Monday, 24 July 2017
Friday, 21 July 2017
I WILL AGE Francie Lynch
Francie Lynch
I Will Age
I wish to age like a wrap-around porch
In a thunder storm, While generations tell tales, Sipping drinks. A porch of blinking stars, A place to run out of rain, With wooden steps for deliveries, With ascending and descending friends. I will age like a tree, grow stronger in the wind; Give shade and shelter to all Beneath my ring-aged limbs. I wish to age as a river bends, Contiguous with all shores; Floating everyone I know On eternal waters defying death, A current winding with no rest. I will age like a star, Burning bright, giving light, Something to reach for. I wish to age like a mountain, With secret caves and riches. And you can rock your soul Around, over or through, Solid, snow-capped summit, Beckoning you. I will age as the moon, In stages, full and new; Each night different, Unnoticeable fading, As all who age will do. |
Wednesday, 19 July 2017
FICTIONALY-HOW LITERATURE MADE RELIGION NO2
https://www.academia.edu/33751419/mesopotamian_religion_2.docx
MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION
MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION
Fictionality-HOW LITERATURE CREATED RELIGION
https://www.academia.edu/33719846/Ancient_Fictionality_Religion_and_Creativity._First_Part_Mesopotamian_Religion
Fictionality-HOW LITERATURE CREATED RELIGION
Fictionality-HOW LITERATURE CREATED RELIGION
Monday, 17 July 2017
The Comfort House Chronicles: The Crone
The Comfort House Chronicles: The Crone
written by: RayFed
@Raymond_Fed
County Police Report: Doctor's recordings of the meetings of Mr. Arthur Baldwin with Dr. Dhaval Uzziel, attending physician The Comfort House Mental Treatment Facility. December 12, 2013. Digital sound copy on file.
"Where would you like me to start Doctor?"
"Start from the beginning Arthur, start from the beginning."
"I always knew that old bitch across the hall was a little crazy, that Mrs. Walker. Seems even more so when you're the only two tenants in a 4 story building. She kept herself to herself mostly, the way old people tend to do. She just wasn't interested in us as neighbors or she was just too shy to make friends, I never knew but either way there was hardly any contact with her." Arthur kept on talking and as he spoke the words, remembering. Seeing it all happen again in his mind.
"Even when we passed her on the stairs she'd answer our good mornings and good evenings with a mumbled hello or goodbye. None of us minded much. She was never any trouble to anyone. She had obviously been attractive in her youth. She had a small build reflecting her once slim figure. Her hair was silver like spiders webs, sprouting scantily over her wrinkled, spotted head. I think it was darker color when she was younger you could see the hint of, well something else there. Her face was pinched and narrow, like she had just sucked on a lemon. She had a crooked arched nose and her right eye was completely black. Like a lump of polished coal, smooth and glistening, moving around like a detached bead with a will of its own. You could never tell where she was looking with it. Her wrinkled left arm was red and patchy. From the third finger to her wrist there was no skin tissue, just red patches with a septic outline, like it had been stopped from healing. It was patchwork like that down to her elbow, with seven or eight of these sores. It struck me as odd when I saw the note she put under my door but I thought hell that's just how old people are sometimes. It was scrawled out in an old kind of script."
Dear neighbors,
I have gone away for a fortnight. Please look in on my pet bird. I will pay you twenty dollars.
Sincerely, C.A. Walker
I have gone away for a fortnight. Please look in on my pet bird. I will pay you twenty dollars.
