Melluha, the mount of spice: pepper hoard
Ships in port await the dawn to trade wares
Sailors, merchants, tourists and priests grow bored
Awaiting their turn for entry: dawn nears
Sunlight streams on shorelines, darkness’ shears
Sailors whoop as barges tow in their ships
Priests cry, “Holy Mountain”… joyful tears
Home at last! One jumps overboard, no he slips
Accidental ablution, or auspicious drips?
A/N: my first attempt at trying to write a poem with meter. It’s tougher than it looks.
A dispute that has raged for millennia
A vendetta turned into a global festival
The Mamankam festival is here
The Chaver tempers his will
Trained from birth to die in the fest
Master of sword and shield, urumi and spear
After this battle he can sleep in rest
The fifteen year old’s final hour draws near
He enters the arena with his suicide squad
Staring at his Target, the Zamorin of Calicut
There are Chinese, Arabs and even Greeks watching from the quad
The Chaver’s life purpose, the death of that nut.
His urumi kills ten with one swing
The Chaver inches towards the king
Nearly there, nearly there, his ears begin to ring
Missed! His elastic sword only shaves off the Zamorin’s hair
And so the vendetta rages on for centuries more
Turned into a festival, with lots of gore
Thousands die to satisfy the vainglory of foolish kings
Barely adult, the Chaver sings,
“For Pride, Glory and Honour”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamankam_festival
Oh Marthanda Varma, King of Travancore
Padmanabhadasa, servant of Vishnu
Oh notable man from Kerala’s lore
I greet you, your life I now view.
Descendant of the Kolathiri and the Chera
Ruler from Kanyakumari to Aluva
You dedicated your kingdom to Parabrahman
Eschewing your riches in your search for Atman
You defeated the VOC, and then recruited them
You tamed the feuding Nair, and ended their penchant for vendetta
Oh most astute judge of character, with DeLannoy at your army’s helm
You extinguished the pyre, and ushered in peace, progress, the whole enchilada
Unfortunately, your descendants couldn’t measure up to you
While Pazhasshi fought Arthur Wellesley in the North
Nearly bringing an end to the Bombay Presidency too (though only swords they held and arrows they drew)
Your children squandered their advantage in the South
And fell into Britain’s ingenious debt trap
That forever changed the world map
A/N: The later rajas of Travancore were good and decent kings, but I don’t think they measure up to Marthanda Varma.
And yes… Arthur Wellesley, of Waterloo fame.
The world weary pilgrim enters the monastery
Finding the chants of the monks sometimes dreary, sometimes cheery
He hopes to find here missing parts of his history
While outside, the flags of Constantine and the East Roman Emperors fly tall
He understands only a few words of the liturgy
Responding: Kyrie Eleison, Hallelujah, Hagios, Amen
He can sing the Trisagion, he has memorized that beautiful hymn
Inside the monastery there is wonderful energy, but no electricity
What does this all mean, he wonders
As the deacons bow in quick succession while they infuse the air with incense
What does it all mean, he wonders
Unable to comprehend, he bows and pretends
On Mount Athos, where the future is held at bay, and the past is present
Where the clock still ticks to the time of Constantinople
The pilgrim tries to sense his ancestors’ scent
Before he returns to the network global
Image: Father Joseph waving a byzantine flag in the Skete of Saint Minas… found on pinterest. I was going to put the Constantine cross, but this one looked so much nicer.
The moon dreamt…
Thomas lay on the sofa, visions of ice and death cascading before his mind’s eye, coalescing and dissociating to the tempo of his randomized playlist. Beethoven and Debussy had brought images of soft blue ice and barren landscape, Holst had ushered in rains of fire, Dvorak had seen the last remnants of humanity struggling for survival under a sunless sky, and Chopin had brought a ray of sunshine. The AVR then began blasting the guttural roars of Amon Amarth, the sound of marauding heavy metal vikings breaking Thomas out of his stupor.
It took a while for his mind to get used to the world outside the dream– to the dew coalescing on his window that blurred his view of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the soft light of dawn, to the smell of coffee that was permeating his little studio apartment, to his stomach that was growling to be fed– it took a while to fully wake up.
What was wrong with him, he wondered as he poured himself another cup of coffee and placed two slices of bread in the toaster. Why were his dreams becoming so damn weird? Were they just dreams, or was the apocalypse really coming? The humming birds, that usually came around this time of year, were missing. The sun looked bigger than it should have, and paler somehow. The clouds looked weird– like dragons flying through the sky.
There was a knock at his door, a sharp rat-a-tat-tat. He’d have known that knock anywhere.
“John,” he smiled, as he opened the door, “glad you came. I need a ride.”
“Oh, just buy a BART card already, you cheap bastard,” his brother grinned. He was dressed for a meeting, looking sharp in a suit that was creased in all the correct places. He’d even put on a lapel, which meant he was hoping to bag some baby boomer big wigs today.
“BART card? You’d stop visiting me if you thought I didn’t need a drop every now and then. Could I borrow a twenty? I’m a little short today.”
