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Fury of the Wind

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which Will had taken up his position at the desk. Only the monotonous
tick of the pendulum clock on the waiting room wall, and the
occasional tap tap of telegraph keys disturbed the quiet. And once
in a while Will Andrews cleared his throat.
Try as he would Will could not keep his eyes off her. His curiosity
grew with the minutes but he did not think it his place to ask
who she was waiting for. He just wished the tardy individual would
hurry up and get there. He didn’t think he should leave the young
woman alone to go to his quarters, although his feet now screamed
to be released from his boots, and his throat felt parched just thinking
about Molly’s lemonade.
He pulled his watch from the fob pocket of his trousers. Half past
four. Half an hour since the train had passed through town, and its
passenger – who had expected to be met – still waited.
A faint sound startled him and he looked up to see the woman
crossing the room towards the wicket. She appeared cool and composed
but Will could see the lines down her cheeks where rivulets
of sweat had streaked her face powder.
“Excuse me, Mr. ah ….”
“Andrews.”
“Mr. Andrews, I wonder if you could tell me if the train was early
today.”
“Nope, right on time as usual.”
“Oh … I see … thank you.” She bit her lower lip and turned away
but suddenly she swung around to face him again.
“Mr. Andrews, would you mind placing a telephone call for me,
please? It would be a local call.”
“Sure. Who to?”
“Fielding. Mr. Benjamin Fielding.”
Will’s mouth dropped open. “Ben Fielding?”
She brightened. “Yes. Do you know him?”
“Ben Fielding ain’t got a phone.”
“Oh.” She said it so quietly he scarcely heard her. Her lips trembled,
and the hand resting on the counter, still gloved, began to
shake just a little.
Again she turned to go but she stopped when he said, “Can I get
my missus to bring you a glass of lemonade? I was just going in for
some.”

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The Qliphoth

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Nicholas:
Special Withdrawal Unit
I have to get it all down. For the record, the Akashic Record of the Aeons, naturally.
Wherein all our phantasms are inscribed, squiggles of amoebic neon in
the starry darkness, every damned thing we’ve done radiating across eternity
like an old broadcast of Journey into Space on its way to the Pleiades.
And I have to set the angelic record quite straight. Writing very carefully.
Not my usual psychedelic scribble—letterforms in doodles of wild purple,
loopy loan-words on the run—but disciplined blocks of sensible words,
arranged thus, line after neat line in my black-and-red Notebook, made in
Taiwan but purchased for me at the hospital shop right here at Oakhill, sunniest
hotbed of sanity in all Devon, as Doctor Jago says, whenever he tries to jolly
us along.
It’s very civilised, “. . . considering, after all, Mr. Beardsley, it is a locked-up
ward, yes?” He allows me the privilege of unlocking my old word-hoard in its
frumpy box of smelly brocade, my little shop of curious relics. I’m permitted
this verb therapy, joining up my grown-up writing. Better this, certainly, than
farting in the day-room all day, like old Beddowes, or wandering about strumming
a cardboard cut-out guitar, which is the preferred pose of Rog, or Rod,
or Rob, or Ron—I haven’t yet made out his name, because our mass dosage of
Largactil makes everybody’s speech slurred.
In fairness to Beddowes, such drugs doth make great farters of us all, our
sulphurous bursts of bad air permeate the lower heavens . . . Perhaps it’s really
Beddowes’ high boredom quotient that’s against him. His preferred interpretation
of reality is that he’s Headmaster of a large inner-city comprehensive
school, that our day-room is his staff-room, and that we, fellow-clients of the
Special Withdrawal Unit, are his backsliding, incompetent staff.
“You’ve no control,” he wags a warning finger several times a day, “no control
at all of your juvenile criminal elementals. Young people committing
problems of evil, terrible state of things in the toilets, boys with knives, and
tinsel in their hair, hair everywhere . . . Look what you have permitted at the
end of the day, you with all your beards and long hair . . .” With me he always
permutates the same set phrases, beards and all. Even the stuffy acoustic of the
day-room can’t take the edge off his abrasive burr, but it goes nicely with his
jowly blue-shaven red face and bald scalp with plastered licks of thin hair.
He likes to grab some old copy of Plain Truth Magazine, and he rolls it up to …

