Suns Out Guns Out Quotes

Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway testing his shotgun Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine the impossibility of being human Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town the impossibility of being human Burroughs killing his wife with a gun Mailer stabbing his the impossibility of being human Maupassant going mad in a rowboat Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller the impossibility Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops the impossibility Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench Chatterton drinking rat poison Shakespeare a plagiarist Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness the impossibility the impossibility Nietzsche gone totally mad the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly

And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.

. . . the first spring in five free from the rumour of guns across the Channel, a spring anxious to make up for the cold winter, life bursting out after four years of death. All of England raised her face to the sun. . .

The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun.

Of the two classes of Prussian officer, the bull-necked and the wasp-waisted, he belonged to the second. Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, 'An unimportant obstacle.

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him. [excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968

The concept of barroom shoot-outs and duels in the sun have no part in our tradition either, possibly because we have had so few barrooms and so little sun. (It is awkward to reach efficiently for a six-gun while wearing a parka and two pairs of mittens.)

However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind’s eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favourite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand.

The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun.

Old Spice           Every Sunday afternoon he dresses in his old army uniform, tells you the name of every man he killed. His knuckles are unmarked graves.   Visit him on a Tuesday and he will describe the body of every woman he could not save. He’ll say she looked like your mother and you will feel a storm in your stomach.   Your grandfather is from another generation– Russian degrees and a school yard Cuban national anthem, communism and religion. Only music makes him cry now.   He married his first love, her with the long curls down to the small of her back. Sometimes he would pull her to him, those curls wrapped around his hand like rope.   He lives alone now. Frail, a living memory reclining in a seat, the room orbiting around him. You visit him but never have anything to say. When he was your age he was a man. You retreat into yourself whenever he says your name.   Your mother’s father, “the almost martyr, can load a gun under water in under four seconds.   Even his wedding night was a battlefield. A Swiss knife, his young bride, his sobs as he held Italian linen between her legs.   His face is a photograph left out in the sun, the henna of his beard, the silver of his eyebrows the wilted handkerchief, the kufi and the cane.   Your grandfather is dying. He begs you Take me home yaqay, I just want to see it one last time; you don’t know how to tell him that it won’t be anything like the way he left it.

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

I won the argument against the knife that night, but barely. I had some other good ideas around that time--about how jumping off a building or blowing my brains out with a gun might stop the suffering. but something about spending a night with a knife in my hand did it. The next morning I called my friend Susan as the sun came up, begged her to help me. I don't think a woman in the whole history of my family had ever done that before, had ever sat in the middle of the road like that and said, in the middle of her life, "I cannot walk another step further--somebody has to help me.

I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village... But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all... and then again... the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and will not wonder long. And perhaps... perhaps I will be a great man... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course... and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire... ...perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don't you see that there will be young men and women, not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen... to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don't you see they have always been there... that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even... actually replenish me!

And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun.

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway testing his shotgun Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine the impossibility of being human Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town the impossibility of being human Burroughs killing his wife with a gun Mailer stabbing his the impossibility of being human Maupassant going mad in a rowboat Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller the impossibility Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops the impossibility Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench Chatterton drinking rat poison Shakespeare a plagiarist Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness the impossibility the impossibility Nietzsche gone totally mad the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly.

Commala-come-come There’s a young man with a gun. Young man lost his honey When she took it on the run. Commala-come-one! She took it on the run! Left her baby lonely But he baby ain’t done. Commala-come-coo The wind’ll blow ya through. Ya gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-two! Nothin else to do! Gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-key Can you tell me what ya see? Is it ghosts or just the mirror That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-three! I beg ya, tell me! Is it ghosts or just your darker self That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-ko Whatcha doin at my do’? If ya doan tell me now, my friend I’ll lay ya on de flo’. Commala-come-fo’! I can lay ya low! The things I’ve do to such as you You never wanna know. Commala-gin-jive Ain’t it grand to be alive? To look out on Discordia When the Demon Moon arrives. Commala-come-five! Even when the shadows rise! To see the world and walk the world Makes ya glad to be alive. Commala-mox-nix! You’re in a nasty fix! To take a hand in traitor’s glove Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks! Commala-come-six! Nothing there but thorns and sticks! When your find your hand in traitor’s glove You’re in a nasty fix. Commala-loaf-leaven! They go to hell or up to heaven! The the guns are shot and the fires hot, You got to poke em in the oven. Commala-come-seven! Salt and yow’ for leaven! Heat em up and knock em down And poke em in the oven. Commala-ka-kate You’re in the hands of fate. No matter if it’s real or not, The hour groweth late. Commala-come-eight! The hour groweth late! No matter what shade ya cast You’re in the hands of fate. Commala-me-mine You have to walk the line. When you finally get the thing you need It makes you feel so fine. Commala-come-nine! It makes ya feel fine! But if you’d have the thing you need You have to walk the line. Commala-come-ken It’s the other one again. You may know her name and face But that don’t make her your friend. Commala-come-ten! She is not your friend! If you let her get too close She’ll cut you up again! Commala-come-call We hail the one who made us all, Who made the men and made the maids, Who made the great and small. Commala-come-call! He made us great and small! And yet how great the hand of fate That rules us one and all. Commala-come-ki, There’s a time to live and one to die. With your back against the final wall Ya gotta let the bullets fly. Commala-come-ki! Let the bullets fly! Don’t ‘ee mourn for me, my lads When it comes my day to die. Commala-come-kass! The child has come at last! Sing your song, O sing it well, The child has come to pass. Commala-come-kass, The worst has come to pass. The Tower trembles on its ground; The child has come at last. Commala-come-come, The battle’s now begun! And all the foes of men and rose Rise with the setting sun.

There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground. It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up. She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground. She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone. She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not anywhere. She would outrun fear and sadness and worry and shame and all those losses that had lined up against her like a column of soldiers with their guns shouldered and ready to fire. If she had to, she would outrun death itself. She would keep on running until she dropped, exhausted. Then she would roll over onto her back and breathe in the endless sky above her, sun glinting off her face. To be an animal, to have a body like this that could taste, see hear, and fly through space, to lie down and smell the earth and feel the heat of the sun on your face was enough for her. She did not need anything else but this: just to be alive, cool air caressing her skin, dreaming of Ivy and what might be ahead.

I’m not gettin’ off, not goin’ away, not playin’ anymore games or wastin’ anymore fuckin’ time. I don’t believe in fate or destiny or any of that bullshit. What I know is that, as far as I can tell, there isn’t another woman I’ve met who fits my life. Who doesn’t care if I get home late after she’s made a special dinner. Who doesn’t have a hemorrhage when I talk about one of my men gettin’ shot, goin’ off about how she feels about my work. You got up and made everyone coffee, for fuck’s sake. You’re a woman who tells me to be careful when I tell her I’m out hunting humans instead of bitchin’ and wantin’ to process how my career choice makes her feel. If an employee walked into their kitchen with a gun and shot at their neighbor, most people would lose their fucking minds. You spent the morning makin’ brownies and the afternoon sleepin’ in the sun. You live hard, play hard and don’t seem to be scared of anything, but manage to keep a softness about you that’s almost unreal. You wanted me to tell you why I’m sure about you, that’s why I’m sure. You grew up and your only parent was a cop. You know the drill. I don’t have any interest in trainin’ someone to get it and I need someone strong enough to live with it. That’s you.

When Chief Black Hawk was defeated and captured in 1832, he made a surrender speech: I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of out making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceitful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal.

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool. Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek.

I thought about the fox. I wondered if he’d returned to the fallen tree and wondered about me. I remembered the moment after he’d disappeared into the woods and I’d called out for my mother. It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn’t have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me.

