these quiet stones
we lay upon
for sins atone
then grow anon
so let this be
rare happy state
it is you and me
as one we elevate
perspective in the head
horizon in the heart
don't fall but rise instead
from sadness e'er depart
clean unto the one
stone beneath our feet
the centre or the sun
with joy the heart replete
the sky is gaping wide
our grace a force of will
the sun is in your eyes
entwined we lay here
still
A thousand years.
For such a long time.
A thousand years...
Or more.
A still place.
A settled state.
Crimson skies hid away from...
Hopeful eyes.
These were left unto the others...
The one's over...
There...
So that we could dream and...
Hope.
And we did.
That is, until...
The emissary came...
And then...
Everything changed.
For better or worse, we are here together.
That's what the Magistrate used to tell us.
"We are aware of the ongoing conflict and conflagration that exists in seeming perpetuity beyond the wall.
We are aware of all of it...
We simply want nothing to do with...
Any...
Of...
It."
Year after year...
A thousand years or...
More...
We said the same thing.
Amid the din in the distance...
Beyond the wall.
Sitting alone in the desert...
Dreaming and hoping of...
Sustainability without...
Sacrifice beyond...
Palatable measures.
But what is that?
What has it ever...
Been?
Crimson skies on the horizon...
Do not...
Touch us...
Here.
Unless...
The emissary awakened to a circle of faces peering down at him.
They...
We...
Wanted to know who he was...
What he...
Wanted.
The elders of our state poked him and prodded...
Him...
Crimson skies carry the truth of everything.
Sky carries truth over...
Walls.
In the distance there is conflict and...
Conflagration.
the veils of the world
obscure us in space
as reality swirls
the truth hides its face
the news says it's time
so it gathers as winds
free speech is a crime
we welcomed all of this in
from the storm on an eve
cattle sated and fat
we'll consume all belief
we'll eat this, we'll eat that
and flying fair in a dream
at impossible heights
we're transcending the seams
and the pale putrid blight
the one can still transcend
by sheer weight of will
the focus spirit sends
to rise before we fall ill
weighing down on ideal
Atlas bearing the weight
the task before us is real
excel before it's too late
now passion and purpose are veiled
linear paths unto more
while our ancestors once wailed
against such oppressive doors
what was the logical point
if there's any at all
if not to fully disjoint
the herd before the fall
the one is absently marked
truant to mean and all its needs
prodigiously unremarked
amid channels the system feeds
unto unavoidable unbecoming
unto this fated dross
unto sickening and soulful numbing
amid such collectivist loss
as if they even care
to acknowledge the day
the cold distant stare
connection slipping
away
The soldier and the three-legged dog continued to seep unto the East...
Like some ghastly discharge...
Of those all too human diseases...
Venereal...
War.
Soon after he had crossed one of those borders...
One of those "state lines,"
That the invading army had not taken the time to...
Acknowledge...
Recognise...
Or respect.
In the distance he beheld a solitary man who was mutely and numbly tilling a frozen field.
The stale sun was lurching across the edge of gaping horizon.
He sighed.
A single scrap of bloodied paper fluttered past him on the air...
On a chorus of cruel and crimson winds...
The soldier hurried after it and caught it with his hands.
He smeared the still wet blood away with his trembling hands so that he could read the...
Words.
It was a headline from some newspaper...
From some once habitable town...
In a war torn...
State...
"The Art of Modern Warfare,"
Beneath the words there was an ominous black and white image of a dilapidated and fissured nuclear power plant caught in the cross hairs of some distant targeting system.
The man cast the scrap of paper back unto the winds and then cast his eyes upon the three-legged dog sitting at his feet.
The dog likewise regarded the soldier...
With either interest or pity.
The soldier smiled vacantly and opened another can of gruel for the dog and emptied its contents out onto the earth beside him.
The dog set about his meal as the soldier walked over to the man tilling the field.
"You there!" he called unto the tiller.
The tiller set down his tool and studied the soldier with curiosity as he wiped his calloused and desiccated hands with a filthy rag.
"What do you want and why are you dressed that way?
Why do you have that rifle?"
The soldier raised his hand as a manner of greeting and assurance that he meant no harm to the seemingly much older and weathered man.
"I came from the war. I need some water. May I have some?"
The tiller laughed.
"War! That's a good one! The head of state says that we haven't had a war here in decades. There is no war."
The soldier looked on the other in incredulity.
"There is a war going on just on the other side of the border. That's where I came from. That's where I lost everyone and everything that I love."
