Fate

1.

So you have broken the world

now what will you do with it?

Shattered and scattered and

scarred, it spins onwards

through space.

Will the sun swallow this child?

Or will we be splattered

past the howling winds of Saturn

to the deep dark loneliness

of the outer reaches?

2.

Not glued in amber

nor frozen in ice

Not impaled on stakes

nor entangled in the web

Not caught in the trap's jaws

nor entombed in peat bog

Not lashed to the whipping post

nor yoked to a shaft

Not fixed to the anchor

nor chained to a rock

Not any of these suffice to hold me:

except the darkest wall of despair.

Cut grass

Bent over, a tiny old woman with a deeply lined face hovers on the verge of the road. A faded and thinning shawl is wrapped tightly round her shoulders. Home spun, it offers little warmth. Cold fingers clasp tightly at her middle, a tired basket wanders at her side.

She shuffles and waits, then steps forward again, all the time keeping to the uneven grass to the side of the road. A few steps further from the edge a drainage ditch is filled with high grasses and small thickets. She scans the foliage for berries. Not many remain so late and cold in the season. She continues to search; hunger does not know seasons.

She finds a few wild greens, which she lays in the basket alongside a scattering of nuts and fruits.

Just ahead stand a couple of distressed trees. She continues towards them more quickly, hoping to find a few nuts below. If there are none, at least she could lean against a trunk and rest a while.

Busying herself in the ground around the trunks, she mutters and hums. Nothing is said though a dialogue between two parties seems to emerge. One voice questions, the other placates. After a time, she sinks to the ground, shuffles so her back is against a trunk and closes her eyes. Her breathing slows and quiets.

Time slides by in the cold pale light.

She hears the sounds of a horse. Then comes the creaking of a saddle. A rider on a horse is coming down the road. She looks up. He is tall, large and dressed in a uniform, dusty and creased.

She scuttles to her feet and tries to scurry to the drainage ditch out of sight. She is too late.

The rider sees her and makes a demand. She does not understand him: he does not speak her tongue. He demands again, louder. She cowers closer to the ground, head down.

His manner becomes contemptuous. He is unused to receiving no response to his demands. With slow, carefully spoken words he insists on his demands.

Again, she does not answer but balls herself up more tightly, frozen in the grass.

Then comes a moment of stillness. The cold afternoon seems to stop and wait.

And suddenly, swiftly, he draws his sword leans over from his saddle, carves the blade through her neck.

She topples over, a small thing, into the grass.

He wipes his sword, returns it to its sheath, signals his horse to continue and rides on into the west.

Slowly, light flees the scene and only the small sounds of scurrying remain.

Machinations

1.

Swallowing the hopeless and

the helpless

When the innocent is

consumed, the machine

is transformed.

2.

The allure of death with its promise of peace.

3.

For spirit’s execution we chose the guillotine of a religiosity not realising that spirit cannot be severed, only suppressed and temporarily banished. As with the banished, outlawing spirit only sets it outside the moat yet it slides like song across the water to the lonely ears of soul.

For soul’s incarceration we chose the prison of a materiality. To contain its escape, we have harnessed it to the yokes of utopia. But like slaves made martyrs in all ages, soul hitched to myth still rings out, bells chime its presence even through tedium.

For body’s disposal, we choose to submerge it in the machine, hoping to gain power and not realising this is its negation. But life-force animates even the wreckage of machines, transforming them into food and structure for new life.

Will the next self be a weed, virulently sprouting un-planted and un-planned through the machinations?