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Wellspring of Love

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how many more times he would be called upon to rescue his headstrong
sister from danger. Mentally, he checked off the incidents that
had landed Rachael in trouble throughout their childhood. The day
he had stopped Bill Harrison, the man he then thought to be his
dad, from giving her a serious beating. That day, Ronnie had taken
the beating in her place. The time Rachael took four-year-old Bobby
and ran away from their temporary home at the Harrisons, into the
middle of the worst prairie blizzard the Alberta community had seen
in years. That time Ronald lost fingers, toes and part of an ear – and
almost lost his life – in an effort to save them.
It grieved him to know that Rachael still felt guilt over his loss. So
many times he had tried to tell her it was not her fault, nor was it her
fault that Bobby, too, had lost fingers and toes as a result of the storm.
She said she believed him, but he had seen her recoil sometimes when
she looked at his hands, or saw his feet when they were swimming in
Emblem Lake. He knew her reaction didn’t stem from squeamishness
– no girl he knew was less squeamish than his sister. No, it was
the knowledge that she had led both him and Bobby into a situation
that could have taken – and almost did take – all of their lives.
But right now there were more immediate concerns. How could
he make Rachael understand that Tim, no matter how innocent, no
matter how gentle he had always been, at eighteen years old had a
youth’s hormones raging through his system? No doubt Rachael was
right – Tim Buckley would not knowingly hurt her. He had been her
playmate since she and Bobby had been adopted by Morley and Tyne
Cresswell eight years earlier. The Buckleys lived not more than half a
mile across the fields from the Cresswell farm, a fact that accounted
for the well worn path between the two houses.
Ronald, while working in the fields, had often seen Rachael and
Bobby on their way to the Buckley farm. But he had rarely seen Tim
coming alone in the other direction. Only when he had company did
his parents allow the mentally challenged boy to leave their yard.
Now, however, Tim came and went at will.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562917

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763327

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume I

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Sea sea
in our minds in our souls in our veins the sea
We saw ships bringing mythic lands
here in the blond sand
where the evening wayfarers slow down
We dressed our childish loves
with wet seaweeds
We offered to the seashore gods
lustrous shells and pebbles
Morning colors melted in water
dusk fires on the gulls’ shoulders
masts showing the immensity
open thresholds in the step of night
and over the stone’s sleep
sea songs hover
illuminated unappeased
entering through small windows
designing gardens flashes and dreams
on the steamed windowpanes and in sleeping brows
Rhythm agony and vigil
There on the naked rocks
we the homeless barefoot children
saw Beauty
walking barefoot in the sea
we heard her voice
shivering with the azure echoes
with the phosphorescence of stars
seeding golden stories
in the green sea floor
Venerable heart
unsuspecting childish heart
who never refuses

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763076

Impulses

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Sounds
Sounds of words striking
emptiness echoing
in void between sense
of love and numbness or
between the falcon’s
feathers humming of spring
and a rodent’s
desperate shriek
vibrates through two
tympanums like wind
through half open shutters
while April speaks of statues
bloomed daffodils
solitude laments

https://draft2digital.com/book/3744513

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073565

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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infant, the swell of faraway traffic, but not a peep from the boy. The
gate opened and slammed shut again as though instructed to do so
by an invisible hand.
He’ll be home by dinner, they told Esther Rhodes. He’s at that age,
they said. But the assumption that Fender would soon saunter
home, as Lois Daniels predicted, proved groundless.
– Call me when he turns up, the social worker said. She left her
card on the table.
By early evening the stifling summer air had cooled, shadows
lengthened in the yards. I was told to peddle to the drugstore and
get Mrs. Rhodes’ prescription refilled.
The All-Stars, their practice cancelled, gathered around our
kitchen table. They divided themselves into groups and assigned
duties, filing out the front door solemnly in their black and silver
club jackets.
A few teammates sat with Esther as she worked the phone. She
called kids Fender had gone to school with, fellow idiots, people
he’d done odd jobs for. When, at 9 p.m., he still hadn’t returned, she
called the police.
Others fanned out across the neighbourhood. They knocked on
doors and scoured the woods. The All-Stars aimed their flashlights
into garages and yards, under parked cars, behind every bush. They
rang bells and blew whistles.
Sgt. McManus turned up at the house to explain to Esther that police
don’t file reports until someone has been missing 24 hours. People in
the Project respected the veteran policeman.He had fought at Dieppe.
–We’ll find him, he said. I’ll bring him straight home when we do.
But they didn’t find Fender that night or the following evening
either. Esther Rhodes looked like she was about to unravel. I think
she had so many pharmaceuticals coursing through her bloodstream
that she no longer knew what was going on, which was, I
suppose, their purpose. After three days the All-Stars declared a
moratorium: no more frames tossed until Fender was found.
– Esther has already lost a husband and a baby, a team member
reminded. She might not have the strength to survive the loss of
her angel.
A week passed without a sighting. It was as if the boy had
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UGGA

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twenty-seven
Two hundred and seventy thousand years before zero
before you butcher the last dinosaur
using your blood, you eternalize him
on the cave wall
you chose
before you start to immortalize with chalk
animals die from your spear
for tens of thousands of years, you think of it
before you paint the first corals with ochre
you hole them to make the first ornaments
some others out of the cave you didn’t know
cut copper coins
they buy, sell
and you with your ornaments
you measure the esthetics of others
for the first time.
Success and failure start to be discerned.

