Last Whispered Howl

 W.B. Preston

The Geese a flock away from heated pits, flap plucked wings sufficed to fail afloat
fast-held homes, imitation castles, photocopied tombs with elaborate floor plans
ghastly fixed yawns on the faces of specters waft through and haunt the cobwebbed hallways
empty but for the musty aged forgotten breath of men.

Yet to forget is to imply memory, can oblivion remember? Can we rewind the void? Can I skip by the commercials of infinity? I DVR'd the Apocalypse, I'll time shift the resurrection, catch it on the way back up the spine of eternity.

Castle foundations swayed atop the shivering crust of earth. Bricks broken apart by wind and rain, but your couch will last forever. Nestled in the cushions of digital dreams of doom downloaded directly into your subconscious.  Is it delicious? The dire dance, move and shake, if you stop you die. The taps and the shimmies and jiggles, keep rhythm with the bouncing sun, it twirls round this dark room, the disco ball of night splash shimmers on the sweat drenched face of love, dont stop. Cant stop. Never stop.

Watch as they turn their heads away, "We only wish to know of the light!" they cry, "do not tell us of the dusk, do not tell us of the void."

Inexperience of the dark, ignorance of the night, is to perceive half of the story, to know but half of self is to be blind to the light. Without the dark there is no light. Venture into that great abyss, into the nothing and come back with true sight.

Though journey cautiously, for many have been claimed by the night. To be a shadow in the void is to be lost. Be guided by the eyes light, to find a way home. However brief your stay may be, for eventually we all must be claimed, in the womb of the void.

The ghosts greet you with a grin, exposed beneath torn and ripped flesh you spot the rotted teeth and shallow souls of men who once were. The rush of wind through empty caverns blows out from hideous broken walls, the last howls of a whisper on the ears of a dead society. The wanderers of thought, lost in their heart, and fallen civilizations of dark, march on the graves devoid of spirit.

Forgotten trampled dust, beneath the perfect, freshly shined black leather tightly tied boots of time.  It takes courage for flesh to release the grip over bones that plead to fall to the earth and decay. Animated skeletons unmoved.

Taste defeat, take a sip of failure. The day of every defeat belongs to the dreamer outlived by the dreams. Your echo vibrates further than you, so let the cries of pain and joy flow from your own personal void and into the void of the collective.

The destinations of all destinations, through the funnel of space, the Alpha Dawn. Every word every light drains back into the void, to the dark dense orb of matter, where everything is condensed and spun into the ball of fate. The ALL.

It spins, it burns and melts all the dust and light and dreams back to their liquid core. Where everything becomes one, and the spinning slowly stops, and the ball cools and freezes and drops and it hurtles through nothing picking up speed and begins to twirl gathering heat gathering speed gently expanding then gradually exploding sending everything everywhere. And we are here again, crying and laughing, at the majesty, at the beauty, at the splendor, at the precision, of the void, the all the mighty the light, the pain of infinity is felt by all. The collective ALL.

Children love to spin, men love to fall, and the fire engulfs us as we bask under the heart of stars.

Worlds of Wishes Safe from Living the Growth of the Soul

Worlds of Wishes Safe from Living the Growth of the Soul

W.B. Preston

Where far enough from home mere steps cannot discern true progress til steps begin to number far larger and measure distances between the heart and the soul, between who we are and who we were. Searching for mountains in a world of mounds, dreams cut deeper than any knife, and waking up lost twisting the mind backwards and up is more comforting than waking up found forever amidst familiar surroundings of home. The mind surges forward burning memories and using the ashes to mold more, excited, electric, who is that, where are they, what day is it today, which way does the sun move here? Lights illuminate unfamiliar windows in foreign hills safe from danger, safe from life, the people safe from living, safe from dying, safe from change, safe from the growth of the soul spilling out over the edges of a predetermined prepackaged, hermetically sealed sanitized existence, with out worry or wonder, is without worlds of wishes. Or the things that feed the spirit. Crashing hurts, but it feels good to burn, cause the soul burns with the fires of infinity, the mind recognizes what the heart remembers. Dangling from the point of a star, fingers losing grip, hovering over the great beyond, how long can you hold on to nothing? 

