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Nae Aug 2020
We all have skeletons in our closets,
Spooky ghouls with hollowed out eyes and slacked jaws,
Ready to spill our secrets like ants to a picnic.

My skeleton is different,
He talks to me at night,
In the dark when I'm scared of what others would say,
He's there to comfort me, with spooky whispers of jokes,
Back chat with the monster under my bed,
Always making me laugh.
But he does all this from the closet, I'm not ready to let him out yet.

When I get home from school, I can't ignore him.
I hope nobody finds out,
But it's getting easier to speak to him now.
His hollow eyes aren't so bad, and he's beginning to look very familiar.

When the sandman arrives, he's not very pleased,
To see me still awake, talking to my skeleton, no dreams in sight.

He tells me funny stories of his times with Medusa,
Drabbles about Mary, how he talked to her through a mirror,
Before he got taken here.

He always gets quiet when he talks about here,
As he slowly slides the door of the closet closed,
Mumbling an excuse of time and school the next morning.

I concentrate less in my classes lately,
I feel bad for the skeleton in my closet.
He used to talk fondly of his time with the mummies, how he was fond of vampires and laughed with werewolves.
Now he walks slowly, quietly, sad.
He misses them, I can tell, but I just can't let him go.

What will everyone say when they find out?
His wrists look thinned, his jaw seems tighter.
He looks oh so familiar, why can't I place him?

My mum says she's worried,
that I'm eating less, looking pale.
I pay no attention, I just go to my room.
My skeleton is waiting for me.
Always waiting.

I don't really go outside much now, just stay between my sheets,
Imagining it's my coffin, my door the the world the skeleton described,
Where everyone was who they were meant to be,
Nobody cared.
I wish nobody cared here.

I try to ignore my skeleton, but it's impossible.
I can hear his bones rattling as I lay awake at night,
Imaging what it would be like in the underworld,
If I would be a ghost, a demon maybe.
I wonder if demons are as kind as my skeleton.
I hope so.

My skeleton makes me feel safe,
Feel myself.
I wish I could have my skeleton with me at school.
To make me laugh, give me confidence.
But I can't let him out.
He's my biggest secret.

My dad would say "we need to talk" and I'd panic.
What if he found my skeleton? How would he know?
Nobody was supposed to know.
He tells me I need at stop,
Start going out,
Stop skipping meals.
He says I look too thin.
He says he can see my bones.
If only he knew what he'd really see if my skin was so transparent.
He said I look like a skeleton.
And deep down I know he's right.


We all have skeletons in our closets.
Gentle creatures with sharp teeth,
Who could ruin us at any moment.
But my skeleton is different.
My skeleton is me.
And it's time I set him free.
There’s a Devil of a night each year, the night of Mr. Haim!
When the devilish and ghoulie ones come out to play their monster’s game.
And why some would seek to trick or treat on this scary day of dead?
Careful now cause gremlins, trolls …sprites and wolves, will offer up their dread!
Quiet, shush, I hear a pack of creepy-crawly boots…

Ra’atan-Zu and the Boogedy-Boo!
And the skeleton bones, clink…
And the skeleton bones, clink…
The skeleton bones clink.

That crafty-smith of horns and hooves is spying on these kiddies,
As Ra’atan-Zu and the Boogedy-Boo are hunting strays to do their dastardly-ditties.
Quiet, shush, I hear a pack of creepy-crawly boots,
And their costumes, oh-so-foul, the evilest of suits!
And there she is, that little girl who can’t keep up, in a tasty mushroom ensemble.
And the skeleton bones clink in her path to give her quite a tomble!

Ra’atan-Zu and the Boogedy-Boo!
And the skeleton bones, clink…
And the skeleton bones, clink…
The skeleton bones clink.

And Sammy Haim, that smithy-devil, a ***** hoof -igniting ghoul’s desire,
He’s howling out, demanding now, “Put that child to the fire!”
And little does he know, no little bit, not even a small clue,
Neither Ra’atan-Zu nor Boogedy-Boo intend on giving him his due!
For once a year on Halloween they get one night to spaz,
Get down and *****, wild and crazy and play a little jazz!
That little mushroom of a girl will play a tiny fiddle,
Ra’atan-Zu and the Boogedy-Boo, a jazzy duet with child in middle!'

Ra’atan-Zu, Boogedy-Boo and a little girl too as they get down actin’ a spaz! Playin’ all night, howling to the moon and kickin’ out some wicked jazz!

And the skeleton bones, clink…
And the skeleton bones, clink…
  The skeleton bones clink.

Halloween narrative rhyme.
Simon Nov 2019
Mind. Body. Both are transfixed among one another. They attract a certain multitude of how both permeates the other with constant activations among it’s greater whole. Two sides to the same coin. Something remotely without judgemental issues to be weary of. Mind and body servitude one another on the grand scale of themes. Monitoring what it’s like to function without one another in the best-case scenarios. One would like to think they both do have separate parts among being each others counterpart. It’s more finite then one would think at first. The difference between finite and separate existence comes with its own separate finite pieces without the other to perturb it’s operations. Finite is a judgmental classification among something to do with how each permeates the other. Yet have many finite pieces among one another who they deem isn’t worthy of there time. There’s an operation going beyond both connections between mind and body can foresee. The skeleton key of mind and body! This key is able to permeate both situational events at one singular time. A simultaneous rate without virtue to uphold it’s investigations. Investigations being something without equal ownership to who’s to be the most separate among each other. And having their own finite pieces among mixed connections one is deemed worthy to uphold among differences entirely. Does mind and body disagree with one another? Or do they simply don’t understand what they are among one another? If they did, then why the hustle from one another? A simple documentation among desirable functions on instinct to never get along. Yet why be brought together to permeate among connections across many of their pieces they already deemed worthy? Is it because they have no choice, but are fixed to get along? A forced operation which localizes their own behaviours across mind and body’s actions. Systematically removing respect among one another. All the above are equilateral. But the skeleton key of mind and body isn’t equilateral by any means. It’s the warden of both mind and body. It’s the warded succession that binds these permeated systems together for peace, and agreement. Desires without conquest isn’t deserving among one another. It’s only deserving among two sides of the same coin, when the key hiding in-between all separate pieces of finite details which takes the entire cake! Why does natures evolution want to keep these visuals under wraps? It’s only the in-between operations without separate pieces of finite details to rhythm the constant of all processes. The skeleton key is the proper picture hiding in plain sight for (non being the wiser) to evoke upon. (A reason being obvious among other reasons without closure among each other.) A testament to become stuck apart, if not for the skeleton key to fill in the gaps. Constantly pushing the desires from urges which are constantly giving practice toward mind and bodies believe in one another. Believe equals sacrifice. Both giving a well-known awareness that they aren’t truly at conflict with one another. There aware of another which binds their desires from urges over and over again. Unlocking one’s own processes among believe which equals sacrifice on a huge scale! Trying to process a path of deservance between how life is truly instructed upon. Natures evolution trying to permeate the true picture from the original design back into another’s claim. Its skeleton key is the object to truly finding progress with the original design. Mind and body being just pawns in a greater horizon. Evolution is the shenanigans of natures ploy. A thing helps pertain the connection between mind and body. Subjecting a skeleton key to react over and over again. Why? Simply so it isn’t disowned by the original designer. Evolution being natures shenanigans is a crafty finite detailed version onto natures spectrum indeed. Evolution being the key to mind and bodies success. A deceiving skeleton key hidden in plain sight for non to equally see!
They say a skeleton key opens all locks. Forcing processes to uphold many believes that it is master of all in-between transmissions among a community without value over itself entirely.
Simon Oct 2019
Stinging with rage! The skeleton would say. Not figuring out anything if never having layers is a good thing. Why must I have an upkeep in social deficiencies, if I can’t learn myself enough? The skeleton contemplated extensively. I’m too gray! Too…Tooooo… Poised! Being poised is a dampening effect. One revolutionizing logic without circumstance. Circumstance without valid reasons to erupt circumstantial balance. Deeming to involve constraints upon your own systems processes. Strife filling into those processes. Putting a bony skeletal hand to its bony chin. I’m a skeleton. I’m all strife! My bones don’t just sting. They rust! RUST!!! It said yelling with two skeletal arms moving clenching bony fists in the air. Try having rusted edges without completing desirable functions! Releasing edges without rust involved. I move one step, and SNAP! OOPS! Edges be screaming my velocities down the rut! Velocities pit my joints moving with other joints in an unbalanced poised expression. Poised is great. Having good flexible positions in the making. Except for the fact I sent the rusted edges. Which once again, is a catch of being too POISED! Maybe I should have asked for layers when wanting to become poised? But without favor. Favor of not having to worry about any deficiencies. Self deficiencies? It said opening it’s mouth wide. More like social deficiencies! I can’t go anywhere feeling my form is off completely! Skeletal arms in the air while staring up into the atmosphere. Mouth still open wide. What do I DOOOOO???!!! All the sudden, the skeletons stinging edges started to rust more. Huh?! Looking down at its skeletal body. Surprised and a little alarmed. The skeleton notices it wasn’t thinking. Since you sometimes don’t realize you just started thinking without one’s volition. The rusted edges were thinking. Or something sizzling with charisma? Charisma with claim, purpose, and factual statements. I don’t, UHHHHHHHH!!! Pausing deeply. Feeling something burn with rage! The stinging…! It’s getting more intense. I-I, I can’t stop myself from feeling it too much! It wants to envelope me. Wait? The skeleton stops. The stinging stopped all together. Not feeling the burning rage anymore. Whoa! Weird. W-what just happened? Sizzling effort of rust kept on thinking with sizzling charisma. OHHH! I get it now. The skeleton retracting its movements back to its original posture. I’m freaking out! Calling for what it seems to be. I’m detracting my own surface from its original desire. Bony hand against its chin. A claim without focus. The skeleton snaps it’s bony fingers. Feeling the sting rupture between rusted joints sizzling with claim, purpose, and factual statements. Away from the thinking. The skeleton seeing it’s joints become more flexible as two of it’s bony finger tips made contact with one another. Seeing is believing after all. It said smiling wide. Feeling the rusted edges absorb it’s smile into it’s thinking base. More stinging raised multiple alarms along the entire bone structure. The skeleton shook violently! Not feeling despair, concern or fear. But warmth. Warmth giving it an excitability it never sought out before. Probably because it never had to. Until now. I think my social deficiencies will start disappearing now. Feeling calmer. Along with my perfect poise that only existed in this bone structuring stage. I’m awaiting something newer. More affordable now that I’m beginning to understand.
How I would feel when moving without contempt for my own volatile commands. Making myself think being stuck in a rut for too long, was actually a good thing. How wrong was I.
Luce Dec 2013
There you are, structure, bones
standing tall in the sunlight
all of the personality drained away.
Oh, goodbye to that twinkle in your eye
Goodbye to that thing we couldn't put our fingers on, that thing that sparked passion
Because all you are now, is a skeleton.