Sincerely, C.A. Walker
"I wondered what the hell C.A. stood for? In the envelope was a twenty dollar bill. A fortnight? Who says THAT anymore? I suspected she had a bird even though we were not allowed pets in our building. I assumed she kept a parakeet. Lots of old people keep parakeets and we'd often hear her muttering to herself about a beautiful bird. We'd had not heard a dog howling in the night, or seen a cat around her place. Come to think of it now Doctor I can't remember the last time I saw a cat or a dog in our neighborhood. I asked my daughter if she'd like to go feed the bird she mumbled and complained like all children do. It seemed like a good way to teach a 12 year old some responsibility and let her earn a few bucks. I should have known there was something wrong when we heard the door slam and the sobs from her locked room. Sarah, my wife, put it down to tweenage angst. Sarah went to sort Jessie out, while I put on my coat and slippers. It was getting late and I didn't want the poor bird to starve because a 12 year old didn't like the job I gave her. If only I'd noticed the door handle was sticky, like Mrs. Walker's scratchy note as if spiders were walking through ink, if only I'd noticed the broken feather in the hallway. If only. The door was wide open. It must have been Jessie, I thought. Lucky Mrs. Walker lived in a virtually empty building. I was hit by the smell of cabbage and cigarettes and something else."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"It was just to the left of the table where a bag of bird seed was sitting. In the hall just in front of an old carved oak wood mirror."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"The mirror was dusty and grimy but I could see the outline of a door under the sheet covering the cage reflected in it."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"I remember thinking that's an awful big parakeet."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"I'd never heard a parakeet make such a loud noise."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"But it wasn't a parakeet Doctor no, not at all. Its long, black beak tapping between the rusty bars."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"Its ruffled black feathers reflected in its eyes, like gleaming ebon marbles. It cawed as I stepped nearer. It was a old crow. I was getting nervous and felt the urge to leave without feeding it. It was just a bird right? What could possibly go wrong? I unlocked the cage door; it creaked as I pulled the door open. The Crow shied away from me at first, tapping on the far end of the mirror,"
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"That's when it lunged at me with out warning. I screamed as birdseed rattled to the floor. I drew back my hand. Pain searing through my arm. As the wretched creature glared at me from the back of the cage, I could see it had a layer of my skin in its bloodied beak. It screamed a caw at me that got louder and longer as it went on. I turned, ran blindly out of the apartment. I fled back through the front door, panting, tears streaming from my eyes, blood flowing from the gash on my hand. I fell against my front door, forcing it shut behind me and falling to my knees. Panic overcame me like a wave of ice water as I realized my mistake. I hadn't locked the cage back up. I reached for the nearest umbrella from the stand to defend myself with and began the journey back to the cursed animal. I approached Mrs. Walker's apartment cautiously. Through the front room, I drew nearer the cage, then froze. The cage wasn't empty like I thought it would be. A coal black eye stared back at me. It wasn't a crow anymore! I dropped the umbrella as I saw the head of Mrs. Walker staring at me from behind the bars with feathers growing out of her face and a tiny little twisted nude version of her body. She was all covered in goo. I turned, fleeing back to the front door, to escape, to find some sanctuary. Drops of sweat slid down my neck and soaked my shirt as I ran, tearing to my own home, to safety, to Sarah and Jessie. What would this thing do to them now that I had discovered its secret? I bolted up the stairs, my vision clouding as my eyes wept and my energy left, powered only by adrenaline. I opened Jessie's bedroom door. Lying in a scarlet pool of viscera and blood was my family. Everything I had ever cared for. A look of stark terror on their patchwork faces, black hollow abysses where their eyes once were. A breeze chilled the room from the open window as I lay, sobbing over all I had ever needed, all I had ever loved."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"The Crow was outside the window, Doctor, the demonic monster, wings outstretched. I rose, almost drained of the will to do anything, my vision fading, flinging myself against the wall, grabbing the handle of the window, pulling it closed with the final remains of my strength. The lock clicked. I could hear nothing, just my heartbeat like a drum beating away years within seconds of time. Then... "
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"In a crescendo, filling my ears until I thought they would explode."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"I turned, holding myself up on the window frame, my legs wobbling beneath me, barely managing to hold my crumpled body. The Crow stared back at me. It jumped of the window ledge and took to the air. It circled once, and cawing in its horrid flight, soared towards me in a final, deadly attack. My legs buckled, I fell on the carpet, covered by a shower of broken glass and I blacked out. That's how it happened doctor. My entire family, my entire life, gone in one night."
tap, tap, tap.
"I keep hearing things."
tap, tap, TAP.
"Maybe its stress, but I can't get it out of my head."
tap, TAP, TAP.
"It won't leave me alone Doctor."
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"It won't shut up!"
TAP, TAP, TAP.
"Doctor, can you give me anything to stop that tapping?"
TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.
"Something to help me sleep?"
TAAAAAAP, TAAAAAAP, TAAAAAAP.