Is it insane to try to escape sanity? We are all the same, in every way except the one that counts. The journey of conquering self is far more challenging than the conquering of any perceived exterior threat. The stakes are higher and the obstacles larger. The greater the enemy the greater the hero, and what enemy is greater than the self? For he knows you inside and out, all your weaknesses, all your strengths, all your tricks and secrets and lies. You cannot hide from yourself, better to face him at the summit of truth. The wars of men are fought at the nadir of illusion, the crime of thought dancing on the lips of the false, the horned sculptors of hell man made and sold as sane. Marching into foreign hills and dashing away a world's wish of peace. It must be insane to watch the sane lie, manipulate, steal, kill, mislead, degrade, horde, accuse, sentence, pollute, withhold, execute, and ultimately hide from their victims. Do the sane feed the mouth without feeding the spirit? 

These so called captains,depicted as sane, hide from the light, from truth, from their own dreams. They've chosen to live in a cage of nightmares, with a prepackaged  hermetically sealed soul, rather than a free prism of light, and for what? Some semblance of comfort, some momentary fleeting resemblance of power? A placebo of control, the only true control is control of self, the only true power is power over self. Power or control over others, is the ego completely out of control, and out of balance with nature and the spirit and soul from which we all come from and share. Castles melt, money burns, and we remain. How long can you hold on to nothing? Aim wildly for the floating drops of rain each one individual falling and blessed with a name, screaming that we their brethren try never to be the same,and to embrace the change in the weather. It's okay to fall cause you'll catch you.

The Darkly Golden Room

The Darkly Golden Room

 

W.B. Preston

Stretching to cover the canopy of a dream with a paint filled with the stars of eternity,

the wind spins atop the wheel twirling the clouds across this imagined ceiling.

Wide asleep I lay,

as she whispers tales of the silver skies filled with purple burrowing moles amongst the dirt in the

sky.

And the buckets of rain the hand maidens emptied to try to fill the holes made by the moles.

Recounting the myths now to you, I cry, though at the time I lay still and silent, for her words billow

softly in the golden shimmer of the night.

The ground is so far away from our feet while we paint, no star the same as the last.

We cover the holes the maidens could not, though the moles were nowhere to be seen.

And then she was gone, and I painted alone, but for the light of the stars,

twinkling shimmering pale blue, the clink of celebratory champagne glasses cheered

from across the galaxy awoke me from my bed of light and sand.

The pebbles fell from the side of the bed as I stood

I nearly slipped on the pinpoint grains of light.

Slipping on my cotton candy house shoes I tip toe not to disturb the giant mole sleeping at the foot of

the bed.

 His grand snores shake the room, but the stars do not budge, like chandeliers,

whose light is impossible but whose attachment is unmatched.

She returns, the woman whispering dreams, but now she screams and the mole jumps awake

burrowing into the floor and pulling the ground into his hole.

I grasp for the lamp and it explodes into glowing floating sand, as does the rest of the darkly golden

room,

whose pebbles spin down the moles hole,

downward we twirl, spinning in a whirlwind of glimmering dust and darkness.

She whispers to me, as the orange and purple glow inches over the edge of the dark sphere,

and my freshly painted ceiling falls from sight,

in the wake of a roar, and the blinding light.

Monkey Hubris

Monkey Hubris 

 

W.B. Preston

 

 

 

          Once a monkey sat atop a tree, peeling and eating bananas, in a most unusual fashion, and tossing the peels to the ground beneath. A man walking through the jungle came to the base of the tree, and found a pile of peels laying before his feet. Bending his back and looking high into the banana tree, another peel flew from the top and landed on his face. Pulling the peel from his face and tossing it into the pile, he called up into the leaves, "Hey! You up there! Stop tossing banana peels from up in that tree!"
        
          The monkey poked his head out from behind the leaves, "Toss off!" Yelling down to the man, who by now was becoming increasingly perturbed, the monkey disappeared behind the leaves again, to send another peel sailing down at the man, who stepped aside as not to be hit with another slimy yellow projectile.

          "This is highly irregular." Thought the man to himself as he stood at the base of the tree. "You can't just leave these here, someone could slip on them and hurt themselves!" The man continued, "Why don't you come down and clean this up and we can find a proper place for all these peels!" He reasoned. A half eaten banana sailed through the air and landed directly in the center of the man's forehead. The chattering laughter of the monkey could be heard throughout the jungle.

          Now extremely upset, the man pulled the half eaten banana from his face, sat his backpack down and unzipped it. "You'll be sorry that you didn't listen to reason!" He yelled as he pulled from the pack a small axe.