A skeleton with so many ghosts, war veterans, teachers and teenage girls that I used to know,
even me.
That old version of me who skipped, smiled and run her fingers through her hair
she dances through the corridors when no-one else is there.

Along they came. Dress you up, ready for business. That's one thing I learned from this, patch yourself up, make yourself look okay and no-one will realise how broken you are. No.

No, they won't notice the graffiti marks of those who have been,
on your skin.
No, they won't notice those damp patches,
in the corner,
of your eye.
They didn't notice how your ribs creaked as you let out a sigh,
your final goodbye.
They certainly didn't notice when you closed your eyes to die,
my skeleton...

I remember when you comforted me from the world with soft, warm arms and friendly words.
I remembered how you nurtured us and watched us grow.
A loving kiss on the cheek and off we go, but I couldn't let you go.

So here I stayed to watch you drift away with each passing day as they measured your waist,
for the suit.
Pull it in tighter.
A stitch here,
a stitch there.
Tighter.
Iron out the crease.
Tighter.
No room to breathe.

The suit may not cover your face, but it is a mask, covering up mistakes.
The mistake of your missing heart, the drive, the ambition.
The mistake of your missing eyes, seeing goodness in the world, giving beauty to the hopeless.
And the mistake of your missing smile, inspiration for lost souls trying to find their way home.

But you, you were home to me, my skeleton.
Now however much you lose or decay, you will never go away.
You will always be there, a ghost in my memory.

My loving skeleton who is now in a suit.
Creaking and cracking,
shaking and rattling,
the skeleton follows.

Hanging like a shadow,
or like a dead man in the gallows,
the skeleton follows.

With a blank expression,
that's quite frankly depressing,
the skeleton follows.

Just a memory,
of what I use to be,
the skeleton follows.

It aimlessly wallows,
with a body that's hollow,
the skeleton follows.
Copyright Barry Pietrantonio
vivian cloudy Feb 2017
I look inside my skeleton
Love-hate bulging
eyes out of my face
Two warts of ambivalence

I want to hug my skeleton
Heart twitching in a rib-cage
Admire the asymmetry
of every piece broken

Dear beautiful skeleton
In veins runs the river
In a stream of excitement
I flood in disappointment

I talk to my skeleton
I tell it that I love it
Rub my head against it
Lungs violently sighing

I believe in you, skeleton
in the blood of your tongue
A kick in the stomach
Everything is working
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
you really need spectacles to read this, zone-in like a humming bird, given all the see-through gaps on the page - reading the Latin alphabet is like looking at x-rays - it's what happens when phonetic encoding borders on geometry that you get problems, or a joke of the gods (erase gods from poetry and you can erase Chernobyl from the history of Ukraine or chlorophyll from the study of biology.*

mother with a                         u...
like the tips of a parabola enjoining to make a double-o?
i.e. moother / μωθηρ? no wonder
the umlaut given specification against the omicron....
this is why greek shouldn't attract diacritical usage,
necessarily borrowed via the Ω-square:

u                            oo



ω                  ­           ü                                       ¨

              (term it as a parabolic union of two dots
          and the twin omega kissing the sky, a limit of
                linear rubric, sentencing
a...............................................................­.......
b........................................................­.............
c..................................................­....................
                                            ­                           and 6ft1 tall)...


or sigma, or castrato sigma M wonky...
who the **** is reading this compass, drunk?
it's all over the place! west... matter... σouth
Σorph...                 ρita pread... the ****?!
this is turning out to be a right Bermuda Δ:
cockney humour, please, we have children present!
i'm teaching them to count matchsticks in a pine forest!
skeleton (a) says to skeleton (b): give me a jaw,
i can't laugh without it.
skeleton (b) says to skeleton (a): conjure up
a diaθragm for me.
skeleton (a) says to skeleton (b): you mean a diaφragm?
skeleton (b) to skeleton (a): any squiggly line will do right now.
compass!
                                             d


b                                                            ­                            q

                                  ­      
                                              p...

and you thought you needed an acid trip.
the above is a hall of mirrors, it's not a compass or
a Kabbalistic magic square... it's a hall of mirrors.
please excuse the Greek gentlemen for applying
diacritical marks to their beautiful alphabet -
that left Brits still standing stark naked in Eden...
                                                                ­ we're waiting;
tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. hello?!
you'd sooner shove an armadillo into an aardvark's ***
than expect the "masters of the universe"
to put on some lipstick to their gobs:
it's not even about being pretentious as it's about being
donkey stubborn; budge *******! budge up!
i need a can of sardines from you, it won't work unless
you turn into custard or fudge!
you have to forgive my friend, he still thinks he's
part of an empire - which he squandered for politically
correct speech like those Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth
noblemen who squandered in three partitions
while ******* on their ancestral grave... the last remnant
of the empire, nortern ireland saved by black market cigarettes
than the good friday agreement; hong kong ping pong
is still going on between Mr. Chi and Forest Gump,
sit down street protests, hippy protests in asia not fuelled
by marijuana... he is a bit deaf: SHOW'S OVER!
PACK UP YOUR PRIDE AND SHOVE IT INTO THE HAUL
OF H.M.S. BELFAST... ****** doesn't hear me... ******...
well, keeping an empire is like keeping an *******,
doesn't last forever, better chisel out a ******* emblem
and pray to it while knee bending at Stonehenge come
the summer solstice. Mr. Bellybutton pimps it gluttonous
in pomp at the Greenwich meridian: clocking up an ancient
0, although not slicing apart A.D. from B.C., just the time
difference: London 9p.m. is Moscow's 12a.m,
hence the 24h news reels.
I swear I could visualize my skeleton
With so much more clarity than before
I could see how whole it was
Despite all my missing parts
My skeleton keeps on flowing through the motions,
The same bones groove together with purpose.
I owe my surprisingly healthy bones more than I give
I feel more whole as a skeleton
Please remove the rest
My motions will be smooth and conscious
Like water dripping from the faucet,
my fingers will tap with impatience.
Like a wheel tumbling down a hill,
My old bones will follow
They are the key to freedom
No wonder.
The key that opens every door
Is called the skeleton key.
Andrew Rueter Oct 2017
I have secret skeletons
That haven't seen the Sun
From things supposedly fun
Now all they do is make me run

Skeletons exit my closet
And enter my jury box
All of whom I've met
Then put behind locks
Now they throw rocks
Or find ways to mock
They are ruthless
Until I'm toothless

I face a skeleton jury
I face the skeletons' fury
They seek vengeance
Or perhaps repentance
I play lawyer in my mind
This job has become full time
And I must laboriously linger
Through skeleton stingers
Until my mind is rattled
By skeleton saddles

They come from my past
To shatter my glass
The skeletons are attacking
My bones are cracking
Under their weight
They are my freight
They judge me
And begrudge me

I made many moronic mistakes
I left laying at the bottom of lakes
Now they are at the surface
Of my fruitless furnace
Skeletons remain
Like a stain
I look across the plain
To see skeletal rain
Precipitated by my dumb decisions
Droplets make numerous incisions
Each one callously cutting me to the bone
Until the skeleton jury is my humble home
K Paige Aug 2014
skeleton hills
stand tall
even though
they stand dead

trees like
backbones
poking through
the hills flesh

don't cry
my dear
they chose
to die here

death shall
be beautiful
just look at
those skeleton hills

low clouds
hang frames
along the
mountains back

wildflowers
grow promising
life does show
on skeleton hills

dry your
tears for
it's the sky's
turn to cry

If I
could chose
I'd die
right here

dignified death
for they
stand dead
on skeleton hills.
I wrote this after seeing dead trees scattered across the mountain side. It may be dark but I hope you enjoyed.
SHALL WE DANCE. . .

take the skeleton
by the hand and
we dance

it is a gloriously
sunny day
of childhood

the skeleton
just grins and
I sing I'm all shock up

mmm mmm
yeah yeah
yeah

can tell
Mr. Skelton is
well into Elvis

swings its pelvis
rattles its bones
"Go Skeletoney goooo!"

my da yells
"Donall son
leave the ****** skeleton alone!"

"Plant ya now
dig ya later!"
I jive talk him

the skeleton
comes to a stand still
dangles from a wire

out of his skull
I leave my Da's
army sports stores

I always amazed
that this
skeleton was once

a man
as alive
as me

years later
the army
thinks the same

and plastic
replaces
bone

he's finally buried
with full military honours
flag draped coffin

3 volley salutes
scattering the crows
a future he

could never know
become human
for the last time

then the boy
I was
becomes the man I am

lighting a candle
for my former dancing partner
"Rest easy Mr. Bones...rest easy!"


