Monday, August 18, 2008
What Could Have Happened During American Revolution: A Satire of Eighteenth Century British Politicians
To Respond with All Haste
He could see a tall man resting his hand on a split-rail fence, standing in knee-deep, rising snow. He wore a gray woolen cloak lined with red and a general's hat. Under the cloak was a dark blue uniform with yellow facings and silver buttons that corresponded to his yellow britches. Shrouding his feet were a pair of black, leather boots that rose to just below his knees. Through the gently falling, lace-white flakes he realized that the man's face was strong yet filled with sadness, and his striking blue eyes betrayed a haunting fatigue.
Suddenly, an intense pain erupted in his feet, and he looked down, saw they were bare and bleeding. Instead of his cloak and uniform, he wore a tattered, brown coat and worn, leather britches. A dark, red stain spread across the canvas of his shirt already wet and freezing from the snow. He reeled, grasped the fence to support himself, and collapsed with fatigue from a thousand marches and battles and memories. His ear stung sharply.
Footsteps brought a red-coated soldier. He gazed into his eyes, saw that he was no longer a man, but a boy of sixteen. The soldier raised his musket, the barrel aimed at his victim's chest, the bayonet gleaming in the winter light. For a long moment neither moved, one held down by the weight of a single bullet in his flesh, the other by his insane anger. Then the tension holding the redcoat snapped, and the bayonet pierced the center of the wound of the already, dying, dying, dead boy in front of him.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
My dears!
And this, my friends, is why we must keep posting!
So... um... something of value? Anyone?
Here's a poem!
Nobody Knows, Just We Two
Daddy
Rubs my back and
Croons songs that haven’t
Been sold in twenty years
Except on the hidden
Discount racks.
Slowly,
He unrolls me
Where I’m wound tight,
Crumpled on the floor like
An unborn child.
He eases me back,
Holding me
Close to him.
As if I am five and
I fell off my bicycle.
Singing
He dances me in slow
Side to side motions.
If I could cry,
I would be allowed to
Cover his shirt with water and salt.
Instead,
I listen, breathing in
His scent and his voice.
He doesn’t ask,
Only answers.
He dances me around the
Kitchen, repeating the
Same songs over again,
Like one of his old records
Stuck on a single point.
I don’t mind,
Even when he forgets the
Words and has to hum them
Or, worse, substitutes his own.
He resolutely sings me down
Until I feel human again.