Peach Tree Grove

  She could feel the tightness in her gut. In her shoulders. In her hands and cramping in her legs. She raised her head to the sky. Breathe in. Send your breath flying back up. Fling it against the highest stuff. It was cold, so she could see her breath pluming, too slow to go far.  She breathed out again, slow, expecting the cloud this time. She looked down. It was steep. Almost a sheer drop. It would be absolute insanity to run down it. Suicidal.  She breathed in, rib cage trembling on the inhale, then steady on the exhale. The smooth side of a building streaming down. Sheer chrome, nothing but lights below. Every muscle in her body was taut and twitching, and it was not because she was here. She was alive. She had life? To possess. She was living? To do. To do stuff in time. To move.  She was relaxed. And every muscle in her body was twitching. It was a very steep drop.  Breathe. Quick. Up hair, over helmet.  Down.  All she could see was the roa...

      Boom-bah-ya, the girls in sparkly sleek tights with with holes out over their behinds stood on platforms in Mortimus plaza, and cigarette smoke wafted up from beneath them.      But here, here there wasn't anything but the stars. Very peaceful, very bright.      Boom-bah-ya. The women slid down slithering poles and the men glanced up at them as they walked into work.      But the stars were yellow, not white.  At least he thought they were. Not cold, but warm. And set in a velvet navy-colored universe.      Boom-bah-ya. The buildings were all chrome and shiny, and the light glinted off them and the curbs and the glass and the girls until you could only ever see one thing at a time, eyes flashing faster than the light, never able to take in more than a pinpoint's worth.     But the universe here looked less like a universe and more like the sky should, he thought. Close and encircling and love...

  Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.               -Friedrich Nietzsche      Battle not with monsters, lest you become one.       Battle not the foul goblins and demons of our world, neither the ones within nor the ones without. Step aside for them, Nietzsche, let them pass and do as they please. Watch them as they creep over the cliffs, and do not dare go near the edge, for the unknown holds naught but terror, and there is no light by which we can pierce the blackness.      I don't think so Nietzsche. What a sweet little notion this is, how delicate and fragile your soul must be, for it to be so easily overwhelmed by only the edge.  You don't seem to understand life. You don't seem to understand what a fine line it is the everyday liver walks. You must be tired, Nietzsche, always running, running, running, never sto...

A confession, A digression, A lesson in pain, Wisdom my mistress goes hard with the grain Of a straight birch from the yard, And by her I've made This little book on the table; It tells a dark-joying fable  Full of shadows and grit And heavy-laden wit And a bright, bright light  And a laughing, singing fight And a steel never broken, Truth's true token  Of Love against lying,  And look, the darkness is flying.

Black, burn, Twist, turn  Back and forth, Nothing worth The twist and the crack, The writhing pain, The black at my back And the derailed train Of my thoughts As I prance wide-eyed and wild  Lost as a child In a pumpkin-patch of briars As the moon climbs higher  Than common sense, and clear The smog makes a blear Of a mockery to haunt, To make my face gaunt  As my eyes flicker back  And the crack of the briar  Makes me flinch like a fire At the tip of the candle. Slow-drip burn, senses run slower Under the darkness of the Sower In the interrupted deafening of this silent night.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and God Your glory gives me peace.  The heavens declare the glory of God, and there isn't anything that can fill in the cracks of my heart the way Your soft feathering clouds do as they slowly draw themselves across a gray-blue sky. They make the peace of my heart unassailable, impenetrable, where it sits above the sidewalk; at least for a little while.            Lord let it not be a little while.  I smell ozone, and it sends my blood singing, and a grin spreads as my eyes are filled with Zephyr-lights. My lungs expand, and with this laughter I could smile in the face of any trouble, Lord with this laughter I could spit in the Devil's very eye as he cast his gaze up through the earth. The breath of the sky's far rumbling fills me, and I feel the need to use it.           Please Lord, let this energy split my bones for the rest of eternity.  Lord my soul flies for ...

  Little girl don’t you worry, though the story is stained, there will always be rivers and the wind’s spacious shivers and creeks bubbling gently ever on.  Little girl don’t you worry, though there’s bitter in the berry, there will always be blooms smiling white and tiny on the hillside, basking in the sun’s soft laughter as it warms.  Little girl don’t you worry, though the snow ever flurries, it leaves the edges soft and silent and the fields blending gently with the sky.  Little girl don’t you worry, small mice will always scurry and ants always hurry and black birds dot the aether like a painting of the sea.  Little girl don’t you worry, though black is cracking souls and snakes are staining worlds, your mother is home now with the wind and the washing and your father is waiting at a station, waiting for a bus that takes him home to you.