I wrote of 'him' way back in 2007 and then lost the poem so this year. remembering the lost poem, I wrote this version. Then I lost this version. And then I found the old version and finally the new version again! I found it interesting to see the different ways of coming into a poem...same facts but a different trajectory as one enters the emotional atmosphere of the poem.

*

COME DANCING


I take the skeleton’s hand
& man...do we dance?

I clasp his bony hand in mine
give him a high five and dude...we jive!

No one can touch us now
(we’re in a world of our own) .

We shake, rattle ‘n’ roll...yeah!
Shake, rattle ‘n’ roll
(then we)
*** into dat kitchen ‘n’ rattle ‘em pots ‘n’ pans
Den den den...den den den!

The skeleton flashes me a toothy grin.

“Man...you the one...you the one...what a groove...we’re in! ”

The transistorised air is alive as song after song drives me on.

The skeleton don’t break sweat!
Me...my scalp prickles...sweat trickles down my spine.

Sunlight spills in the window
& the dust motes go wild.

The skeleton places a bony hand on my clavicle
& I place my hand on his sacroiliac.

We waltz eye socket to eye socket
& patella to patella.

Gene Kelly sings:

"What a great day it’s been... what a rare mood I’m in
Why it’s... almost like being in love!"

He’s a fine medical specimen.

He dangles from a thread in his head
& the slightest breeze moves him
...gets him going.

I call him Mr. Bo Jangles.

He lives in my Dad’s army sport stores.

From the inner sanctum of his room
my Dad’s army voice booms:

”Donall...leave that ****** skeleton alone! ”

And goes back to counting his *****.

The ledger grows & grows.
(He mutters & mumbles to himself) .

“*****...soccer...50? ...50! ”
“*****... rugby...50? ...50! ”
“*****...medicine...50? ...50! ”

he intones as if chanting a mantra.

I shuffle out...trying to be cool
(in this heat?)

“Yo, see ya later Bo! ”

Years later I see him
in a tiny newspaper article.

Apparently the Army
realise they’ve got a real life skeleton on their hands

& decide to do the decent thing
(remembering the man he’d been)

& bury him

with full military honours

flag draped coffin
& shots fired into the air to scare the crows away.

I wish I could have...been there.

Say my goodbyes.

I smile & whisper
a little prayer:


”Yo, see ya later...Bo! ”
Paula Swanson Oct 2010
The rat smells the air, squeaks in alarm and runs off.  
Black boots come into view.  With the sharp tip of a sword.
I crouch in the dark, behind the bins of *******.

The boots walk on by.  The sword, poking into corners.  
All the while, eyes of glowing red, within deep sockets
of a musty old skull, scan for signs.

I look at my hands.  The festered and rotting flesh.
My bones showing through.  The stench unbearable.
Glad my nose fell off last night.

The timing was off.  It was just a little sneeze.
PLOP!  Right in my gruel.  
Every one at school laughed.
Skeleton Puberty *****!


And now, Dad is mad.  Just cause I waxed the hearse
and didn't use "Ear Wax".  You could hear him rattle
all day.  What's wrong with the "Toe Jam Wax"?

Wait till I catch sis.  She went and showed mom my
mags.  "Raw!  Boo To The Bones".  I'll bet dad had
mags like these when he was a teenager.

They have good stories.  The pics are just a bone-us.
I think it's safe now.  I'll just sneak into the house.
Just sit and look innocent.

How did you find me?
A whole trail of pieces?  Sheesh!
I know.  I'm grounded.  Not for the wax job?
The Mags!?.
Skeleton puberty *****.



My Halloween offering for Oct. 12th
Carla Blaschka Jul 2015
We proposed for Witches Abroad on Broadway, a costume.
As a lure to students, orange and black candy.
Dancing at the prom, cell phones caught the ghouls.
This stretch of road was full of cool cats.
Unlucky ones were left on the side as skeletons.
We swept them clear with our broomsticks.

Our guns were not as brutal as broomsticks.
Bristles hid the ******* end, as if in costume,
No flesh, just skeleton.
Like bags of orange and black candy,
They were left, full of calico cat.
Our familiars, our friends, dinner for a ghoul.

They pulled at the ghoul,
In the hands of a witch, danger came by broomstick,
When ghouls snacked on cat,
In their orange and black fur costume,
Tasting sweet, like candy.
They beat them up and down, but they find another skeleton.

Them ghouls come faster, giving birth to others, another skeleton.
Vocalizing desire for black and white, red and yellow make orange, a ghoul,
Howls for student flavored candy.
A witch lays out one, then another with her broomstick,
Removing the face mask and costume.
Them that can, holler their outrage in cat.

Your *** was revealed in orange and black on a calico cat.
Females cooled themselves of ***, unwilling mates to a skeleton.
Once alive, copulating loudly, now in a death costume.
Walking upright, a neighborhood was destroyed by a ghoul.
Neighbors watched, a witch patrolled on a broomstick.
Your students were seen as human candy.

One wife beater had a juicy rind, sweet and soured candy.
At the dance, hors d’oeuvres were made of cat.
Shot forward, it can create a hole, can a broomstick.
Where stomachs used to be, a skeleton,
Death conquers all, no more ghoul.
One, now many properly attired for the Danse Macabre in costume.

I found an orange, as broomsticks cleaned Broadway of cat candy.
In my student costume and human face mask, my path is crossed by a cat.
It disappeared as if it never was, visible only to Death, a skeleton made by ghoul.
A Halloween Sestina
skeleton man
meets the dust
and rusts

his white bone
is vacant of red.

skeleton man
keeps a key
in his pocket

It's a locket
That stores his heart and soul.

skeleton man walks with a limp:
an eerily timorous skip
like some frightened child

he's a ghost
That lives
And never dies.

skeleton man's cheeks are hollow
and his smile is splintered
and his hugs are cold

he's old
full of mold
he's decaying.

skeleton man walks alone
with the desert dust
and the broken, wagon wheel
and the black raven's croak
and the dissidence of a million nights spent listening to imaginary voices in the wind forever and ever and ever and ever
Liam Kleinberg Jun 2015
I’ve always had a fascination with bones. The skeletal system was taught to me in my fourth grade year. I learned the name of each bone that laid just under my thin layers of skin. I read books on how they were made, how they were broken, how they fixed themselves. I saw them as self-sufficient. I gazed at the plastic skeleton that lived in the corner of my classroom. I tried to match his bones with mine. ******* in my stomach to pinpoint each individual rib. Stretching my skin to watch the edges of my bones appear. I remember narrowing my eyes at the plastic toy in front of my face. It was like he was mocking me. He was showing me everything I wished I could see on myself. Staring at me with such contemptuousness in a sneer of his plastic teeth. I walked away in a mood that rivaled a hurricane, tears that felt foreign against my soft cheeks and a boiling pool of disgust deep inside my body that was covered in too many layers of skin.

I spent my first two years of middle school in quiet distaste. I forgot my fascination with the bones inside me. I never quite existed anywhere but in my own head. I was content. When my father pushed us away the first time, we fled to a different home on a different street. The second time, he shoved us into a different house in a different state. I started a new school with new people that inhabited new sets of bones. In my biology classroom, another plastic skeleton took up home in the corner. I went back to my new house everyday to my mother who I only saw once a day if I went to seek her out and sisters who had to take the blows silently. I trailed behind them, gathering their missing pieces and using the glue holding me whole to stick their parts back together. I scrambled to feed the zombies wandering around my house, shaving off layers of skin. I had to stand by and watch my own body turn into the skeleton I envied. I could peel back the skin I had left and finally see the sharp edges of milky bone.

We were pushed again. To another house in another state. I panicked to hide what was festering inside my chest. I tried to shield it from the eyes of my sisters, trying to keep them pure from fear of death or something just as scary. I pulled a veil down over my face, building a wall between the people I loved and myself. I watched as girls my age twisted and smiled and matured. I felt uneasiness as I tried to be like them, taking note of the way they flicked their hair back and tried to replicate it in a mirror. I painted my face with powders and rimmed my eyes in black to cover the red. I grew out my hair long enough to cover the bones trailing down my back, trying to bend in a shape that I didn’t want them going. I spent nights trying to find something that could bring my bones to life. I danced around death, grinning like a maniac when I dipped my toes into the ******* I had found. I watched the blood drip from the cracks in my skin as I stared by at my own face that looked like a ghost to me now. I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror. With white around their nose, red around their eyes and with features almost parallel to the skeleton that had mocked me so long ago.

I came back from myself in the months following. I tried to rip off the veil over my eyes. I worked to carefully dismantle the wall between me and everyone else. I let my skin grow and grow until I couldn’t see the bones I used to find beautiful. I let myself dress how I knew I wanted. I let myself be who I wanted. I took the pain I had nurtured in my chest since I was a child and bundled it up, pushing it away because it was a friend I didn’t want to be around anymore. I had to learn how to hold my sisters up and climb up with them too. I started scribbling a new name on the canvases I have poured my heart into. I stopped trying to carve my own bones into the shape I wanted them to be and instead, I painted the way they grew. I molded creatures out of clay. I drew beautiful things. I made beautiful things. I began only drawing the things I saw most beautiful. I drew flowers and animals and the people I had allowed to help me. I drew architecture and waterfalls and insects. After my bones had disappeared and the smile on my face wasn’t pulled up by the thought of being non existent, I drew myself too.
this is the poetic essay I had to write for English. It's supposed to have a theme and only be 640 words long... I went like 200 words over **** this thing *****
Grey Rose Apr 2021
Strange Skeleton Knight
Why do you fight?