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Jazz with Ella

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Suddenly Jennifer turned cold. “Paul, we met that group two days ago. You’ve been with her ever since!”
He nodded. “And you didn’t even notice I was gone, did you?” He pulled on a t-shirt.
Guilt swept over Jennifer. Why hadn’t she noticed? She was supposed to be looking out for the students. The buck stopped at Professor Chopyk, but she was closer to the students, more in touch with their needs—or so she had thought. The answer came back quickly. Because she was too preoccupied with her own love life, that’s why. “But you could have been followed…the authorities….” she spluttered. “Dammit, even Soviet people can’t just go where they wish. Saratov and Toglyatti are closed areas to most Russians—much less to westerners.”
Paul continued to nod.
“How did you get back here?”
“I swam, remember?” It was his turn to laugh at her. “No, I hitched a ride on a farm truck. Vera arranged it. It wasn’t so far. The Volga twists and turns a lot here and the boat did a big loop. Really, we aren’t that far from Toglyatti or her father’s farm as the crow flies.” He pulled a sweater over his T-shirt. “I had a bad moment early this morning when I thought I wouldn’t be here early enough. I knew the ship usually steamed off at first light. But it’s not leaving early today.”
“A good thing!”
“There was another bad moment,” he went on, “when I discovered that I had arrived on the wrong side of the river.” He stopped attending to his wardrobe and studied her. “I appreciate your concern, Jennifer, but I’m a big boy now.” He moved toward the door.
“Wait a minute.” Jennifer stopped him and looked into his cool blue-grey eyes, so much like Volodya, she thought, same high cheekbones, same mane of dark hair. “So you’re not seeing her again?”
He didn’t reply.
“We’ll be in Kazan soon. Then you’ll be too far away to swim back to see her.”
He was silent.
Jennifer sensed that her words would make no difference but she continued. “You’re still thinking about her. She won’t be allowed to leave the Soviet Union, even for visits, unless she’s a model Communist. You know that?” A part of her brain registered the fact that he was packing.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Marginal

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X
Come, bring a glass of fresh water
from the humble pitcher at the hour
of no shadows when the sun opens
every heart to accept the poet
before he lost his mind, come, and
sit under the grapevine to wish him
freedom from the heaviness of his heart
come and let us sing about the tragic
killer who under the craziness of
his mind he ordered his favorite song
to be played and in his dance he killed
three men, and let us reminiscent of
all the exaggerations for whom we danced
under the scolding laughter of the cicadas
let us dedicate a white page to all
the paranormal on this earth and let’s
remember that only from the crazy
and the children you learn the truth

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771715987

Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

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“True, but first we must find a safe shore and make repairs to the prow. She is
ready to break up if we run into more rough weather.”
“Fresh water is running low, and we need fruit and vegetables to stop the spongy
gums and bleeding. Several men are quite sick. Their wounds from the sheep capture
are not healing.”
Hjálmar was the last to speak. “Well, then, we will let the current carry us farther
south. There is land to the west, but ice still floes between here and that far shore. We
have plentiful fish and fresh lamb on board to last us to safe harbour.”
When Captain Hjálmar informed the crew of his decision, they expressed their
approval with a loud cheer. Only Ari voiced disappointment to his new friend,
Brother Lorcan. “Now you will not get to meet my brother, Melrakki, nor fish with
me in our mountain streams, nor ride our Norse horses. But most of all, I will not
see my dear father whom I miss so much. We argued when I left to go to sea. I have
been away from home so long that he will think me drowned as he threatened I
would be.”
With the tremendous pressures of having to fight currents, winds, and unexpected
disasters finally over, Norsemen and monks alike began to relax, to enjoy the
leisurely voyage south. Some mended clothes. Some whittled dogs, horses and sheep
out of bone and driftwood as toys for their children at home. Others fished by attaching
gut line to small blocks of wood. With rock weights and bronze fish hooks
baited with lamb liver, they hauled up cod hand-over-hand as they sailed once more
over open water, steadily southward. The diet of fresh fish was welcome, although
several of the crew were experiencing sores and lesions in their mouths and on their
lips caused by lack of fresh vegetables and fruits.
Brother Rordan at last sat talking with Ul beyond the almost silent sheep pen.
The captain’s thrall had given up trying to avoid the Celtic monk who had been so
insulting.
“Please forgive me and trust me to be your friend. If we were to be sold in Thulé, I
doubt if we will be now. Whatever time we have left, I would like to get to know you.”
“I bloody well doubt it. There’s not a member of Hjálmar’s crew wouldn’t like to
get his filthy hands on me, and if he catches me talking to you, I’ll be in for a beating
and so will you.” With that, the Irish thrall rose to his feet and slipped away.
Eighteen days after the eruption off Thulé and five since their ice encounter, a
huge whale, almost sixty feet long, began following the ship. It blew a fountain of
water higher than the ship’s rail. Then, with a massive sigh and a gentle rippling of
the water, it sank beneath the surface and reappeared far ahead. Later on the same
afternoon, the Norsemen were visited by a shining black pod of killer whales. One
by one, the dozen beautiful mammals moved gently under the hull and resurfaced
on the other side, blowing water like Moorish fountains.
Captain Hjálmar saw the visit as a good omen. “Tomorrow,” he told the men, “we
will find good harbour and all will go ashore.”
That evening, everyone drank toasts of mead to Ægir, King of the Sea and to the
Sækonungar, protectors and patrons of Nordic sailors and explorers. Every Norseman
also drank to the Irish God who had delivered them from an icy grave.
Finten felt a sudden surge of excitement as he recalled stories told to the student

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