Hold on

The heart is most sodden in the fathomless night

When distractions by day fade to a distant echo

and are swallowed up by the closeness of the dark.

From the folded corners of memory old pains return

and cast off silver cobwebs like dust in the moonlight.

It is then, in pale robes, she drifts through my window

and lies down so softly the sheets seldom stir.

Her hair with white aura and mind of its own

reminds of years past and her presence returns.

My heart is most sodden when I turn on my side

to look upon her as she looks to the sky

and she speaks in a voice melodious and pure

of nothing important but I cherish the time–

since It’s been a long while since I’ve smiled this way

and she doesn’t come much anymore.

Though I try to resist the drawing glow of her form

my hand reaches out through the shadow dividing

and tingling with hope goes to brush through her hair

but the space is left empty and my fist closes cold.

My heart is most sodden when I lay in the night

soaked in silk sheets I’d pushed out of mind,

and wishing her here but knowing she’s there,

and at his sweet caress, she won’t disappear.

Nocturnal Scintillans

The goatman’s van wears tender smiles

Around him all the children play

With time in days, the day of times,

Fades tenderness and youth decays.

Clipclop on the path he stutters the rhyme 

A hole nice and tight, a home in the night 

Where the pond’s fetid bank softens the ground, 

The goatman is braying and dancing around.

A bloody sunrise ends the lust of today,

but newfallen autumn at rest still remains. 

Play-toh

It came in a plastic yellow container the size of a roll of toilet paper. The four men sit around it curiously.

– What is it? says John.

– Well its presentation seems to identify it as “Play-toh” says George.

– Obviously, but what is Play-toh? says Jeff.

The fourth man, James, wears a tweed jacket and contemplatively twists his mustache. Well It could be anything, he says. We can not know its form until we open the container, and even then we will not realize its true beauty, just a poor imitation of it.

The others look at him warily. After a short pause, George leans forward to reach for the mysterious tub.

– Wait! shouts John. George stops abruptly, his red tie swinging sharply from his neck. If you open it they might make us pay for it, I’ve seen this kind of backhanded ploy before. None of you ordered this “Play-toh” did you? The rest shake their heads.

– Well, says George, I’m all about action and I’d like to know what’s inside this container. So if someone else doesn’t open it, I’m gonna go on ahead and do it. He reaches for the container again, but this time, Jeff’s hand stops him.

– I’d better do it, says Jeff. It could be a toxic substance – ricin, anthrax or something like it, they’re coming up with new chemicals all the time. If you get a trace of it in your respiratory system, you’ll melt into a bloody puddle from the inside out – and of course none of us would want that. I’m better trained to take the risk.

George is visibly shaken. Looking around for a bottle of water and finding none, he wets his lips with his tongue and clasps his hands together. Well you’re a good man Jeff, he says. I always knew you were, and a brave man for standin’ up to despicable acts of terror.

Jeff produces a pair of sterile latex gloves from his inner pocket and snaps them on, snick snick. John and James watch the process intently, George leans his fading grin further and further from the table.

– They could be trying to create false revenue to make their goals, says John. It is the end of the quarter, some companies have been caught shipping boxes full of bricks to their other warehouses so they can write off the cost of goods sold. You know, add to the accounts receivable, cook the books a bit.

– Sshhhh, says George, Let the man do his work.

With utmost care and precision Jeff lifts the flimsy container by its base and pinches its cover with fingers cold and thin as tweezers. The lid cracks open easily and he peels it back to inspect what rests within.

Inside is a mass of cushiony pink substance that is nearly indistinguishable from a human brain. Its layers of spongy matter worm around each other in tangled layers that seem to pulsate gently under the unsteady glow of the kitchen light. The four men are awestruck by the lifelike accuracy of the brain, and they are confused and taken aback by the vague scent of crayons that rises from it and fills the room.

George muffles an involuntary yelp, clears his throat and says, Dear God, what poor man’s brain is that? And what is that smell, is it anthrack?

– Hardly, says Jeff, but I’m not really sure what it is. He puts his glasses on and looks at it more closely. Regardless, I don’t believe it’s dangerous.

– Is it anatomically correct? says John, because if so this could be a cash cow.