The tiller, still not having a word of it, waved his hand dismissively and said, "Well, you are welcome to the water that I have... though it may be frozen by now."
The soldier's thoughts rained red.
How could the other not even be aware that there was a war going on?
A "Special Military Operation"??
He thought of the absent, impersonal, inhuman way in which his family and his unit had been...
Annihilated.
He followed the tiller to the other's bent and rusted Lada pickup truck.
As the two men came upon the truck, the soldier happened to notice a tattered copy of a book that had been haphazardly thrown onto the passenger seat, "Celebration in a Time of Plague."
The soldier had read that one, too...
When he was younger...
Long before the war.
He unsoldered his rifle and regarded the weapon with a soulful sadness.
As the old tiller fumbled with the nozzle on a rubber bladder, the soldier bludgeoned him at the head with the butt of his rifle...
Again and...
Again.
Then he turned and lurched back over to the three-legged dog who...
Somehow regarded him with a look of...
Solidarity.
They drank freezing water from the rubber bladder and then the two of them continued their journey...
East.
The hours rippled past them like indiscriminate and anonymous heralds of lives and realities...
Indistinct and...
Unacknowledged.
In the soldier's mind he imagined that he was following that single scrap of paper that had fluttered past him on the winds...
That it would bring him unto his destination.
The three-legged dog whined incessantly as they journeyed on, but it was good.
It was recognition of truth...
Of life.
There were myriad transitions of sky...
Dark, then greyish light, and then again blood red...
Skies
Cyclically...
Passing...
By.
Finally, the two travellers came unto the village and unto the house of the young man with the name tape on that uniform in the photo the soldier had seen.
As they had entered into the village the soldier had seen a flower shop.
He took a handful of the modest amount of money he had taken from the pockets of the tiller he had killed in cold blood, and proffered it unto the smiling woman who had in turn handed him...
A bouquet.
"This is too much," she had insisted, but the soldier had told her to keep the change.
The soldier and the three-legged dog turned and lurched abstractly unto the destination to which the bloodied scrap of paper would lead them...
Rifle slung over the shoulder...
Bouquet in hand...
Three-legged dog whining as it limped alongside.
"Have a lovely day!" the woman had called after them.
As the soldier approached the indistinct, iron door of the common apartment building to which he had connected the name on the name tape he had seen in the photo...
And had then connected it to the military unit that was headquartered closest to that address...
He began to laugh.
"Modern warfare as an art form..." he had muttered aloud.
The three-legged dog whined in protestation.
He thought of the way that his family and his brothers in arms had been killed from such vast distance...
Without ever having had the chance to defend themselves...
Or to look into the eyes of the one who was killing them...
By pressing a button.
The soldier found the family name on the door register and with a trembling hand he pressed the button.
After a spell there was a buzz and a clicking sound.
He went in.
He and the three-legged dog ascended the stairs as if steams of some abstraction arriving at one's door as...
Destiny.
At the sixth stage they exited the stairwell and entered into a corridor.
The indolent buzz of the cold electric lights that emerged from the concrete ceiling like boils of plague reviled the soldier.
They go on...
They would go on...
Long after...
Long after his loved ones and brother in arms...
Long after...
Him.
He and the three-legged dog came unto the door and knocked...
Three...
Times.
There was the sound of celebration beyond the indistinct, banal portal.
After a spell the door swung open and lightly perspiring, smiling woman greeted him.
"Hello! Are you here for the party?"
Red rain ran through blood and filled his thoughts...
Again.
"Yes," the soldier said, as he extended the bouquet unto the woman...
As his eyes beamed their frustrated, hateful psychosis...
And he smiled broadly and menacingly...
As he had never smiled...
Before.
The three-legged dog whined as the two of them were invited...
In.
scan far and distant skies
somewhere the fire is lit
kept deep within the eyes
some fleeting trace of it
cradled a brother's head
a bombed water hole
no light, but void instead
all absence takes its toll
and then bled once more
some pale reality
opening and closing doors
one must wait to see
in a bunker, in a bar
still living on the wane
somewhere a brighter star
uncertainty remains
smoke rises in solemnity
we juxtapose this state
this pestilent disparity
helps us better to equate
this with that
the fleeting forms between
distinct and flat
ideal from horrid spleen
come late unto the giving field
there's nothing known but loss
life's blessing e'er concealed
be more no matter cost
my head held within a good friend's hands
eyes open far too late
grasping after fading strands
of life, you are the loving state
i know...