          "Whatdaya think you'll do with that then?" The monkey's question echoed and went unanswered as the man wedged the axe into the base of the tree. "You'll have a hard time of that, with such a tiny axe!" But the monkey's cries were ignored, as chunk after chunk of the tree was chopped from the trunk. The monkey went on eating bananas and dropping the peels on the crown of the mans head as he chopped at the wood. Each peel seemed to enrage the man further, and he increased the speed of his chops with each insult.

          "You'll tire yourself out before you make a dent!" The monkey yelled down as the man's face turned red, and he began to sweat profusely and his clothes became damp. The afternoon, turned to evening, and the orange light of the dusk awoke the now napping monkey. "Surely he's given up by now," thought the monkey to himself. But as he poked his head out of the leaves and looked down, he saw the man chopping away still, with his tiny axe.

          "At this rate, the tree will be down in time for Christmas!" Provoking the man further, the monkey chuckled to himself, though now it was his own sweat that began to fall. Searching his perch, he looked for something to deter the man's progress, but all he had were the bananas, then his eyes settled upon the pile of peels at the base of the tree, beside the man whom chopped at the tree solidly and steadily. To his right he found a parrot, and the monkey whispered something devilish in her ear. Immediately she flew off with a smirk on her face, her blue and red feathers, gliding away over the orange and purple sky. The man's chops began to slow, he stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow. The monkey watched, hoping the man would give up and leave his tree in peace. Turning from his work, the man looked over his shoulder at the setting sun. He knew he could not work much longer and decided to give it one last go, before he had to retire. Heaving the axe up high he whacked at the trunk with the reserves of his strength and the monkey watched, hoping his plan would develop in time to save his beloved banana tree.

          Then he heard the thundering footsteps of his plan unfurling, and he leaped from his perch and watched the man turn and see the giant hippopotamus rushing towards him. Stepping back his foot landed directly in the pile of banana peels causing him to lose his balance and fall on his back, half submerging him in the mucousy pile of peels. The monkey leapt for joy on his perch, but his celebration was short lived, as the hippo slammed into the now very fragile banana tree, snapping its trunk like a twig and sending the monkey and the tree violently to the jungle floor.

          Pulling himself from the pile, the man stood and looked down upon the fallen tree. Wiping himself clean, he pulled up his axe, tucked it into his pack, flipped it over his shoulder and walked into the night whistling a tune. The monkey was furious at this, and vowed revenge, as the jungle denizens descended on his banana harvest, now easily accessible to the jungle floor creatures. The monkey's eyes burned with tears and went red with vengeance, as he flew into the nearest tree, and silently stalked the whistling man from far above, hidden in the shadows of the moon, waiting for his chance at reprisal over his newly acquired foe.

Cloud Roots

Beneath sands lay secrets, beneath secrets lay we the keepers of our own hidden lights like rays reflecting off pale pebbled deserts, or the shifting flowing waves curling round the curvature of the earth, wrapping and coiling and twisting in to form you and I dancing to the rhythms from the sky, bouncing with the undulating invisible drum beneath the roots of the clouds, drinking from the lakes of a star, whose river follows everyone where ever they are, painting shadows on the ground soon to be erased, the great artist, creates and destroys at once ad infinitum.

The Missing Pocketbook

The Missing Pocketbook

W.B. Preston

Today of a dream, I forgot to see you, in your sun tinted dress fit snugly atop your waist, I wondered, did you call? But I was in a mad rush to the hospice, for Bunnie forgot her pocketbook in a drawer on the third floor of room seven. You know me, rushing about downtown, eyes fixed on cement and street signs, the cross street was eighth. I knew the hotel clerk would be trouble, peering at me from behind rimless spectacles, he huffed at my suggestion. I simply needed to get into the room and search the drawer, but he was stubborn this one, insisted on a few coins for his trouble, which I would not have begrudged him had he not been so unseemly about the entire affair. I washed my hand when I got up to the room. The window was open, yet the room lay shadowed for it was a quarter past noon, I must have missed the bells of St. Thomas as I scurried through the alleys to O st. A bark from below the window caught my ear, the dampness of the bathroom someone had recently showered, though Bunnie had told me she was alone here, and she had checked out this morning , by eight. The clerk would have mentioned if someone else had rented the room, I doubt it, the bed sheets were strewn about, no one had even remade the room. Had Bunnie been here with someone else, I wondered and lurched for the drawer, nearly pulling it from its bedside night table. A bible but no pocketbook.