James lifts his eyes from deep thought and strokes his beard. I think the question that must first be asked, before asking the prior question of whether or not this representation of a human brain is anatomically “correct”, is whether or not said anatomical correctness is feasible; if it is an ideal that we, as mere humans in this imperfect world, are capable of achieving. Some would say that if this structure is present in the physical world and manifests itself in nature, that a perfect reproduction is potentially possible, but we simply do not have the ability to recreate it at the moment. The rationalists would explain this with a celestial leap between mortals and the figures of divine creation, the skeptics solely with the consistent failures of humanity. I, personally, do not –

– What are you?! –

– Excuse me while I conclude my point! As I was saying, I, personally, do not believe there is such a thing as “anatomical correctness” as we perceive it. The variation of forms solely in human cerebral structure exemplifies our lack of congruity, our lack of understanding of the true form in all its beauty as it is in its ideal dimensions. This is why we can never know truth or beauty unless a great figure, a member of the intellectual elite, who has the ability to make an objective connection with the absolute truth as it is, can present said truth in words understandable to the laymen and correct our conceptual falsehoods; thereby bringing us all closer to truth, and giving us a more accurate grasp of what it means to be anatomically correct.

The others stare at him wearily. James sits back in his chair and intertwines his fingers across his stomach.

– I completely disagree with you, says Jeff. The variations of anatomy are representative of nature; although nature does contain structure and form of its own – each individual being, each individual characteristic is unique from the next, which is the wonder and beauty of nature itself.

– Beauty can not be found in variation, beauty is inconceivable on this earth, as is absolute truth. We will never know it, which is why we think second rate representations, poor copies as are present in nature, are truly beautiful.

– You know nothing about nature! You live with your head in the clouds!

– You know nothing of truth, which makes your words the words of a fool!

While Jeff and James continued bashing their heads together, George leans in to whisper in John’s ear. Nodding and smiling for a few moments, John moves forward to speak.

– Guys, guys, let’s calm down. I think we’re missing the point here, there’s a tremendous business opportunity in this “Play-toh” that we’re looking at, it’s unmarked, no logo, no copyright. So instead of discussing whatever it is you seem to be upset about, let’s talk business. George needs funding for his next campaign, and we could use your support.

George bobs his head and flashes a well rehearsed poster smile – Be an actor not a talker, vote for George Walker!

– You morons, Jeff snorts indignantly. I’ll make sure this fantastic sculpture of the human mind remains untainted by shallow corporatism. And with that he snatches the Play-toh from the table and snaps the lid shut.

James is flung back into reality upon the click of the plastic resealing itself. Ah! he says, but there is the metaphysical, we can step further outside ourselves! Not only is this a poor representation of the human mind, it’s a poor representation of a representation of the ideal form of the human mind! He gasps and runs his hand through his hair, momentarily immobilized by sheer awe.

– Shut up already about forms and representational bullshit! I’m trying to make some money! John lunges for the Play-toh and knocks it out of Jeff’s hand. The four men watch it clatter beneath the table. There is a mad rush and screech of the table as each one dives for the sacred brain, elbowing and slapping each other in a vicious free for all. A voice roars down from the stairs and silences the commotion –

WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN HERE? A slender woman with bloodshot, filmy eyes and disheveled hair claws the wooden handrail and slowly limps down the stairs. The four combatants stand up sheepishly, the Play-toh sits unharmed beside the table. She continues down the stairs, running her other hand through her hair and holding her head tenderly.

– I would appreciate if you could keep from fighting each other at 9 in the morning, I’m trying to sleep off a nasty hangover. What is this about?

– Well, uh, John starts to speak and glances down at the container on the ground. She follows his gaze to the yellow encasement, and her face lifts momentarily, then returns to sour judgement.

– It’s a pun, she says. And it’s mine. Next time mind yourselves and don’t go parading around in other people’s business.

Tetra Terra

The cellar hall is cast in a musty brown light produced by gas lamps hanging low from the ceiling. They flicker and throw dancing shadows across the stone walls. The width of the hallway is no more than two or three paces and it extends some fifty meters long. On both sides are thick steel doors covered in chipped citrine paint and spaced apart at intervals of three meters. Each door has a caged alarm directly above and a small barred window at eye level. All of the doors are closed. I can see to the far end of the hall from my vantage point and there seems to be nothing there but a wall. I turn to inspect the space behind me and find another dead end, the same dusty stone as the rest of the cellar. It seems apparent that I am in a prison, and I am born into this world with the knowledge that this particular prison is deep underground. I need to find a way out.