You're so fragile
Yet you take on my burdens without being asked
Why must you be so eager to die on my behalf?

Don't you deserve to live too?

Mr Skeleton Knight
Why don’t you cry?

You never make a sound
Yet your sadness echoes deafeningly
Do your bones not feel cold out in the dark?
Does not being able to shed tears make you unable to release your sadness?

Can I cry on your behalf?

Sir Skeleton Knight
What did you do with your heart?

Did you tear it out to stop yourself from feeling?
Did you give it away along with the rest of yourself?
Even someone without flesh and organs shouldn't look so empty inside
Why can't you get your heart back?

Can I give you mine instead?

Noble Skeleton Knight
Do you like the grave I've dug you?

I'm glad that you haven't buried yourself yet
But I'm sure you don't feel the same way
Then why don’t you let your soul rest?
Wouldn't the warm dirt hug you more than anyone else has?

I don’t think I can help you anymore.

Beloved Skeleton Knight
I’ve killed myself

I hope you don't think that your existence was a tragedy
Though in the end I never managed to make you feel alive even once
I’ve told them to bury me next to your grave
Promise me that you'll stay at my side
Atleast now we can be cold and empty together.

Why do you still look so sad?
mark jarrad Sep 2010
"I'm fed up of this"
The skeleton said
As he lay in his grave
"I'm bored being dead !"

"I think i'll get up and go for a run
I've been here for years !
And it just is'nt fun"
" I'll call on my girlfriend
And see if she's in...
"Being dead's helped her diet
She's got really thin !!

So he bent up his arms
And gave a big push
"Did you hear that"a voice said
From a nearby bush !

Two boys were out playing
When they heard the sound
" BOO " said the skeleton
As they slowly turned round
"AArgh " screamed the boys
And broke into a run
The skeleton laughed
He was just having fun!

They ran from the graveyard
And into the street
They were running so fast
That smoke came from their feet !

They did'nt stop running
Until they reached their front door
Then rushed to their mum
To explain what they saw
She said as she laughed
" It's not real what you've seen"
Someone's played a prank "
Well it was ...Halloween !

            Epilogue

What became of the skeleton
Running around ?
He got chased by some dogs
And never was found.
Ron Sanders Feb 2020
(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com
Sorry about the ghastly copy. This system makes graceful formatting impossible.
Homunculus Apr 2015
One night . . . a pitiful -looking skeleton appeared and said these words:

A melancholy autumn wind
Blows through the world;
The pampas grass waves,
As we drift to the moor,
Drift to the sea.

What can be done
With the mind of a man
That should be clear
But though he is dressed up in a monk’s robe,
Just lets life pass him by?

Toward dawn I dozed off, and in my dream I found myself surrounded by a group of skeletons . . . . One skeleton came over to me and said:

Memories
Flee and
Are no more.
All are empty dreams
Devoid of meaning.

Violate the reality of things
And babble about
"God" and "the Buddha"
And you will never find
the true Way.

I liked this skeleton . . . . He saw things clearly, just as they are. I lay there with the wind in the pines whispering in my ears and the autumn moonlight dancing across my face.

What is not a dream? Who will not end up as a skeleton? We appear as skeletons covered with skin -- male and female -- and lust after each other. When the breath expires, though, the skin ruptures, *** disappears, and there is no more high or low. Underneath the skin of the person we ****** and caress right now is nothing more than a set of bare bones. Think about it -- high and low, young and old, male and female, all are the same. Awaken to this one great matter and you will immediately comprehend the meaning of "unborn and undying."

If chunks of rock
Can serve as a memento
To the dead,
A better headstone
Would be a simple tea-mortar.

Humans are indeed frightful beings.
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.

Have a good look -- stop the breath, peel off the skin, and everybody ends up looking the same. No matter how long you live the result is not altered[even for emperors]. Cast off the notion that "I exist." Entrust yourself to the wind-blown clouds, and do not wish to live for ever.

This world
Is but
A fleeting dream
So why by alarmed
At its evanescence?

The vagaries of life,
Though painful
Teach us
Not to cling
To this floating world.

Why do people
Lavish decorations
On this set of bones
Destined to disappear
Without a trace?

No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place.
We return to the source
And turn to dust.

Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place,
Then we need not fear
Losing our Way.

No beginning,
No end.
Our mind
is born and dies:
The emptiness of emptiness!
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Rain, hail, snow and ice:
All are different,
But when they fall
They become the same water
As the valley stream.

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.

Cover your path
With the fallen pine needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.
I was profoundly impacted by this, and felt it was worth sharing.
Kason Durham May 2014
She was a lost and beautiful skeleton,
Caught looking at the sunrise,
Torn by images of him; like firelight,
They flickered in her eyes,
Burning; the smoke clouded blue skies.

He was a big and invisible boulder,
She kept heavy on her shoulders,
Her body trembling under the weight,
Her mind, riddled with love and hate.

But show your cat teeth to the lion,
And carry it no longer,
For with time, we’ll make it into sand,
So agreed, you’re keeping my hand.

Like a flower in a human skin coat,
You’ll wilt before you bloom,
Like a gardener in your colorful, cool, garden,
I’ll care for your tomb.
So keep your eyes on the sky skeleton girl,
Soon you’ll see the sun.
A horror movie scene as the heroine escapes.
Everything is still besides her convalescing breath and the distant, chasing wind.
Not a noise is heard except the fall leave's rattle and the birch wood's moaning bark in the moonlight.
Her body slouches into the protection of a lone shed, and shrouds itself in the aroma of cut grass.
A tense brow relieves and tired eyes close, thankful to receive the momentary peace.

A possible misstep turns the wary peace on end with the jagged cut of broken leaves. The once relieved brow now concedes surprise as wild eyes are cast towards an opaque barricade.
Sly pieces of garden equipment leash a weathered jacket in place as she attempts to stand.
A cackle is heard, a shriek undone.
To spite the brittle wood, the formulaic jump-scare-skeleton-hand bursts through the shed's solicitous walls, set to declare the last of a weary soul as his own.
The wind catches up and spearheads any hole it can find.
It begins whistling around the dim room like a tornado elated to havoc behind a castle's walls.
The tree bark howls, the leaves, now delight.
We learn there is no reprieve for a begging champion.
The camera backs out of the splintered hole, and pans over a silhouetted forest to face the waning moon.
The hero succumbs with muted screams to a gore far below and out of frame.

Our only closure, a black screen, with bright white letters, slowly scrolling up.


The end.
Just something I had fun writing, figured not posting it would be a waste despite it not being "poetry", just an experiment I guess. I feel like it would be good, in like, a high-school, short story competition. *****.
Toni Seychelle Feb 2013
The ground beneath the stiff leaves is frozen. The cold, brisk air invades my lungs, I exhale, my breath visible. I step over fallen branches and tugged by thorny vines. A red tail hawk screeches overhead, this is a sign of good luck. There is no path, no trail to mark our way, just an old, flat railroad bed surrounded by walls of shale, blown up for the path of the train so long ago. The only ties to remind of the rail are the rotting, moss covered ties that once were a part of a bridge that would have carried the train over a small creek between two steep hills. I see a fox burrow, and it's escape hatch is one of the hollowed railroad ties. I want to be a fox... The trek down this hill is not easy, thorny blackberry bushes and fallen trees impede progress. At the bottom, the small, bubbly creek is frozen at the edges, traveling under rocks and continuing its ancient path. I look up the hill that I just descended, and wonder how the return will go. Keep moving. The next hill will be easier, there are no thorny tangles, just treacherous leaf litter that will give under my feet if I don't find the right footing. The trick is to dig my boots into the ground as if I'm on steps. These hills are steep. Finally at the top, I look back at this little spring valley, I'm not that high up, but what view. Here, there is a dilapidated tree stand, falling apart from years of neglect and weather. Surrounded by deep leaf litter, there is a patch of rich dark earth, a buck has marked his spot, his round pellets are nearby. The saplings catch my hair as I walk by, and at these moments I am thankful for this cold snap that took care of the ticks. A creepy feeling takes over me, so thankful for this snap. A few feet further, as I watch where I am walking, another tussled bit of earth and I notice some interesting ****. It's furry and light grey; I poke it with my stick and find a small skull when I turn a piece over. Owl. I continue my walk, I didn't come here to play with poo. The last time I took this hike was three years ago, on a similar frigid day. It was a lot easier to make it through the shale valleys. Last summer, a wind storm felled trees and took out power for two weeks. The evidence of that derecho is clear here in this untouched forest. I remembered a tree, which now is a fallen giant, that had lost it's bark. The bark had separated and laid around this tree like a woman's skirt around her ankles. Now the tree lies with it's bark. I pass another tree I recognize whose branch extends out but zig zags up and down, as if it had three elbows. The tree signifies my next move, to descend from the flat railroad bed, down to a creek that flows through the tunnel that would have carried the train. The creek is considerably larger than the last creek I could step across. Descending towards the creek leads me over moss covered rocks and limbs, still bearing snow. Outside the tunnel, the hill walls are large stones, covered in a thick layer of moss, some of which has started to fall off due to heaviness. There's a sort of ice shelf in the creek, it's three layers thick and can support my one hundred and twenty pounds. Laying across the creek is another derecho-felled tree. Some sort of critter has crawled on this, using it to avoid the water below and as a short cut up the hill. His claw marks are covering the the limb, a few are more clear, it looks as if the creature almost slipped off. His claw marks show a desperate cling. I walk through the tunnel, in the mud and water; the creek echoes inside. I look above. There are drainage holes lining the ceiling, one is clogged by a giant icicle. I imagine the train that used to ride over this tunnel, I pretend to hear it and feel the rumbling. The last time we were here, we found cow skeletons. We placed a few heads on branches and one over the tunnel. We stuck a jaw, complete with herbivore teeth, into the mossy wall and a hip bone on a sapling. The hip bone reminded us of Predator's mask in the movie. All these bones are turning green. When I was here before, there was a bone half submerged in the creek; I had taken a picture of it but today, it isn't here. I'm sure it was washed away. After our exploration of the previous visit, we turned back. We are cold again, can't stay in one place too long. I climb through the deep leaf litter and over the rocks back to the railroad bed. Passing all the things I've already seen and spotting things I missed. I find two more fox burrows. They utilized the shale rock and burrowed underneath the jutting formations. Hidden coming from the south, the gaping openings seem welcoming from the north. My friends, the spelunkers and climber, want to descend into the darkness but I remind them, it is an hour to sundown, our trek is hard enough with overcast daylight. Wisdom prevails. We pass a tree, we didn't notice before, that was struck by lightening. The cedar tree was split in two and fell down the shale wall. I see the evidence of the burn and a smoldered residue at the base. Nature has a cruel way of recycling. The downed tree still has snow on it and the path of a raccoon is visible, I like the paws of *****. Though the way is flat, the walls of shale tower above us, limiting routes. At one point I can't see through the fallen trees I have to pass through. I have to crab walk under, crawl over, duck again and find my way around the thorny collections of bare black berry bushes. Finally into a clearing, still surrounded by sharp shale, there is another wall covered in inches of thick, healthy moss. I place my hand, taking time to stroke the furry wall. My hand leaves an imprint. I wonder how long that will last.. Back down the steep hill up and up the thorny tangle. I know I'm on the right path up, I see the fox's hole through the railroad tie, and his entrance burrow up the hill. Going down was definitely easier. The summit is literally overgrown with thorns, there is no clear path through. It is, again, impossible to see through the tangle of limbs and saplings and more thorns. Somehow we make it through. We are close to breaking off this path. We know this by the remains of a cow skeleton that more than likely fell from the top of the shale cliff. Femurs and ribs and jaws abound. On the last trip, we placed a hip bone in the "Y" of a sapling. The young tree has claimed it, growing around it. We add a piece of jaw to the tree's ornamentation and move on. We climb down from the railroad bed to our car - parked on the side of the road with a white towel in the window so that no one suspects a group of people walking through private property, past faded NO TRESPASSING signs.