This must be when you rang me, you had been waiting twenty minutes for our lunch date that would never come to pass. You must understand that Bunnie needed that white pocketbook, and she had sent me to gather it,I had no choice. If I had been in a better state of mind, I'd have called you from the room, but the barking dog and the missing pocketbook, the knock at the door snapped my neck around. I cracked it open slowly and peeked through the doors edged. The large nose of the clerk shone red in the dim hallway light and he huffed at me again. It seems five minutes was too long to be searching for a small pocketbook, yet I was desperate to find it. I know what you would say but I only had to please her, I could not stand the judgment of her eyes, pure and gray.

Quickly I rampaged the other drawers while the clerk, arms folded watched, though I knew I would not find the pocketbook, for she had told me which drawer to check. I was about give up, hang my head out the door and be on my way when I spotted the shoe behind the bathroom door, just beside the wastebasket. Dull yellow heel with white lining, I recognized it from the night before, it was Bonnie's friend Grace, she was drunk before I had a chance to take a sip. However, twirling the shoe in my hand as I rode in the back of a cab to Llobo's, I recalled that Grace had been driven home by quite the sober man with the thick mustache poorly trimmed that it gave him half a smirk, though I'd forgotten his name, he seemed unimportant at the time.

Llobo ran the bike kitchen on fifty-first, as you'll recall, his hands always greasy, he rubbed them in a towel and watched me as I made the walk towards the garage. I could tell he'd be no help at all, though he did remind me of my lunch date with you. I rushed into his office and rang your mother, but she said you'd been gone all afternoon, to meet with me. I dream of those thin sandwiches with the avocado, and the crème sodas to go with them, I half missed the lunch more than you. Llabo handed me a beer in the garage, and we leaned back against the workbench and sipped from the bottle under the shade of the garage a little after one. Llabo talked about some latina he picked up across town, a kid fiddled with the spokes on a bike, and from time to time Llabo would jump up, mad as hell and slam his beer on the bench, kicking over to where the boy worked, he berated the poor chap about proper manufacturing technique, something about the price value, though I didn't blame him, this was his livelihood for christssake, though the boy probably was only paid a few coin. I sort of admired old Llabo, the way he brought in the street boys and put them to work, taught them a trade, they could make good money fixing bikes, everybody rides in this part of town.

Llabo went on and on about his Latina from the night prior, though I didn't listen much, I really just needed to know about what happened when he ran into Bunnie. Turns out he didn't so much run into her, as run over her. After listening to his story for thirty minutes in that steamy garage, often interrupted by the poor workmanship of the street boy, he finally gets around to telling me that he nearly ran over Bunnie, Grace and the mustachioed man with the smirk, while riding with the Latina on his bicycle handles. The whole thing sounds like some kind of farce, but it's true, every word, he described the smirk to a tee. He said Bunnie had the white pocketbook then, cause he saw her take it out and give Grace a cigarette. Llabo said she was so drunk she nearly burned herself with the cigarette tilted from her lips. Poor Gracie, she'll never stop, they say it's to do with all that business with her brother, from a few years ago, I don't know why Bunnie doesn't take Grace to see her analyst, I bet it'd do wonders for the confused girl. Llabo said that Bunnie told him they were going to the smirk's hospice, so I was back at square one, although I had a few more pertinent clues.

The first was that Bunnie was a liar, the second was that the room was made out to the smirk, not to Bunnie. So back I went to the hospice looking for the Smirk's real name. The clerk huffed before I could get my second foot in the door. Donald Meede, it turns out, though I still don't know if that's his real name. I remembered he called himself Donnie, he let the name slink from beneath that mustache. Now I hadn't spoken to Bunnie since this morning, and it was nearly three by the time I had gotten all this information and spun around the city twice, I needed to talk to the girl, and get some answers straight. So I rang her studio, and to further my anger I was met by the voice of a man.

“What do ya want?” What do I want? Shut up and put Bunnie on the phone! Is what I wanted to say but I’ve never been one for confrontations, I politely requested Bunnie. “She's dead!” He barked and hung up the phone.

Country's War

.5

Still Hearts Beat

Erupting into a cacophony of laughter and excitement, the crew just about fell all over each other in amusement, recounting how the boy flew so easily over the gunwale. Atryn in his armor clanged about the boat, crashing into the other armored soldiers knocking them out of the way with a metal bang as he searched the bilge frantically. Parcleus rushed over to him, chattering and hysterical. Atryn grabbed him around the collar and looked him in the eyes for just a moment.