I take my first steps toward the opposite end of the hall, scanning the walls floor and ceiling for any openings through which I can make my escape. As I pass each barred door a cold chill runs through my bones – the bodily manifestation of fear of the unknown. Anything could be pacing behind the unyielding steel: massochists and cannibals in their natural dungeons of pleasure, black-eyed psychotics devouring innocence with smiles, relentless undead corpses, drooling beasts driven by blind hunger, infestations of flesh-eating scarabs… I avoid touching the doors at all costs and continue walking in a feverish trance. My shoulders tensen and rise, my arms wrap tightly around my sides.

After a short time I reach the end of the hall. It is identical to the other side, there is no way out. I turn and walk back with heightened pace. I return to my starting point, there is no way out. I start running back and forth down the narrow hall, terrified that I will be trapped in this lonesome hell, tortured by my wild thoughts for eternity. Eventually I calm myself and harden my motion to a new resolution. I accept the inevitability of exploring the rooms behind the barred doors. If I can overcome the terrors behind the doors, maybe I will find my escape. I choose one door in the middle of the hall at random and lean up to it, my hands held out cautiously before me. I bring my ear gently over the crack of the hinge and hold myself still. There is a faint mumbling coming from deep within the room, barely audible from behind the cold steel. It sounds like a man, and from the roughness of his voice I conclude that he is old, but I can’t decipher the words from behind the door. I step back and push the door lightly. It swings open.

Every corner of the room steams with golden lamplight. It consists of a small walkway straight ahead and two barred cells to the left of my vision, the second of which is hidden behind a dividing wall. All else is dusty stone. The man’s voice is coming from the far cell, and although he is much clearer now I still can’t understand him. He is speaking a foreign language that I can’t identify, but it has a Germanic sound. I approach cautiously to keep from startling him.

I arrive at the far cell and an ancient man comes into view. He is standing in the center of his cell staring directly at the dividing wall. I’m shocked by his frailty; my earlier speculation on his age was a severe underestimation. Thin wisps of white hair hang from a skull of a sallow, papery complexion. His skin, where it is visible through the holes in his military uniform, is covered in deep wrinkles and riddled with age spots. His face sags thin and gaunt over his forehead and from his rigid shoulders hangs the remnants of a spectacular white and red military suit bedazzled with frills and stars on the shoulder pads. As he speaks to the wall I catch glimpses of a haphazard collection of rotting teeth, and although I do my best to make my presence known, he never acknowledges my existence.

After searching the room for an escape and finding none, I pursue the same task in the other cells. Each one contains a lone military man that stands staring at the wall and mumbling incoherent words in a foreign language. As I leave the rooms their emaciated figures leave my vision but their voices follow me, such that after going into ten cells I have a small crowd of murmuring voices in my head. Exasperated by the failure of my search and disoriented by the haunting voices I decide to go straight to the last cell, desperately hoping something different waits within. This is when I encounter the American.

His youthful figure fills a crisp green uniform. When I approach he turns on his heel to face me and with stiff firm command he says man the gun. He says man the gun. He says man the gun. Thoroughly confused by this request, I return to the hall but his voice stays with me much louder and clearer than the collection of foreign voices, MAN THE GUN. I pace the hall trying to rid myself of the voices but man the gun, man the gun and to my horror I see that I’ve left all the doors open and the soldiers are coming out of their cells and wandering the hall.

 

I awake on my stomach with my arms crossed beneath my pillow. I’m in a house like a modern cabin, its deeply colored walls are contrasted by a light hardwood floor. I get out of bed and walk into the night. It’s a Tennessean suburb in late autumn. Most of the trees have already begun hibernation, and the moonlight glows silver through their spindly branches. Feeling light and relieved of my horrid nightmare, I set off down a wide black road glistening with new rainfall. After walking past several dark houses and through the occasional yellow streetlamps I see a victorian mansion off in the distance. Its three stories of warm windows glow with inviting light. I approach the front door through its sprawling yard and without hesitation, I enter. Inside is an eclectic group of a hundred of my old friends and acquantainces having a fantastic celebration in the main room. I’m welcomed heartily and passed several drinks upon entering, and in a vibrant state I settle into the night.