(This is from a tribute poem to Ronnie James Dio: Former lead vocalist of the band Rainbow, Black Sabbath. This is written with all the titles of the hit songs of DIO. The titles are all in upper case) You can “CATCH THE RAINBOW” – “A RAINBOW IN THE DARK” Through “ROCK & ROLL CHILDREN” “HOLY DIVER” will lurk “BEFORE THE FALL” of “ELECTRA” “ALL THE FOOLS SAILED AWAY” “JESUS,MARY AND THE HOLY GHOST”- “LORD OF THE LAST DAY” “MASTER OF THE MOON” you are When my “ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE” With our “BLACK”, “COLD FEET”, “MYSTERY” of “PAIN” you crave You’re “CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE”, “BETWEEN TWO HEARTS” When “HUNGRY FOR HEAVEN” “HUNTER OF THE HEART” hurts “FALLEN ANGELS” “FEED MY HEART” “FEVER DREAMS” “FEED MY HEAD” “I AM” “ANOTHER LIE” “AFTER ALL (THE DEAD)” Not “GUILTY” if you “HIDE IN THE RAINBOW’’ With your perfect “GUITAR SOLO” “DON’T TELL THE KIDS” to “DREAM EVIL” Don’t “GIVE HER THE GUN” to follow “DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS” Those “EVIL EYES” can see “LORD OF THE NIGHT” “MISTREATED”; “MY EYES” hate to fancy “SHAME ON THE NIGHT” “TURN UP THE NIGHT” Now it’s “TIME TO BURN” “TWISTED” “VOODOO” does “WALK ON WATER” And today its our turn “BLOOD FROM A STONE” “BORN ON THE SUN” I’m “BETTER IN THE DARK” “BREATHLESS” The “PRISONER OF PARADISE” you are! Forever you are deathless “SACRED HEART” “SHIVERS” Laying “NAKED IN THE RAIN” “THIS IS YOUR LIFE”- “ WILD ONE”! Your “GOLDEN RULES” we gain “IN DREAMS” “I SPEED AT NIGHT” I’m “LOSING MY INSANITY” “ANOTHER LIE”: “COMPUTER GOD” Your “HEAVEN AND HELL”- my vanity! By “KILLING THE DRAGON” “I COULD HAVE BEEN A DREAMER” I’m “THE LAST IN LINE” To “SCREAM” Like an “INVISIBLE” screamer Now that you are gone “THE END OF THE WORLD” is here “STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HEART” “PUSH” “JUST ANOTHER DAY” in fear “CHILDREN OF THE SEA” “ DYING IN AMERICA” Is it “DEATH BY LOVE”? “FACES IN THE WINDOW” looking for A “GYPSY” from above Dear “STARGAZER” from “STRANGE HIGHWAYS” Our love “HERE’S TO YOU” “WE ROCK” “ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD” The “OTHER WORLD” anew “ONE NIGHT IN THE CITY” with “NEON KNIGHTS” “THE EYES” “STAY OUT OF MY MIND” The “STARSTRUCK” “SUNSET SUPERMAN” Is what we long to find “THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING” Is the “INSTITUTIONAL MAN” “SHOOT SHOOT” to “TURN TO STONE” “WHEN A WOMAN CRIES” to plan To “STAND UP AND SHOUT” before “ THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL” Though “GOD HATES HEAVY METAL” “EAT YOUR HEART OUT” to reach the goal. From the poem- Holy Dio: the Diver (A tribute to Ronnie James Dio)

The Valley Weeps Weep softly o mother, the walls have ears you know... The streets are awash o mother! I cannot go searching for him any more. The streets are awash o mother with blood and tears, pellets and screams. that silently remain locked in the air, while they lock us souless inside. The guns are out o mother, while our boys go armed with stones, I cannot go looking for him o mother, I have no courage to face what i will find. They fill the air o mother, The fragrance of plastic flowers I will place them beside your grave if i ever do survive, flowers that have no soul. and would never fade with time, The sun shines glorious o mother The water sparkles so fine The buds are closed in terror and birds have gone silent with fear There is poison in our heaven o mother I dread for what more is in store. They came for him o mother, yesterday as you slept inside, He went marching o mother with all the others beside. I never told you o mother, I do not know if he would ever return. The streets are awash o mother! I cannot go searching for him any more. Weep softly o mother, the walls have ears you know... If your old blind eyes can see, You will want to see again no more. Our men have lost their spirit Our women have lost their smile, Our children have lost their laughter, The valley has lost its shine, Weep softly O mother For, we still have our pride. 17/07/2016

I explored the literature of tree-climbing, not extensive, but so exciting. John Muir had swarmed up a hundred-foot Douglas Spruce during a Californian windstorm, and looked out over a forest, 'the whole mass of which was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire!' Italo Calvino had written his The Baron in the Trees, Italian editionmagical novel, The Baron in the Trees, whose young hero, Cosimo, in an adolescent huff, climbs a tree on his father's forested estate and vows never to set foot on the ground again. He keeps his impetuous word, and ends up living and even marrying in the canopy, moving for miles between olive, cherry, elm, and holm oak. There were the boys in B.B.'s Brendan Chase, who go feral in an English forest rather than return to boarding-school, and climb a 'Scotch pine' in order to reach a honey buzzard's nest scrimmed with beech leaves. And of course there was the realm of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin: Pooh floating on his sky-blue balloon up to the oak-top bee's nest, in order to poach some honey; Christopher ready with his pop-gun to shoot Pooh's balloon down once the honey had been poached....

Who in this world can you trust? When the guns are drawn, when the sun goes down, when you’re walking in the shadows, Who Can You Trust? People call themselves your friend. They say they were there but they weren’t there. Say they’re coming but they don’t show. Say they got your back as they get their knives out. Two tongues in their mouths, the one they use to promise and the one they use to lie. “I don’t have any friends,” Richard once said. “I have associates.

Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!  “Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —   For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!   We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.   (After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”  …

But why can’t the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You came in to that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I’m wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. ‘Good for you man,’ a man once said to me at a party, ‘you’re making a killing with poetry. You’re knocking ‘em dead.’ “-On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, p. 179, Ocean Vuong “I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly. Like right now, how the sun is coming on, low behind the elms, and I can’t tell the difference between a sunset and a sunrise. The world, reddening, appears the same to me--and I lose track of east and west. The colors this morning have the frayed tint of something already leaving. I think of the time Trev and I sat on the toolshed roof, watching the sun sink. I wasn’t so much surprised by its effect--how, in a few crushed minutes, it changes the way things are seen, including ourselves--but that it was ever mine to see. Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you first must be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted

Those bastards in their mansions: to hear them shriek, you'd think I'd poisoned the dogs and vaulted the ditches, crossed the lawns in stocking feet and threadbare britches, forced the door of one of the porches, and lifted the gift of fire from the burning torches, then given heat and light to streets and houses, told the people how to ditch their cuffs and shackles, armed them with the iron from their wrists and ankles. Those lords and ladies in their palaces and castles, they'd have me sniffed out by their beagles, picked at by their eagles, pinned down, grilled beneath the sun, Me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun.

So far he’s never been bit, but there was once, deer hunt, climbing a bluff and he’d slipped, rolled down a shale slide into some kind of grotto and the whole place started buzzing. Big rattlesnake nest, twenty or so, all small but they’ll kill you just the same and he’d scrambled and cranked round after round through the bolt, felt a hot white pain in his leg, dropped the gun and jumped. Once he was out of it he pulled down his pants, found the bite but it wasn’t a bite, just the one hole and too big, something lodged under the skin. He cut at it for a time. Piece of copper jacket from one of his own bullets, turned out. Stood there, sun in his eyes, blood on his hands, pants full of blood and bunched at his ankles, happy as he’d been in a while. - "Any Deadly Thing

The sun goes down and it's night-time in New Orleans. The moon rises, midnight chimes from St. Louis cathedral, and hardly has the last note died away than a gruesome swampland whistle sounds outside the deathly still house. A fat Negress, basket on arm, comes trudging up the stairs a moment later, opens the door, goes in to the papaloi, closes it again, traces an invisible mark on it with her forefinger and kisses it. Then she turns and her eyes widen with surprise. Papa Benjamin is in bed, covered up to the neck with filthy rags. The familiar candles are all lit, the bowl for the blood, the sacrificial knife, the magic powders, all the paraphernalia of the ritual are laid out in readiness, but they are ranged about the bed instead of at the opposite end of the room as usual. The old man's head, however, is held high above the encumbering rags, his beady eyes gaze back at her unflinchingly, the familiar semicircle of white wool rings his crown, his ceremonial mask is at his side. 'I am a little tired, my daughter,' he tells her. His eyes stray to the tiny wax image of Eddie Bloch under the candles, hairy with pins, and hers follow them. 'A doomed one, nearing his end, came here last night thinking I could be killed like other men. He shot a bullet from a gun at me. I blew my breath at it, it stopped in the air, turned around, and went back in the gun again. But it tired me to blow so hard, strained my voice a little.' A revengeful gleam lights up the woman's broad face. 'And he'll die soon, papaloi?' 'Soon,' cackles the weazened figure in the bed. The woman gnashes her teeth and hugs herself delightedly. ("Papa Benjamin" aka "Dark Melody Of Madness")

The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun— slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron—that I know—not gold. 'Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight! Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night—good night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.) 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad— Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way! CHAPTER

She closed in and sat down. Combing road-dust out of her hair. Thinking. The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. Afterword Zora Neale Hurston: “A Negro Way of Saying