"Doctor, is that you tapping? Are you making that noise? Come on, that's not funny. Doctor? DOCTOR!?"....
CAW! CAW!
Thursday, 13 July 2017
Redemption Song 1776 by Ceinwen Haydon
Redemption Song 1776 by Ceinwen Haydon
Ceinwen Haydon imagines an ancient tale of tragedy, loss and religious redemption.
I shut the front door quietly, hunching against the freezing rain. Snow would not be long in coming this night I'd wager. The shower glistened in the lamplight at the end of the garden path and I pulled up the hood of my cape. I walked passed the closed shops, still bright, redolent with the colours of the winter festival. The icy dampness surged into my shoes each time my foot pressed on a rocking paving stone: I misjudged all too often, and cursed roundly.
I went out that night to fulfil a promise. One made a year since, when I knelt with the ragtag and bobtail congregation that gathers on this sacred eve. My senses were assaulted by the stench of damp tweed, cinnamon, stale drink, goose fat, flatulent emissions and lavender, as I knelt to pray. I huddled gratefully in their midst, warming my poor perished body against the heat of the convivial herd.
That night I had no front door, no inside to enter from outside, no matter how cruel the elements. I had returned from sea, to this small Northumbrian town, intending to keep a promise to my lass. My eye had had an optimistic gleam, as I strode on with nuptials on my mind. Presents from the orient lay in my mariners' sack. Celebrations would burst forth, in the depth of darkness, at the turning of the year.
Broken promises are a sulphurous curse! I was too late. Eight years ago, when I'd last held Katie's hands, and looked into her deep brown eyes, I'd promised to return within twelve months and a day. But my new life at sea was compelling, and time marched on. Work came thick and fast and time was spent too easily. Now my reckless complacency called me to chilling account: I found no bonny, bright eyed girl to dance with, nor even a full flowered woman to take to my bed. I found instead a gravestone where, they said, my Katie lay.
I'd come home. Some six years since a pestilence of disease, the pox, had laid this place low. So many poor wretches had succumbed: my mother, father, sister and my youngest brother in that number. One brother had survived, and he had fled to the Americas swaddled in grief. I was alone. I roared to the stone grey heavens, swirling in ferocious blasts of wind, "Why, oh why?" Why had I survived those torrid foreign waters, when all I loved had died at home?
What else could I do on that night of my returning? That night, the eve of Christmas no less. I drank in the tavern, recognising no-one, silent in my corner. Food, a pie and peas, lay untouched upon my platter. When the witching hour approached I sought sanctuary in the midnight mass that called my fellow men to prayer.
As I have told above, within that Norman edifice, that church, the warmth of many bodies eased my cold distress. On my knees I silently implored to God Almighty, "Dear Lord, I beg thee give me a purpose, or take my soul and let me die. I am undone. Only you can save me now. If you can find me a mission I will give my all. After twelve months I will return to this same pew, on this sacred night, and give thanks for my salvation, or take steps to end my life."
As the stream of comics, penitents and inebriates left the church that holy morn, my elbow was grasped by one I knew, but had not noted. As our eyes locked I saw Joseph Smyth, the man who'd courted my own sister, Sarah. She should have stood there by his side, his wife. As with Katie, the frozen ground embraced her now. "Come home with me dear Daniel," he said, the first to call me by my given name since my returning. "You can share my barn, the manger wherein my sheep take shelter. The sole remains of my farm."
I followed Joseph, shivering from trauma and from the hoar frost (that pretty frigid lace). Once inside the hay strewn refuge we drank wine once more, and he gave voice to his pain. When he was spent and crying freely, I embraced him and called him brother.
At length I beseeched him to tell me in what dread way my Katie had died. He uttered words that struck me as lightening from a summer storm, "Daniel, she died in childbed."
"Not the pox then?" I stuttered.
"No Daniel, your youngest brother Sam was due to wed her, believing as we did that you were dead or gone for good. Samuel was the spit of you when he was grown, and Katie held a fondness for you both that brooked no breach by any other man. As is the custom, in these country parts, they were betrothed, and so were sanctioned to mate, prior to taking marriage vows.
"As was hoped, conception blessed this coupling. The babe was born. Heart's ease came, then on its heels despair: Katie, taken by childbed fever when the mewling bairn was but six days old. Sam, heartbroken, gave the pox easy access and followed her not two weeks later to his grave."