Toward the end of the festivities I stagger off in search of the restroom, and taking a wrong turn at one of the many halls I stumble upon a small group of my friends deep in a secretive ritual. Four hooded figures stand in a semicircle with candles and flagellate whips around a central figure that is entirely naked and strapped to Ixion’s spinning wheel of the ancient greek dungeon, Tartarus. The four alternately drip hot wax and lash the unclothed person raw, and I, standing awestruck in the doorway, watch in horrified silence. The most terrible aspect of it all was the bloodied face of the one being tortured. Through all the debasing pain he held an utterly ecstatic expression, like he was honored to be subect to such treatment. As I stand gaping at the scene before me his face momentarily peeks above the rest when it reaches the apex of a rotation of the wheel. Upon seeing me his expression speeds to betray me, and although I try to dodge behind the wall before the others turn I am not fast enough and they discover that I was watching.

I run back to the main room, but when I enter most of my friends have already left or are leaving somberly. A few stragglers remain behind, but the atmosphere that was so bright and festive a moment ago has diminished to a weak echo. When I turn back toward the hall I see the cult members huddled together. They have changed into their normal clothes and act as if nothing has happened. After a brief moment one of them approaches me resignedly: let’s go, we need to talk. They take me to a second floor balcony where some of the remaining people are continuing the celebration; and still pretending nothing is amiss, we continue drinking and passing the time.

I notice on the far side of the balcony that one of the cult members has pulled out a knife and is playfully pretending to stab some of the others. They joke with him, throwing weak jabs and feigning attempts to disarm him. As if they noticed my wariness and discomfort, they stop their game and turn to me simultaneously. The knife-wielder approaches me in a crouched stance and starts pretending to stab me as well. I laugh nervously, parrying his blows with my forearms, but all the time with my muscles quivering tensely. Laughing, he looks at me: you know, he says from his stance, you know what has to happen. With that he makes a quick lunge, attempting to rip my guts from my belly, but I jump off the balcony just in time and land hard on the ground. When I recover my senses I see the others have leapt down after me, and each one of them brandishes a knife or sword for the pursuit. I run to the rear of the backyard and look frantically for a way past the high fence but to no avail. When I turn back several more groups have come out of the house wielding their weapons and some have started throwing them at me. I try to sprint away but find myself bounding in great orbital leaps with my pursuers rapidly advancing upon me. I manage to escape to the front yard, but not before the initiator reaches me and thrusts his knife at my belly again. I grab the blade with my hand and twist it out of his grasp without harming myself. I continue running to the street.

The knife bears a strange insignia. It’s a red swastika with sharply curved ends like that of a scimitar, and as I run with it in my hand I am reminded of the cult proceeding I witnessed earlier. I gain some separation from the violent crowd and reach the road. A truck’s headlights bob down the street and I jump in front of it, waving my arms and shouting for my rescue. As the truck gets closer I see a strange design on its hood, and when it slows to a stop I can just make out the crimson curves of the satanic crest from behind the glaring headlights. Two men start getting out of the truck, but I don’t wait to see who they are. I run. At this point I have a minor realization; why is my hand not bleeding from where I grabbed the blade of the knife? This leads to a second thought, how is everyone I see a member of this cult? And a third, why are all my friends trying to kill me? This is unbelievably strange and unpleasant, I must be dreaming.

 

I awake on my stomach with my arms crossed beneath my pillow. My bed is in a loft of a snowy room. The walls are made of clear blue ice frozen in sparkling waves around me, and drifts of snow rest in the soft corners and curves where the concrete floor below meets the ice walls. There is a ladder leaned up to my loft to allow access and a small chest sits partially hidden under a pile of snow a few paces from the foot of my bed. Otherwise the room is bare. I throw my comforter off and climb lightly down the ladder, glad that I’ve left my horrid nightmare behind. This is when I realize I’ve left my things.

