Albuquerque

I always thought 'Albuquerque' would be a good name for a horse that one would take on an arctic voyage and had to end up killing to stay warm, and for food after the iron rations ran out, before being rescued by a monk that lived in a cave near the north pole.

The Elements of the Howling

It's nights like this,
That the winds howl.
My windows are sealed,
My door, locked.
The bedclothes wrap fever tight.
The darkness, still, like a blanket of silence.

But the winds howl through me.
Like a paper bird caught in the tempest.
I can feel them, blinding, shouting,
Begging.

They clutch at me like starving children.
They beat me and mug me, in the alleys off the streets of my own thought.
They claim to love me,
They rape me,
The ask for forgiveness,
As they mercilessly torture me.

They blow through me,
The winds howl like wolves gone rabid.
The winds none but I could hear.
I am their father,
Their brother,
Their lover,
Their son,

But never would I call them friend,
The winds that howl,
That chill my chest.
My lungs.
My throat.
Chilled to ice,
So that breath comes in ragged gasps.

Eyes are heavy.
But the winds blow on and on.
Rattling my bones.
Shaking my heart.
I beg them to let me sleep.

But to the hand of what man are the elements of this earth heedful?
So too the elements of madness.

Believing is Hard.

Every long day of our cruel, bitter and unlovely lives,
The bastard, the bitch, and the sinner survives.
He could be that random bloke with a gun,
Who shot up some local kids, just for fun,

Or it might be the girl who gives a self-sure sermon,
Before she goes out to give herpes to an unknowing virgin,
Or it could be that man who drinks instead of loves,
And ignores his wife and all the serving she does,

Maybe it's the kid who egged your car,
Or the boss whose shouting went too far,
Maybe it's your neighbor who lets her dog shit on your lawn,
Or that guy who you took home who left before dawn.

Those bastards, those bitches, those sinners survive.
And as much as the faith you had, you try to revive,
It gets harder each day to believe in the great, the good,
The hard working, honest folk, as you know that you should.

The bitter sad anger of humanity is surely clear,
We should go out each day, well dressed in our fear,
That some awful person will stab our backs,
And then walk away whistling to cover their tracks.

But then, as much as those people we might resent,
Would you or I, given the chance, do any different?

The only way to make the world sane,
Is to try, and try, and try again.
To believe in the wondrous things humans could be,
And right now, that greatness we should all try to see.

To say I'm not the best chap at the task, is fair,
But still, try seeing the good, even when it's not there.

Smoothness

The handle of my knife protrudes from beneath the pillow I rest my head upon. When an infant I had no pacifier, rather, my mother would give me some small smooth object for me to hold in my hand, to quiet me. My knife handle is hard, a dark brown wood, surrounding the cold fixed steel of the blade. A thing if beauty, as David once said, to see and to touch.

It was a birthday present from my father. I used to use it for carving, and sometimes when spear fishing to clean my catch. But I don't do those things anymore. I lost the will to carve after my rejection from the school of art, and one needs to be near water to spear.

Now its job is mainly for something comforting to grasp when the night is strange. I wouldn't use it to stab someone. It doesn't have a hilt, I'd probably just cut my fingers. It isn't really a weapon. It's a Bowie knife, clipped point. Long. More threatening certainly than my Swiss Army Knife, which I always feel would be a laughably stupid thing to use in a fight.

But I still get afraid at night, during the day too, but that isn't when I need to sleep. Just the smooth feel of it under my fingertips calms me.

I don't find it that strange that I do this. We each of us find solace in materialism, in what we can know is, "Really there". I like to feel the realness.