True blues ain't no new news about who's been abused For the blues is as old as my stolen soul I sang the blues when the missionaries came Passing out bibles in Jesus' name I sang the blues in the hull of the ship Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip I sang the blues when the ship anchored the dark My family being sold on a slave block I sang the blues being torn from my first born And hung my head and cried when my wife took his life And then committed suicide. I sang the blues on the slavemaster's plantation helping Him build his free nation I sang the blues in the cottonfield, hustlin' to make the daily yield I sang the blues when he forced my woman to beg Lord knows how I wished he was dead I sang the blues on the run, ducking the dogs and dodging the gun I sang the blues hanging from the tree in a desperate attempt to break free I sang the blues when the sun went down, cursing the master when he wasn't around I sang the blues in all these wars dying for some unknown cause I sang the blues in a high tone, low moan, loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk I sang the blues in land sea and air, about who when why and where I sang the blues in church on sunday, slaving on monday, misused on tuesday, abused on wednesday, accused on thursday, fried alive on friday, and died on saturday. Sho nuff singing the blues I sang the blues in the summer, fall winter and spring I know sho nuff the blues is my thing I sang the backwater blues, rhythm and blues, gospel blues, saint louis blues, crosstown blues, chicago blues, mississippi GODDAMN blues, the watts blues, the harlem blues, hoe blues, gut-bucket blues, funky chunky blues, i sang the up north cigarette corp blues, the down south sprung out the side of my mouth blues, I sang the blues black, i sang the blues blacker, i sang the blues blackest I SANG BOUT MY SHO NUFF BLUE BLACKNESS! from "True Blues" by the Last Poets

From the hills behind, came the solitary voice of a girl. She must have been bringing down the goats, and she was singing wildly. At the limit of her uninhibited voice, without any recognizable melody in Turkish Muslim intervals. It sounded disembodied, of place, not person. I remembered having heard a similar voice, perhaps this same girl's, singing one day on the hill behind the school. It had drifted down the hill into the classroom, and the boys had begun to giggle. But now, it seemed intensely mysterious, welling out of a solitude and suffering that made mine trivial and absurd. It held me under a spell. I sat with the gun across my knees, unable to move while the sound floated down through the evening air. I don't know how long she sang for, but the sky darkened, the sea paled to anachronous grey. Over the mountains, there were pinkish bars of high cloud and still strong light from the set sun. All the land and the sea held light, as if light was warmth, and did not fade as soon as the source was removed. But the voice dwindled towards the village, then died into silence.

There was no movement around the discoloured walls, and Lucy turned the Land Rover about in a slow crawl, the tires crunching on the desiccated earth. She scanned the windows, black squares punched through the sides of the silent blockhouses, looking for threats. As the grumble of the engine died, Marc heard the moan of the steady breeze, and the desolate cluster of buildings seemed like the loneliest place on Earth. ‘Stay alert,’ said Lucy, reaching down into the wheel well to grab her backpack. ‘We don’t know what we’re gonna find here.’ She reached inside and her hand came back with the compact shape of an MP7 sub machinegun. She cocked it with a snap of the receiver, and handed Marc a walkie-talkie. ‘Just in case,’ she added. Marc followed her out of the Land Rover, slipping out of the door with his bag over one shoulder. He had the Glock ready, close to his chest and his finger resting on the trigger guard. He felt acutely aware of every tiny detail around them, the crumbling rocks beneath his boots, the heavy heat of the late afternoon sun, the weight of the loaded gun

Liberals are imperfect. Yes, of course. Liberals need to grow one fucking vertebrae, stop massaging capitalism’s nards, and actually serve their constituents. But, on the other hand, if you look at the actual fucking laws they are trying to pass and the actual fucking leader they are supporting, the Republicans of 2019 literally do not want human beings to have health care. They do not want millennials to be able to earn a living wage, own property, or comfortably retire, ever. They want to expand access to guns and shrink police accountability. They want refugees tossed into concentration camps. They want pregnant people to be forced to incubate and birth unwanted children and for barely pubescent rape victims to die in childbirth. They certainly want to roll back marriage equality, if they can, and they’ve already begun stripping rights and protections from trans people. They want to squeeze every last resource out of our ecosystem until everything you love—manatees, dragonflies, fruit, your grandchildren—either burns or starves or drowns. They want to steal your money and waste it on gold-leafed steaks that they can shit into their gold toilets while they watch the sun swallow the earth. They are very, very bad! Similarly, sometimes Democrats ask you to respect people’s pronouns!

I see her on TV, screaming into a microphone. Her head is shaved and she is beautiful and seventeen, and her high school was just shot up, she's had to walk by friends lying in their own blood, her teacher bleeding out, and she's my daughter, the one I never had, and she's your daughter and everyone's daughter and she's her own woman, in the fullness of her young fire, calling bullshit on politicians who take money from the gun-makers. Tears rain down her face but she doesn't stop shouting she doesn't apologize she keeps calling them out, all of them all of us who didn't do enough to stop this thing. And you can see the gray faces of those who have always held power contort, utterly baffled to face this new breed of young woman, not silky, not compliant, not caring if they call her a ten or a troll. And she cries but she doesn't stop yelling truth into the microphone, though her voice is raw and shaking and the Florida sun is molten brass. I'm three thousand miles away, thinking how Neruda said The blood of the children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Only now she is, they are raising a fuss, shouting down the walls of Jericho, and it's not that we road-weary elders have been given the all-clear exactly, but our shoulders do let down a little, we breathe from a deeper place, we say to each other, Well, it looks like the baton may be passing to these next runners and they are fleet as thought, fiery as stars, and we take another breath and say to each other, The baton has been passed, and we set off then running hard behind them.

Billy ran around with a rare old crew And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew Where Billy's bones are resting now Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee And he took him down from six to five foot three Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi That copper won't be having any family Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Billy went away with a peace-keeping force 'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course Went away in an old khaki van To the banks of the River Jordan Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat And they ran like shites Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? One night Billy had a rare old time, Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line Came back to camp not looking too pretty Never even got to see the holy city Now Billy's out there in the desert sun And his mother cries when the morning comes And there's mothers crying all over this world For their poor dead darling boys and girls Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Have a Billy holiday… Born on a Monday Married on a Tuesday Drunk on a Wednesday Got plugged on a Thursday Sick on a Friday Died on a Saturday Buried on a Sunday. "Billy's Bones

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle and a black dog running behind. Cobwebs snatched at his feet, rivers hindered him, thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind and the sky turned into an unlucky opal, but he didn't mind. I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out any spider I meet, said he to his dog and his rifle. The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks with his old black hat on his head. Mountains jumped in his way, rocks rolled down on him, and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead. And the rain came down like mattocks. But he only said, I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day, and he went on over the paddocks. When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling, Up came the night ready to swallow him, like the barrel of a gun, like an old black hat, like a black dog hungry to follow him. Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing and the grass lay down to pillow him. His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling. But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain, just as his heart foretold. He ran like a hare, he climbed like a fox; he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold - like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain, like a ring of gold. The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare, and the grass stood up again on the mountain. The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulder instead of his broken gun. Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him, and the rainbow shone as brightly as the sun. All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder, nobody else has done anything equal to it. He went home as easy as could be with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder.

They emerged from the tropical vegetation, greeted by a general cheer. Stephen advanced, carrying his hurly: he was feeling particularly well and fit; he had his land-legs again, and no longer stumped along, but walked with an elastic step. Jack came to meet him, and said in a low voice, 'Just keep your end up, Stephen, until your eye is in; and watch out for the Admiral's twisters,' and then as they neared the Admiral, 'Sir, allow me to name my particular friend Dr. Maturin, surgeon of the Leopard. 'How d'ye do, Doctor?' said the Admiral. 'I must beg your pardon, sir, for my late appearance: I was called away on -- ' 'No ceremony, Doctor, I beg,' said the Admiral, smiling: the Leopard's hundred pounds were practically in his pocket, and this man of theirs did not look very dangerous. 'Shall we begin?' 'By all means,' said Stephen. 'You go down to the other end,' murmured Jack, a chill coming over him in spite of the torrid sun. 'Should you like to be given a middle, sir?' called the umpire, when Stephen had walked down the pitch. 'Thank you, sir,' said Stephen, hitching at his waistband and gazing round the field, 'I already have one.' A rapacious grin ran round the Cumberlands: they moved much closer in, crouching, their huge crab-like hands spread wide. The Admiral held the ball to his nose for a long moment, fixing his adversary, and then delivered a lob that hummed as it flew. Stephen watched its course, danced out to take it as it touched the ground, checked its bounce, dribbled the ball towards the astonished cover-point and running still he scooped it into the hollow of his hurly, raced on with twinkling steps to mid-off, there checked his run amidst the stark silent amazement, flicked the ball into his hand, tossed it high, and with a screech drove it straight at Jack's wicket, shattering the near stump and sending its upper half in a long, graceful trajectory that reached the ground just as the first of La Fleche's guns, saluting the flag, echoed across the field.