The wine traced a web of notions through my vibrating, addled brain: does this child live? Katie's child, Sam's? I seized Joseph's arm, "Tell me, tell me, a girl child or a boy? Alive or dead?"
Dan stalled and shook his head. "Let that rest anon, you have had enough for one day."
"No" I responded. "No, the truth, the truth before my heart goes cold."
"You have sought the truth undimmed, very well, I will tell you all I know. The child, a girl named Grace, lives, but she has no sight. A pretty maid she is, nearly six years old. She abides with the old widowed priest, the very man who shrove us all tonight. He is tender to the canny child, but moithers about what will happen to her when he departs this life. Who will be her guardian, her guardian and her friend? Who will be her guide, and who will be her eyes?"
At this news I sped without delay, along the frozen street, up to the tied church house. I knocked the door as if the hounds of hell were at my heels. The startled ancient peered from the upper casement. After an age, or two minutes maybe, the latch was drawn, and I was admitted.
I could tell you of much grieving, distress, kind and unkind words. Many utterances made between us two, some born of desperation, and other ones of hope. All these, and more, spilt forth in that long Christmas advent night. But I will not taint the priest, who sought to protect the child. Or belie my wretched self who sought to love: and in loving find redemption, find a life.
So in the end this man of God gave me his blessing. As the ice thawed that spring, I found a house to make a home and Grace came to me. I love her for herself, and for Kate and Sam. Her bright smile shines without the need to see, and I am both amazed and humbled by her strength, her wit, her gentleness. I earn my money honestly, a jobbing farmhand. I spend my pennies frugally. I am investing now and in the future that is to come. I yearn for Grace's safety, her fulfilment and her happiness.
And so it is tonight that midnight mass calls me again: I must keep my promise to my God, even though the log fire and its warmth seduce me and bid me stay indoors. A kindly woman Kirsten, my new wife, watches over Grace, as her own belly swells. This elemental winter weather is but a test of my resolve. Wet shoes are nothing of importance.
God Almighty sifted through the gone before, and found a life for me. I must bare my soul, confess my sins, and give him thanks. He saved me when desolation and despair looked sure to smother me, sure to corrupt me with anger and hate. It began with Grace, such a small girl with so much love, and then Kirsten came and made me smile, and now she is with child. Against the odds, I start anew. Christmas midnight bells stroke our hearts to bursting: Christ redeems us all. Amen.
I went out that night to fulfil a promise. One made a year since, when I knelt with the ragtag and bobtail congregation that gathers on this sacred eve. My senses were assaulted by the stench of damp tweed, cinnamon, stale drink, goose fat, flatulent emissions and lavender, as I knelt to pray. I huddled gratefully in their midst, warming my poor perished body against the heat of the convivial herd.
That night I had no front door, no inside to enter from outside, no matter how cruel the elements. I had returned from sea, to this small Northumbrian town, intending to keep a promise to my lass. My eye had had an optimistic gleam, as I strode on with nuptials on my mind. Presents from the orient lay in my mariners' sack. Celebrations would burst forth, in the depth of darkness, at the turning of the year.
Broken promises are a sulphurous curse! I was too late. Eight years ago, when I'd last held Katie's hands, and looked into her deep brown eyes, I'd promised to return within twelve months and a day. But my new life at sea was compelling, and time marched on. Work came thick and fast and time was spent too easily. Now my reckless complacency called me to chilling account: I found no bonny, bright eyed girl to dance with, nor even a full flowered woman to take to my bed. I found instead a gravestone where, they said, my Katie lay.
I'd come home. Some six years since a pestilence of disease, the pox, had laid this place low. So many poor wretches had succumbed: my mother, father, sister and my youngest brother in that number. One brother had survived, and he had fled to the Americas swaddled in grief. I was alone. I roared to the stone grey heavens, swirling in ferocious blasts of wind, "Why, oh why?" Why had I survived those torrid foreign waters, when all I loved had died at home?
What else could I do on that night of my returning? That night, the eve of Christmas no less. I drank in the tavern, recognising no-one, silent in my corner. Food, a pie and peas, lay untouched upon my platter. When the witching hour approached I sought sanctuary in the midnight mass that called my fellow men to prayer.
