A Warm Touch In Cold Woods
Ink is text juice
Wrung from blood
Tracks untrue
Lure to traps
Spring is pounce
Fall is over
Winter loses
Summer calls
Hidden in leaves
Clinging to branches
Oral sex in a
Swaying tree’s embrace
Prayer works only to
Raise and focus one’s
Energy and effort.
There are things
We cannot do
Miracles are anomalies
The mechanism for which
We do not yet know.
Lightning rods draw strikes
Inducing anomalies
Because we grasped the mechanism.
Before lightning rods
Bolts from the blue
Symbolized random.
Now is always the time
To honor ancient deities
A season of mysteries
In times of swirling abandonment
Travel the spirit world
Walk with your boon companion
In words, by streams of
Endless thought shapes.
/// /// ///
/ W B Kek
#
When nothing is left
But blunt reality
We see
We stand on rocks
Slick with slime
In a tidal pool
Warmed by a
Bloated sun, the air
A dance of humidity,
Our sky electric with
Lightning, dark with smoke
From birthing volcanoes.
We cry
Our cries
Subsumed by
Roiling seas, flying spray,
Wind lashing in fitful slaps.
We grow toward
Light and stillness.
Entropy just laughs.
/ W B Kek, “Hephaestus In Despond”
66 words, 20 lines
#
In the Alcove
It’s funny, what one is worth, isn’t it?
You know the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind”
but you never know how painful it can be.
A masterless samurai is a ronin.
What is a knight errant with no scarf?
Does errant cover that?
What is he worth?
Where is the light?
No sun, no stars, milady Moon a sliver caught in scud.
I know why knights went on impossible, suicidal quests.
Slaying dragons keeps you busy.
Fat is my dragon.
More widely, health.
This alcove is snug though.
Could easily be a grave.
I hear Procol Harum’s “Conquistador”,
“Under Cover of the Night” by the Stones,
So many more cries of anguish, despair, and defiance.
Some muses wander.
“Are you leaving me?”
“Don’t you trust me?”
Yes. Oh yes, milady, yes.
And then nothing.
No words.
Not a touch in passing.
Not a smile across a crowded room.
Not an instant spared to say ‘I’m here, all is well.’
One is left to kindle faith from damp twigs in a blizzard.
All one wants is the sun’s return.
Light and warmth, that bright regard.
Yet echoes in the wilderness ask questions.
Echoes of those echoes kindle the smoke of doubt.
It is worth it, after all?
Is it foolish tilting at a windmill giant only you can see?
Is it you doing all the work to build a castle of clouds?
Is it you alone holding one end of a rope tied to air?
Dignity in the fall remains a choice.
Become stone stood in barren land.
Stone can roll downhill only to the flats.
Stand up to catch what light may fall to you.
Gather shadows as your due.
Iron filings fly without will.
Draw; do not be drawn.
A lodestone’s boulder be.
/// /// ///
#
Cthonic Plea Sans Divinity’s Grace
Spectral stone, striations gradient of shadowed truth
Split flat, fashioned into stained stone majesty,
Our window into frozen hearts bequeaths us colors
Buried under unseen time, uncovered, happy accident,
In violent strikes against a stock-still earthen mound;
In artifacts lie evidence of erstwhile tragedy,
Mere proof we sang before unheard in time’s wilderness.
Dig deeper down to find me.
Pull harder now to raise me to your light.
/// /// ///
#
I heard an echo
Turned
Looked back at
Myself peering
At me in the dark
Because he
Heard an echo.
/ W B Kek, “Only”
#
How you enflame me
How you endgame me
How you reduce me to toy
How you entice me
Once, twice, and thrice me
How you induce me to buoy
With our words
How you engage me
How you last page me
How you produce in me joy
With your words
/ W B Kek, “As She Plays”
#
A star and the Sun are the same
Distance intervenes
We see them so differently
Perspective is our trap
We are One
No Separation
Sun Moon Stars Ourselves
/ Ayujen Tetari, Tenshin Monastery
#
Careful writing is faceted work.
Layered writing adds depth, like animation.
Layers fed pane by pane, cell by cell,
Through a single hungry lens.
Ferocious, desperate writing
Leaps chasms, often sailing into fire,
Diving into lava, seeking magma
At the heart of story’s core.
It can also soar above the fray;
What soars, plunges into chaos.
Height echoes depth, yearning to ignite.
Intensity births a cosmic reach,
Engenders calamitous falls.
How we write when left to discover self
Determines which worlds choose us.
/ W B Kek, “A Dream’s Stumble Into the Trenches”
#
Marks Made By Existence Upon Reality’s Stone
Mysteries impose and reinforce
Order upon the chaos of crime.
