Monstrous Love

You slammed the door on a monster man,

He was frothing at the mouth,

The whites of his eyes had consumed those clear brown irises

The gnashing of his teeth and the rage of his roar

Tore at you through the thin red bricks

He shut out the monster woman,

Those thin, red talons that grapples at his throat

Sunk into his back to leave long red marks

While they make monstrous love, on the big screen

Her screams tearing at him through the sere concrete

My love, it was a monstrous love,

That gnawed at my insides until I awoke hollow and bloodied

And poured hot ecstasy into my veins, broke

Its heavy chains, bounded inside its cages

I draw it to me while it tears at my skin

Your love, it was a beastly love,

That cackled and danced until you awoke sick with horror

And the sleepless night blent into days, broke

Your gentle gaze, yet still those ragged arms ached

To draw the madness back into your ribbed and raw embrace

We cry together, scream together, monstrous lovers

Each more afraid than the other of those red, consuming eyes

We run together, flee together, from the beastly heart

Grasping at each other’s wild, flying hair, lest

The devil should take the hindmost 

Aging

I grow old, I grow old

My bones shall shiver in the cold

With sere flesh draped, corrupt with fever,

The biting frost grows ever bold.

The cherry flush fades from lip and cheek

Defiant eyes grow dim and meek

The lightest touch will send a-tremble,

What the senile mind could put to sleep

Vital blood rushing through vital veins

Cool, thins and stagnantly pools

In spider’s silk under papery skin

Creeping up my withered limbs

At the summit of youth, first

Have I felt the horror of winter’s sway,

Beheld death’s valley spread beneath

While withered trunks line my forward way.

I first dreaded then, that breath of cold

And the thought that I, too, shall grow old,

From the creases that run from my eyes

Etched from the labours I have sold.

Then the luxuriant locks would fade

A slender figure would engorge with time

Feasted upon the ruins of the years,

A violet fast fading, a sweetness fast wasting

This joy a fruit that cloys at the tasting

Washed with the bitterness of aging.

Ghosts in the Water

When our limbs grow frail and our leaden eyes dim,
Hand in hand, we shall step beneath the waves,
Firm feet in the sand, towards the dusky rim,
We will welcome the darkness of the waters' depths.

Our hair drift out like silver seagrasses behind us,
Fanned by the crash of distant waves high above.
We will sing with mermaids in our coral tombs,
Our voices rise as ocean foam,
Hear it echo in whitened bones, cleaned and hollowed
by the sand, the water, the salt and the stones.

Tempests shall not wake us from our deepened slumber.
We see distant crash of ships as driftwood sinking down.
The dead that thrashed and writhed are at peace below the surface,
We close their eyes in the restful sleep of the drowned.

When the sea-crabs that skate along the silence of the ocean floor
Feast upon our lips, we will hear no human voices.
We will own no name, beneath the waves we live as ghosts
In the cold water, we shall drown no more.

The Eternal Home

Come my dear, stay with me for the year of our lives.
Four seasons, four walls, four windows, we'll reside
in four houses of beauty unsurpassed

In Spring, we'll chorus in a house of crystal glass
We'll watch the cherry petals drift down above us thick and fast
Our bed will be a blanket of springy green moss
And the brook will join in a lullaby as it bubbles past

On Summer eves we'll lie below the constellations
Our house, the boughs of ancient oaks and pines rustle in syncopation
Your head on my lap I'll stroke the stardust from your hair
And lulled to sleep by the summer sweetness hanging heavy in the air.

In Autumn we'll look out from our log house in the woods
Watch the fiery leaves fall to carpet the bare and barren earth
Stare at the dying fire in the hearth, at the way our breath mists together,
When running becomes much harder than it should

I fear, my dear, in winter you'll leave me to live alone,
Gone to your warmer grounds in places far and unknown,
I can do nothing but wait by this cold house of stone
Waiting for the day I'll join you in our eternal home.