When I undress for bed later, there are many small scratches up and down my legs from those ****** thorny vines. I'm okay with that, it's better than searching for ticks in my head.
I couldn't write a 'poem' about this hike. It was too full of nature.
Jack May 2014
A skeleton in a fingerprint
A dancing bag of bones
A cantilever shade of gray
A prisoner all alone
A silent pulsing partner
A drift this blot of ink
A catch phrase in the darkness
A caption on the brink
A blistered swirl of images
A channeled mystery
A skeleton in a fingerprint
A different piece of me
WickedHope Dec 2014
I wish I didn't feel so empty without you

   I'm hollow
      All that's left is my core
         I'm just paper thin, tearing skin
   **All I've left is my black heart, melting away
Sometimes I forget how unstable I am.
I'm very.
- - -
Might add to this at some point.
by
Alexander K Opicho

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

When I grow up I will seek permission
From my parents, my mother before my father
To travel to Russia the European land of dystopia
that has never known democracy in any tincture
I will beckon the tsar of Russia to open for me
Their classical cipher that Bogy visoky tsa dalyko
I will ask the daughters of Russia to oblivionize my dark skin
***** skin and make love to me the real pre-democratic love
Love that calls for ambers that will claw the fire of revolution,
I will ask my love from the land of Siberia to show me cradle of Rand
The European manger on which Ayn Rand was born during the Leninist census
I will exhume her umbilical cord plus the placenta to link me up
To her dystopian mind that germinated the vice
For shrugging the atlas for we the living ones,
In a full dint of my ***** libido I will ask her
With my African temerarious manner I will bother her
To show me the bronze statues of Alexander Pushkin
I hear it is at ******* of the city of Moscow; Petersburg
I will talk to my brother Pushkin, my fellow African born in Ethiopia
In the family of Godunov only taken to Europe in a slave raid
Ask the Frenchman Henri Troyat who stood with his ***** erected
As he watched an Ethiopian father fertilizing an Ethiopian mother
And child who was born was Dystopian Alexander Pushkin,
I will carry his remains; the bones, the skull and the skeleton in oily
Sisal threads made bag on my broad African shoulders back to Africa
I will re-bury him in the city of Omurate in southern Ethiopia at the buttocks
Of the fish venting beautiful summer waters of Lake Turkana,
I will ask Alexander Pushkin when in a sag on my back to sing for me
His famous poems in praise of thighs of women;

(I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.
I loved you because of your smooth thighs
They put my heart on fire like amber in gasoline)

I will leave the bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin in Moscow
For Lenin to look at, he will assign Mayakovski to guard it
Day and night as he sings for it the cacotopian
Poems of a slap in the face of public taste;

(I know the power of words, I know words' tocsin.
They're not the kind applauded by the boxes.
From words like these coffins burst from the earth
and on their own four oaken legs stride forth.
It happens they reject you, unpublished, unprinted.
But saddle-girths tightening words gallop ahead.
See how the centuries ring and trains crawl
to lick poetry's calloused hands.
I know the power of words. Seeming trifles that fall
like petals beneath the heel-taps of dance.
But man with his soul, his lips, his bones.)

I will come along to African city of Omurate
With the pedagogue of the thespic poet
The teacher of the poets, the teacher who taught
Alexander Sergeyvich Pushkin; I know his name
The name is Nikolai Vasileyvitch Gogol
I will caution him to carry only two books
From which he will teach the re-Africanized Pushkin
The first book is the Cloak and second book will be
The voluminous dead souls that have two sharp children of Russian dystopia;
The cactopia of Nosdrezv in his sadistic cult of betrayal
And utopia of Chichikov in his paranoid ownership of dead souls
Of the Russian peasants, muzhiks and serfs,
I will caution him not to carry the government inspector incognito
We don’t want the inspector general in the African city of Omurate
He will leave it behind for Lenin to read because he needs to know
What is to be done.
I don’t like the extreme badness of owning the dead souls
Let me run away to the city of Paris, where romance and poetry
Are utopian commanders of the dystopian orchestra
In which Victor Marie Hugo is haunted by
The ghost of Jean Val Jean; Le Miserable,
I will implore Hugo to take me to the Corsican Island
And chant for me one **** song of the French revolution;


       (  take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
  
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
  
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
  
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
  
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that we)

 From the Corsican I won’t go back to Paris
Because Napoleon Bonaparte and the proletariat
Has already taken over the municipal of Paris
I will dodge this city and maneuver my ways
Through Alsace and Lorraine
The Miginko islands of Europe
And cross the boundaries in to bundeslander
Into Germany, I will go to Berlin and beg the Gestapo
The State police not to shoot me as I climb the Berlin wall
I will balance dramatically on the top of Berlin wall
Like Eshu the Nigerian god of fate
With East Germany on my right; Die ossie
And West Germany on my left; Die wessie
Then like Jesus balancing and walking
On the waters of Lake Galilee
I will balance on Berlin wall
And call one of my faithful followers from Germany
The strong hearted Friedrich von Schiller
To climb the Berlin wall with me
So that we can sing his dystopic Cassandra as a duet
We shall sing and balance on the wall of Berlin
Schiller’s beauteous song of Cassandra;

(Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
From the sad and tearful slaughter
All had laid their arms aside,
For Pelides Priam's daughter
Claimed then as his own fair bride.

Laurel branches with them bearing,
Troop on troop in bright array
To the temples were repairing,
Owning Thymbrius' sovereign sway.
Through the streets, with frantic measure,
Danced the bacchanal mad round,
And, amid the radiant pleasure,
Only one sad breast was found.

Joyless in the midst of gladness,
None to heed her, none to love,
Roamed Cassandra, plunged in sadness,
To Apollo's laurel grove.
To its dark and deep recesses
Swift the sorrowing priestess hied,
And from off her flowing tresses
Tore the sacred band, and cried:

"All around with joy is beaming,
Ev'ry heart is happy now,
And my sire is fondly dreaming,
Wreathed with flowers my sister's brow
I alone am doomed to wailing,
That sweet vision flies from me;
In my mind, these walls assailing,
Fierce destruction I can see."

"Though a torch I see all-glowing,
Yet 'tis not in *****'s hand;
Smoke across the skies is blowing,
Yet 'tis from no votive brand.
Yonder see I feasts entrancing,
But in my prophetic soul,
Hear I now the God advancing,
Who will steep in tears the bowl!"

"And they blame my lamentation,
And they laugh my grief to scorn;
To the haunts of desolation
I must bear my woes forlorn.
All who happy are, now shun me,
And my tears with laughter see;
Heavy lies thy hand upon me,
Cruel Pythian deity!"

"Thy divine decrees foretelling,
Wherefore hast thou thrown me here,
Where the ever-blind are dwelling,
With a mind, alas, too clear?
Wherefore hast thou power thus given,
What must needs occur to know?
Wrought must be the will of Heaven--
Onward come the hour of woe!"

"When impending fate strikes terror,
Why remove the covering?
Life we have alone in error,
Knowledge with it death must bring.
Take away this prescience tearful,
Take this sight of woe from me;
Of thy truths, alas! how fearful
'Tis the mouthpiece frail to be!"

"Veil my mind once more in slumbers
Let me heedlessly rejoice;
Never have I sung glad numbers
Since I've been thy chosen voice.
Knowledge of the future giving,
Thou hast stolen the present day,
Stolen the moment's joyous living,--
Take thy false gift, then, away!"