At the end of the lane Elizabeth put down her side of the trunk and sank down wearily beside Lucinda upon its hard top, emotionally exhausted. A wayward chuckle bubbled up inside her, brought on by exhaustion, fright, defeat, and the last remnants of triumph over having gotten just a little of her own back from the man who’d ruined her life. The only possible explanation for Ian Thornton’s behavior today was that he was a complete madman. With a shake of her head Elizabeth made herself stop thinking of him. At the moment she had so many new worries she hardly knew how to begin to cope. She glanced sideways at her stalwart duenna, and an amused smile touched her lips as she recalled Lucinda’s actions at the cottage. On the one hand, Lucinda rejected all emotional displays as totally unseemly-yet at the same time she herself was possessed of the most formidable temper Elizabeth had ever witnessed. It was as if Lucinda did not regard her own outbursts of ire as emotional. Without the slightest hesitation or regret Lucinda could verbally flay a wrongdoer into small, bite-sized pieces and then mentally stamp him into the ground and grind him beneath the heel of her sturdy shoe. On the other hand, were Elizabeth to exhibit the smallest bit of fear right now over their daunting predicament, Lucinda would instantly stiffen up with disapproval and deliver one of her sharp reprimands. Cognizant of that, Elizabeth glanced worriedly at the sky, where black clouds were rolling in, heralding a storm; but when she spoke she sounded deliberately and absurdly bland. “I believe it’s starting to rain, Lucinda,” she remarked while cold drizzle began to slap the leaves of the tree over their heads. “So it would seem,” said Lucinda. She opened her umbrella with a smart snap, holding it over them both. “It’s fortunate you have your umbrella.” “We aren’t likely to drown from a little rain.” “I shouldn’t think so.” Elizabeth drew a steadying breath, looking around at the harsh Scottish cliffs. In the tone of one asking someone’s opinion on a rhetorical question, Elizabeth said, “Do you suppose there are wolves out here?” “I believe,” Lucinda replied, “they probably constitute a larger threat to our health at present than the rain.” The sun was setting, and the early spring air had a sharp bite in it; Elizabeth was almost positive they’d be freezing by nightfall. “It’s a bit chilly.” “Rather.” “We have warmer clothes in the trunks, though.” “I daresay we won’t be too uncomfortable, in that case.” Elizabeth’s wayward sense of humor chose that unlikely moment to assert itself. “No, we shall be snug as can be while the wolves gather around us.” “Quite.” Hysteria, hunger, and exhaustion-combined with Lucinda’s unswerving calm and her earlier unprecedented entry into the cottage with umbrella flailing-were making Elizabeth almost giddy. “Of course, if the wolves realize how hungry we are, there’s every change they’ll give us a wide berth.” “A cheering possibility.” “We’ll build a fire,” Elizabeth said, her lips twitching. “That will keep them at bay, I believe.” When Lucinda remained silent for several moments, occupied with her own thoughts, Elizabeth confided with an odd surge of happiness. “Do you know something, Lucinda? I don’t think I would have missed today for anything.” Lucinda’s thin gray brows shot up, and she cast a dubious sideways glance at Elizabeth. “I realize that must sound extremely peculiar, but can you imagine how absolutely exhilarating it was to have that man at the point of a gun for just a few minutes? Do you find that-odd?” Elizabeth asked when Lucinda stared straight ahead in angry, thoughtful silence. “What I find off,” she said in a tone of frosty disapproval mingled with surprise, “is that you evoke such animosity in that man.” “I think he’s quite demented.” “I would have said embittered.” “About what?” “That is an interesting question.

You thought about something? Happy Jack Traven had a place down thisaway.” “When he was out of jail.” “I think maybe we could use him. He had friends among all them Neuces outlaws, too. Remember? He was always takin' up for them, feedin' 'em, hidin' 'em from time to time? We could use some help.” A pebble rattled among the rocks, and Dal rolled over behind a fallen tree. Mac's Spencer slid forward. “Nice of you boys to remember me, an' that coffee sure smells good!” Happy Jack Traven wore a battered black hat and a smile on a face seamed by sun, wind, and years. “Mac? Put down that gun. You wouldn't be shootin' an old man, would you?” “Come in an' set. You'll never get old, Jack. You're too mean. Where'd you steal that horse?” “Now, Mac, that's unkind. You know I never stole no horse unless I needed him. This here's one your pappy give me.

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. (We made it secure against being, I hope, By setting it out on a northerly slope.) No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below." I have to be gone for a season or so. My business awhile is with different trees, Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, And such as is done to their wood with an axe-- Maples and birches and tamaracks. I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard's arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God.

Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, “An unimportant obstacle.

Beasts Bounding Through Time Van Gogh writing his brother for paints Hemingway testing his shotgun Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine the impossibility of being human Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town the impossibility of being human Burroughs killing his wife with a gun Mailer stabbing his the impossibility of being human Maupassant going mad in a rowboat Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller the impossibility Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops the impossibility Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench Chatterton drinking rat poison Shakespeare a plagiarist Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness the impossibility the impossibility Nietzsche gone totally mad the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly.

Even seasoned military men found it difficult to believe what they were seeing, and admitted to feeling bewildered and disorientated as the attack unfolded. The notion that an actual raid was underway was slow to enter their minds. In the eyewitness accounts, that pattern of belated comprehension is repeated again and again. A plane approaches. ( “Why are those planes flying so low?”) American ground-based antiaircraft guns fire at the intruder. (“Why are the boys shooting at that plane?”) A bomb drops. (“What a stupid, careless pilot, not to have secured his releasing gear.”) It explodes. ( “Somebody goofed big this time. They loaded live bombs on those planes by mistake.”) As the plane turns upward, the Japanese “Rising Sun” insignia comes into view on the underside of the wings. ( “My God! They’re really going all-out! They’ve even painted the rising sun on that plane!”) An American ship explodes. ( “What kind of a drill is this?”) Even then, some men refused to believe that a war had begun that morning—perhaps, as Commander A. L. Seton of the light cruiser St. Louis first guessed, the attacker was “a lone, berserk Japanese pilot who somehow had gotten to Pearl and now would be in trouble with his navy and ours.

George Clinton's group(s) Parliament-Funkadelic outlined the all-out war they were waging via a metaphorical villain, 'Sir Nose D'Void of Funk,' who had been 'pimplifying (the people's) instincts' until they were 'fat, horny, and strung out.' Parliament, building on Sun Ra's sci-fi vision, explained that funkateers were pitted in a cosmic battle against unfunky forces who use 'the placebo effect' to put people in the 'nose-zone' of 'zero funkativity'. Clinton explained in 'Mothership Connection' that Dr. Funkenstein's champion 'Star Child' would use his bop-gun to spread 'funkentelechy.' an antidote to consumerism and alienation.

We stalked carefully through the park in best paramilitary fashion, the lost patrol on its mission into the land of the B movie. To Deborah’s credit, she was very careful. She moved stealthily from one piece of cover to the next, frequently looking right to Chutsky and then left at me. It was getting harder to see her, since the sun had now definitely set, but at least that meant it was harder for them to see us, too—whoever them might turn out to be. We leapfrogged through the first part of the park like this, past the ancient souvenir stand, and then I came up to the first of the rides, an old merry-go-round. It had fallen off its spindle and lay there leaning to one side. It was battered and faded and somebody had chopped the heads off the horses and spray-painted the whole thing in Day-Glo green and orange, and it was one of the saddest things I had ever seen. I circled around it carefully, holding my gun ready, and peering behind everything large enough to hide a cannibal. At the far side of the merry-go-round I looked to my right. In the growing darkness I could barely make out Debs. She had moved up into the shadow of one of the large posts that held up the cable car line that ran from one side of the park to the other. I couldn’t see Chutsky at all; where he should have been there was a row of crumbling playhouses that fringed a go-kart track. I hoped he was there, being watchful and dangerous. If anything did jump out and yell boo at us, I wanted him ready with his assault rifle. But there was no sign of him, and even as I watched, Deborah began to move forward again, deeper into the dark park. A warm, light wind blew over me and I smelled the Miami night: a distant tang of salt on the edge of rotting vegetation and automobile exhaust. But even as I inhaled the familiar smell, I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck and a soft whisper came up at me from the lowest dungeon of Castle Dexter, and a rustle of leather wings rattled softly on the ramparts. It was a very clear notice that something was not right here and this would be a great time to be somewhere else; I froze there by the headless horses, looking for whatever had set off the Passenger’s alarm. I saw and heard nothing. Deborah had vanished into the darkness and nothing moved anywhere, except a plastic shopping bag blowing by in the gentle wind. My stomach turned over, and for once it was not from hunger. My