Globalisation: a moral dilemma

“We should raise our children to find it intolerable that we who sit behind desks and punch keyboards are paid ten times as much as people who get their hands dirty cleaning our toilets, and a hundred times as much as those who fabricate our keyboards in the Third World. We should ensure that they worry about the fact that the countries which industrialized first have a hundred times the wealth of those which have not yet industrialized. Our children need to learn, early on, to see the inequalities between their own fortunes and those of other children as neither the Will of God nor the necessary price for economic efficiency, but as an evitable tragedy. They should start thinking, as early as possible, about how the world might be changed so as to ensure that no one goes hungry while others have a surfeit.”

“They need to see their lives as given meaning by efforts towards the realization of the moral potential inherent in our ability to communicate our needs and our hopes to one another.”

-       -    Richard Rorty (American Philosopher)

Globalisation has become the catch-phrase of the last quarter century. No facet of humanity and its environment has been left untouched by our newfound ease of connectedness, from the spread of ideas to the distribution of resources to the proliferation of power to the people. It has reordered the fundamental building blocks that have defined politics and history in the last two centuries, empowering institutions and individuals, eroding governmental control, changing the drivers of economic success and redefining the role of business. It has also been a movement imbued with unprecedented optimism and hope – hope for peace and economic cooperation, the spread of opportunity, the improvement of living conditions for billions and a global connectedness that would amplify the voices of those that have previously remained unheard and repressed.

As a phenomenon, globalisation is not new. The seed of modern globalisation had been nurtured in the fertile soil of neo-imperialistic Europe, and the Western World have reaped the fruits ever since. Though the concept of globalisation itself has been around for as long as there have been ancient trade routes across the land and seas, we have regarded this modern phenomena as hand in hand with Western hegemony: to be modern is to be western, and to be modern, is to be global. Indeed, it is hard to think of 'modernity', 'connectivity' and 'progress' without imbuing it with Western values.

Globalisation has always radiated from focal points of economic and hegemonic power, whether accounting for the dominance of Western, American culture or the rising influence of the East. Its advocates paint globalisation as the shining ‘new idea’ of the 21^st century, spreading values, setting standards, creating opportunity for the destitute and the isolated, in an era of unprecedented peace and cooperation.

John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1920 on Britain before the First World War paints for us a vivid picture of the benefits of globalisation:

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend.

 

But to paint globalisation as a beacon of hope for humanity’s culture is to inherently suggest that outside of the influence of globalisation and the values that it perpetuates, there lies a darker world that is primitive and alien at best.

The globalisation that Keynes describes cannot be separated from its social and cultural implications. C.T. Kurian, a leading Bangladeshi economist, described the main component of globalisation as the celebration of the triumph of private capitalism and its dominant influence in the world. It is a radiating force, whereby states are absorbed into a homogeny of markets, policy and free-market values. Globalisation cannot be motivated without the profit imperatives of like-minded global consumers, cannot perpetuate without the supporting platform of standards and fiscal openness, and cannot be justified without its moral imperatives. At its core, globalisation imitated as an economic phenomena that has had profound social and political ramifications.

It is in this nursery of lasses-faire, free market globalisation that businesses have flourished, and it is their imperative to globalise these friendly conditions. Globalisation is not a purely economic phenomenon. It is also the gradual encroachment of one way of thinking, one set of values, beliefs and behaviours, one social structure and one state of the power dynamic between private institutions and government, upon the diversity that exists in our world. It comes with a sense of entitlement, where advocators of globalisation assume ethical superiority because they truly believe what they have assumed the ideal form of modernity. What we arrive at then, is a sad echo of the kind of thinking that justified colonialism and the tragedies they perpetrated.

Zygmaunt Bauman, one of Europe’s foremost sociologists, describes globalisation as an ‘ethical challenge’ in two ‘secessions’. He points firstly towards the separation of businesses from the local household and community, when the village merchant turned their eyes outwards towards the frontier lands free of all governmental, legal and moral constraint. What followed was an era of unprecedented economic prosperity, but also one of unprecedented human agony. The industrial flourishing of the colonial era was built upon the backs of the conquered and the marginalised. It was an era of extremes: the rich got richer and the poor struggled on.

Keynes himself acknowledges this in his book, quoting:

The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot.

As we read on, it becomes hard to ignore the inherent egoism and sense of entitlement in the expectation of globalisation as a modernising and 'moral' force.

'He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference.'