"Ne'er with bridal train around me,
Have I wreathed my radiant brow,
Since to serve thy fane I bound me--
Bound me with a solemn vow.
Evermore in grief I languish--
All my youth in tears was spent;
And with thoughts of bitter anguish
My too-feeling heart is rent."

"Joyously my friends are playing,
All around are blest and glad,
In the paths of pleasure straying,--
My poor heart alone is sad.
Spring in vain unfolds each treasure,
Filling all the earth with bliss;
Who in life can e'er take pleasure,
When is seen its dark abyss?"

"With her heart in vision burning,
Truly blest is Polyxene,
As a bride to clasp him yearning.
Him, the noblest, best Hellene!
And her breast with rapture swelling,
All its bliss can scarcely know;
E'en the Gods in heavenly dwelling
Envying not, when dreaming so."

"He to whom my heart is plighted
Stood before my ravished eye,
And his look, by passion lighted,
Toward me turned imploringly.
With the loved one, oh, how gladly
Homeward would I take my flight
But a Stygian shadow sadly
Steps between us every night."

"Cruel Proserpine is sending
All her spectres pale to me;
Ever on my steps attending
Those dread shadowy forms I see.
Though I seek, in mirth and laughter
Refuge from that ghastly train,
Still I see them hastening after,--
Ne'er shall I know joy again."

"And I see the death-steel glancing,
And the eye of ****** glare;
On, with hasty strides advancing,
Terror haunts me everywhere.
Vain I seek alleviation;--
Knowing, seeing, suffering all,
I must wait the consummation,
In a foreign land must fall."

While her solemn words are ringing,
Hark! a dull and wailing tone
From the temple's gate upspringing,--
Dead lies Thetis' mighty son!
Eris shakes her snake-locks hated,
Swiftly flies each deity,
And o'er Ilion's walls ill-fated
Thunder-clouds loom heavily!)

When the Gestapoes get impatient
We shall not climb down to walk on earth
Because by this time  of utopia
Thespis and Muse the gods of poetry
Would have given us the wings to fly
To fly high over England, I and schiller
We shall not land any where in London
Nor perch to any of the English tree
Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Thales
We shall not land there in these lands
The waters of river Thames we shall not drink
We shall fly higher over England
The queen of England we shall not commune
For she is my lender; has lend me the language
English language in which I am chanting
My dystopic songs, poor me! What a cacotopia!
If she takes her language away from
I will remain poetically dead
In the Universe of art and culture
I will form a huge palimpsest of African poetry
Friedrich son of schiller please understand me
Let us not land in England lest I loose
My borrowed tools of worker back to the owner,
But instead let us fly higher in to the azure
The zenith of the sky where the eagles never dare
And call the English bard
through  our high shrilled eagle’s contralto
William Shakespeare to come up
In the English sky; to our treat of poetic blitzkrieg
Please dear schiller we shall tell the bard of London
To come up with his three Luftwaffe
These will be; the deer he stole from the rich farmer
Once when he was a lad in the rural house of john the father,
Second in order is the Hamlet the price of Denmark
Thirdly is  his beautiful song of the **** of lucrece,
We shall ask the bard to return back the deer to the owner
Three of ourselves shall enjoy together dystopia in Hamlet
And ask Shakespeare to sing for us his song
In which he saw a man **** Lucrece; the **** of Lucrece;

( From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
  And girdle with embracing flames the waist
  Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of chaste unhapp'ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
  Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
  With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
In the possession of his beauteous mate;
Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
  That kings might be espoused to more fame,
  But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
An expir'd date, cancell'd ere well begun:
  Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
  Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made,
To set forth that which is so singular?
Or why is Collatine the publisher
  Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown
  From thievish ears, because it is his own?

Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty
Suggested this proud issue of a king;
For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be:
Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,
Braving compare, disdainfully did sting
  His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt
  That golden hap which their superiors want)

  
I and Schiller we shall be the audience
When Shakespeare will echo
The enemies of beauty as
It is weakly protected in the arms of Othello.

I and Schiller we don’t know places in Greece
But Shakespeare’s mother comes from Greece
And Shakespeare’s wife comes from Athens
Shakespeare thus knows Greece like Pericles,
We shall not land anywhere on the way
But straight we shall be let
By Shakespeare to Greece
Into the inner chamber of calypso
Lest the Cyclopes eat us whole meal
We want to redeem Homer from the
Love detention camp of calypso
Where he has dallied nine years in the wilderness
Wilderness of love without reaching home
I will ask Homer to introduce me
To Muse, Clio and Thespis
The three spiritualities of poetry
That gave Homer powers to graft the epics
Of Iliad and Odyssey centerpieces of Greece dystopia
I will ask Homer to chant and sing for us the epical
Songs of love, Grecian cradle of utopia
Where Cyclopes thrive on heavyweight cacotopia
Please dear Homer kindly sing for us;
(Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we
feasted our fill on meat and drink, but when the sun went down and
it came on dark, we camped upon the beach. When the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I bade my men on board and
loose the hawsers. Then they took their places and smote the grey
sea with their oars; so we sailed on with sorrow in our hearts, but
glad to have escaped death though we had lost our comrades)
                                  
From Greece to Africa the short route  is via India
The sub continent of India where humanity
Flocks like the oceans of women and men
The land in which Romesh Tulsi
Grafted Ramayana and Mahabharata
The handbook of slavery and caste prejudice
The land in which Gujarat Indian tongue
In the cheeks of Rabidranathe Tagore
Was awarded a Poetical honour
By Alfred Nobel minus any Nemesis
From the land of Scandinavia,
I will implore Tagore to sing for me
The poem which made Nobel to give him a prize
I will ask Tagore to sing in English
The cacotopia and utopia that made India
An oversized dystopia that man has ever seen,
Tagore sing please Tagore sing for me your beggarly heat;

(When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from
beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,
thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder)



The heart of beggar must be
A hard heart for it to glorify in the art of begging,

I don’t like begging
This is knot my heart suffered
From my childhood experience
I saw my mother
Sky May 2016
Dance on a skeleton tightrope,
Bones strung across a bottomless hole
One foot in front of the other
With spiderwebs holding your wrists prisoner
Pill bottles around the sink
Tapping on their tiptoes
Lined up to greet you,
To pour sleepdeathdarkness down your throat
A knife spins on its scarlet-stained tip
A weeping chasm divides the solidity of your vein
Railroad tracks on snow, the crows lose their voices
And drop feathers into the frost
Feathers fill your head so you cannot thinkspeakbreathe
A kiss of sunshine tries to wake you,
But you’re too far under
The frigid waves
Palms raised to the walls of the iceberg
Lips parted to sing a song of release me please
Hushandshush no one wants to hear you cry, deary
Stitch a smile into your lips
Hide the tears that dance on your vocal strings
No one wants to see the broken doll
Who dances on cracked limbs
Porcelain dancing on thin ice, watch it
S h
A
Tte
R
Watch her fall
No one really wanted to save her after all
Dance in a nightmare, cry in a dream
The pain will make me burst at the seams
I can see the blood spilling
Onto the tile floor
It stains my eyes, it stains my heart
It digs claws into my soul to tear me apart
The fog tranforms into laughing ghosts
Their faces are the masks of tragedy
Their eyes are everything I fear
These are not words that I want to hear
A boy with eyes the color of chocolate and mahogany
Is desperate to keep me safe
But I am afraid
Even the warmest kiss cannot melt the icicles lining my veins
Here I go, to walk the skeleton tightrope,
My tears fall into the bottomless void
Behind me, the monsters ask me to fall
Ahead my soul begs me to
Put one foot
Ahead of the other
Keep walking the skeleton tightrope, forward
Into the gleaming city of hope.
Dr Sam Burton Oct 2014
S H E


She softly came into my life without her crown

To whisper, to shed light and to turn me upside down

As soft music, she spoke through her pictures

And once I saw them, I adored her features

Something is daily pulling me to her marvellous cave

To appreciate her fountain of beauty  to which I crave

She gave me something I won't lose

Even if I drank too much *****

She gave me something to keep in heart

So that we won't ever part

Something I look at and see her in mind

Then slowly move to heart to bind

Now that I am totally stunned and sedated

It is too hard for me to be eliminated.



Sam Burton ©



Today is Sunday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2014 with 87 to follow.

The moon is new. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus.



In 1876, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M;, opened. It was the first public higher education institution in Texas.

In 1883, the Orient Express train made its first run.

In 1895, the U.S. Open men's golf tournament was first contested. It was won by Horace Rawlins.



A thought for the day:



You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge. -- Damon Runyon





QUOTES for the day:



It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear...

------------------------

He serves his party best who serves his country best.



Rutherford B. Hayes



You're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.





Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure, Gran Prix, 1994



“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

Peter Drucker



"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."



Billie Jean King



POETRY





AEDH Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven



W.B. Yeats


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

About this poem


"Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" was originally published in Yeats' collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" (John Lane, 1899).

About W.B. Yeats


A poet and playwright, Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in January of 1939.

*
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.


This poem is in the public domain.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate







Vocabulary

"Bona fide" is used to mean good faith, sincerity. It is the evidence of one's good faith or genuineness -- often plural in construction; evidence of one's qualifications or achievements.

Health and Beauty



Pumpkin Seeds



Have you ever toasted pumpkin seeds at Halloween? Don't wait until the holiday to eat them. Pumpkin seeds are a great source of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium, and area also high in omega-3. One handful a day makes a big difference.





CHINESE FOOD

In Canada, Thanksgiving is just over one week away. As an alternative to turkey, how about serving Cantonese Roast duck for Thanksgiving dinner?



