"ceremony" from the book "the other way"

"ceremony"

The man opened his eyes to the sound of a single rifle shot.

0600.

The ceremonial call to defend the city.

He could almost smell the carbon on the gasp of winter streaming through the window.

The woman in the bed beside him reaches for him mechanically.

He eludes her.

He rises from the bed and moves over to the window.

"Where are you going?" she calls after him.

He stands at the narrow pane naked, looking out unto the ancient square.

It occurs to him to take a cigarette, but then he remembers that he doesn't smoke.

"You not answer me? You not soothe me. You make me on fire, but you not soothe," she mutters bitterly.

He closes his eyes and blows cold air back unto ether as if it were smoke.

"You should focus on the former," he says absently as he gets dressed.

Soon thereafter, he was standing in a throng at the city cemetery.

They had all gathered to commemorate the sacrifice of the young people of the city who had been killed during and since the 2014 invasion and occupation...

Not annexation.

And as seven sisters distributed candles unto those gathered so that they could lay them at the tombs of the countless fallen...

From just one city...

The man kept asking himself...

Again and again...

With shaking, empty hands extended before him...

"What have you done?"

"What have you lost?"

"What have you bled for?"

Orthodox priests preside over the lamentations with reverence...

Over the ceremony.

The military contingent is there too...

The circle of Colonels...

To honour the fallen.

And to secrete their hangovers into morning air.

Snow begins to fall, and for a fleeting spell it almost seems as if all of this is real...

Sincere...

And that the lessons have been learned...

And we now know that lives depend on the promises that we make...

Whether as lovers...

Or contested states...

Whether invaded...

Occupied...

Or emancipated...

And recognised for sovereignty.

An elder in tattered clothing and a moth-eaten woollen scarf approaches the man and asks him to sign a petition vowing eternal allegiance unto the city.

The man takes the pen but his hands are shaking so terribly for the cold and the absence of anything solvent between people that it falls away from him.

The elder went to gather the pen from the snow, but in the time it took him to overcome the aches of his bones and joints the other had already rippled off with the procession.

As the procession lurched along the snow swept winter streets, the man noticed an older woman shuffling off to the side.

She was laden by some terrible, mortal weight...

As three small boys chased after balloons in her wake...

Squealing in youthful delight.

At some point, one of the Colonels took the man by his arm and muttered, "It's inevitable, eh? When do you think they will come?"

The man sighed.

"Nothing is inevitable except that which we permit...

After Christmas, I think."

The Colonel regarded him with bitter alarm.

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?"

Silence.

The procession lurched on.

The church appears in the distance, and sun emerges on the eastern horizon.

The collective soon enters into the temple and all those young souls who were killed will be well and truly commemorated...

Celebrated...

Because people are so fucking sincere...

In their grief...

And their mourning...

It is not a show.

It is not a show.

Three politicians circle the pulpit with plastic sympathy adorning their faces distributing leaflets on which transcendent ideas for the bold way forward are beautifully hand written by third tier staffers.

The occasion is too heavy.

It is too much for the three children still chasing after balloons outside the windows of the church.

No child should ever have to bear such a burden.

The man settles into the fold, and the ceremony goes on...

And on.

At some point, when everyone has been standing for so long...

Observing the tenets of ritual...

Another elder takes the man by his arm and whispers...

"There was not so much collaboration here, you know? It's not as bad as people suppose. It wasn't. The Nazis were simply a means to an end... Better than Stalin. You know?"

The man said nothing, for a spell.

Until he did.

"Shit on every side."

The elder lowered his head.

"Exactly."

Three hours later, the ceremony ended.

The solemn flock dispersed...

They carried their stories and their distractions back unto their own lives...

Whilst simultaneously...

Eternally...

In some frozen, hollow fissure of existence...

Those young people who were killed over border disputes and distinctions decompose in their state-funded holes just a little bit more.

At least there is that...

There is...

That.

Hours later...

Perhaps 2200...

The man is standing at the window again...

Naked...

Wondering at the folly of it all...

The eternal compromise...

Ideal...

And imposed or chosen circles of hell...

On earth...

The woman strides into the room.

She is wearing only her black, see-through stockings.

Her skin is like milk in the darkness.