Nodding, I tried to tell myself how Travis didn’t care about me. He hadn’t come for me all these years and he never would. Wanting to be rational, I still felt his rough hands on me. I hurt between my legs like I did when he was done. He had marked me again in the dream and I would never be free. After a short time, Cooper stood up and walked to the next room. Hating to be alone, I still flinched when he returned. He seemed bigger now. His shoulders wider, his face harsher, his whole demeanor reeked of potential violence. Instead of hitting me, Cooper lowered a blanket behind the chair so I could cover myself. I stared at him as he sat back down. We studied each other for a long time as I waited for something bad to happen or the fear to fade. Neither occurred, leaving me stuck behind the chair for hours. Cooper tried twice to caress my face and both times I jerked back and away from his touch. After the second attempt, he stood up and left the room. I heard the front door open and assumed he was leaving. Then, his big ugly dog Rafe waltzed into the room with Cooper following behind. In his hand, Cooper held a gun and I pushed farther back into the corner. “No one,” he said, kneeling down by the chair, “will come here and take you. If they do, Rafe will wake us up and I’ll kill the fucker. No one is hurting you or taking you away from me. Do you understand?” Staring into his dark eyes, I did understand. I craned my neck so I could see Rafe comfortable in the corner. When I looked back at Cooper, he sighed. “Baby, it’s nearly six in the morning. The sun is coming up and you need to sleep. I need rest too, so let’s go to bed and I’ll keep you safe. I won’t even touch you, but I need you to go to bed.” “You love me,” I said in a rough, exhausted voice. “More than anything else. I will never let that piece of shit or anyone else come here and hurt you. You are mine and that makes you untouchable. Do you understand?” Nodding again, I crawled out from behind the chair and Cooper helped me stand. He stepped back, willing to keep his distance to avoid scaring me. Reaching for him, I knew he would keep me safe. If I couldn’t shake the fear of the dream, I could at least know Cooper was someone Travis wouldn’t screw with. Rationally, I knew Travis likely forgot I existed, but I wasn’t rational. I was primal and the monster was always waiting to ruin me again. With Cooper though, I was safe.

With that, I follow my little chem partner out of the room and down the hall. “Stop following me,” she snaps, looking over her shoulder to check how many people are watching us walk down the hall together. As if I’m el diablo himself. “Wear long sleeves on Saturday night,” I tell her, knowing full well she’s reaching the end of her sanity rope. I usually don’t try to get under the skin of white chicks, but this one is fun to rattle. This one, the most popular and coveted one of all, actually cares. “It gets pretty cold on the back of my motorcycle.” “Listen, Alex,” she says, whipping herself around and tossing that sun-kissed hair over her shoulder. She faces me with clear eyes made of ice. “I don’t date guys in gangs, and I don’t use drugs.” “I don’t date guys in gangs, either,” I say, stepping closer to her. “And I’m no user.” “Yeah, right. I’m surprised you’re not in rehab or juvie boot camp.” “You think you know me?” “I know enough.” She folds her arms across her chest, but then looks down as if she realizes her stance makes her chichis stand out, and drops her hands to her sides. I’m doing my best not to focus on those chichis as I take a step forward. “Did you report me to Aguirre?” She takes a step back. “What if I did?” “Mujer, you’re afraid of me.” It’s not a question. I just want to hear from her own lips what her reason is. “Most people at this school are scared that if they look at you wrong, you’ll gun them down.” “Then my gun should be smokin’ by now, shouldn’t it? Why aren’t you runnin’ away from the badass Mexicano, huh?” “Give me half a chance, I will.” I’ve had enough of dancing around this little bitch. It’s time to fluff up those feathers to make sure I end up with the upper hand. I close the distance between us and whisper in her ear, “Face the facts. Your life is too perfect. You probably lie awake at night, fantasizing about spicin’ up all that lily whiteness you live in.” But damn it, I get a whiff of vanilla from her perfume or lotion. It reminds me of cookies. I love cookies, so this is not good at all. “Gettin’ near the fire, chica, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get burned.

My teeth clatter in my mouth as everything ripples and shudders in the storm of shells, whining, whizzing. The kid on the bicycle rolls out of sight. Untouched. A miracle. A dream. The shells abruptly cease and there is only the settling creak of the car seat, a scatter of twittering birds in the shrubs and trees. I could use some gum. Where do you buy gum so early besides the service station? It seems wrong to go there since we don't need any gasoline. We don't drive enough. A tank of gas lasts us forever. I get behind the wheel and in the mirror I can see my eyelids fluttering. I sit squeezing the steering wheel until I realize I haven't started the engine. The garage conceals me. I don't want to go out into the open. A horse whinnys – are they bringing up the artillery? It's the farm field where old Wallam tills a little garden, his yard is the biggest and runs alongside the back of ours to the farm where his family has their orchards. What's wrong with me? Sounds of explosions, bullets, voices of men. Volleys. I smell smoke. Burning things, festering ruptured corpses with maggots pulsing under horrible skin and the shells, the horse, it's hit, it shrieks, explodes apart – can we pull the gun by hand? The crew is dead too, bullets are making their bodies jump even after they have broken apart like smashed holiday nuts. I want to scream. Maybe I am? I begin breathing rapidly. I don't know how long I am there but I hear the screen door open and I key the ignition. “Car troubles?” Mr. Kincaid calls out to me from the front porch. “No troubles,” I say setting my arm out the window and holding the mirror to keep my hand steady. “Lovely day.” The sun was really rising, taking the temperature up with it, hot shards of searing light coming over the treetops to stab at everything that couldn't find the shade. I couldn't find the shade.

When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it. As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up. “Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.” Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that? John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them. “Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?” “Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!” No rest for the weary. “So, Steve,” I said as gently as I could, not wanting to dissuade him as we headed out. “How old were you when Bob took you to see this nest?” “Must’ve been six,” he said. More than two decades ago. I stared around at the limitless horizon. I had my doubts. I watched Steve’s eyes dart across the landscape. He struck out in a particular direction and led us over a series of jump-ups. Then he’d get his bearings and head off again. One hour. Two hours. If someone had put a gun to my head I could not have led them back to the dam. “I think I know where it is,” Steve said abruptly. We continued on a little farther. Sure enough, in the distance I saw an unusually large eucalypt. In its main fork was what appeared to be a thick pile of debris and sticks, carefully laid together, that must have been eight feet thick. There it was, an eagle’s nest, twenty feet off the ground.

I came to do business, and you’re starting this shit?” Park touched his arm. “Come. We speak elsewhere.” “Fuck that. I’m not going anywhere.” He shook off Park’s hand, but Park gripped him again. “You are not here to die. I am not here to threaten. Walk here. Away from our men, so no one hear.” Park steered him across the lot to a sleeping flatbed. I followed along with them. Park’s men floated into new positions without being told, securing the area and isolating Ramos’s thugs to give us privacy. Telepathy. Or maybe they were good at their jobs. We were in the sun, and hot, but alone between the big trucks with their men out of earshot. Ramos shook off Park’s hand again, and squirmed like he thought someone might stab him. “What the fuck are you doing, bringing your guns? You think you can scare me into returning your money?” I said, “I can give you the Syrian.” Just like that. In his face. It caught him off guard, and took him a moment to catch up. He glanced at Park, then looked over both shoulders as if he expected federal agents to climb out of the trucks. “What

It's the whistling," Laila said to Tariq, "the damn whistling, I hate more than anything" Tariq nodded knowingly. It wasn't so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict. Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table. When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling, forks in mid-air, unchewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflection of their half-lit faces in the pitch-black window, their shadows unmoving on the wall. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed by an expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared for now while somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke, there was a scrambling, a barehanded frenzy of digging, of pulling from the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, a grandchild. But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't. After every rocket blast, Laila raced to the street, stammering a prayer, certain that, this time, surely this time, it was Tariq they would find buried beneath the rubble and smoke. At night, Laila lay in bed and watched the sudden white flashes reflected in her window. She listened to the rattling of automatic gunfire and counted the rockets whining overhead as the house shook and flakes of plaster rained down on her from the ceiling. Some nights, when the light of rocket fire was so bright a person could read a book by it, sleep never came. And, if it did, Laila's dreams were suffused with fire and detached limbs and the moaning of the wounded. Morning brought no relief. The muezzin's call for namaz rang out, and the Mujahideen set down their guns, faced west, and prayed. Then the rugs were folded, the guns loaded, and the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched as helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish.

