The Dark Talons Of Two Worlds
REMINGTON GRAVES
The fire roared furtively and then sighed, feeding the men a hellish heat as they trembled in their soaking slumber sweat amid thick and tattered blankets—dusty, bloody fingernails digging into hard soil, aching toes twisted and lashing, throated gurgles and gnawing of tongues—silent begging muted screams. Tangled soaring trees insidiously standing afar and reaching for the black heavens, pointing to vanishing blinking stars, enciphering the lush language of listening, with wolves soft approaching pats upon the twigs and wintry pebbles. And there was waves of sludging sirens delivered by oscillating drones driven by devils, angered by angels, washing upon the shore of the cauterizing core from which they slept. But the pyre raged on and wailed and rumbled, snapped and popped…the lupine lopes approached in slopes…low, and slow in pulse.
And from the distant eyes of a silent predator pretending to be prey, could be seen the icy breath from writhing men, meeting the wolves and ascending gently and fading—ghosts—fighting to live…
Fighting to die.
Torn by the cold, dark talons of two worlds. The one you are certain of, the other, the one that awaits.
∞
Grace
“What’ll it be, friend?”
”Three fingers of Fiddich—straight.”
”Sure thing, stranger. Say, you ain’t from around here are you?” he said proudly pouring after reaching from the plenitude of liters and pints.
”No,” he replied rapidly.
”You know, pal, I got a couple of girls just down the road who got hips, slips and fingertips to make you yearn and burn”
”Not interested.”
”Okay, well, how about some laughers, poppers, squinters, squatters, bennies, zingers, frackers, jiggers—“
“Listen, barkeep, I simply want to sit here quietly and sip these spirits, if you don’t mind,” he moaned slowly as the gray in his hair shimmered in the mirror and his dove pendant gleamed behind the bartender. Ostensibly Oxforded and buttoned-up benign, he feigned forbearance and benevolence.
“Sure thing…,” he said catching the bird of prey on his chest, “I just know what it’s like. I used to be a man of the cloth once upon a lifetime ago. One can never truly become what the good book wants us to be, you know? Shit, I don’t think I ever met a person who didn’t fall short of the grace of—well, I’m preaching to the choir now, I reckon.”
“Please, please don’t kill us. We can double what he’s paying you, I’ll triple it. C’mon, just look at my kids, will ya?! They’re crying for god’s sake. Hurt us all you want, but leave our kids alone. They had nothing to do with this. Look at ‘em, please! They’re little angels—they never hurt anybody. Have a heart, we beg you. Just let them go. No! No! No!”
With a consuming and cogent cock of the wrist, he cradled the empty glass and catalyzed the eyes of the cute cunt at the end of the bar to sidewind her beautiful curves towards him sultry then sanguine.
”Buy me a drink, Preacher?
“Sure thing…” he said fishing for her name.
”Grace.”
∞
Notable Quotes
STEVEN STAPLETON
“I’ve been doing it for 22 years now, or whatever,” Stapleton reflects, “and no amount of adulation would change the music. It’s never worried me. I’m really happy in my life, I’ve got my goats, my lovely family, I’ve got everything that anybody could really want and I’ve also got my music. I’m a happy person. I make the music that I want to hear and that nobody else is making, a music that’s never really existed before.”
In The Nirvana Of This Nothingness
REMINGTON GRAVES
I think of past lovers.
I think of present lovers.
Old lovers still present.
Invisible ribbons of perfume caress my face as I speed in my motorcycle under the shadows of falling leaves—and there you are, in the lavender, in the orange blossoms, against the rose and the vanilla, with your toes in the cool creek, amongst the sunflowers, in the green fighting the fall.
Past lovers whimper in pain.
Present lovers blow kisses with all the warmth they can muster.
Forgotten lovers lay in bed half asleep reaching for my body.
The silence that is late night traffic crashes in waves against my spider infested apartment walls—they spin dead roaches, cradle still flies, broken leaves tremble amid the tangle, and here I am…aching back against the wall—typing these words, hoping they reach you…
In the past.
In the present.
In the nirvana of this nothingness.
∞
What A Tragedy
REMINGTON GRAVES
The dissonance with its diaphanous dialect, summoned the dormant menace no longer dreaming, to rise from a bed of warm and wet yellow, orange and brown large leaves. Pine needles permeated throughout a silent congregation of soaring giants—barked skin, and still with leafless limbs. His naked and trembling body, glistened with sweat and reflected the soft glow of the dawn, levitated and circled aimlessly then remained in motion in the figure of eight. And as his toes scraped against stones,twigs and leaves, an owl perched in the distance, watched. A murder of crows scattered as they screeched and squawked. As the cacophony preluded the somnolence in the symphony, a Sphinx in the distance, covered in miles of hot oblivious sands, hummed a delicate melody that tried with no avail to escape the depths therein.
Nearby ran gently a cool creek cutting through old rocks and moss, small colorful birds ribboned in ballet amid the darkling thrush and against the soft blue heavens, they chirped and chimed madly like tiny silver bells being swallowed by the feral jaws of a place beyond the pines. These elegant throes with their indomitable woes, beckoned, pleaded and pulled…
And the ensemble of the earth, with its visceral arrangement, veiled with its celestial verse, set the stage of praise for an unsung Oedipus who knew the long, the everlong awaited words.
And the Sphinx, forgotten, and altogether absurd, in another time, perhaps—in another world—in all that darkness, managed to finally see…the riddle answered and thus quite simply:
What a tragedy that would be.
To have died without me.
∞