            “Still your heart.” Atryn glanced beside Parcleus and spotted what he was looking for in a corner on the other side of Tarkys. Knocking Parcleus aside, Atryn’s steel steps slammed across the boat and through the crowd of soldiers, whom were still reeling with excitement. Bending he retrieved a chain link rope from the bilge and hooked it to a cleat protruding from the gunwale. Taking the other end of the chained rope and clipping it to a cleat protruding from just above the waist of his armored suit, he gathered himself and crouched beside the gunwale. Springing up he grabbed the edge of the gunwale and pulled himself up hooking his leg atop and climbed up until he sat atop the wall. The crew had grown silent as they watched Atryn sit upon the wall looking down at them. His eyes met Tarkys.

            “Your crazy.” Tarkys spat to the bilge. Atryn shifted his eyes from Tarkys over to Parcleus and fell from the side of the boat, the chain spun over the edge rapidly one link after the other hit the iron gunwale with a clink and there was a deep thud of a splash.

Country's War

            .4

Enjoy the Fish

     Goaded the giant tosses a few loaves, thudding the shoulder and forehead of the suicidal man. Rowdy shouts from the older soldiers grew more intense and bolder. Atryn looked around as the men began standing and moving toward the giant and the boy, some shouting some laughing.  The boy shrinking at the gunwale shutting his eyes he placed his palms flat against the cold metal wall. Seeming to Atryn as if he thought somehow the wall could protected him. The crew cheered the giant on, Parcleus stood and surveyed the excitement then looked down to Atryn. Leaning back, he shut his eyes, silently drifting.

            “They’ll toss em’ over!” He cried over the rising mayhem athwart ship. Atryn sat as still as the wind had become. Parcleus turned back to the disorder. The giant threw another loaf at the boy, who recoiling began to sob.

            “He’s tearin up he is!” A short filthy man pointed at the boy and giggled with his hands on either side of his belly. The giant roared his most boisterous delight. Turning he raised his arms to the crowd of onlookers. In unison they cheer him, fists pumping and backslapping. A loaf of bread pats the giant against the back of his massive cranium, the boy stood, eyes of tears chest higher than his head, and hushed the crowd. Turning slowly with eyes of disbelief and shock, the giant saw through to an end.

            “So, death is your wish after all.” Pointing at the boy with eyes of rage, and hair wild, his stomps rang out a clatter of metal as his steel boots pounded the iron deck. Rushing away, the boy tried escape, but the crowd enclosed him, pushing him towards his adversary. Bouncing off the enthralled mob, he ducked under the swing of the giant, momentarily escaping his fate. Parcleus turned back to Atryn.

            “Do something!”

            “You do something.” Atryn calmly retorted. Again the boy tried to rush into the sea of men, and again they fought him back and thrust him into the center of the ring, with the iron gunwale its unforgiving gate. It was his salvation and his damnation. Free from the agitated fence, he found himself with his back against the cold iron entry to the sea as the giant descended upon him. Into the air he went with one swift motion of the mountainous man, he was lifted high above the deck, an felt himself oddly safe in the monstrous hands of the giant as he lay cradled above all. Looking out he stared at the sky, thin and flat where it met the sea thin and flat, and thought of where they might collide.

            “Toss him over!”

            “Get on with it!” The men shouted for the giant to throw the boy off the ship.

            “Enjoy the fish.” The giant said as he bent slightly to send the boy out and over. From athwart ship a voice boomed in command.

            “Let em alone Tarkys!” The deck grew silent, and the crowd turned toward the bow. Startled Parcleus looked back, with the crew, at Atryn now standing with his eyes fixed on Tarkys, holding the thin boy above his head, whom was no longer squirming and fighting having made his peace with the waves and the clouds and fate. Tarkys slowly brought the boy down to the deck.

            “Pardon me. I wasn’t told of your promotion.” Tarkys acquiesced.

            “There’s been no promotion Tarkys.” Atryn began walking towards the crowd.

            “Surely you must be captain now, giving orders out.” Tarkys grinned, his eyes of anger, slightly wrinkled at the corners.

            “Tarkys, I’m no captain, leave the boy be.” The boy tried to run but the weight of Tarkys’ hands upon his shoulders kept him anchored to the deck directly in front of Tarkys. Atryn slowly approached the crowd Parcleus in tow, Tarkys towering above.

            “Moments ago you tried pushin em over yourself.” Their unwavering eyes were locked. The crew moved to either side allowing for a path between the two men.

            “The boy wanted to live, so I let em.” Atryn saw the boy for the first time, a thin lad with a straight nose and shaved head. A look of dissolution in his brown eyes. “Your right to do the same.” Tarkys lowered his giant brow.