As I have told above, within that Norman edifice, that church, the warmth of many bodies eased my cold distress. On my knees I silently implored to God Almighty, "Dear Lord, I beg thee give me a purpose, or take my soul and let me die. I am undone. Only you can save me now. If you can find me a mission I will give my all. After twelve months I will return to this same pew, on this sacred night, and give thanks for my salvation, or take steps to end my life."
As the stream of comics, penitents and inebriates left the church that holy morn, my elbow was grasped by one I knew, but had not noted. As our eyes locked I saw Joseph Smyth, the man who'd courted my own sister, Sarah. She should have stood there by his side, his wife. As with Katie, the frozen ground embraced her now. "Come home with me dear Daniel," he said, the first to call me by my given name since my returning. "You can share my barn, the manger wherein my sheep take shelter. The sole remains of my farm."
I followed Joseph, shivering from trauma and from the hoar frost (that pretty frigid lace). Once inside the hay strewn refuge we drank wine once more, and he gave voice to his pain. When he was spent and crying freely, I embraced him and called him brother.
At length I beseeched him to tell me in what dread way my Katie had died. He uttered words that struck me as lightening from a summer storm, "Daniel, she died in childbed."
"Not the pox then?" I stuttered.
"No Daniel, your youngest brother Sam was due to wed her, believing as we did that you were dead or gone for good. Samuel was the spit of you when he was grown, and Katie held a fondness for you both that brooked no breach by any other man. As is the custom, in these country parts, they were betrothed, and so were sanctioned to mate, prior to taking marriage vows.
"As was hoped, conception blessed this coupling. The babe was born. Heart's ease came, then on its heels despair: Katie, taken by childbed fever when the mewling bairn was but six days old. Sam, heartbroken, gave the pox easy access and followed her not two weeks later to his grave."
The wine traced a web of notions through my vibrating, addled brain: does this child live? Katie's child, Sam's? I seized Joseph's arm, "Tell me, tell me, a girl child or a boy? Alive or dead?"
Dan stalled and shook his head. "Let that rest anon, you have had enough for one day."
"No" I responded. "No, the truth, the truth before my heart goes cold."
"You have sought the truth undimmed, very well, I will tell you all I know. The child, a girl named Grace, lives, but she has no sight. A pretty maid she is, nearly six years old. She abides with the old widowed priest, the very man who shrove us all tonight. He is tender to the canny child, but moithers about what will happen to her when he departs this life. Who will be her guardian, her guardian and her friend? Who will be her guide, and who will be her eyes?"
At this news I sped without delay, along the frozen street, up to the tied church house. I knocked the door as if the hounds of hell were at my heels. The startled ancient peered from the upper casement. After an age, or two minutes maybe, the latch was drawn, and I was admitted.
I could tell you of much grieving, distress, kind and unkind words. Many utterances made between us two, some born of desperation, and other ones of hope. All these, and more, spilt forth in that long Christmas advent night. But I will not taint the priest, who sought to protect the child. Or belie my wretched self who sought to love: and in loving find redemption, find a life.
So in the end this man of God gave me his blessing. As the ice thawed that spring, I found a house to make a home and Grace came to me. I love her for herself, and for Kate and Sam. Her bright smile shines without the need to see, and I am both amazed and humbled by her strength, her wit, her gentleness. I earn my money honestly, a jobbing farmhand. I spend my pennies frugally. I am investing now and in the future that is to come. I yearn for Grace's safety, her fulfilment and her happiness.
And so it is tonight that midnight mass calls me again: I must keep my promise to my God, even though the log fire and its warmth seduce me and bid me stay indoors. A kindly woman Kirsten, my new wife, watches over Grace, as her own belly swells. This elemental winter weather is but a test of my resolve. Wet shoes are nothing of importance.
God Almighty sifted through the gone before, and found a life for me. I must bare my soul, confess my sins, and give him thanks. He saved me when desolation and despair looked sure to smother me, sure to corrupt me with anger and hate. It began with Grace, such a small girl with so much love, and then Kirsten came and made me smile, and now she is with child. Against the odds, I start anew. Christmas midnight bells stroke our hearts to bursting: Christ redeems us all. Amen.
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