Crack! Crack! The sniper. More swearing and more shooting. After some minutes two M-1 tanks arrived, clanking and smoking. They leveled their terrible guns. Ka-boom. Ka-boom. Ten shots. The shock waves bounced off our ears. Someone pointed and yelled. “Look!” shouted Corporal Christopher Spears. “He’s on a bike!” A man pedaled away from the building, away from the marines, in an alley. There was no shot to take; the angle was oblique. “He’s in the road, he’s in the road!” Eckert yelled. “Shoot him!” Evening approached. The sun sagged. Six hours had passed since the sniper first fired. The ruins belched smoke and fire. Omohundro sent a squad across the street. They put out clouds of green smoke to cover their advance. No one fired. The marines entered the building, what was left of it. There was no one inside.   I

ON A WARM, drowsy afternoon in early September, Ed Murrow, Vincent Sheean, and Ben Robertson, a correspondent for the New York newspaper PM, stopped at the edge of a field several miles south of London. The three had spent the day driving down the Thames estuary in Murrow’s Talbot Sunbeam roadster, enjoying the sun and looking for dogfights between Spitfires and Messerschmitts. Their search had been fruitless, and they stopped to buy apples from a farmer. Stretching out on the field to eat them, they drowsily listened to the chirp of crickets and buzzing of bees. The war seemed very far away. Within minutes, however, it returned with a vengeance. Hearing the harsh throb of aircraft engines, the Americans looked up at a sky filled with wave after wave of swastika-emblazoned bombers that clearly were not heading for their targets of previous days—the coastal defenses and RAF bases of southern England. Following the curve of the Thames, they were aimed straight at London. In minutes the sky over the capital was suffused with a fiery red glow; black smoke billowed up into a vast cloud that blanketed much of the horizon. When shrapnel from antiaircraft guns rained down around the American reporters, they dived into a nearby ditch, where, stunned, they watched the seemingly endless procession of enemy aircraft flying north. “London is burning. London is burning,” Robertson kept repeating. Returning to the city, they found flames sweeping through the East End, consuming dockyards, oil tanks, factories, overcrowded tenements, and everything else in their path. Hundreds of people had been killed, thousands injured or driven from their homes. Under a blood-red moon, women pushed prams piled high with their salvaged belongings. That horrific evening marked the beginning of the Blitz: from September 7 on, London would endure fifty-seven straight nights of relentless bombing. Until then, no other city in history had ever been subjected to such an onslaught. Warsaw and Rotterdam had been heavily bombed by the Germans early in the war, but not for the length of time of the assault on London. Although

But, as it happens, I have a better idea. One that won’t affect my marital status or my occupation.” He eyed her warily. “And what would that be?” “I think you should keep him.” He reared back. “Me? I can’t keep him. My assignments take me from the Rio Grande to the Louisiana border to the Gulf of Mexico. I spend half my time chasing gun-toting, fast-shooting men on the run and the other half hauling them in. I can’t be towing a little one along. Out of the question.” She shrugged. “So get married.” His jaw dropped. “Married? To who?” “I don’t know. I’m sure I could find somebody for you.” His ire began to rise. “Well, aren’t you the one thinking the sun comes up just to hear you crow.

He continued to move forward, skirting a pocket of radiation that had not died in the four years since last he had come this way. They came upon a place where the sands were fused into a glassy sea, and he slowed as he began its passage, peering ahead after the craters and chasms it contained. Three more rockfalls assailed him before the heavens split themselves open and revealed a bright-blue light, edged with violet. The dark curtains rolled back toward the Poles, and the roaring and the gunfire reports diminished. A lavender glow remained in the north, and a green sun dipped toward the horizon at his back. They had ridden it out, and he killed the infras, pushed back his goggles, and switched on the normal night lamps. The desert would be bad enough, all by itself. Something big and batlike swooped through the tunnel of his lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers, and it fell to the ground and did not return again. To the squares, this was Damnation Alley. To Hell Tanner, this was still the parking lot.

The place looked more like a genteel horse farm than the roar-and-fume venues where they usually played. Vast, grassy ranges stretched in every direction, with neat, sun-shaded shooting platforms at the head of each. Men—and a few women—were stretched out on the platforms, aiming rifles downrange. Others stood laughing and talking, holding rifles in cases. But for the occasional snap of a gunshot, it was quiet enough to hear birds singing.

But after all, there was no alternative. I just had to make the best of it, and lie here like a lox until I was discovered—which seemed to me to be a long-overdue event. I had been sprawled here in direct sunlight for at least half an hour: Can a corpse get a sunburn? I was certain dead people avoided tanning booths—even in zombie movies—but here in the midday sun, was it possible for dead skin to tan? It didn’t seem right; we all like to think of cadavers as pale and ghostly, and a healthy sun-kissed epidermis would certainly spoil the effect. But now I hear a rising chorus of fuss and bother nearby: A metallic door thumps shut, hushed voices murmur urgently, and finally I hear the sound for which I have been yearning: the hurried clatter of approaching footsteps. They stutter to a stop beside me and a woman gasps and cries out, “Nooo!” At last: some real concern for my tragic condition. A trifle melodramatic, perhaps, but it’s touching, and would even be heartwarming, if only Dexter had a heart to warm. The woman bends over me, and in the bright halo of sunlight surrounding her head, I can’t make out her features. But there is no mistaking the shape of the gun that appears in her right hand. A woman with a gun—could this be Dexter’s dear sister, Sergeant Deborah Morgan, stumbling across her beloved brother’s tragically murdered self? Who else could possibly put on such a rare display of well-armed grief for me? And there is real tenderness in her left hand as it drops to my neck to feel for a pulse: in vain, alas, or whatever it is we say instead of “vain” nowadays. Her left hand drops away from my neck and she raises her head to the heavens and says through a tightly clenched jaw, “I’ll get the bastards who did this. I swear it.…” It is a sentiment I approve completely—and actually, it does sound a little bit like Deborah, but not quite enough. There is a hesitant, musical fluctuation in the voice that my sister would never permit. No,

He pulled on the lever and the gate opened, making a huge squealing sound.   It was a simmering hot day in Springfield. The sun pounded on Steve's helmet for a while until his head was pounding from the heat. He had been traveling for three hours now, he hasn't had a drink of water for a while now, so he decided to look for the nearest pond to get a drink of fresh water. He took out his map and pinpointed the exact location of a small pond. He made sure to tie the horse to the tree with a special knot he had learned in survival training. He jumped off, walked to the pond, and took out his cup. He drank water until his belly was full, then he decided he was going to sit down for a second and stretch his legs.   There was rustling in the bushes behind him. He unholstered his bow-gun, loaded the arrows, and turned around to see who it was. He couldn't see anything from where he was sitting, so he stood up and walked toward the sound. He looked behind the bushes but there was nothing. Then he heard rustling behind him. "Hold it right there," said a raspy voice behind him . Steve froze in place and slowly turned around. It was a villager holding an iron-sword. "Now, drop your weapon," Steve dropped his weapon. "Now kick the weapon over to me," Steve pushed the weapon toward the villager. He picked it up and unloaded the arrows from the chamber. "Now walk!" The villager poked Steve on the side and pointed toward a small cabin not far from there.   Villager:

When a thing happened that had not happened before, a confusion often descended upon people, a fog that fuddled the clearest minds; and often the consequence of such confusion was rejection, and even anger. A fish crawled out of a swamp onto dry land and the other fish were bewildered, perhaps even annoyed that a forbidden frontier had been crossed. A meteorite struck the earth and the dust blocked out the sun but the dinosaurs went on fighting and eating, not understanding that they had been rendered extinct. The birth of language angered the dumb. The shah of Persia, facing the Ottoman guns, refused to accept the end of the age of the sword and sent his calvary to gallop suicidally against the blazing cannons of the Turk. A scientist observed tortoises and mockingbirds and wrote about "random mutation" and "natural selection" and the adherents of the Book of Genesis cursed his name. A revolution in painting was derided and dismissed as mere "Impressionism." A folksinger plugged his guitar into an amp and a voice in the crowd shouted "Judas!

He took a steadying breath. "You see, I'd always thought of life as a series of target practices. A man had to approach them with a clear head and a fine pistol. He saw the target and he shot, and if he had a steady hand and a gun that shot true, he hit what he aimed for." She stared at him, nodding as if she understood. "And love was the sun that blinded him when he prepared to shoot, a dangerous distraction." He shook his head at his own foolishness. "But I forgot one very important thing--without the sun, he can't see to aim. By blocking it whenever it dared to shine, I missed what I was aiming for--security, duty, family. And for the past two years, I've missed the mark over and over. So what did I get? The very thing I wanted to avoid--setting disasters in motion." He reached out and took her hand, then squeezed it. But yesterday when you said you loved me, the sun cut through the clouds. Now I see things clearly. Without love, I have no security, duty is a pointless exercise, and family an empty comfort. Without your love, I might as well put this pistol to my own temple and fire, because I'm not going to hit anything else I aim for in life.

Every Farmer Understands Every Tear from Every Eye Becomes a Babe in Eternity This is caught by Females bright And returnd to its own delight The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath Writes Revenge in realms of Death The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air Does to Rags the Heavens tear The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun Palsied strikes the Summers Sun The poor Mans Farthing is worth more Than all the Gold on Africs Shore One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands Or if protected from on high Does that whole Nation sell & buy He who mocks the Infants Faith Shall be mockd in Age & Death He who shall teach the Child to Doubt The rotting Grave shall neer get out He who respects the Infants faith Triumphs over Hell & Death —William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence” (lines 67–90)

wasn’t out there running and gunning, partying until the sun came up, and having a good time on my parent’s dime.