            “My right.” Nodding his head, he placed his hands upon the boys waist and sent him flying over his head. Barely missing the top of the gunwale he disappeared behind it and Atryn heard a splash.

             

Country's War

          

.3

Cretus

     Atryn awoke to yells and the scrap and ruckus of a scuffle. A young man had succumbed to the seasickness and tried to leap over the side of the ship, his high pitched screaming disturbed Atryn's slumber. Grappling with him, the young man’s friends tore at his rags as he clung to the edge babbling incoherently at the top of his lungs while they all barked for him to let go the edge. Fully awake and angry at the disturbance, Atryn leapt from his seat and pulled the suicidal man's saviors from his legs, flinging them to the bilge.

          "Let em drown, we've no need of cowards." Atryn stared down at the young men, checking their eyes. The suicidal man clung to the edge sobbing now, lowly. Turning Atryn grabbed him by his collar and the seat of his pants. "Well jump boy if you're gonna, and get on with it." Shoving the man up, he tried to push him over the edge. Kicking and driving off the side, the suicidal man fought back. Atryn let go and the man fell from the side of the boat and landed on the bilge with an empty thud. "You wanna  live or not boy? Make your mind. Do it quick and quiet, a conqueror needs sleep." Atryn sauntered over to his bench, and plopped down with a clank folding his arms across his chest.

          Chuckles could be heard amongst some of the older men. The young men slowly rocked back and forth with the ship, susceptible to the waves, hovering where Atryn napped. They stared at him wide eyed, while the suicidal man lay on the ground fixed on Atryn as well. Settling back into their general positions, the boat became quiet again. Atryn's fiery beard fluffed over his armor and stopped just above his belly, like some hariy beast in a suit of steel. One of the young men finally spoke.

          "Would you've really pushed em?" He sat across from Atryn who's one opened eye appeared like a blue marble caught between wrinkled flaps of freckled pink flesh.

          "Sure, he was makin' an awful racket wasn't he?" More chuckles from the older men. He closed his eye again. The young man was unmoved.

          "This not your first voyage then?" Quivering vocal cords chimed. Without opening his eyes, Atryn responded.

           "Nope."

          "Where'd you fight?" More of the first voyagers gathered around them, eager to hear the tales.

          "What's your name lad?" Atryn still napping.

          "Parcleus." Chin slightly raised. Atryn's eyes opened fully. Searching he saw Parcleus for the first time. The proper response eluded him. He spoke low and true.

          "I liked your father." Surprise sprang across Parcleus' face. A few of the other younger lads looked at him.

          "So did I." Parcleus looked down at his boots.

          "I saw him fall at Cretus." Atryn coughed out.

          "You were at Cretus?" Lurching forward the passengers reoriented themselves as the ship hit a wave. Atryn barely moved his neck, which was thick beneath his armor.

          "Aye." A mariner's silence echoed over the waves. The older men were quiet now, hunched on their benches, pretended not to listen.

          "Why..." Parcleus lost the nerve. The First Voyagers looked at Atryn for the answer. He knew what he wanted to know, what they all wanted to know. Solemnly he recalled with a red pain in his blue eyes.

          "They wouldn't stop fighting." The suicidal man began swiping at hovering flies above a bag of bread in the corner of the ship. Parcleus’ eyes never wavered from Atryn. One of the other older men yelled at the suicidal man.

            “Hoy! Knock it off.  We won’t get no meat til them flies lay their eggs!” Standing he towered six feet six, his armor was twice the size of other men. His brown locks dangled across his shoulder plates, his short beard recently cut. The suicidal man cowered against the iron wall of the ship as the giant grabbed the bag of bread and shoved the edges down towards the bilge, loafs tumbling out all over. “Wanna kill yourself now? Try the maggoty bread in a day or two.” A roaring laugh escaped his chest as the suicidal man gagged at the thought.