I climb back up the ladder and go to the chest to retrieve my phone and wallet before leaving. Upon brushing the powdery snow off the top of the chest my hand bumps against my phone, and I put it in my pocket. I continue brushing snow away to find my wallet, but instead I feel a hard and cold object, smooth like steel. I pick it up slowly. It’s the knife, the red insignia emblazoned on its hilt. I throw it down in shock and it clatters across the concrete floor near the base of the ladder. I start flinging snow off the chest in massive sweeps, finding bits and pieces from what I was convinced was a dream but seems to have become my reality. The last token I find is a shred of fabric. It seems to have been torn from a suit of some sort, and looking more closely at the shreds of red and white, I see the stitching of the corner of a general’s star. I drop the cloth jump down the ladder and run out –

 

Into the morbid brown of the underworld prison. I return to the hall to a chaotic scene. All of the steel doors remain flung open and hordes of ghostlike veterans pace and limp and drift around the hallway before me. Instead of ignoring me as they did before, they converge upon me on my appearance. I have to dodge through the crowd of ancient corpses with vile breath of decaying flesh as they babble on louder and louder in nonsensical tongues. They want me to help, I have something they need. All I can do is run from their dead embraces and hope I can avoid sharing their tragic fate.

I see the American. He is the same man but not in the same form I saw before, he has become one of them. The youthful soldier that told me to man the gun has been ripped to shreds by some act of war, his flesh clings to shattered bones by sinews of torn muscle. He runs up to me eyes wild and pleading. Get me out, GET ME OUT. I brush by him and crunch myself as narrowly as possible to avoid the advancing mob, but he stays behind me. Get me out, but all I can do is move myself back and forth trying to stay away because I know there is no escape. When I enter the cells it seems that the dead veterans are spawning at an uncontrollable rate and tides of their limp figures flood the hall. Get me out. There is no escape. GET ME OUT.

I’m back at the end of the hall when I hear a bodiless voice boom from above the mass of decrepit wails. Come with me, it says, and a white light slides through what used to be stone.

 

My pupils contract from the blinding light and bring a glowing tile stairway into my vision. I walk up the stairs towards a figure in flowing white linens that waits at the top. He leads me into a massive office with the dimensions of a warehouse; row upon row of employees sit hard at work behind countless computer screens. The walls and ceiling are the purest white, and flourescent fixtures high on the ceiling sterilize the room. As I walk behind my rescuer on an unimaginative blue carpet with brown designs I scrutinize the endless lines of workers that extend to the furthest reach of my eyesight. Most of them are human, some are chimps or gorillas, even fewer are man-sized worms and cockroaches sitting upright in front of their monitors. The worms have thin cartoonish faces consisting of two black eyes and a small mouth, and some of them wear green hats similar to Robin Hood’s. However, they have no arms, so they seem to be sitting before their screens and reading or otherwise doing nothing. The cockroaches’ faces are much to small to be discerned, but they use their insectile forelegs relentlessly, methodically tapping away at their keyboards.

I follow my pristine savior through rows of employees feeling calm and relatively at ease in my new environment. Now that I am comfortable I begin to think of myself, and I realize that I am exceedingly hungry. As if on cue, a tin bucket appears before me. It bears a white sign that reads: Snacks, 4 euro. I look longingly at the packages of peanuts chocolate and candies, but it’s such an exorbitant price for so little and I don’t have any money. Immediately another tin pops into existence next to the snacks. This one bears a much simpler sign: Money. I look around to see if anyone is watching. The employees sit busy at their work and the man in white linens walks ahead nonchalantly. I take some money from the bucket, put it beside the snack tin, and take a package of fruit snacks. Still no one acknowledges me. I feel guilty.

I awake on my stomach with my arms crossed beneath my pillow, relieved that I’ve left my nightmare behind.

Tetra Terra (Prelude)

This is an experiment in lucid dreaming. Over years of trying to harness the wild imagination of my subconscious, I have succeeded only a few times in injecting my conscious self into the landscape of my dreams. On these few occasions that my ego and subconscious have merged, I experienced a boundless life in which I have flown, breathed underwater, and transformed into a cheetah (among other things) in any place of my choosing. These lucid dreams are never planned – rather, I stumble upon them while in a dream that is close to reality and realize that something is amiss: the houses in my neighborhood are oddly shaped, I’m in a foreign land the likes of which does not exist in my understanding of reality, the people around me are acting exceedingly irrationally. There are a few tactics to distinguish the dream world from the real one. Waking Life claims that light switches don’t work in dreams, and I’ve also been told that your hands look different than they do in reality. The difficulty with these tactics is remembering to use them while you’re dreaming.