As July ran out both sides settled down to an erratic apprehensive calm, enduring the same blistering sun, the same plague of flies and infected dust, the same ant-like existence in the ground. The Allies waited for the Turks to issue forth from the hills; the Turks waited for the Allies to come up to meet them. It was all very old and very new, a twentieth-century revival of the interminable siege. The Turks had a trench and a machine-gun post among Schliemann’s excavations on the site of Troy. CHAPTER TWELVE THE

They wore sandy- and light-green-colored camouflage fatigues, carried AK-47s, and wore army boots with red socks topped with white stripes tucked into their trouser legs. Veiled turbans covered their faces, but Issaka could still see the area around their eyes. Though clearly baked by the sun, most of these men had the toffee skin tone of Arabs. They were hell-bent on leaving a wake of destruction as they fled the French army. The trucks stopped and the men in the backs of the trucks held their guns in the air, bouncing the trucks on their tires as they chanted in Arabic, “There is no god but God! We stand up for Islam!” A tall militant in a deep-green turban and camouflage fatigues got out of the driver’s side of the truck closest to the house. He didn’t carry a gun. He pointed a finger at Issaka’s father. “You have some evil things we’ve been looking for, old man.

Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town Took the one eyed-jacks across the railroad tracks And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through He's a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave And the road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known He kind of looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back She says, I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat How far are you going? Said depends on what you mean He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline I guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved And I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma Shave And with her knees up on the glove compartment She took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like root beer And she popped her gum and arched her back Hell, Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road Some nights my heart pounds like thunder Don't know why it don't explode 'Cause everyone in this stinking town's got one foot in the grave And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma Shave Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the stations? Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror She said mister, anywhere you point this thing It got to beat the hell out of the sting Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin' And so drill me a hole with a barber pole And I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight Why don't you have another swig and pass that car if you're so brave I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma Shave And the spiderweb crack and the mustang screamed The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine Just a nickel's worth of dreams and every wishbone that they saved Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma Shave And the sun hit the derrick and cast a batwing shadow Up against the car door on the shotgun side And when they pulled her from the wreck You know she still had on her shades They say that dreams are growing wild Just this side Of Burma Shave

A hailstorm of rocket-propelled grenades, thundering mortars, and AK-47 machine-gun fire strafed the exposed men from all directions. The Marines of Mike Company had walked into an ambush laid by over 2,500 well-camouflaged North Vietnamese warriors. It seemed as if the Angel of Death was swooping down upon the Americans like a swift sword. Instead of rescuing their fellow comrades, the Marines now faced complete annihilation. Outnumbered, out-gunned, and exposed, there was nowhere to hide. Would any of them survive to see the setting sun?

woke to the crack of gunfire, screaming, and running feet. Before she could move, a gun was shoved into her back. She looked over her shoulder at the merciless dark eyes of the man holding the weapon. “Hello, Dana Sorenson. I’ve got a job for you.” She’d had a job, one that hadn’t turned out as she’d hoped. Had it only been a week ago she’d been standing on a dock in Turbo, Colombia, a disreputable port town rife with violence on the coast of Colombia and in the horseshoe of the Gulf of Urabá to fulfill her mom’s wish. It was just before dawn, the sun nothing but a glimmer on the horizon. She’d waited for a boat that would take her and her crew into the Darién Gap, a place that

The tables are crowded with American civilian construction engineers, men getting $30,000 a year from their jobs on government contracts and matching that easily on the black market. Their faces have the look of aerial photos of silicone pits, all hung with loose flesh and visible veins. Their mistresses were among the prettiest, saddest girls in Vietnam. I always wondered what they had looked like before they’d made their arrangements with the engineers. You’d see them at the tables there, smiling their hard, empty smiles into those rangy, brutal, scared faces. No wonder those men all looked alike to the Vietnamese. After a while they all looked alike to me. Out on the Bien Hoa Highway, north of Saigon, there is a monument to the Vietnamese war dead, and it is one of the few graceful things left in the country. It is a modest pagoda set above the road and approached by long flights of gently rising steps. One Sunday, I saw a bunch of these engineers gunning their Harleys up those steps, laughing and shouting in the afternoon sun. The Vietnamese had a special name for them to distinguish them from all other Americans; it translated out to something like “The Terrible Ones,” although I’m told that this doesn’t even approximate the odium carried in the original.

And here might be the moment to squirt one perfect tear, all bittersweet and shimmering with dreamy resignation. Except that as the serpent once sunned its coils in Eden, patiently awaiting the opportunity to let the biggest cat in eternity out of the sturdiest bag, so a pack of Camel cigarettes stands in these wings, waiting to come on and do its most unexpected stuff.

Few Carpathian women carry to full term. The child rarely survives the first year of life. Do not be so certain we are out of the woods. You must rest and be cared for. The child comes first. Byron would say so also. Mikhail must take you far from this place, away from the vampire and the assassins. I will hunt and rid our people of the danger while your mate looks after you.” Gregori’s voice was low and pitched in silver tones, tones of light that beckoned and danced. Nearly impossible to resist. So calm and soothing and reasonable. Raven actually had to shake off the compulsion to do as he wished. She glared at him. “Don’t even try that with me, Gregori.” She included Mikhail in her stare. “And you, you big lunk, you would have gone along with him like the tree-swinging macho man you are. Watch these guys, Shea, they’re impossible. They’ll do anything to get their way.” Shea found herself smiling. “So I’ve noticed.” It was reassuring to see that Raven had learned to hold her own with the men. Shea was every bit as strong. “I can’t leave Byron out there to suffer the same fate as Jacques,” Raven insisted stubbornly. She looked beyond Gregori to Shea for support. “We can’t.” Shea had seen firsthand what the human butchers were capable of, and she could no more leave Byron to such a fate than she could walk away from Jacques. She nodded in agreement. “Once we have Byron’s location, you men can go after him. I’ll stay with raven, and we’ll wait for you here. The vampire can’t come out with the sun up, and we have guns if the humans show up.” “In any case, Mikhail, you know you could protect us from humans, even from a distance,” Raven reminded him. “Shea is right, healer.” Jacques suddenly threw his support to the women. He owed Byron. He could not allow anyone to suffer as he had. He glanced at Gregori. “You knew Raven and Mikhail were in trouble when their minds were connected to Byron’s. What is it? How does the vampire trap us?” “He ensnared Raven and me through Byron, a monumental feat,” Mikhail admitted. Then he rubbed his jaw ruefully. “Is it possible, little brother, you enjoyed hitting me just a bit too much?” Jacques’ teeth gleamed white in the semblance of a smile. He could not help but admire Mikhail’s coolness in the midst of a threat as lethal as the healer’s and the vampire’s combined. To be able to joke, to put aside the ego of the Carpathian male, was nothing short of a miracle.

Stacy McKee (who is one of the new head writers at Grey’s Anatomy but started out way back in the beginning as the assistant on the show) IS the kind of mom who does crafts with her kids and puts photos of them up on Pinterest and Instagram. She works long, hard hours but still, you go into her office and as she’s talking scripts and story, she’s hot-gluing beads onto a princess cape for her daughter. I always furrow my brow and ask her why the hell she is doing this. Why? Or why the hell is she delicately hand-painting vistas onto Easter eggs? Or why is she doing any number of crazy amazing crafty things Stacy does for her kids? For the love of wine, why? Stacy will furrow her brow back at me, equally confused. “Why wouldn’t I?” she says. See, Stacy LOVES doing this stuff. She’d probably do it even if she didn’t have kids. Oh wait. I knew her back when she didn’t have kids and she WAS doing it. Stacy once spent days making incredibly lifelike renderings of all the Grey’s Anatomy characters out of pipe cleaners. PIPE CLEANERS. So it’s not about working moms vs. nonworking moms. It’s about people who love hot-gluing beads on capes vs. people who do not know what a hot-glue gun is. And it’s not even that. It’s about the non–glue gun people not assuming the glue gun people are judging them, and vice versa. Maybe don’t start out with your weapons raised. Maybe that Perfect PTA Mom didn’t even realize that homemade brownies could be a hardship. Maybe instead of yelling obscenities at the mention of homemade brownies, it would be better to stand up and gently point out that not everyone has the time or the bandwidth to make brownies.