The assumption that one should be able to access resources, markets and opportunities freely, acquire freedom of labour and movement across borders, have access to capital is one that very closely echoes what globalisation has brought us today. Keynes has chosen to view culture as separate from the economic activity and ignored the innate embeddedness of business in the environment that surrounds it. Whatever resistance is then met in the due course of performing these activities is not approached with due consideration, but with surprise. What he has essentially described is the need for ease of doing business despite cultural, governmental and legal barriers, and perhaps even without them.

Bauman described globalisation as the ‘second wave’ of secession. Businesses have once again, broken away from the locality of nation states and entered into an international territory of legal inconsistency and moral greyness. The territories that offer the most resistance can be tactfully avoided; those weakly governed can be swayed. Some of the wealthy, and most powerful entities in our world now are no longer states, but businesses.  The kind of global development we see now is not far different from a hundred years ago. On the whole, the world is making progress. Average income is rising. There is much more international trade, international FDI that brings opportunities for development into third world countries. But it is the gap in the speed of development, the unequal sharing of the fruits of globalisation that must be addressed. The Report of the World Commission on Social Dimension of Globalisation describes our current trajectory as encouraging "deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable".

In the year 2014, globalisation is not a trend, but a reality. The ability to communicate with others, by itself, is not an insidious force, but one marked with untold potential for human good. Free markets, commerce, trade and business, similarly, is not by itself a force of evil or benevolence, but simply a structure through which people and resources interact. What is imperative then, is that we realise the potential for improving lives through the tools that we have at hand. It is important that businesses understand the power that they have in this brave new world, and to learn from the mistakes of the past. To not proceed with the same kind of thinking that drove Keynes, and the tragedies of the colonial eras. To recognise the moral need for self-restraint, to abide by the regulations, recommendations and standards set by international organisations like the WTO and ILO not for fear of bad press or subpoenas, but to create a globalisation that brings equal opportunity and respect for human dignity.

Businesses must take up their moral role just as they have donned the mantle of profiteering. They must recognise their part is fostering a culture that looks at the world not only as a grand supply chain fluctuating in a sea of economics, but as a space for imagination and potential from all individuals. They must realise that they are not only exporting goods, but a culture, a way of life. To realise that modernization does not necessarily equate with Westernization, and concurrently the adoption of western lifestyles and products. This epiphany is not just important for moral imperatives, but for long term sustainability in an increasingly multipolar world, with the rise of the Asian Century. The most attractive markets of now and the future may not be set in the hegemonic monopoly of the west as the capitalists of the 20^th century had envisioned. The current distinctions of the ‘globalised’, the ‘Connected’ and the ‘Westernised’ markets and economies from the ‘under developed’ and ‘isolated’ world will and should become invalid. 

We should extend opportunities not only to those that would adopt our values, and not to seek for the universalisation of those values, but look for the possibilities that exist at the meeting of great civilizations, cultures and ways of thinking. To be culturally sensitive and to create equal opportunity is then not only a moral imperative, but makes business sense as a driver of innovation, increased consumption in foreign markets and more developed human resources. If that is still not enough justification for an equal globalisation, then we only need to look to the past to understand that for every action we take now to increase human suffering, we are building up karma for dissent, conflict and revolution in the future.

Nought shall quaver the burning of midnight oils
When the sleepless wander through lonely halls
And stranger than fancy in the night,
The tricks that Oberon plays on the mind.

Summer Ball

She said dance with me, so we twirled
To the whirl of wine in glasses
While the band tapped out a merry waltz
And the fire crackled in its niche
 Holding her tender waist against mine
Our feet draws out the swirls of our love
She felt lithe and soft, felt like home
The dancers slow,as the band fades out
Her eyes seeking the next dancing partner
Pressing a soft sigh and a kiss to her cheek
I let her go

And this too shall pass

Summer's day. Summer's end. A pastry for a dollar spent. Crumbling shortbread.
Ivy clings to cream walls. Warm sun streaming through halls. Flowers spill out of window stalls.
Holding hands, we walk. Passing trees. We talk. Marble stairs. Bird song.

They seem, so distant, so tasteless. Stuck in that wasteland. Honey drips at day's end, the birds that chirp but never land. They just don't understand.

