Huh ...

Thought of the evening:

Vasili Arkhipov amd Stanislav Petrov (the latter of whom I knew of before tonight) are both credited with saving the world from nuclear war. (The former during '62, the latter during the 80s over a missile warning 'glitch'.) Who would be their American counterparts, if any?

For a novel

All you can do is break the world,
That's all you're good for, all you are
Cracks in the world, wholeness in me
Sunlight dancing on a frozen sea
What is it good for, failing so far:
all you can do is break the world.

The Perfect Angel

She flew more naked than the day she was born,
eyes wide and wounded with silent scars.
Angels formed in the snow, crude and misbegotten.
Her eyes burning she turned away
in a silent pain too deep for words
and blinked fiercely in denial
of denial and it seemed that the stars
blinked back, and laughed.

So she forgot, and people can forget:
that is Heaven.
She made one last angel in the pristine snow
because she could
and had nowhere to go.

They found her cold and smiling
and knew that she was gone.
They carried her home in silence
not knowing what she’d done.
They tramped over the perfect angel
that then melted in the sun.

Working on a novella

Tentatively titled 'Found', it's about a man, his family, and his accidental adoption of a hellhound. Which, thanks to poking at dog breeds on the 'net ,I have decided is 'mostly Bouvier'. It says much about me that I figured the dog needed to be a specific breed.

Stories

Our stories have a limit,
you said, soft, watching skies.
I waited, drawing words from you
with silence.

Follow any story long enough
and it's just a tragedy.
"Like heroes?" I ask, though
I am never sure I speak.

When our stories end, prayers begin.
We plead for exemption, from death.
I would have a story rather
than live forever, you added.

I listened to your voice, felt
the silence fill the emptiness
as if that was all we ever do.

Silent

It was a point of pride, dulled
with life's decay; pockets free of holes,
empty of tools. The deaf man
carried no paper, no pen, no pad
into the world of open-mouthed silence.
He knows their language but so few,
know his, not even the insults.

When he needs them, they appear
at a gesture, another magic of
a foreign world. Shabby but
sometimes a miracle, signs
like small gifts, offerings he takes
as hope for the world, swallowed
with a kind of nameless sadness.

This is Untitled

I project the inward out,
everything I offer you already have.
Our meshing a tangle of needs and wine.

Outside, rain sluices down windows
drops meet, merge, slow, but
they all seem to fall alone.

Inside we are too warm, our words
hot and heavy and I think of the desert:
to move, make such wondrous noises, but
not to change.

In cool sweat and tangled sheets
the rain loud over our breath, we find
smiles, yes, but no words to share,
not one.

Why?

Hollow, we cling to empty things,
Seance a lonely whisper in the dark --
Why?

Before stark truth, a metal table and a white sheet,
Raw words from numb lips --
“Why?”

Laughters slips, harsh and unrestrained,
Men in uniforms, silent, might wonder:
Why?

Amateur mourners say false sympathies
Eyes righteous, accusing the unvoiced:
Why?

Why did we let you die, not stop you,
You hid beind a smile, never telling why
You died.

Love and the Sea

I know even a lousy miracle is still a miracle
I whispered softly to you
I held your hand and traced our names in sand
And said I’d always be true
But the water came and washed it away, I guess it’s the same
For love. And a harsh wind blew
Across the land, crashing windows: someone said I should know
Omens when I see them true.

But I had so much to give I still thought that was love
I still thought you were there for me
I thought we were inseparable but everything is permeable
All we had was each other, if only
If only it had been enough. O what was our crime what was our sin?
We let love in and I don’t see
What we did that was so wrong but someone told me I should know
We never took the time to be.

Someone told me things aren’t fixed by songs -- broken wings
Might never mend again
Somehow we just go on and maybe one day the hurt will be gone
So we learn to never complain
Yet it’s a miracle we’re told since we loved at all but it’s hard to see
And harder to sustain
But we were sold on it even if it was a lie, even if we feel too old
So I’m trying for love again

And this time it’s not first love and maybe never can be true love
You say you love me, I say “We’ll see”
And there’s hurt in your eyes but I won’t offer up lies
And often I walk alone down by the sea
And I remember other lovers, how cold it is in December
And wonder why love and I always disagree
But here I am again, opening up my heart again to let it sing
“Maybe this time we will be. Maybe this time we will be
What wound ever healed but by degrees?”

The fun of resurrection

Higher Ground is a story I wrote in 2002. Some people liked it, I finished it, re-read it and pretty much didn't care for it. (Major plot holes, last minute 'wait, there is no villain! Shove one in!' stuff, the usual fun of doing a draft of a novel without, say, plotting more than a couple of chapters ahead.) However, as much as I disliked the end result, I did have a soft spot for the core concept of it:

Why do characters who end up in Fantasy World stay?

Not everyone would want to, or should, but I thought it would be focus on a character whose only goal is to get back home because of mundane issues like the new car getting towed, work, rent and so forth. As such I am entirely re-doing the novel from scratch and altering a lot of character roles. Or shall, in time; I'm doing up notes at present so things are more solidified in my head when I start out.