Horror reverses that formula,
Taking order of all sorts apart,
Scattering it, leaving us stranded.
Science fiction imposes order
On the future and, more generally,
On the unknown in any form.
Fantasy orders dreamland’s swirl
Of change and unpredictability.
Romance orders affairs of the heart,
Flames of the loins, cascades of passion,
Tames sex into a managed, mannered
Dance of sinuous ballroom slithers.
Mainstream describes literary chaos
Without regard to order being imposed,
Celebrating direct experience over thought,
Or cerebration’s victory over mere flesh.
Erotica puts our id in handcuffs,
Puts in order our disheveled bed of bitten nails,
Describes libido’s fevered lusts,
Imbues words with a glistening gloss of need.
Each writer imagines choice in what is written
Choice there is, as form and genre, line and shade
Choose us, as muses in their glory smile.
/// /// ///
11:56 Wed 12 Feb 2014
#
You hear about these terrible things.
You think people don’t do that, do they?
But they do, they really do snatch kids,
Women, anyone to use in unimaginable ways,
To keep hostage in dungeons, root cellars;
To rape, to murder, to mutilate.
They really do such appalling things.
Their atrocities masked by easy smiles,
Kind voices, generous gestures.
These monsters can be great neighbors,
Good friends, cherished relatives.
they can be respected community members,
Pillars of society, even celebrities
Whose mere presence draws attention,
Whose charisma excites crowds.
Most are average, though. Most your gaze
Passes over without hitch or snag,
Never catching on the sharp hooks
Kept so well-hidden behind their nothingness.
Unless you are one of the unlucky ones.
If you are unlucky, you get a lesson
To last the rest of your suddenly shortened life.
/// /// ///
Samael Gyre, “Atonement’s Lament”
#
Thoughtful people know they’re alone in a hostile world.
Too many are content to accept what the world dishes out.
Some decide to fight back by whatever means possible.
These are not so easily satisfied by accident’s share.
They demand more, Oliver Twisting their leveraged bets,
Scrooging to get what they want in the face of all ghosts.
They arrange things so accident, if it happens at all,
If it can find a way to weasel into the clogged pipes of planning,
Will benefit them with concentrated, not diffused, effects.
Among such people are a few who choose to ignore society,
Abandoning rules entirely, shrugging off constraint and scoffing
At restraint, humility, or modest gains as they live an
Autonomous life, doing as they wish and sloughing off
Consequence and responsibility as burdens of fools
Less aware than they of life’s grand lack of design.
Sociopaths, they’re called by polite society, despite
Being unable to see their path, perceive their view.
Precipitous, their path, so steep it dizzies and appalls
Mere human beings, one that invigorates the psychopathic few
Who imagine themselves strong enough to blaze trail there
On the isolated peaks and crags of utter isolation.
For such are often mistaken for leaders.
Monsters, they’re called in the dark by shivering huddled children.
This because the mundane call anything they cannot grasp,
Anything that scares them, monstrous and profane.
You’ve now taken the first tentative steps along the monster’s path.
Are you stern enough, dauntless of risk, daring to pursue your shadow?
How far does your inner vision reach into backlit darkness?
How far will each of you go in the footsteps of wilder beasts?
/// /// ///
Moonlit Drop Trembling / 12:50 Wed 12 Feb 2014
#
Headlines called him The Invisible Billionare.
His fortune flowed from music, TV, documentaries, and movies;
Real-estate came next, high-end resorts in wilderness
Where the rich could relax without leaving a footprint.
He insisted a third of the guests be drawn from those
Who could pay only a token of the exorbitant usual fee.
He was in the media as regularly as breathing but
Moved from entertainment to hard news
When a woman vanished while visiting one of his resorts,
A mansion in London, England’s different wilderness.
Police suspected him of wild party accident, the wages
Of sinful excess, and public opinion’s kangaroo court
Hopped to its usually vicious conclusion, calling for blood,
Mad for revenge on behalf of someone they’d never met.
Missing person case shifted to murder with political pressure
The hand on the hidden gear shift of power, vrooming toward
Offering up another sacrifice to insatiable public lusts,
Each worth a vote in sham democratic processes, each
Sealing a leak in the hull of the political ship of cash.
He vanished before any evidence could be cobbled against him.
Media howled that he’d fled, was in hiding, proof of guilt, yet
No sign, trace, or clue of him bubbled up from the muck they stirred so well.
He surfaced thirty-five years later in Omaha, Nebraska, USA,
Working as a volunteer investigator of cold cases for the police.
He declined all interviews and kept helping solve stalled, stale cases,
Bringing a measure of calm to families left in free fall for so long.
/// /// ///
Split & Splice
13:39 Wed 12 Feb 2014 C.E.
