dope deliverance: May 2012

(semi-rough draft)

Perched, every strand of his woven self called upon for all purposes analytical. Peering over a boulder half his height, average, crouching, and eyes affixed on the “to-be-slain,” one of a dozen and a half pinned to the ill-reputed city council’s public hit list, quietly resting in the corner of the Town Hall, the publicly open portion of the Mayor’s residence. Over the boulder, from the edge of a cliff not quite fifty yards from and no more than twenty feet higher, peering, at the target.

The “Wanted Board,” erected in an attempt to drive away known criminals from the vicinity had taken to it like a challenge select, regular, aspiring, hopefuls who would rather stalk track and hunt for a human head than, say, work for the town as a woodsman or farmer. Each offender had their own wooden, rectangular panel with their name and other information etched in, sketches with varying quality pinned on the left. Some wanted dead, some alive, some it did not matter but since carrying a decapitated and mute cranium was easier than doing so with an actual, living body, “dead or alive” had always meant “dead.”

So over this boulder, crouching, from atop a cliff overlooking the scene. The targeted man directly within straight line of sight, north, sitting comfortably in front of a still pond on his own boulder, his left knee raised, right foot on the ground, left on the rock. Unanticipatedly aged, it occurred to the pursuer. Twenty feet or so to the aged man’s left was a rather finely crafted, considering middle-of-nowhere location, hut but, to the younger, looked just like a miniature lake cabin. Tobacco and a few vegetables patches were flourishing in a personal garden.

The whole area, pond and hut, were surrounded by the cliff the younger now sat on, peering, with a small, valley-like entrance some ways south. They were easily scalable cliffs, though, not entirely qualified to serve as any sort of prominent protection. A gentle breeze caressed the nostrils of the hopeful, bringing in a whiff of lavender from the west. He had surveyed the area enough he decided and it was time to devise his attack.

Yiero was the targets name and he was the only one on the board without a listed crime and had also been there the longest. His bounty was high but his status was legendary in a hushed sense. Never could anyone of the town, or bordering towns, remember seeing him attack unless in self-defense. Even before the board, he was hunted regularly, from a young age. His assailants were always drifters, unfamiliar faces in the county. A large number of souls had seen him in combat and not one would claim it was not spectacle of utmost beauty.

They told him, this young bounty hunter, clad in typical leather dyed untypically blue, that Yiero’s sword is never drawn until the battle is done. He didn’t care for or know what that meant; If he fights without a sword, he thought, that’s just an advantage for me. But he did see his sheathe sitting by his side, an unusual thing made of some hardened, black rock that concealed the weapon in its entirety as the hilt was had no handguard and slipped fully into the sheath. He was just sitting there in front of the pond, gazing distantly over. His attire was cloth, smooth and uninhibiting. A dark, earth-toned green simple shirt and pants of the same material and some type of open faced vest that hung hung from his shoulders down to his knees; a deepened, darkened purple.

They told him no one knew what the hilt of his sword looked like because no one had seen it for more than a few brief moments. Mockingly, they told him that he better know how to dance if he wants his cash. Rumor had it that he actually had not committed any crimes and put himself on the board. Other rumor had it that he killed three kings in three years, that he carries gems so valuable he could afford a cavalry of horses, that he was immortal, some even spreading whispers of demonic, or maybe angelic, influence. He’s just an old man.

He’s just an old man and I have no home, no friends, no family, and no money. And he was curious, most of all, he was curious. Eerily, at the exact moment in time the young sword swinger in blue noticed how abnormally long he had been staring at the target and the surroundings and how Yiero had not moved even an inch, Yiero nonchalantly stands from his boulder, loosely holding his sheathed weapon at his side.

“If your contemplation has been put to rest,” his words, his breath, like gentle wind, now turning to face the younger’s direction revealing to him shoulder length, thin white hair and thin, chest length pointed beard, “then you are free to descend.”

The target inviting the assassin. No ambush today. He stood from his stooped, peering position, slowly and carefully, keeping his own, exposed, usual long sword in a position ready to be swung. Green. Yiero’s eyes, averted to his assassin’s feet, were an almost unnaturally vibrant green. I don’t care anymore.

He dashed down the inclined hill toward the elderly man and swung fiercely and, to Yiero’s own slight surprise, more calculatedly than expected, like a left-handed baseball batter at his core.

Like lightning, like unnatural lightning conjured from some sort of sorcerer, the old man ducked without moving any direction, the swing connecting with nothing but air. He rose just as quickly, as the swinging steel ended its foreswing, a blur of earthen green accented by swirling purple. Gracefully, he hopped with one foot up the boulder in between them on which he had been relaxing, and swung backhandedly at his attacker’s face, connecting and causing even more imbalance than the failed sword swing. He hopped back down and creepingly semi-circled, leaving the boulder out of the way.