Cantonese Roast Duck



By Rhonda Parkinson



Author Deh-Ta Hsiung writes: This is the duck with a shining reddish-brown skin seen hanging in the windows of a good Cantonese restaurant.

Serves 10 - 12 as a starter, or 4 to 6 as a main course. (Note: total preparation time does not include the time needed to dry the duck before cooking).

Ingredients

    One 4 1/2 lb (2 kg) oven-ready duckling
    2 teaspoons salt
    4 tablespoons maltose or honey
    1 tablespoon rice vinegar
    1/2 teaspoon red food coloring (optional0
    about 1/2 pint (280 ml) warm water
    For the Stuffing:
    1 tablespoon oil
    1 tablespoon finely chopped spring onion
    1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
    1 tablespoon caster sugar
    2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)
    1 tablespoon yellow bean sauce
    1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
    2 teaspoons five-spice powder

    Prep Time: 30 minutes
    Cook Time: 60 minutes

    Total Time: 90 minutes

Preparation

Clean the duck well. Remove the wing tips and the lumps of fat from inside the vent. Blanch in a *** of boiling water for a few minutes, remove and dry well, then rub the duck with salt and tie the neck tightly with string.

Make the stuffing by heating the oil in a saucepan, add all the ingredients, bring to the boil and blend well. Pour the mixture into the cavity of the duck and sew it up securely.

Dissolve the maltose or honey with vinegar and red food coloring (if using) in warm water, brush it all over the duck - give it several coatings, then hang the duck up (head down) with an S-shaped hook to dry in an airy and cool place for at least 4 - 5 hours.

To cook: preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. (200 degrees C./Gas 6). Hang the duck head down on the top rack, and place a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F. (180 degrees C., Gas 4) after 25 minutes or so, and cook for a further 30 minutes, basting with the remaining coating mixture once or twice.

To serve: let the duck cool down a little, then remove the string and pour out the liquid stuffing to be used as gravy. Chop the duck into bite-sized pieces, then serve hot or cold with the gravy poured over it.

Courtesy of Deh-Ta Hsiung.

JOKES



Skeleton in the closet



A very large, old, building was being torn down in Chicago to make room for a new skyscraper. Due to its proximity to other buildings it could not be imploded and had to be dismantled floor by floor.

While working on the 49th floor, two construction workers found a skeleton in a small closet behind the elevator shaft. They decided that they should call the police.

When the police arrived they directed them to the closet and showed them the skeleton fully clothed and standing upright. They said, "This could be Jimmy Hoffa or somebody really important."

Two days went by and the construction workers couldn't stand it any more; they had to know who they had found. They called the police and said, "We are the two guys who found the skeleton in the closet and we want to know if it was Jimmy Hoffa or somebody important."

The police said, "It's not Jimmy Hoffa, but it was somebody kind of important."

"Well, who was it?"

"The 1956 Blonde National Hide-and-Seek Champion."



Quick Quotes



"It was different when we were kids. In second grade, a teacher came in and gave us all a lecture about not smoking, and then they sent us over to arts and crafts to make ash- trays for Mother's Day." --Paul Clay

---

"We should have a way of telling people they have bad breath. 'Well, I'm bored...let's go brush our teeth.' Or, 'I've got to make a phone call, hold this gum in your mouth.'" --Brad Stine

---

"Doesn't it bother you when people litter? The most creative rationale for throwing an apple core out the window is 'It will plant seeds for other threes to grow.' And, of course, our highways are lined with apple trees--right next to all the cigarette bushes." --Nick Arnette



Republican or Democrat?



A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the balloonist. "How did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it's my fault."



Birthday Gift

A husband went to buy a birthday gift for his wife. Some friends had been invited over that night to celebrate her fortieth, and he wanted to get something special. At the store he spotted some cute little music boxes. One blue one was playing "Happy Birthday."

Thinking they were all the same, he chose a red one and had it gift-wrapped. Later, at dinner, he gave it to his wife and asked her to open it...

When she lifted the lid, out came the tune to "The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be!"



Blonde Convention



80,000 blondes meet in the Kansas City Chiefs Stadium for a "Blondes Are Not Stupid" Convention. The leader says, "We are all here today to prove to the world that blondes are not stupid. Can I have a volunteer?" A blonde gingerly works her way through the crowd and steps up to the stage. The leader asks her, "What is 15 plus 15?" After 15 or 20 seconds she says, "Eighteen!"

Obviously everyone is a little disappointed. Then 80,000 blondes start cheering, "Give her another chance! Give her another chance!" The leader says, "Well since we've gone to the trouble of getting 80,000 of you in one place and we have the world-wide press and global broadcast media here, gee, uh, I guess we can give her another chance." So he asks, "What is 5 plus 5?"

After nearly 30 seconds she eventually says, "Ninety?"

The leader is quite perplexed, looks down and just lets out a dejected sigh -- everyone is disheartened, the blonde starts crying and the 80,000 girls begin to yell and wave their hands shouting, "GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"

The leader, unsure whether or not he is doing more harm than damage, eventually says, "Ok! Ok! Just one more chance -- What is 2 plus 2?"

The girl closes her eyes, and after a whole minute eventually says, "Four?"

Throughout the stadium pandemonium breaks out as all 80,000 girls jump to their feet, wave their arms, stomp their feet and scream...

"GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"





Have a super nice Sunday!
Kylin Luna Sep 2010
I meet a skeleton hiding in the depth of my closet,
in nothing but my boots and a satin type corset,
still with her hair(well I’m assuming its a she)
and in her hand holding a special secret for me.

she assumes she knows more
than an average friend may
and to this I am startled,
but don’t give it away,
for what is a skeleton without
a name or a trace?
I mean, I beg your pardon,
get out of my face.

she hung there waiting for me to come by,
knowing that soon id be needing clothes to try,
and I swear she would hang there so happily,
excited at the prospect of alarming me.

and so I am frightened
by the grey of her bones,
by the scent of her flesh,
and the sound of her drones
yet of coarse i smile widely
if not slightly too trying,
at the hope of her secrets
confiding.

what she sais makes me angry but I know she is right,
there’s a dark place inside me that never sees light,
and she managed to find gapes in which to crawl through and sleep,
in-between all the sharp shadows of the feelings I keep,
hidden somewhere inside me that is so close to the grave
that I never look inside it, I’m never that brave.

until it reaches to a time my
secrets comes  to me,
in the form of a skeleton
(unfortunately)
to tell me i should look deep
inside of what’s wrong,
and fill it with
what i knew
All along.
Sky Feb 2015
I look at my hands...
I see ash
I look at my eyes...
I see empty black holes
I look at my face...I see a grinning skull
I look at my shadow...
I see a monster
Reaching out to pull me underground
I am falling apart
Inside and outside and under the skin
My mouth is open wide...
I am screaming unheard words
They echo inside of my head
Until someone hears
And saves me from the skeleton I have become
Do you see me now?
I am nothing more than bone
Carved with the sharp words that fly
Out of your mouth
Do you hear me now?
I have been screaming and crying inside
for so long
Tears refuse to fall...
I am a stone wall...
I used to be
But now I've become something much more gruesome
I am screaming unheard words
They echo inside of my head
Until someone hears
And saves me from the skeleton I have become
I am becoming this
This is what you've made me
You can still save me
Just open your eyes
And see the pain
Just open your ears
And hear me scream
Just open your mouth to the sky
and
scream
unheard words
They echo inside of our heads
Until someone hears
And saves us
I am screaming unheard words
They echo inside of my head
Until someone hears
And saves me
I am screaming unheard words
They echo inside of my head
Until someone hears
And saves me from
The skeleton I have become
I am falling apart
Inside and outside and under the skin
My mouth is open wide...
Amanda Lee Mar 2014
I feel mostly like I'm just a skeleton
With worn out ribs and a cracked spine
Blood shot eyes lined by dark circles
Alabaster skin I'm constantly trying to shed
An alien within my own habitat
I know not where I'm going
Or when I shall ever get there
But I still carry on, slightly limping all the way,
The unforgotten memories of past failure still lingering
Reminding me I am merely bones and skin
Emotions  and ambitions left behind long ago
Not immune to the disastrous ways of the universe
along the path you set for me,
i came across a skeleton key,
off the side there was a tag,
the words i read seemed to lag,
i caught my breath and read aloud,

*take this key, i have endowed,
find my weakness.... break me down.
Keith J Collard Jan 2013
Resident Facebook by Keith Collard

{remnants of a blood and ice coffee stained diary}


23april1996,

Been working at this mansion for at least four months now. Fellow co-workers are friendly enough. The pharmeceutical researchers are very pompous with their exact demands. Im in charge of the food storage and refridgeration for the mansion. It is the only modernly powered facet of this mansion. Besides the labs in the basement(from which I only heard).


26april1996,

This mansion is too creepy, the architect designed the living quarter and main facade of the mansion in a 1920 neo gothic fashion--with gas lamps and gothic paintings. Every device, even the typewriters in the mansion are old fashioned mechanical. A top researcher told me in casual conversation that these doors and clocks are more durable than current electronic means, built in the same fashion as the pyramids and stonehenge--he was pointing out all the clocks and engraved doors in the dining hall as he was speaking,while I was putting out the food. He's the usual eccentric for as these researchers go, he told me the company president paid him to design classical mantraps along the mansion and guardhouse to keep workers from straying, encrypted with runes and riddles as keys(some odd ducks).


2may1996,

Mansion workers were given each a laptop today by the head researcher Albert Wesker. This guy is like the James Bond of scientists, dashing and suave with a 9mm berreta at his side(wish we were allowed guns). He wears sunglasses--even at night. He said they experimented with a comunications app the scientists have been using to communicate expeiremental data. The only app available on there is something called Facebook, which the scientists call "fbproto."