To set the scene: Madzy Brender à Brandis was a young mother with two small children, trying to survive through years of hardship and danger – and some unexpected pleasures. In May 1942, after her husband was suddenly taken prisoner and sent to a German camp, she began writing a diary to record the details of her life – for her husband to read when he returned, if he returned. She called it “this faithful book.” Here are some passages: 28 October 1944 [when the electricity was cut off because of lack of fuel for the generating plants]: “We have to use the daylight to its utmost, and we figure this out already in the morning. [At the end of the afternoon] We flew faster and faster to use the last bits of daylight, lay the table, lay everything ready so that at 5:30 we could eat in the dusk until we couldn’t find our mouths any more. Blackout and one candle, finished eating and washed the dishes. Read to children in pyjamas and then they to bed. Then unraveled a knitted baby blanket [so that the yarn could be used to knit other things] and at 9:00 blew out the candle and continued by moonlight. But now I’m going to bed, tired but satisfied with my efforts, though very sad about all the misery.” 1 November 1944 [after a threat of having the house demolished]: “Well, our house is still standing. I filled a laundry bag with many things, and everything is standing ready [in case there was a need to evacuate]. Because there is much flying again. At one moment an Allied fighter plane flew over very low; just then three German soldiers were walking past our house and one, “as a joke,” shot his gun at the plane. Tje! What a scare we had!” 24 December 1944 [addressing her husband, still in the camp]: “The whole house is in wonderful peace and I’m sitting by the fire, which gives me just enough light to write this. [The upper door of the small heater, when opened, gave a bit of light.] My Dicks, I don’t have to tell you how very much I miss you on this evening. It is a gnawing sense of longing. But beyond that there is a sorrow in me, a despair about everything, that pervades my whole being. Besides that, however, I’ve already for days seen the light of Christ coming closer and in these days that gives me hope. So does the waxing moon, the hard frost, the bright sun – in a word, all the light in nature after that endless series of misty, rainy, dark days. And so I sit close to my unsteady little light, that constantly abandons me, and think of you. It’s as though you are very close to me. I’m so grateful for everything that I have: your love, the two children, and everything around me.” 12 February 1945 [during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45, after one of her trips to forage for food]: “Today I went to Rika in Renswoude: 1¼ hours cycling there, 2½ hours walking back pushing a broken-down bicycle and with 25 pounds of rye [the whole grain, not flour] through streaming rain, while there was constant booming of artillery and bombing in the distance.

Why would you call for me to save you?" He led her out of the coffee shop. "Saving you would be Faroz's job." "I don't know." She looked out over the bay, taking in the soft glow of the golden hour, that magical, romantic, fleeting moment between daylight and dusk when the sun began to dip below the horizon, enveloping everything in shimmering gold. "I think it's maybe because you made me feel safe when Faroz was flashing his gun and telling us stories about being tortured. My subconscious must have figured you were my best bet for a happy Bollywood ending." "You think I could protect you?" He looked so bewildered that Layla had to laugh. "Of course I do. It's who you are. You might be trying to kick me out of the office, but you've been protecting me since the day we met.

Australia is not, as is commonly believed, a vast, wealthy, and extremely happy country in the southeastern corner of the globe settled by ex-British convicts who mellowed out considerably and built a fancy opera house once they’d gotten a bit of sun. First of all, globes do not have corners. Second, Australia is in reality a crazed anarchic hellscape where machine-gun toting grizzled Australian troopers are deployed alongside eyepatch-wearing koala infantry to battle ferocious emu warlords and their kangaroo allies. Control of the continent regularly shifts between dictatorial factions as they battle for control of the continent’s precious metal and Vegemite reserves.

Later, I sat down drunk on the corner of Carondelet and Canal Streets, listening for the rumble of the streetcar that would take me back uptown to my apartment, watching the evening sun bleed from the streets, the city shifting into night, when it truly became New Orleans: the music, the constant festival, the smell of late evening dinners pouring out, layering the beer-soaked streets, prostitutes, clubs with DJs, rowdy gay bars, dirty strip clubs, the insane out for a walk, college students vomiting in trash cans, daiquiri bars lit up like supermarkets, washing-machine-sized mixers built into the wall spinning every color of daiquiri, lone trumpet players, grown women crying, clawing at men in suits, portrait painters, spangers (spare change beggars), gutter punks with dogs, kids tap-dancing with spinning bike wheels on their heads, the golden cowboy frozen on a milk crate, his golden gun pointed at a child in the crowd, fortune-tellers, psycho preachers, mumblers, fighters, rock-faced college boys out for a date rape, club chicks wearing silver miniskirts, horse-drawn carriages, plastic cups piling against the high curbs of Bourbon Street, jazz music pressing up against rock-and-roll cover bands, murderers, scam artists, hippies selling anything, magic shows and people on unicycles, flying cockroaches the size of pocket rockets, rats without fear, men in drag, business execs wandering drunk in packs, deciding not to tell their wives, sluts sucking dick on open balconies, cops on horseback looking down blouses, cars wading across the river of drunks on Bourbon Street, the people screaming at them, pouring drinks on the hood, putting their asses to the window, whole bars of people laughing, shot girls with test tubes of neon-colored booze, bouncers dragging skinny white boys out by their necks, college girls rubbing each other’s backs after vomiting tequila, T-shirts, drinks sold in a green two-foot tube with a small souvenir grenade in the bottom, people stumbling, tripping, falling, laughing on the sidewalk in the filth, laughing too hard to stand back up, thin rivers of piss leaking out from corners, brides with dirty dresses, men in G-strings, mangy dogs, balloon animals, camcorders, twenty-four-hour 3-4-1, free admission, amateur night, black-eyed strippers, drunk bicyclers, clouds of termites like brown mist surrounding streetlamps, ventriloquists, bikers, people sitting on mailboxes, coffee with chicory, soul singers, the shoeless, the drunks, the blissful, the ignorant, the beaten, the assholes, the cheaters, the douche bags, the comedians, the holy, the broken, the affluent, the beggars, the forgotten, and the soft spring air pregnant with every scent created by such a town.

My dreams took me many places. Sometimes I would be in a pirogue with my father, deep in the Atchafalaya swamp, the fog thick in the black trees, and just as the sun broke on the earth’s rim, I’d troll my Mepps spinner next to the cypress stumps and a largemouth bass would sock into it and burst from the quiet water, rattling with green-gold light. But tonight I dreamed of Hueys flying low over jungle canopy and milky-brown rivers. In the dream they made no sound. They looked like insects against the lavender sky, and as they drew closer I could see the door-gunners firing into the trees. The down-drafts from the helicopter blades churned the treetops into a frenzy, and the machine-gun bullets blew water out of the rivers, raked through empty fishing villages, danced in geometrical lines across dikes and rice paddies. But there was no sound and there were no people down below. I saw a door-gunner’s face, and it was stretched tight with fear, whipped with wind, throbbing with the action of the gun. I could see only one of his eyes—squinted, cordite-bitten, liquid with the reflected images of dead water buffalo in the heat, smoking villages, and glassy countryside, where the people had scurried into the earth like mice. His hands were swollen and red, his finger wrapped in a knot around the trigger, the flying brass cartridge casings kaleidoscopic in the light. There were no people to shoot at anymore, but no matter—his charter was clear. He was forever wedded and addicted to this piece of earth that he’d helped make desolate, this land that was his drug and nemesis. The silence in the dream was like a scream.

The idea of strategy, like the owl of Minerva, typically arises just as the sun is setting on an organization. An old saw has it that strategy is when you’re running out of ammo but you keep firing on all guns so that the enemy won’t know. As a rule, corporations turn to strategy when they can’t justify their existence in any other way, and they start planning when they don’t really know where they are going.”18

There was nothing to aim at. Seth hadn’t screamed. Seth wasn’t down there. Another scream split the air. But someone else was. He holstered his gun and rushed for the cave. “Please, someone help me!” It was Seth. No, not Seth. “Someone help me!” The voice broke. Sobbing echoed off the cavern walls. Not a little boy. He stuck his head over the cavern entrance. “A woman?” Rafe spoke aloud. Trying to believe his own ears. The words echoed into the depths. There was no response, only sobs. But it was not his imagination. There really was someone down there. The crying rose and fell, echoed off the walls until it sounded like ten women crying, all ghostly, terrified. “Who’s down there?” His voice bounced back to him. Only more tears. The sun was gone. Dank, cool air rose up from the pit. He could see nothing. After those first words, there were no more. But she might be out of her mind with fear. Something Rafe could understand. Rafe looked at the rope but didn’t care to trust his weight to it. His eyes went to a flat boulder only feet away. Would it still be there? After all this time? Rafe muscled the boulder aside, stone scratching on stone, and uncovered a depression in the rocks to reveal . . . “My ladder.” He pulled it out, the metal clinking. It was chain, badly rusted after lying in the ground for years. Long ago Rafe had switched it for the hand-woven hemp rope he, Ethan, and Seth had trusted with their lives. Then trust had died and Rafe had anchored the ladder to this boulder. The sobbing had a haunting quality, but this was no ghost—Rafe didn’t believe in them—although for a few uncertain seconds, he’d been tempted to consider the possibility. “I’m coming down.” The sobs stopped. Then he heard them again, softer, muffled, as if she was trying to squelch the sound. “I’ll get you out,” he called, his voice echoing. Had someone abandoned her down there? “Can you tell me your name?” No response. He gave his chain ladder a quick inspection and wasn’t too happy with its condition. “I’m Rafe Kincaid. I ranch near here.” Rafe had known the cavern very well by the time he’d given up his exploring. Not as well as Seth. No one knew this cavern like Rafe’s little brother. Seth had run wild down there. Once, in a particularly wild mood, Seth had told Rafe he’d lost his soul down there and had to find it. Seth had always been