  There is a train in Wonderland that runs however it pleases with the clock. Behind it, with it, against it, ahead of it, or entirely above it, its lines won't run in time with the ticking of your pocket watch. The Glovemaker already knew that.  He also knew that despite time's lack of a hold on the train, the train always ran like clockwork. It arrived as punctually as any normal train could hope to arrive at every stop along its line, and the stops on the line in Cardholm were no different from the rest. You just never knew how much time you would spend on the train between getting on at 7:42 a.m. at Whittenbelly and getting off again at 8:03 a.m at Blacktop. It could be 30 seconds, it could be 7 minutes, it could be 3 hours. At least, that was how it ran between the stops in Cardholm. He had heard, of course, that it ran differently beyond the Garden Walls. Many things did.  As the story went, it was quite the wild ride outside the hedge, and the Queen, in an attemp...

  “Why can’t you see that you have to break it! Your oath doesn’t matter in the face of stuff as important as this! Can’t you see!” The last two words were said with in a pleading note in her voice that she had never used in front of a stranger before.  “On the contrary,” the cat said with a grin part maniacal and a greater part sane. “I have to see that I cannot break it. For if I do break it, why should I break it?”  Her brow furrowed. “What?” “If I break my oath, why should I break it?” “What?” She looked at him with a challenge to explain and spread her hands. “That makes no sense. Even coming from you.” “Wrong!” His whole body twisted on the tree branch to look at her, and he grinned like a psycho. “It makes all the sense in this world! It’s the most nonsense sense of a spell that we have. When Wonderland forgets the old, old spells that spell that kind of sense then Wonderland descends into blood and chaos. Instead of topsying her turvys and turvying her t...

  The marble swirled like a picture of the world, and the globe was in her floor. She stared at it for a moment, unblinking. Then she turned and walked away. She thought of swirling her navy robe on the floor, battling the flecked marble with shining silk. She did not.  She walked slowly to the throne that sat in the center of the wall facing the empty room, stone and simple. She did not look at the throne as she walked towards it, she looked at the inlay above it, the world hanging above her head. She looked up at it from an angle. Should the world fall, it would not fall on her. It was laid in the wall and set in stone. The marble wheel would not turn on her.  Her eyes slid to the seat. She ran one smooth finger over its perfect surface. Perfect levels, perfect lines. She sat, with no ceremony. It was an empty space anyway. She was still for a moment, both arms on the armrests. She did not feel like a lion. She twisted, uncomfortably, and looked up at the stone. There w...

There is a lady on a bridge sipping a cigarette through a veil.  She has been there a long, long time, and the sayings of everyone all say a different thing.  "A heartbroken Italian mistress," they say. "A promiscuous Mexican murderess." And so she seems, shirt open, the space between bare, breasts just barely covered.  "She died drunk in a car," they whisper. "She dropped down into the water." Sunglasses shaped like a cat's make them blind to her eyes, and she sips her cigarette like a convict enjoying a meal. Her veil is edged with white lace in a thick band and dyed bright scarlet, the color of clay in the earth, or of a feather from a jealous parrot's plumage.  She sips her cigarette through sheer scarlet and leans carelessly against the rail as water darker than her hair rushes underneath. A smile curls under eyes that reflect as a cat's as a cigarette meets veil meets lips.  A heartbroken Italian mistress, she died drunk in a ca...

    Behind the shed there is a row of purple-blue hydrangeas leading to a corner guarded by a cherry tree and a rose. When the rose blooms on its trellis it will bloom yellow and red, the sun spotting Joseph's layered coat as it sets down to rest. For now "now" is not "when,"so the rose climbs unclothes, thorns laid bare for all to see.      Around the corner the hydrangeas are asleep, bouquets brittle and dead adorning leafless stalks, waiting for clouds of purple-blue to cool and leaves with green deeper than the forest.      It is night here, in this corner I have cut from the world. At my back brush-stroken spruces stand silent sentry in the dark and ghostly light glitters down through my greeneried walls, while the stronger sixth of the stars peek down through a street-touched sky.      Movement, and I step up to balance on the garden bed's wooden beam as stark shadows stretch out from the underneath me, cloaking the unfound no...

    She had hair like fire and stars, and he was afraid of her.         She had hair like fire and stars, and her eyes were narrow as winter.     She was no regent, this girl with hair like fire and stars, no powerful queen. She didn't sit in a heavenly throne high above no matter how much his wishes wished she did. She was no regent, no queen encompassed by court and law; she was only alone and her hair like fire and stars, and as he went he would hear the restless sound of her footsteps behind him. Her mouth sat cold and still as steel in his eyes and fire and stars raged for her in the sky.      Her footsteps were relentless and never danced. Nothing about her danced, only her hair, and her hair was not her. Her hair flickered under streetlights and in the rim of bright between window shade and window frame seen in the middle of the night. It flashed in the black light of car windshields and neon signs from far away. It...

Our world is is full of pockets. It’s riddled with hidden spaces, secret places, and caverns where time stands still. Things are strange inside of these hollows. Things are frozen and changed and morphed in them. Old things live there and new things are created. Some things fester, some bloom, and some twist and unfurl into things stranger than anything you’ve ever seen before.  Sometimes they grow so much their pockets are no longer pockets. Sometimes the pockets are grown into something more, something not a pocket. Sometimes they twist into tunnels and get pulled into passages; sometimes that finite little pocket fades away until it’s not a piece stolen from this world, but a hole into another.  Sometimes people finds these pockets-now-passages. And sometimes, they fall in.