The clouds afloat, glowing pink and gold. The steeple bells tolled. We lay, staring at a blue space, watching it fade to cold. The plaster cast of finer molds. A white manor, maps to hold.

Fall's come. Fall's gone. Empty beds, chilled dawns. A memory of seared prawns.
The tide comes, the tides go. The rain drips so slow. Eyes wrung, pillows soaked.

Howling winds, warm stove. A wooden home in a pine grove. A cave of limestone.
Trains pass, gliding. A city brightening. A bathtub with jet streams.
The warmth of a cotton dress. The warmth of deep breaths. Street food, a happy mess.
Squeezing into a tiny space. Convenience stores by our own place.

They say, so maybe, so one day. Half blurred photographs that won't stay. The glass that cuts as it slips through fingers, the blood that runs the other way.

The first time, the first night. Curtains retreating from daylight. The stars beneath, in flight. White leather sofas and black little dresses, ropes and knuckles and teeth and feathers. The hands that never left anything but scratches.

A bitten tongue, a broken wick. A short and melting candlestick. A melody to heal the sick.
A shattered, silver coated looking glass.
And this too shall one day pass.

And this, too, shall one day pass

Airborne

Rush. The sound of blood in your ears. A flood of cars on wet asphalt. Water forced from the tap, bubbling, splatters onto the aluminium sink and falls into the drains, gurgling their horror.

Tick. Tock. The sound of the second hand that moves so slowly and the hour hand that blurs by in endless circles. The silent night that falls so slowly and all of the sudden the stars rush out to blind me.

Whoosh. The sound of the leaves that fall so loudly from the trees and beat down like falling rocks raining from the sky. The quiet storm that beats against my face.

Buzz. The sounds of the bumblebee perusing through autumn leafage for the last honey'd drops of summer in the park as we watched. The sound of flickering fluorescent lights in the linoleum kitchen.

Hum. The sound of a soothing voice echoing as I lay across his chest with every tender taken breath, the exhilaration of feeling him being, alive. The sound of the refrigerators on sleepless nights.

Pitter patter beats the heart, and pitter patter the raindrops fall.
A flood, a tide, a thunder of feeling.
Nerves scattered overwrought in veins of brightness across the darkened windows.

Then falls the silence.
A quietness of thought.
A footstep towards the airborne-

A stain upon the floor.

Take all the wonderings of the world.
Take all the maybes, the ifs and the onlys.
To squeeze all the questionings into my palm.
To take courage,

To delineate, to reason and to distinguish
To come to the overwhelming conclusion
To eliminate the impossibilities, to arrive
At the improbable truth.

That perhaps, I alone
Sit festering at the root of all these problems.

The Magic Garden

Tell the wind that echoes back your troubles my sweet,
Let the wind bear away your worries to a brighter land,
Let the rustle of the leaves wash over your hurts my love,
Hear them whisper in the soothing tide
Deeper, deeper you go.
To a kingdom of whispered dreams

Tell the moon that beams down on you my sweet,
So that the sky may shed a thousand starry tears,
So that the stars may leap from the skies my love,
Hear them twinkle as they dash and dance
Bursting, bursting all around
In fireworks of golden light

Tell the dew that pearls upon the silver grass my sweet,
Mayhap they'll shiver in sorrow on slender stalks,
Mayhap they'll freeze in the chilling night my love,
Hear them sigh with the silence of frost
Colder,colder they grow
Their bodies beading in the dawn

If the wind and the moon and the frost shall fail you my sweet
Could you think to fall within my widespread arms-
Could you wonder to seek comfort here my love?

To seek the ears that hear, the eyes that see my love
A breast to wet with your tears, that blooms
A field that blossoms with your tears, outside
A window with no latch, just a curtain drawn upon the panes
To keep you warm, and I will be your garden

The Man of No Mercy

I seek the blue planet,
With shores of burnished gold.
The sunset that bleeds like the flesh of men,
Pierced by the mountains old.

I wander toward the forgotten lands,
For a maiden clothed in green,
Her hair woven with sea-grasses
Her eyes, of violet sheen.

Upon her blooms a thousand roses
Her arms are lily white
But between her lips clasped the sweetest blossom
This flower I pluck'd in the night.