John shook his head, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be. I don’t want to dull the edge of your husbandry.”
“My husbandry?” Thomas asked, feigning shock. John’s presence always made Thomas cheer up. Maybe John would be able to help with the weird dreams, but Thomas was reticent about sharing the experience. It was scary, and made him sound like a mad man.
“What’s up, little buddy?” asked John, sensing the change in his mood.
“What if you knew that the world was going to end? That meteors were going to fall from the sky, the sky was going to be so thick with clouds that they wouldn’t let in the sunlight, and stuff like that. All our money would be pretty darn useless then, wouldn’t it? All our jobs and infrastructure wouldn’t mean a thing. Civilization would be in complete collapse. What would people like you or me do in a world like that, a financial analyst and a history major?”
“Well,” John closed his eyes in thought, wincing as Thomas chomped on his burnt toast, “we’d be dead meat if that was all we were. Humans adapt, don’t they? Tell you what, once you’re done with this semester let’s take a vacation to Canada and muck around in the wilderness and learn some survival skills. That would cheer us both up, eh?”
“Eh,” Thomas agreed.
A humming bird flew past his window.
******************
A/N: I thought I’d put this up just to give you kind ladies and gentlemen an idea of what this would look like after one round of editing. The novels I write usually go through this process around three or four times before I’m satisfied. Here’s what it looked like in the Outline I’ve been posting on this blog:
The moon god dreamt…
Thomas knew there’d be trouble as soon as he heard the medley reach its climax. It was too perfect, too smooth. Oh, what had he done? One did not fuse Beethoven, Debussy, Gustav Holst, Dvorak and Chopin into a single entity. The transition from Moonlight Sonata to Claire De Lune had been fine, but then when his playlist had started on Mars the Bringer of War, into the third movement of the New World Symphony and culminating with the Funeral March, Tom knew that it could mean only one thing… the end of the world as he knew it. Visions of the future, cold and lifeless, filled his thoughts, moonlight shining white and bright only on a few scattered corners of the world. He felt like flinging his speakers to the ground and destroying them with a baseball bat. Did he even have a baseball bat?
No, a hammer would have to do, but what was the point in even trying? The damage was already done. Wrecking his speakers wouldn’t change a damn thing. The universe had already heard the song. Instead, he put on some Amon Amarth and tried to think, his mind flying to new heights on the eddies of the guttural growls of 21st century vikings. There was comfort in this sound, melody within cacophony, method within madness, honour won and glory earned in a barbaric and murderous world, virtuoso solos within distorted power chords. This was what the Fifth Symphony sounded like in hell. Amon Amarth helped him see things with new perspective. Tom had broken the world and he had no idea how to fix it.
Perhaps it was time he took up ice fishing.
The moon dreamt of Thomas
Rain pitter-pattered on the pedestrians of the Tenderloin, the homeless taking shelter under ragged pieces of cardboard that they had scavenged from the garbage bins of San Francisco, as the sun fell below the horizon. Thomas shuddered as he heard the sounds of Bach coming from Eduardo’s little house.
“You really must get over your fear of classical music,” Eduardo chuckled as he ushered Thomas in through the door.
“I know, but…”
“But nothing,” Eduardo said, a rare seriousness rising in his tone. “You hear the moon. Your visions are pure, but your mind corrupts them. When you thought you’d destroyed the world by listening to your playlist, it was because you had subconsciously remembered the mind of the moon, and interpreted it in your own fashion,” Eduardo gestured for Thomas to sit on the carpet, while he stirred a bowl of Ayahuasca. “Misinterpreting your dreams could have serious consequences for us all.”
“I don’t think I can keep coming here like this,” Thomas told the shaman. “My attendance at uni is beginning to take a dive. I might not get a degree if…”
“Degree,” Eduardo pffed. “You say this world is coming to an end and then you talk about degrees. The matter of sorting out your visions is more important. Attend your university classes if you must, but don’t miss coming here on a full moon night.”
Thomas nodded, pinched his nose and then drank the draught handed to him. His vision flickered, each blink of his eyes infusing everything around him with more and more colour… until it all faded to moonlight.
“More words, you lazy shit,” the manuscript said to the writer.
The writer scratched his head, “But it’s flash.”
“I don’t give a damn,” the manuscript tried to spit out ink. “Where’s the soul, where’s the character development, where’s the frickin writing? Dostoevsky’s turning in his grave. You write some shit and then deliver a punch line, like that settles the whole thing. There’s no commitment from the reader, no time to ponder, to sit down and think about it by the fire. Use a roll of fricking toilet paper for this flash crap, not me.”
“It’s the latest fad,” the writer pleaded, “everyone’s writing it. Don’t you want to be read?”
“Sure, if it’s in the Quotable Quotes of Reader’s Digest,” the manuscript simmered down. “That’d be kind of nice actually.”
“Nobody reads the Reader’s Digest anymore,” the writer shrugged.