Oftentimes nightmares can shock the body into waking, or the dreamer can attempt to pull out of the dream by convincing himself that it is not reality, and therefore find relief from the horrific stress. For the past week or so I have had several eerie dreams akin to nightmares. I am not sure of their cause, but my being in a foreign country, the hectic schedule I am pursuing, the literature I am reading, or the cold I have developed could any and all be contributors to my night terrors.

In one such dream, I was in the corner of a dimly lit room with decaying wood floors. There was a man sitting at a table under a bare yellow lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and a heavyset middle-aged woman was walking slowly out of the darkness from the left of my vision toward him. From his chair the man said, “Stop, don’t come over here.” The woman continued with the same steady pace. He repeated, “Stop now, don’t walk here.” She kept walking. When he was about to warn her for a third time, she stepped on a plank of rotten wood and the floor caved in around her, exposing a pit some 10 meters deep below the floor. At this point I walked, or floated, or was transported in some way (as people in dreams sometimes are) to the opening of the mouth of the pit to help her. When I looked inside I saw a horrific scene – twenty or so massive centipedes and countless smaller centipedes and millipedes were scampering over her figure and about the hole, clicking and slapping their many legs across the entrapment of wood and stone. She was desperately trying to claw out, her eyes stretched open to a snapping point and her lips pressed so tightly together that they were drained of all blood. She would have screamed if not for fear of the things crawling into her mouth and down her throat. The largest of the centipedes, a disgusting creature around four feet long and covered in a gleaming dark brown shell with spots of a golden hue, had attached itself mercilessly to the back of the poor woman’s neck just below her brain stem, and it violently sucked away her life as she struggled to escape its hold.

At this point I awoke in my bed. Fully shocked by the images brought forth by my mind, I came to consciousness in a cold sweat with my sheets and comforter wrapped tightly around my face. I can find no ulterior meaning in the short episode other than to instill pure terror. Maybe because of its brevity and the fact that it happened to some woman, a stranger of no consequence, it seems to hold no significance for me. What is important about the dream I just recounted is that I forced myself into waking; upon seeing such a grotesque event, I decided I did not want to be dreaming anymore and subsequently awoke.

The next dream I am going to recount has caused several hours of deep contemplation on many things: the hopeless violence of human nature, the exponential effect of cult-like followings, the loneliness of contemplation itself, and the comfort of the life I now lead. Although the sequence of events is by no means the most horrific I have experienced in a dream, the nature of the episode has burned it into my memory. It is a tale of four worlds, each of which I thought to have woken from and left behind for reality, only to find that I had entered yet another dreamscape instead.

My memory of this dream begins like most others in that there is no definitive inception to the episode. I fade into existence – no doubt transported by my subconscious from some other wild, nonsensical adventure.

The Cliff

Yesterday I went to the Cliffs of Moher. After a lengthy bus tour in which we stopped at six or seven other touristy sights along the way (four too many in my opinion), left a Chinese man behind and lost over half an hour retrieving him, and generally spent most of our time viewing the rolling green countryside through the steamy windows of our overcrowded bus, we finally arrived. I will say the tour guide was wonderful. He was an ancient Irish man full of playful jokes and invaluable knowledge of Irish history, and I emerged with a more enlightened view of the struggles and folklore of the land.

It was a gorgeous day. There were a few clouds in the sky, but they did nothing more than occasionally shade our eyes from the blinding sun reflecting off the great Atlantic. The breeze ruffled our coats without cutting through them, and the air was free and clear, giving the crowd of visitors a spectacular view of the ragged cliffs hanging over the ocean and the hidden coves far below. There was nothing more exhilirating than wandering along the edge on the dirt path walked by so many before me. Occasionally the cliffside cut in a few feet and there would be a glimpse of majesty, an emptiness in vision that fell thousands of feet to the jagged rock formations covered in white foam. When I stopped and walked within a few feet of the edge there was an inevitable tightening of muscles and shortness of breath, my friend Kyle put it perfectly when he said “it’s hard to trust the ground.”