5may1996,

The f.bproto is neat, we can watch movies , talk to eachother, and to workers at the pharmaceutical's sister facilities. Everything is monitored by the companies security admins Ive heard. The company will be holding raffles via f.bproto for staffers who could win a chance to participate in "beneficial lab trials" from ***** extension treatment to magnetic wave reducing therapy. Sounds unappealing to me...I put my name down on the site just in case.


6 may1996,Been talking to girl who works in sanitation department underneath the guardhouse, her name is Ada, she said there was an important goverment official flying in to the helipad today. She is pretty cute, and one bright light in this shadowy mansion. message from company, we should join democratic party on fbproto. whatever they say,they're the scientists.


10may1996,

Been stayin up too late posting on f.bproto,the company is posting alot of links, of visual images and sentences I don't quite understand. Ben from mansion cleanin services keeps hitting on Ada,I want to defriend him but want to know what he's doing. I put my cat in fbproto company pic contest,with everyone else who was given lab pets by the scientists, I put little gloves on her paws--Im sure to win.


11may1996,

Karl sent me a message on fbproto that he saw a researcher go into his room, and never saw him leave, and when he went to clean his room the researcher was not in there. This mansion is creepy, I mean a statue of a woman cutting her own throat with the inscription "only death shall set you free,"is that a little gloomy or what. fan of smiley faces on fbproto.;)


12 may 1996

man, the doors are like eight inches thick, solid wood, I locked myself out of my room and tried to shoulder the door in. Well, the door with its inlaid wood carving just laughed at me, it resembles a dragon or snake or someshit with two fern looking wings, red and blue. Spooooky stuff. I had to go get the security admin for the mansion staff living quarters. He unlocked the door, and told me that all the doors are solid oak. I asked him what the words at the bottom of serpent meant, he said it says in latin “ the two wings of the beast are red and blue.” I asked him what the hell that means, he says he didn’t know, but that it has to do with the research the scientists are doing.

I stayed up almost all night on fbproto, at first because my shoulder was killing me, but then it went away, and I kept finding myslelf with a ciqerette in my fingers all the way burnt down and my skin charred, geez, fbproto really takes your mind off things, especially this mansion which reminds me of a sepulcre. That Dan thinks he’s hot stuff, posting himself in his living quarters in the guard house, which is better than the mansion staffs. He get’s to go to the guardhouse recreation room, his profile pic is a bottle of Johnny Walker Red in it’s high end package that looks like a coffin, that him and the guards won at dart’s. It’s not hard to win that when Albert Wesker is on your team, that guy sunk three darts WilliamTell style into the bull’s eye. He tagged me in the picture of the Johnny Walker, *******.


13 may 1996

Locked myself in the walk in freezer today by accident, forgot the code….a researcher let me out finally, and asked if I was alright, I said I was fine, he just looked at me curiously. I was in there to clean out these blue vines, that kept on growing into the ducts and stuff, kept on turning the temperature down. But I won’t lie, I had my laptop with me to pass time, but after a while I couldn’t scroll down because my fingers stopped working , so I pressed the keyboard with my tongue. Ada’s pictures kept me warm, oh how I love her…..I want her so bad.


13may1996

Had a dream about the helicopter ride in and how the dense forest resembled a corpse’s face as we flew past it fast overhead. We touched down on the helipad, and there were dead bodies in the razor wire, they were shaking as if they were in a laughing frenzy from the rotor wash of the helicopter. Then as I entered the main façade (my footstep's echos on the tile seemed to walk away and disapear into the mansion)and stepped on the black and white checkered hall floor, Albert Wesker was there, and he was nicely dressed as a bartender or sumthin, and he asked if " I wanted a ****** mary," and he was squeezing a heart into the glass, then I looked down and there was a hole in my chest where my heart was supposed to be. Then there was a giant ice coffee and dancing with a mirror to moonlight sonata….****** stuff, this mansion is getting to me.


14may1996

dan is such a ****, keeps posting pics of himself shirtless, he was given some experimental hormone from a researcher and is relleshing in it It was some form of energy drink called Red Bull.

Him and Ada are talking more. Message from company to like republican party page(whatever)Daves three eyed frog won fbproto pic contest,grrrr.


15may1996,

there's been more accidents in the mansion and in the labs below. Fred from the kitchen staff cut off his fingers today,and Ive heard through Chris' post that someone fell into the live feed area where they feed animals to their experiments. Bob put his fbproto password(instead of mansioncode) into the mechanical lock at the observatory springing a trap of spikes that spiked his hand to his head and his head to the wall, the featherduster was still in his hand(or face).;(


16may1996,

the scientist with the always grave look has disapeared, the guards said he transferred,but a fellow researcher said he was fired, shame, I liked him.

There is a plant living in my radiator, keeps growing vine-like tendrils, and is turning up the heat...230 friends on f.bproto,woot woot.


17may1996,

the company is handing out promotional ice coffee that they created in the labs to staffers via f.bproto,I wasn't picked, dang,its said to give you "10x human energy and vitality".I became a fan of Backstreet Boys on f.bproto.


18may1996,

karl found a memo from the missing researcher under his bed when he was cleaning out his room, sent me a message via f.bproto,it read that the researcher concluded that the f.b proto had negative effects on living tissue, decreased brain function,increased tendencies for violence,and not worth the sublimal control contract with the goverment, and that both pre-cambrian ferns pose to much liability for a biohazard and show signs of sentience.........hmm,im up to 300 friends now.


19 may 1996,

more accidents in mansion, Albert Wesker sent message to staffers that he was just promoted to Head of Security,and that if anybody is caught leaving the premises they will be shot. I wouldn't even dare to go out in the surrounding forest, I hear the wild dogs howlin all night amid those dense woods.just became a fan of Ace of base, they are awesome.


20may 1996,

my roomate looks like a hot messs, his skin looks pale with black blotches and he has pitch black circles underneath eyes, he's been taking the labs new painkillers, man he should change his profile pic. I poked Ada.


21 may 1996

message from f.bproto, "outside guards replaced by Hunters.".....man, def would not go out there now, I fed one of those ape reptile thingy's live feed the other day( Phil went missing, I had to do his job, always doing other peoples work), and the feed for that day was a cow, and this thing just poked the cow to death with its razor claws.

Everyone of those brute raptor things have a skeleton key has their middle razor claw, a researcher said they can hear every door open and shut in the mansion, " If you see one, turn around and go out the door you came, if you enter a door your not supposed to, well....." he didn't finish what he was saying, only walked off muttering "what have I done....".....I friend requested him on fbproto, his last post was "god forgive me." His profile pic was his mansion room, with replicas of insects and a fishtank(that is rumoured to be a model of a giant one in the basement). He disapeared soon after and his fbproto was deactivated.

Joined Labville on fbproto.;)


22may1996,

message from company, the labs are combining expieramental ice coffee,painkillers,and steroids,anyone on f.bproto can partake, and we should document how we feel and what we do on fbproto multiple times a day. Took a pic of myself shirtless, can see spine coming thru skin, and I keep catching the red plant from the radiator posing in the background, or giving me bunny ears......grrrrrrrr.;(


23may1996

went to smoke a spleef on the stone balcony, near the greeen house over looking the forest the other night, they grow all kinds of red and blue marjiauna there.....but there was one of those reptile hunter things, standing guard there, blocking the path, it screamed and almost blew my eardrums out, " okey dokie" I said, and slowly backed away and left......friggin nazis these pharmaceutical people are.

I got rid of the Labville app on fbproto, that game is too hard, I keep running out of butlers to feed my experiments, and my humans keep escaping into the woods. But mostly, Im sick of seeing

Albert Wesker's name with the highest score everytime I play......



25may1996,

Ben said he saw a handfull of scientists and guards on the helipad taking a chopper out. There is more plants decorating the halls, no one knows who put them there, some rooms are blazing hot, others are ice cold. Ben said to not go to the library, everyone who went upstairs to that room has not returned, that the blue ones have took over the cobblestone path to the courtyard where the armory is. Said he saw Kevin in the tangles running up the stone wall on the side, he had a vine going in his mouth and coming out his eye; and he said that the researchers call the red ones "evaginates," for how they trap and slowly eat you(sounds ******). Im not on Ada's top friends list anymore, angry.


26may1996,

the mansion is awash in accidents and fighting, roomate looks like zombie, others look like reptilian muscled gorillaz, others just a blur they move so fast.eyes hurt from staring at f.b proto. Moaning alot. everyone is playing "I Saw the sign" from Ace of Base. Vines keep stealing my hat, and eating people.


25...,

no food, ate cat,mittens and both hearts,gas lights out, dark,everyone walking around with laptops to see,blue fbproto reflections on walls.fml.


2aprol

took chris' ice cofee and killed ben before he took steroids,lol,ate steroids,no one cooking food, getting hungry,guards came,ate em.....bullet hole in my chest......chaaange f.bproto profile pic to facee....my quote is mooohaha... just. saying


23...,

feel strong, fast,gruntin alot, hungry, no food, ate carl, ate red plant, carved him with my skeleton clah....I hate mondays was post on f.bproto,yum ice cofee.


43

oooohhhh, lol,lol, top ada friend list, ,ate benny...b.esisde armpits....he stink.....roarrrrr......oohhh....bullel wond in cheeek....see benny in thar......moving quick......hunman bones everyware....stain carpits....helicupter....mur guards......no.....pulice.....wesker is wit em....ace of base now.....bed of blud..I wit...fur em.....fbproto sez **** starssss ......


2..........rooooooahhhhh,yum, ohhhhhhh,lol,raohh.fml............[rest of transcript unintelligible]

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