She brings tea, and sets a mug upon the sill before him.

"What are you thinking?" she asks him.

"I am thinking of an old woman I saw today. There was something about her...

There was something there."

The woman sets her mug of tea down next to his on the sill and tries to pull him down onto the bed.

She tastes of vanilla and myrrh.

He could easily lose himself there.

But something is off.

Something is different.

The world is shifting...

And the old gods and demons are freeing themselves once again.

The man rises and dresses hurriedly.

The woman is calling after him...

"You are worse than a devil...

You are worse!"

As he comes to the door and bursts into the street he calls back to her...

"Focus on that!"

He runs through the streets as if his life depends on it.

He does not know why.

He passes the youth of the city...

Gathered to celebrate and forget time and space...

To create human connections...

The fabric of everything that is and needs to exist for any of this to work.

But only if there is some fundament to the connection...

Or?

Is nothing solvent?

Is nothing relevant?

Did those kids die for nothing?

The man runs and runs.

He can smell the carbon of an expended round.

It stings the nostrils.

It damns the soul.

Finally, he comes unto the city square at which the old woman that he saw at the side of the procession earlier is standing by herself at the corner.

The man slows.

He greets her.

She does the same.

The winds have gathered.

It is so cold.

Emptiness is a lesion within the soul.

It is real.

The man wonders at the reason for her having moved alongside the procession when everything is superficial and self-serving...

There is no reverence, so what was she expecting to find there?

In his mind he sees and smells the ravages of conflict in life...

The world.

He processes it with every beat of his heart.

But that is not enough.

What about this woman?

What has this experience shown her?

She is holding a satchel, from which she procures three thin white books.

She proffers them with bright blue eyes peering at him across age...

Loss...

Despair.

"What are these?" He asks.

"These are the books I wrote for the memory of my beautiful son who was killed when they came in 2014...

These are my life."

In the stillness of a moment...

A time to reflect...

The man realises that he has neither lost, nor bled for anything more than himself in his bordered, selfish, and pallid existence.

Neither he nor the woman says anything...

She merely regards him...

Wondering whether he will take the chance to be more for himself...

And for this world...

As the ceremony...

Continues on.

leaver's land

oh these seasons passing by, oh the dire hours, how love alights and then flies, as blooms and fading flowers, gather up the cloak tonight, then hide within instead, rise above the fleeting blight, of love ruled in the head, the shadows linger on the air, in corners of the room, wish instead to be somewhere, where there was room for two, could never peel away veneer, could never truly know, the things which would have brought us near, to what we'd hoped to sow, for fervent longing across space, these lives are tattered strands, just want to feel autumnal grace, about the leaver's land...

the citadel-nobody's hero.1

It amuses me to reprise the tale, the one of how I came to fail... but, time runs on, and perhaps it is not too late to make some modicum of difference here...

In this pale and putrid place.

Nevertheless, I commit this account unto words, for there must be an account.

There must be...

Accountability.

I allowed myself to be drawn into the conflict...

Into the war.

I took these pale, elongated fingers, and I placed them around stock and barrel of the rifle...

With intent in heart and mind...

To kill.

And so the Nazis came unto the shores of Morocco by means of my... Vichy... control, in 1940, but when the Allies came in 1942...

It was then that I felt compelled to return unto my native place...

To defend what amounts to nothing more than ideal, really.

I am not the Vichy Pétain.

I am the other one...

The centre on a tangent between hero, and anti-hero.

Verdun, or capitulation and collaboration to and with the Nazis?

Which will it be?

What has it ever been...

In the heart...

Or the head...

The acts undertaken and advocated upon this absurd plane of human affront?

I do not know whether this account of this next portion of this biliously extended life of mine shall ever reach you, but as e'er I write these words unto you, Élyse, and perhaps...

Unto the one that I understand to be your newborn daughter...

In these torturous times...

Anna.

I moved as if in trance across the desert to oppose enemy force.

At some point, my violin fell away from me and I bled.

I fired and hacked my way through the Nazi rank and file...

All those that foolishly deigned to stand against me.

I felt nothing in the taking of those lives.

But the violin...

My texture.

I looked back unto Ouarzazate...

Unto the citadel at which this pestilent tale began.