At one point I thought I saw the window, the elusive vision of sublimity that only appears in places of stirring beauty like this one. It is the same vision that inspired poems like Shelley’s Mont Blanc upon that snowy monolith. But my contemplation was interrupted by a piercing chatter behind me, a despicable shrieking, the most disgusting, defiling noises I could possibly hear in such a moment. It was a group of Americans standing not too far away, making a collection of ridiculous poses: like dinosaurs with their hands in fake claws, attempting to capture a midair jump by the cliff, turning their backs to the camera and acting serious. It was almost as if they had seen my admiration and instantaneously said, “Oh my God, it’s a window! Let’s take a picture in front of it! Tongues out everyone, mmmnnnnnn!” I wanted to scream at them to once, just once, appreciate beauty for what it is. Take a picture of the expanse of nature laid out before us. Just once, turn the camera away from yourself. But of course, yelling would have only added to the discord and continued the ruination of the moment for others. I had to walk away.

I went to the far end of the cliff, over the highest point and back down around a couple more turns. I found an isolated grassy place on the front curve of the last cove with the final statue of rock positioned directly in front of me. I sat and tried to recapture the moment that was so rudely shattered before, but the memory was still fresh on my mind. I took out my notebook and wrote this poem.

 

The Cliff

I can see how we thought the earth was flat and the ocean tipped

its water over a sharp edge into nothingness.

The question is where would it go?

Into some hidden boiler, a subterranean hellfire that transformed it to clouds?

Surely not, but life’s circle is still such a mystery.

Swelling waves rolled by the wind envelop the coast’s rocks in foam.

They beat away at the seaboard to form craggy spines,

inverted triangles that are remnants of the ice age.

They hang in balance til they fall and break into stones,

then crumble to pebbles, are crushed into sand,

and are pulled under by dark waves of insatiable hunger.

I watch and think if this keeps up, surely it will all be consumed and become nothing.

 

But the world has a strange way of replacing itself,

and somewhere, not here, it’s slowly rising up in massive folds,

or hardening spews of molten lava

to make up for its own destruction.

We are the few that don’t return what we’ve taken.

Maybe that’s why we’re eternally cursed by temptation,

teased by dangling aspiration and unfulfilled possibilities.

I can sit on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher and

hang my legs off the end of the world at bird’s height.

I can watch them flying in rapture, in amazement and wonder,

but never harmony.

 

17 people die here each year.

Most are bumped, or slip, lose their grip on the hair of the mighty cliff

and disappear. Lives lost by human folly.

But some, coming far from a cubicle in a poor imitation of majesty,

a horrid structure reflecting our shallow concept of touching the sky,

and upon seeing truth again for the first time since childhood, they leap to the air –

even knowing they’re destined to fall.

Sole Darkness

One truly great man will conquer the four.

In a group one man leads, others follow.

And the head, thinking that by numbers he’s won,

will fight less intensely and falter.

I’m destined to stay a wandering soul,

and leave all my love unrequited.

Since that which I love I never can have,

And it brings too much pain to fight it.

Like the river at dusk I fade into a mist,

embracing the wonder of celestial might.

Always knowing and breathing, but thinking and hoping,

that someone, with me, shares the night.

The Irish Bull

The title of this blog is a pun on the Irish bull. I was originally going to spend some hours writing an inspirational first post full of clichés about my taming of this Irish bull during my time abroad, but many other things have gotten in the way so it’s much shorter than I would like. Regardless, what I have written already is of the same sentiment –

The Irish bull, a phrase that captures Ireland’s playful (and sometimes scathing) banter, is the subject of many great short stories and works of literature. I hold a special place in my writing for satire and puns, so the Irish bull fits in nicely. They are caricatures that are exceedingly humorous and clever – they box the intricacies of life into playful quips and turns of phrase. But at this early point in my writing endeavors I have yet to extend my style beyond parodies and satire for fear of being criticized for poorly expressing true thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the bull, but if I use it alone to lead myself, I will be restricted to the cream off the surface. The cream is sweet but the milk is nourishing, and I need the sustenance.

So I’ve decided to tackle writing in a more serious manner. Of course, humor and puns will still be scattered throughout my writing; I need it to lighten the day, to poke fun at our perpetual seriousness – but I will do my best to limit myself for fear of being lost in satire. I must appreciate its place or forfeit lightheartedness; I must cherish it but use it sparingly. And In order to tame the bull, first I have to break it.

This is my first post, and that is my new determination. To any and all of my readers I raise my pint. Cheers!