Country's War

.2

War Voyage

          At the bow Iron Horde was engraved across a battered and scratched gold plated banner. Atryn eyed an empty bench beneath the banner and limped his way towards it. Clattering down with his armor, he began rattling the pieces together, connecting the giant knee plates to the steel boots, and twisting and screwing the bolts in place. He caught a glimmer of shining metal amongst the grimy lumps of twisted shield. Searching the sky for the sun, there was none, only the ambling billows of layered clouds gathering over the open sea. Searching the beach dunes of the coast, his eyes settled atop a ridge with an edge of foliage and grass that spilled over the cliff like sand. A woman stood from the ledge wrapped in a large grey shawl, she disappeared with the sky. Blinking Atryn found her gaze as she stared directly at him, acknowledging this with a slow deliberate nod of her chin once his eyes met hers. Suddenly shivering he felt for the first time the cold of the morning and he cast his eyes down to the boat again. She had to have been some five hundred yards off, there was no way she could find his gaze, and yet Atryn could not shake the feeling that she spoke to him with her eyes. A deep and dividing fear crept over his spine and through his brain as he looked back towards the ridge and searched across it, not finding the woman in grey. A slamming metal door obscured his view as the ship was clamped shut and he felt the hunk of metal heave away from the shore and slosh into the ebb of the sea. Blood and chaos and crossed steel lay before him, yet the only thing his mind could see was the unwavering stare of the woman in the grey shawl. 

A thousand footprints took hours to stamp across the sand, it took merely a moment for the tide to wash them all away. The outline of the sun hung overhead, a circle of light inscribed in the clouds; it just as well have been night, for there was nothing to see but the rusted deck of the Iron Horde. The clanking of metal as men shivered in their armor, the wretched scent of vomit, dry and moist, stung the air. Moldy bread and potatoes was all they had to eat, along with as many waterskins as they could pack and carry along with their armor. No meat. 

"You'll have your meat with victory!" -Viceroy Nikan

          Soon the weak would jump from the back of the ship. Atryn could never understand it, the drawn out torture of the lungs filling with ocean was a fate far worse than the meandering voyage which would probably end with a short quick death under the blade. He knew which he preferred. The opportunity to reap the rewards of victory was enough to keep him alive and fighting. His second War Voyage, upon the first a soldier returning home victorious was allowed to take a wife and given a bit of coin. Atryn chose not to take the wife; he knew he would be leaving for his second voyage soon. The year and a half it took the Viceroy to choose a target was excruciating. Atryn spent the duration drinking beer and fighting with the other soldiers. He trained and waited patiently for his second chance at glory. 

          Upon return from a second War Voyage, a soldier was granted a plot of land, a horse, a farmhand, and double the coin. A boyhood dream some twenty-five suns ago. Now was his chance to earn his leisure, with the blood of a foreign threat.  The strays were usually boys who had been coddled by their mothers far too long, better for a boy to learn how to survive in the mud of madness, so to defend himself from the torturous silence of the voyage. So Atryn sat, in the back of the Iron Horde, in his suit of steel, huddled with six other men, when finally the rain stopped. He would make these men his squad before landfall. But that would not be for many moons, and with the rain stopped he could finally quiet his mind to sleep.

Country's War

Country’s War

W.B. Preston 


.1
 The Clatter of Armor

“Puncture the shores of our enemies with the iron ships of war. Dye the sands on the banks of their land with the blood of its men.”  -Viceroy Nikan

            The War Command escaped Viceroy Nikan’s thin nasals. The snarling speech would be the last words Atryn heard standing on his home soil. Thousands of men trudged across the beaches of Ganamoth lugging the clanking metal armor through the muggy bay all the while Atryn wishing he were comfortable in his bed. What of the other thousand soldiers? Loading themselves into the Iron War Ships in the early morning. Was it blood or blankets they yearned for?

 Dragging his War Armor through the slog of the early morning shore, the sky fell short and leaden.  He carried his steel suit hunched over his right shoulder, pulling and heaving with strained biceps and gritted teeth. Atryn, like the rest of the infantrymen of Ganamoth trekked across the seafront towards the iron ships, the giant metal monoliths black and motionless, forged and anchored to the bay floor. Twenty hulking shadows, steely and ferrous, dotted the landscape a half-a-mile down the shoreline. Engulfing one soldier after another, the metal monstrosities bobbed and moaned with the morning tide. The low chromic roars echoed inland as the shadows on the sea devoured one soldier after another, slowly, hour after hour. Entering the mouths of the beasts, the men went in willingly, and quiet.  

Lightning purple and pale tore across the smothering gray blanket of sky, afterward a crack and a boom of thunder round and full. Atryn saw the tear and heard the rip, yet looking to those around him, the soldiers were too busy to bear witness, they sunk in against the wall of wind that slapped at their jaws riddled with ocean as water sprayed across the brow and they loaded on to the warships. Clanking metal pounded over and over again for hours a half-mile down the coast as two thousand armored boots met the steel bilge of the lurking colorless, flagless ships. Floating towards a foreign coastline, they appeared enormous black creatures of the sea, carving through ocean waves and smashing all that lay in their wake. To Atryn they seemed the same kind of beast, blights on his home coastline, enveloping and floating away with its men, good men. In victory most would return, in defeat only some. The monsters over the waves were to blame.

