Cracked white rapping
A brief shimmer of glissando on the black metal
Shining steel pressing until
Just before it burns
And what might have been a life
Made for a death and plucking away
Is brought into another life
Between how the children of grass’s descent
Were crushed to dust
Their bodies mixed together
And cut apart again
I’m happy to write for you on a variety of topics; fill out the form below to get your piece started!
The blind old uncle, singing smoky,
Lauds the sweet clarity of pine-filtered moonlight,
But seeing Selene’s castings dappled by gnarled oaks,
I think I have had the better view.
I am happy to write to order for you; get yours going today!
The clock read 3:27,
And since I use the 24-hour kind of time
I knew it was the morning,
Earlier even than I usually make me wake up,
So I tried to go back to sleep,
But I remembered the dream
As I rarely,
Rarely,
Do–
So much so that I have thought
I have lost the ability to dream–
So I tried to write it down,
Myself as a landlord,
Living in the building whose pieces I rent,
Trying to keep everything together and moving,
Not entirely succeeding
Even though the residents seemed to appreciate
The work I did to keep them happy
It seemed
It would be a good thing to write,
A source for several stories in diverse styles,
Something of an anthology although following one line,
But it vanishes even as I put pixel to page,
And only these lines remain of it.
That there is
Some suitcase overstuffed or steamer trunk whose hinges and latches strain
I’m sure
But an armoire into which to unpack is less certain.
Do you know anyone who makes furniture?
If you’d like, I can write for you! Fill out the form below to begin!
I squeeze the bottle again and again
The honey burbling as another drop struggles to fall
And I have to wonder once more if
It is worth it to struggle so for
Just one more small taste of sweetness
Get yourself a little something–or maybe get something for your sweetie!
The day, at last, has come that I have sought;
The joy its coming brings, I’d near forgot
As I by reams of paper have been caught.
But soon, I shall have leave to go and play
At being young again while the bright day
Shines out across the hills. I seldom say
Such things, of course, since I my work must do,
But seldom saying does not make untrue
What is thus said, and joy does now me woo.
It beckons from outside the window’s pane,
Makes its intentions for me clear and plain,
Suggests that soon I’ll find some ease for pain
I took these several months to figures run–
Perhaps this time I may well have some fun!
If it’s not too taxing, maybe hire me to write for you?
The string has to be taut for the bow to pull sweet sounds from it,
And a sure hand has to be had for so much to be true,
But it is all too easy, when trying to tune,
To make something snap, and there is no fixing it after
Want one of these for your own? Fill out the form below to get yours started!
Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.
An extended commentary on a fragmentary Skill-scroll precedes “Bonds and Ties,” which opens with Fitz enjoying riding a new horse and not enjoying the attempt by the same–Fleeter–to Wit-bond with him. Fitz assesses his combat capabilities as Fleeter presses upon him, and Fitz’s name in the Wit, Changer, comes to attention again as Lant and Perseverance join them. Fitz also does not enjoy the added company and attempts to get the others to leave, but they refuse and determine to accompany him despite his urgency. Nor yet is he thrilled that Motley joins and decides to like Perseverance, nor yet when Riddle later joins the growing throng–although Riddle, at least, seems aware of the complications the expanding group presents.
With warning that they will not wait for the others, Fitz and Riddle press ahead, Fitz settling into the saddle atop Fleeter and acknowledging her quality as a mount; Perseverance does a decent job of keeping up, and Lant lags behind. At the end of the day, the group chance upon a barn and make use of it, conferring as they tend to themselves and their animals. Fitz surreptitiously doses the group’s tea with a soporific, apologizing for doing so as they fall asleep, and after a brief rest of his own, he doses himself and Fleeter with carris seed, musing on what he has seen of its perils. After ensuring that his erstwhile companions will be well, Fitz also doses himself with delvenbark, and he and Fleeter proceed into the dark.
The prefatory materials once again catch my interest. Describing a damaged manuscript and the circumstances of its damage, the prefatory materials bring to my medievalist-trained mind the various manuscripts of the Cotton Library, damaged by flame and thrown out into the snow–those that were not lost, entirely. Even now, some of those manuscripts continue to degrade from the effects of the flames, chemical changes to their materials put into motion and ongoing, unstoppable, ultimately irredeemable. Knowing as I do about some of what survived, I have to wonder what was lost and will now never be found again, and a great sorrow wells up within me at the works of scribal hands and cunning minds lost to chance and misfortune. How much worse must it be to contemplate deliberate destruction!
But it’s not like that kind of thing happens anymore, right?
In the chapter, itself, I note with some appreciation the juxtaposition of Fitz’s recognition of his (physical) deconditioning and his seemingly easy resumption of his assassin’s tricks; he notes the fatigue he feels after a single day of hard riding, when he had before gone days or weeks in the wild with relative ease, and he has little hesitation about drugging his comrades–and does so without being noticed by someone also trained to stealth and skullduggery (Riddle being long implied to have some such schooling). Something about old age and treachery comes to mind, and, as I feel my (fewer than Fitz’s) years while I’m writing this, there is some comfort in it for me.
It’s not just poetry I’m happy to write to order for you, after all! Fill out the form below to get your piece–verse or prose–started today!
The last few dozen yards beckon,
And though my legs are grown heavy
And my breath is raggedly in and out,
Still, I swallow and start to sprint,
Knowing that once I break the tape,
I can rest a while before the next event
The days and months pass, but poetry endures; commission your work today!
Reading for the work I do,
And there is still a lot of it I do
Even now in these later days,
I remember when I read for the joy of it,
Something I seem not to do anymore,
And I wonder where the years have gone,
Even as I have to get back to
Poring over the pages
Like what you see?
Then hire me,
And go forth with glee
At the writing you get!
There is so much more to do
And I fear I can’t carry through
All my tasks–but it is true
That I am working on them.
I lift my pen; I wield no sword.
I rise from bed and go to board
And thence to add more to my hoard–
My tasks, I’m working on them.
Whether a couple short stanzas or hundreds of lines of narrative verse, I can write poetry to order!
Elliott RWI 