            We use salt for snow and we use salt for spirits, for ghosts and gheists, for the haunted and the haloless. “Be like salt,” they say and I think, “What am I to melt today?” Do I melt the dead, the clinging rage, the fear and failure gripping tight, the howling remnants of the consequences of numbering yourself among dead men walking? Do I meet that fear, that failure, those emotions running higher and higher til they whirlwind out into terrible personification? Or do I fight the fingerless, groping cold that comes gentle and soft and creeping on little frost feet, ready to numb and make naked, to make nobody of delicate, hot-blooded man, to stop his heart’s pumping and the pressure of life holding cells and senses tightly bounded into being.      Spirits melt and snow gains savor. The cold and the calloused, the hungry and the groping desperately for life, for fire, for flavor, for crystals of Christ given in bounty, are fed...

       A yelp and crash sounded behind him, and he flinched before whirling around in irritation. Lalia was standing with scrunched shoulders and an apologetic wincing face next to an overturned pot.  “Sorry,” she whisper-shouted. Josef practically growled. He strode forward and grabbed her by the shoulder, dragging her away from the pot-rack.  “We are standing in the kitchen of a bloodthirsty elf king out for my head and your womanhood,” he hissed in her face. “If you don’t start taking this seriously then there will be terrible consequences, and I don’t want to feel those consequences because you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing and where you’re going!” She shrank in on herself for real at his outburst and he could see the edges of her lacy blue head-covering droop with shame. She looked away. “I’m sorry. I will be more careful.” She stuck closer this time as they moved on, head down, eyes up and watchful behind him.  There wa...

       Iron clamped down on Alistair’s shoulder and he flinched. Blue eyes sharper than the edge of a knife stared at him over his shoulder, supported by a skinny, trembling arm on the back of the chair.  “Uh-why don’t you sit down mister?” He helped the old man into the chair, but those eyes never left him, and the hoary eyebrows above furrowed.  “How are you going to defeat the Queen?” the old croaking voice surprised Alistair with its strength, but he felt his heart do that quavering thing it had done before. He turned back to the porch rail. “I don’t know.”  Hands clasped at his shirt again and dragged him around to face the furrowed old face. “Know. She must die.”  “I-okay.” He gently undid the hands on his shirt and led the old man back to his chair. The intensity in his voice frightened him; it ran even deeper and clearer than Leo’s. He turned again to the railing and looked out over the Señorita’s field. There was silence, but he could f...

     Do not trust the old woman dressed in black.      The woman who waits in the station and appears in the alley just when you are at your most vulnerable. The woman who walks down the streets in heavy black clothes with only her face and her hands uncovered. That face is lined and wrinkled, but it does not sag. It is full of wicked sharpness: her nose the nose of the old nobility, her eyebrows arched with unfaded fierceness. A round black hat with a narrow brim sits immovable on her gray head, untouched by the wind that billows her skirts and her shawl as she strides up the street.      If you ever see this woman do not look at her, they said. Do not look at her, hurry away in the opposite direction as quickly as you can. She is shameful and she will show you no mercy if you fall into her clutches; all she knows is an old, old hate. That was what they told her.      Bread was extended to her by a strong, wrinkled hand. She s...

       Glittering halos ring round their heads. Some are diamond and some are stone, harder and heavier even than hands weighed with blood and boldness to wreck man’s image.      Diamonds know no death; they know nothing but dust and coal and cold, then pain and pressure and light and laughter. Diamonds know no death, and they may sit on heads of stone pure and purifying. Diamonds know no death, and it is they who pierce the stone.  Rock cracks and crumbles and the christened fall, but the christened know this heat well, this rolling fire full-folded in liquid gold grace. They do not fear it, they love it, and it receives them rippling like soft silk. Stone crumbles to steam and nothing is left but the ever-rolling fire, glittering with a thousand rings of calm, cool relief, the christened thrown safe into the furnace.

     The ravens were coming, and they couldn't be here when they came.      The ravens were coming and Lishia was still struggling. The circles under her eyes were deep and black, and her breathing was coming in heavy, labored pants. He gently took her shoulder. Her eyes were half-closed and glazed over, not really registering anything. She wasn't doing well. But they couldn't stay here.      He looked to the sky and then back to his sister. The tendons in his hand were tightening. His fingers tugged harshly on his hair and he took a deep breath.      Lishia's eyes were almost fully closed now. He stood up again and cast his eyes across uniform gray above. He could feel them coming. Everything could. The very grass shrank and grew gray when the ravens passed over it. And those black specks before the mountains did not have anything good in them. He licked his lips once, then sank quickly to the ground at his sister's side. She ...