“To see, one must realize,” Yiero whispered again, “The rock to you, known, yet unconsidered.”

What the hell just happened? He darted forth and thrust to be sidestepped deftly. He slashes the forward force to the left, parried by the rocken sheath. Another swing, another step to the side, just inches from the blade. Another and another graceful parry. Like dancing, he thought bitterly. His frustration was brewing. A swing and a dodge, and a dodge so gallantly. He’d spin, twirl, and then when least expected painfully strike with an elbow or, more recently, a palm to the chest, sending the bounty hunter backward and leaving him breathless.

“Air courses through us as sustenance, a part of us.”

Gathering himself, he flings forward again. Two handed slash, one handed parry, and and underhanded, two fingered, sharp poke to the kidney. He’s not even looking at me. And he wasn’t. He cares more about where I’m not than where I am, he keeps his target in his peripherals. Trying to account for this, a pitiful, intended surprise punch to the ribs while his blow was parried was met with Yiero letting go of the sheathed weapon blocking steel and somehow propelling himself in a backward dash and kicking straight forward the incoming fist, the sheathe dropping to the ground straight upward and falling toward Yiero’s direction in time for him to retract his right legged, knuckle shattering kick and flick upward the falling sheathe with this left foot back into his right hand.

“But as it is a part of us, we are a part of it.”

What... am I feeling? The misguided profiteer had never felt such a mixture of revelation and fiery pain both in his throbbing kidney and now assuredly, at least partially, shattered left fist. He understood the pain, crouching there, catching his breath. But... why do I feel... reminded? His face raised to look forward in perfect timing with the first fully offensive blow from Yiero; he looked up and was met with an upward knee from underneath his jaw. How did he... He seemed to glide forward after flicking back up his sheathe and then launch with seemingly impossible velocity upward, his angled knee dislocating with ease the younger’s jaw, landing and then casually walking backward a short distance.

“Direct your thoughts toward and toward thy thoughts be directed. Take this with you.”

For some reason, he could not think of why, the younger rose back to his feet. And looked toward Yiero, his eyes still unmeeting. He lashed forward, through crippling pain and swung as if he had been doing it his entire existence, keenly. But in just one blurred motion, planted firmly in place, Yiero’s sword came unsheathed, so quickly there was no telling how.

All in one motion. From sheathed to unsheathed to piercing the epicenter so precisely, interrupting the final slash from the young man in blue leather. In his last moments of life, the words of Yiero rang through his head and he felt, as he was dying, paradoxically blessed. For the sword that was now in his abdomen, exiting him from this realm, was so beautiful. The second to last thing he saw: shining, clean, green agate gems, purple amethysts aligning the hilt, silver seeming to line the blade. Yiero’s words ringing yet as he directed his vision toward the last he’ll ever see, here in this life - Yiero’s eyes. Looking back into his as if he was affirming an order. He saw trust in those vibrant green eyes, his words echoing as all faded into nothingness.

stars ~ disassociatedly distant
that you notice for a minute
puffing at your cig to the sounds of the whistling highway

attention lotto scratch off may reveal your pondering of them
one night alone with a joint in a relative's backyard
cherishing the weaning edge of your continentals

stars flickering

a poignant partisan of poetics or prose
perhaps wondering in time
what more can be said of stars?

so I say of a pebble rolled in soft sand
how the tiniest unraveling of earth
shows its path,
when I'm asked about... stars...

because,

infinitely convoluted by the continual need for continual definition by terms made of itself

stacking magnifying glass on top of magnifying glass on top of magnifying glass

hoping to find some sort of rip in the universe that'll allow us to have our minds blown

when the material for detonation is self-contained and how we envision is key to ignition

and like
some people will just never understand any of this

so girl outside of bar musing out a response from me to your attention lotto scratch off showing three stars
as I puff my cig, having reverently marveled the foundation of marvel itself, the sky, back in the way when
am going to tell you about a pebble

rolled over soft sand

and shed the tiniest feather of hope
while mentioning Jack and the Beanstalk
or nuclear powered power plants
that one day you'll finally move off of Free Parking

at which time I become victor of a Tic-Tac-Toe

and I guess that same thing holds true for trees
wave-harassed vessels on reckless oceans

anything to do with walls and the bouncing that happens when you fling a twenty-five-cent gumball machine rubber mold of satisfaction turned abrupt sense of loss and chaos in between two walls

anything to do with throwing knives and how to throw knives so you can be throwing knives

so yeah

ask me about the stars, intoxicated female

and prepare to think

that I am a moron

and then one day

a rat ate a hole in your brand new red dress and all of a sudden nothing in the world makes sense anymore

dope deliverance

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Hi-Tek

Wither

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Short Story

so much better than stars

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

another one of those things with words

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