I breathed in devil's chorus on the winds...

For they know neither borders, nor perceived lines drawn on maps by men...

And I silently realign myself with everything that set me out upon my path in the first place...

Opposition to sick and misjudged prejudice and rule.

I am not your hero...

You're just tired of experiencing in real life, or reading upon the page the divergence between fact and ideal.

Look at us.

Look at this.

A procession of Jews, behind which I allowed myself to be moved as part of a line, lurches unto a dance hall in Casablanca that has been repurposed as a holding cell for suspected religious or otherwise ideological dissidents.

Sultan Mohammed V has at least spared them the necessity to bear the yellow Star of David on their non-existent rags to mark them for exclusion...

Or worse.

Propagandist leaflets flutter the city.

The Germans invite Muslims to side with them against the Jew.

The British do everything they can to subvert German influence in North Africa.

Slavery and subjugation exist all around, and yet, as I read the gazette, it interests me to witness people who understand humanity, in the moment...

Following the landings of the Allies in Morocco, President Roosevelt wrote to Mohammad V and expressed that the Allies were to be benevolent subjugators in Morocco.[23] In his letter, he wrote:

"The arrival of the American forces in your country in collaboration with forces of the protecting power is merely a token of American intention to assist in defending your sovereignty and in protecting your country and mine against a common enemy whose power will be destroyed."[23]

Mohammad V replied:

"The first contacts between people who do not know each other well enough are always marked by hesitation and reticence, but progressively a reciprocal understanding is established between them, they are followed by esteem and friendship which creates a cooperative effort profitable to all."

How true this latter missive is of all meetings and relations.

So, I sat among the military, political, and religious prisoners in that repurposed dance hall at the heart of Casablanca wondering what insipid disease it would be that dictates someone's next act...

Like the Book of Acts...

These things define us, though we are not heroes.

The cream-coloured walls...

Cheap paint and plaster...

Leaned in against the herded mass and horde it now contained.

The stench of sweat, piss, and shit was pervasive.

At some point, one of the guards asked me whether or not I am Jewish.

"I look like one, don't I? The way a Jew is supposed to look, eh? Well, sorry to disappoint Der Führer. I am nothing... neither here, nor there, neither this, nor that...

And certainly not Jew.

But perhaps that rather broad minded notion will suffice for your myopic heads to clamber unto some explanation for why and how you want to kill me...

Well, come then.

I will be waiting."

The guard raged and struck me three times about the face.

"This means nothing to me, you paltry, little person."

The guard struck him again.

When he went out, the fixing and bolting of the great iron door resounded.

All was silent for a spell.

At some point, a little Jewish girl came unto me and asked me why, if I am not a Jew, was I there a captive among them.

"I would just as contentedly sit in captivity among any other persecuted people... or person. I am tired of this strain of oppression."

I had some bread from morning's rising within my cloak.

I gave the girl my bread.

After a spell, the lights in the hall were put out abruptly.

There was a collective gasp among us.

Torches where hurled through the second tier, narrow windows, and they fell upon the wooden beams of the hall.

I watched as the flames grew, and the will and heart of the people shrank.

I watched as hope fled from the fight, like it always does...

Just when people need it most.

I obscured myself within my long dark cloak, and I went unto the door.

The screams of parents and children behind me were deafening.

The flames gathered and rose with horrific voracity.

When I came unto the door and observed the iron lock, I knew at once there was a way.

The flames rose higher and higher, amid the escalation of panic and fear.

I closed my eyes.

I thought of the Abbott at the Cloister in Madrid.

I winced with soulful spleen for what I did not do then.

And then, I opened my eyes.

I extended my sickeningly elongated finger, and I forced it into the lock.

It hurt, but soon I found the form I could bear and sustain.

I turned the lock.

When it did, I withdrew my finger and pushed the doors forth, and with that gesture the multitudes at my side too sprung forth...

