get something to eat.”

In response to Studio30Plus prompt "Skulduggery" 

Image by Tony Jacobson