The nearer he came to the metal ships, the louder their anchored roar bellowed from deep within their rusted depths. Beside each ramp was a Monitor in hooded robe holding a lantern above his head. The yellow glow a speck beside a black void, once over the ridge. Now they were orange and faded, as the last of the soldiers loaded on to their assigned ship. The Monitor held the lantern until the last man of his ship entered and the ramp was lifted and the entryway closed. Atryn recognized his Monitor by the long white beard and sunken eyes. It was he who had taught Atryn chess in his childhood. Without the slightest gesture or glance the Monitor stood motionless, eyes fixed on the horizon as Atryn’s metal boot came down with a clang on the iron bilge. The ship was half full and Atryn despised the rectangular deck surrounded with hard iron benches. A few of the older men he recognized, but there seemed to be many young faces, First Voyagers whom had never seen the battlefield.

Eclipsing Thunder

A total shadow falls over a barren field, hovering endlessly snug and silent. I stare up into the sky of the night, in hopeless anticipation, clouds of gaseous coils explode sending streaming pools of light down upon the field. And me, wondering about the dirt, slipping in and out of the dance of shadows and sun. The wind shouts, "dig in the light". I crawl on my hands and knees to the nearest circle of light, a stream of fire burning from sky to field. I claw up clumps of dirt with my palms, tossing them behind me they disintegrate in the night. A deep and deafening hum fills the field a low rumbling vibration. As I dig the spotlight narrows finding the hole I stand in. Knee deep in dirt and silt, the sky grows closer, blue mist and purple fog encroach upon my site. As I dig I am buried in the clouds and shadows of the night, the beam of fire penetrates the fog and illuminates my path into the ground. The barking dogs howl and yelp, the ray of light narrows to keyhole size, I reach into the dirt grabbing hold of two iron handles and pulling out a stone carved chest. I drag my hand across two alien elephants chiseled into the sides of the chest, my eyes fixate on a small hole drilled in the center. The light beam enters the hole, and the chest opens up, the purple fog and blue mist enter the chest, and liquefy into mud mush bubbling and pulsating. The chest closes and all of the lights vanish, and I am alone in a hole in the middle of a barren and deserted field, holding a chest full of blueish purple muck. A chest quite heavy, chiseled out of stone, I struggle to pull it out of the hole. I lay between the chest and the hole, starring into the sky's night, sweating and panting, looking for a sign or a way.

Empty With Me: The Shitman and the Invisible Spotlight

Fallen from inside myself

I grasp to the edges of me

Only pulling myself further down

Into the belly of I

Pulling out my knife

I hack and I stab at my innards

Scraping and tearing away at my flesh

I cut away all that I hate

Until all that is left is love

I could write forever but something is stopping me. I feel a block, a strange mental block. At one time I could free write forever, the words flowed from me freely and I didn’t give them a second thought. Now It is as if every word is a thought out processed piece of shit that I have to delicately carve and shape into a shitman. Frothy the shitman. Was a very shitty man. He stunk and slid all around the toilet and I flushed him down the hole. Kill the shitman kill the shitman. Fuck the audience. An audience of one. I think this is what I forgot. I was writing for myself before, and then when the pressure of an audience was presented, I froze in the invisible spotlight. Kill the armed guard at the invisible spotlight. I am with my shitcannon (My asshole) and shit bullets fly from it and penetrate the armed guard’s chest. He explodes into a million pieces of shit that rain down on the empty prison yard below. Empty with me. The invisible spotlight falls. And I stand covered in the shit of my own making. I write on the prison walls in shit crayons. I write forever over and over, forever over and over, forever over over forever. The words will not stick in the rain. The rain washes everything away. The shit returns to the earth from whence it came. Back to the rivers of shit, into an ocean of shit over the shitty waterfalls off the edge of the earth into the Universe of shit. That’s all we are, a Universe of shit, all of us, isolated in our own shit world, spinning around and around and around around, until we explode, and shit rains on the newborn babies below us. Shit rains on them and they think its new. But it’s old shit. It’s ancient shit, that was shat eons before any of us rolled in our own shit. There is no new shit. There’s just less shit to go around. I am the shitman. The Shitman forever. The shitman forever standing in the invisible spotlight. Won't the rain wash me away?