And out...

the paladin

forever kisses burn at skin, longing marks the fool, recurrent pleas resound as din, to rage against the rule, the shrouds in which our dreams emerge, unto astral plane, then dross and cowardice converge, render rapture tame, a corridor we knew before, silent, soulful flight, the paladin is here restored, come unto the fight, these seasons move across the lines, of what we control, ineffable and pale designs, fragments of the whole, then somewhere at horizon's end, hearts still beat as one, open to what living sends, beneath crimson suns, as lovers earth, and sea, and sky, chains just fall away, impermanence we'll e'er defy, mark another day...

the figurehead

cut a figure here instead, by means of hand, or heart, or deed, rise up from the waking dead, for all the cuts that you still bleed, the sea so vast and without end, depth's tones the cloak you wear, the travesties these lives portend, for what you've yet to bear, a plume of smoke in distant space, a harbour is no more, of life or hope there's little trace, for all the raiding hordes, gathered low at fissure's hollow, they're selling crowns back to the lot, the vacancies forever follow, unto oaths their hearts forgot, as lovers shifting in the bed, substance comes of lessons learned, figures swaying in the head, for all the ships we've yet to burn...

 

free

by means of this, transcend the norm, it's shone there in your eyes, it radiates the bleakest storm, the gaping, distant skies, it's always been your finest part, for all the mountains climbed, it's always healed your boundless heart, until the end of time, against the glass and dimly glowing, aggregate the scars, beyond the burdens you've been towing, it's clear you've traveled far, remember this whilst you're alone, and fallen on your knees, adversity just negates tone, as spirit sings you free...

old moss meadows

Keeper flailed then slowly turned around, the plight of sightless seekers far, stretched arms to feel that which surrounds, some trace of errant star...

"It's more meaningful than all this time," he thought as he scratched his ass, "to from this dissonance, render rhyme, that our futures scorch the past..."

Three ravens circled just outside, narrow fissured refuge place, when pasts and futures somehow collide, one is forced to gag on space...

Descending spirit, wandering fields, left all of them behind, the ones you love, who sing in kind, all that which feeling yields...

The good and bad, the highs and lows, we take these things in turns, but patience somehow always knows, the way our spirits yearn...

So, Keeper swept himself up in his cloak, with fervour set about, and unto fields to have a smoke, to puff away all doubt...

And as he sat there beneath dawning sky, a crooked pipe in hand, a gentle friend from years gone by, just happened to descend...

Old Moss Meadows then reeled to form, from someplace 'twixt the earth and sky, with him the sky breathed something warm, and the world came alive...

Moss Meadows smelled of morning dew, like all the dreams of me and you, and Keeper too, for all his crank, the bilious way in which he stank...

Moss Meadows was one not much for words, preferred to quietly and wait, the dawning chorus of morning birds, hear them persistently elate...

The saddened states of broken hearts, of travellers wandering far afield, even Keeper and his putrid farts, for all the truth that they do yield...

"So, you are come to greet me at the end," said Keeper on a breath. "I have come to greet an ancient friend, at the unwinding of a death...

Or the unravelling of beginnings,"breathed old Moss Meadows on the breeze, Keeper beamed with hopeful grinning, then stood up tall with little ease...

"I've still yet leagues and leagues before i reach, the fateful transcendental space, where boy crossed sky and gave this place, a taste of all those dreams that swirl...

This way, that way, here and there, fates are shifting left and right, their way, our way, truth or dare, we gather here to end this blight..."

At which Old Moss Meadows puffed a circle made of clouds, in which emerged a question mark, "Why so quick to lift the shroud, and undermine the will of larks?"

Keeper sat there in a centric sphere, Moss Meadows yet present at his side, Keeper gasped and muttered with drear, "Don't know how much longer i can hide...

From things i have, or haven't done, the worlds set into being, ideas and clay in unison, and love that took my seeing..."

Moss Meadows took some light into his hands, then he proffered it unto friend, such acts are indeed the living strands, and that is what perspective lends..."

1,000 leagues

1,000 leagues they said to me, between decay, and destiny, a distance fraught with silent space, i could not even name this place, my wings were clipped beneath the sea, some deep and distant vagary, a northern promise reeks of melt, the cirrus towers touched, and felt, now fissure is my morning kiss, some vague divide, or teasing bliss, it's hard to breathe so deep below, the placid sea and afterglow, yet i emerge with love to bear, as tithings unto this free air, for any dreamer still with guts, to rise above this living's ruts, and pallid painted majesty, forsaken love is travesty, they said to me in calming tones, this thing you are is not alone...