And so the Revolution of the Manuscripts began, and the written word vanished from this world.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Waaagh!
Image courtesy: https://m.imgur.com/gallery/HEyKkDJ
A/N: This is my last attempt at experimenting with Flash Fiction. It’s just not for me. I’m going to pay more attention to my serial novel from now on.
…
Oh broken guitar string,
I knew not how old and rusted you were
As I began to shred and sing
Your presence on my rosewood fretboard did reassure.
And your adherence to tuning on my Floyd Rose tremolo
Was most appreciated.
As we explored Schumann Resonances
Oh, you dear old fellow
My every emotion you reciprocated
As we played sad little dirges.
Every man, woman, and child worked hard, ignoring fatigue and sorrow in their haste to leave the sinking continent… the only home they had ever known. The spirits of nature did their best to help their human patrons, trees, lakes, mountains and nature spirits exhausting the lasts of their reserves of energy to flee the only home they had ever known. Beyond the oceans lay mystery and ice, savages babbling in unfathomable tongues, and spirits that were incomprehensible.
Agasthya had taken charge of the migration effort. “We’ll use Mari’s flying mountain to transport the most frail people and the more fragile goods. Its wings are strong,” he had told the people. “As for the rest, we’ll leash my tamed dinosaurs to the mountain, and ride them across the ocean.”
The Elders were busy creating a tree that would contain a template of all physical and spiritual living beings. The flora and fauna of the Young Continent would be born anew from the Tree of Life and find a new home once the foreign lands had been tamed.
Makk and Aystrana helped with loading the dinosaurs with cargo.
“More poppy juice,” Makk begged Aystrana as they loaded the last dinosaur. Aystrana hesitated. Makk looked at her through large beseeching eyes, “Kara’s madness is consuming me. The curse is too strong for me to handle on my own.” Aystrana gave in.
The convoy soon began its long journey, Mari’s mountain flying in the sky ahead, strong ropes pulling a train of thousands of dinosaurs behind.
“I can’t leave this land,” Makk said, as they stood on a dead mountain, watching the convoy enter the ocean. “The madness is growing stronger every day. You must kill me and leave this place.”
Aystrana shuddered as she looked at the obsidian dagger in Makk’s hand, slapping it away, “How could I do such a thing?”
“If you don’t I’ll end up becoming like Kara, and we’ll go through this whole thing again. I cannot let myself commit such atrocity.”
“The poppy juice will keep it at bay. I’ll sing to you until you forget about madness, every moment of the day if I must,” Aystrana cried. “I can’t lose you. Not now.”
“You must!” Makk said through gritted teeth. “You cannot let my corruption spread. You are the only one I can ask to do this.” Makk grabbed Aystrana’s hand and embraced her, kissing her on the lips for the first time in their lives. Blood dripped down Aystrana’s lips as they ended the kiss. The dagger had pierced Makk’s heart. On that dead mountain, under the constellation Capricorn, Makk died.
“Why did you kill him?” Trivia asked Venus. “Why did you act on his whim? The curse of Kara was neutered within his soul, And so it would have never taken its toll. Why did you believe him?”
Venus turned her head so that none could see her face, “I was a naive young fool, and my world had nearly come undone. Can you blame me? Continue his song.”
“I cannot sing this any longer, the complexities of his soul grow much louder
Cacophonous almost, But I can hear one constant refrain from him in a key much lower.”
“What is the refrain?” asked Mars.
A repetitive pattern in all his incarnations
Venus in them all, what in tarnation
She finds him, loves him and then kills him
Venus eternally cursed, love and madness in each limb
Athena, Artemis and Aphrodite, her three phases
The horror and sorrow of her tragedy amazes
Even me who has heard it all!
“Enough,” cried Venus, but Trivia ignored her.
“Amon, Osiris, Ashur, you killed,” Trivia sang.
“I never killed Osiris,” Venus’ hair blazed with fire.
“He seems to think you did.
Tammuz, Ningirsu, Mahabali
Adonis, Orpheus, Pan
Were just some of the names of this man.
Would the story had changed if you had known
What you were doing, reaping the fruit of madness and sorrow that you had sown
When you stupidly murdered Makk.”
“Enough,” shouted Venus, her entire being ablaze with deadly fire, “The elephant rider is under my protection. If anyone touches him they will answer to me.” Venus then retreated to her throne.
“She has a lot to think about today,” sighed Soma.
The Man with Seven Souls gazed at the strange beings watching him. Did they perhaps want to share in his meal? All the dragon meat was over. They should have asked him for some sooner. Something about that glowing woman seemed familiar. Where had he seen her before? The Man with Seven Souls shrugged, and continued on his hunt, his elephant trumpeting in time to his song.
THE END
© whenmarsmetsaturn.wordpress.com (2018)
A/N: 1. This is the song he was singing, performed here by the Polish folk band Ochelie Soroki
The story of the Man with Seven Souls (in his modern day incarnation) will continue in the Second Part of the Autumn Arc (coming soon).
Whispers of the Universe 