Scrawl

Ummm...I want to thank Night Star for asking if I wrote any stories...not...in poem form...So...here's to you Night Star...

DISCLAIMER: This is not for the faint of heart...it is in fact a foray into graphic realism...

Scrawl

The building stood proud in it’s emptiness. Inhabited by dust and the webbing of spiders. Time held this house, careless in it’s caressing. Neglect scrawled playful, etching here, stirring there, leaving his spore to root on every surface. Long ago perhaps, these walls had felt a loving, cleansing, touch, absorbing hints of scenes that once had been, so long ago.

The bones of furniture sprawled in their attitudes of disrepair. Fossil relics, longing for an age they’d left behind. Each room held it’s antiquated pieces respectful in their shabby state, unmindful of the dirt precursors that had settled like a grey blanket, cloaking impression and wear alike.

Behold the fitful scurry of time, the great consistency whose grope reaches into every niche. Who wears all things covetous, so mindful of part and performance. No accolades for you, no applause for this grandiose, curtain-less show.
Over the hills and across the fields limped weary, disheveled, a man. Long hair white and blowing, battered as the lands through which he passed. Yes, age was now a part of him, a shadow moving through his years. His telltale face stamped in wisdom, his eyes shading a persistent sorrow. Such a strange combination, befitting and odd. In spite of his obvious pain, the questing dark of his gaze bore the barest hint of a smile.
There at last as if in challenge to things eternal, waited the house.
He wandered tired through it’s dusty halls, tears forming in his eyes, leaving tracks in the road-stain of his face. The family room beckoned to him and he set-

a reply to: YouSir


tled his bones into an old unbroken easy chair. How strange his very presence here, now, peculiar, as if somehow this place were a journeys end.
Exhaustion cradled him, rocked him. The scene before him shifted, flowed. Almost he could hear the sound of laughter, smell the scent of familiarity and taste life’s relinquished flavor. Identities flew swift before his minds eye. Names came unbidden to his lips and fell again into obscurity. A childlike face swam into his vision, a small and perfect hand reached out. He could feel the soft caress, the curious innocence.Tears flowed fresh, he scrubbed at his eyes, trying to consign the ghosts of his past again to memory.

House felt the meager weight of the old mans bones, breathed the scent of unbathed flesh...and awakened.
Jedidiah slowly fell into sleeps sure clasp.
The road that had led him here, a calendar, a capitalized tally of his years. So tired, so heavy with life’s vast measure. Sleep Jedidiah, give up the burden of journey, rest now and let the hours slip away.

The dream took him, a frenzied ride on virtigo’s carousel. A disjointed, whirlwind tour through confusions state, peopled with nameless faces mouthing litanies, fingers pointing. He became in tune with and focused on a solidness beneath him. Awareness backhanded his senses in full realistic measure.

Flash.
He stood alone on a rise overlooking a vast and broken city.

Burn.
The stench of decay hung weighty in the air, corruption and the burning.

The wind.
A palsied grave borne sigh snatched his moan away and brought in exchange a discord of torture, a harmonized chorus of dying.
This city, the Pyre.

a reply to: YouSir


This city, caressed so lovingly by the hand of the reaper. Flee strength like a watery stool as he dropped in shock to his knees, shards biting at his flesh. Despair, in the smirking mouth of a human skull, suckling at his flesh. He looked more closely at the ground beneath him. No ground, not ground but bodies. Bodies protruding at odd angles like human jackstraws heaped there uncaring, by some crooked childish hand.

Death uncounted, mimicking the shape, miming the depraved sprawl of perversity. Faces thrust forward as if in final verbal appeal. Arms, fleshed and without, bare and warding like misshapen, leafless trees. He stood upon a mound of the dead, a monument to death, forgotten. Dementia, in the mewling cries of the damned burst fresh upon his mind. He raised his fists to press against his ears, trying in desperation to block them out.

“Their torment, oh misery please, I can’t contain this agony”, he wailed, and wailed on. The anguish smashed his feeble barriers and twisted, a glaring, thrashing hook, deep into the essence of his self. There it took on a queasy form and voice all it’s own. A wheezing breathy lisp of drawing, an echoing summons.

“Come, Jedidiah,...you musst go,...musst, musst go, go, go,...you mussst go!”
“Come back to usss, come home Jedidiah, you musst go!”
“Who are you, are you, are you...why can’t I see, see, what do you mean, mean, mean?”
“You mussst go!”
“Where am I, am I. why can’t I see you, see you, what do you mean, mean...what do you mean I must go, go. Go where?”
“You musst come home to usss, you musst go!”
He threw back his head and gave vent to insanities direst peal.



Now that wasn't so bad...................right...?
chapter one and done...




YouSir

Wow! Are you a published author and just not telling us???? You must, must, must publish your works and share with the world the poetic flow of words and emotion that come forth! You are amazing!!!!!!

___Signed, your number one fan, Night Star

a reply to: Night Star


Ummm...thank you so much Night Star I'm not a published author...well...with the exception of one poem in one of those pay to play books and some other poems that an old girlfriend used to place in a local paper once a week for a month or two...(until we broke up that is)...that was in the eighties...

None of the work that I have posted on ATS has ever been published...although I retain all rights to my work...I did use a couple of them in an online digital design course I was taking...

Maybe I have unresolved fears of rejection...so have forgone the traditional route...although to be honest one of the reasons I placed them here was to gauge reaction...so far it has been a pleasant little journey...

I'm sipping my one cup of morning coffee...watching the clock...gotta go do the work thing...

I wish you well Night Star...believe in yourself...never apply negative modifiers or ascribe non positivity to who you are...
Breathe in awe...exhale only a love for all things miraculous...never let hatred be a part of you...

These are the things that grow your soul...




YouSir