At once her breath, honey sweet,
Let out a rattling sigh
And the lily white arms clasped about my neck
Fell back, withered and died.

Gallant knight, in your shining armor,
You bring death in your wake
Death to the innocent, the beautiful and young,
You sow, and the reaper takes

Run, ride and gallop away my knight,
She is no maiden fair
Do you not see the glimmer in her eyes
That whispers of your despair

Truly, she wishes for the sweetness
The ambrosia of your youth
The glint of your gilded armor
The glimmer of your couth

The knight thus warned flees the crone
Draped in the kirdle of the maiden fair
Weeping beside the lake's rippling waters
Raking the weeds from her brittle hair

Oh Gallant knight, had you seen from your heart
The maiden that you'd left
Once past the dale, her age fell away
The maidens heart bereft

Shakespeare Ramble

Mercutio lays slain upon the ground, while Tybalt flees the scene. Romeo gives chase.

Romeo: halt Tybalt, thy tyranny knows no bounds of reason; thy cowardice hath moved thee to stab an unarmed man. Though we are of one blood and one house, even if you consider it not, it would be a shame upon my duty were I to let you smear the sin of murder upon our house without it being cleansed by blood.

Tybalt: Gallant Romeo, thus is your colours revealed in the flag stained red, draped across your kin’s limp form. Gallant Romeo indeed! I will reveal you for the villain that thou art. I implore you, stab me if you will, and rid yourself of this city. Show you and your motley crew no more in the unstained streets of Verona, else I drown it in your blood.

Romeo: Villain I am not, and gallant, I am yet not. These hands will be dyed with Capulet blood before the sun dips below the brow, and yet, I will not be merrier for it. What I do, I do out of duty; though the passions of my soul howl for revenge upon your head, I will not revenge for revenge’s sake. I mourn for thee Tybalt, and my heart bleeds for the tears that Juliet will shed.

Tybalt: Get you gone from my cousin! You are not worthy to stare upon her fairness, or to kiss the sods upon which she treads. The sin of murder hath tightened around my neck, let it. A man once hung cannot be hung again. Let me cleanse Verona of the foulness of the Montague house, and may the Capulets sing of my glory after justice has been done.  

Romeo: I would entreat you to surrender yourself to the mercy of the state, a vain effort. Thou hast forced by hand; let it be known, that Romeo dreweth upon his kin not for the pleasure of revenge, but in the name of justice.

Tybalt: the occasion for talk has passed. Defend!

Leanne looked on at her husband, trying to see a hint of the weariness that he surely must feel. But there, on his weathered face and in the stubbled set of his jaw, only joy and relief. He was thinner, but then again Adam had never been a heavy man, being borne to leaner southern parents with their dark curls and deep blue-grey eyes. The years had been kind to him; besides from the light grey that swept back from his temples and the slight stoop to his shoulders, his movements were still propelled by the vigour of youth. A sharp nose and a thin mouth gave him a slightly hawkish appearance, one that his son had inherited. His daughters, on the other hand, were fashioned after the image of their northern-borne mother, with light and fair feathers, golden curls and full rosy mouths. They all stood rather tall for their age, though the twins still retained the rotundness of infanthood.

But what Mia might have lacked in physical likeliness to her father, she more than made up for in every other aspect. Lively, quick of eye, keen and easily excitable, she had been a difficult child to keep out of trouble. Jun had always been more silent in comparison, quietly looking on at the playfulness of his sisters, ever ready to intercede in their foolish behaviour. Balanced and serious, Leanne would not know how she would have raised her daughters without him. They twins seemed to have taken after their elder sister more so than either of their parents. The three girls were always together, on one adventure or another, always finding themselves in the most impossible situations. Leanne still remembered vividly the time when they had failed to return home after dark, and the entire village had set out to look for them. It was eventually Jun who had found them trapped in the hollow of a tree they had managed to squirm into, far out on the edge of their isle. Whenever they had gotten lost, it was only ever Jun who could find them. Jun was the one that kept Leanne together when Adam was away.

But finally, Jun could take a break from reining in his sisters, now that they were together again. A stiffness that Leanne had not noticed in her shoulders began to melt away at the sight of Adam sitting in his old oaken chair, surrounded by their children. But with every reunion, so would there be the inevitability of another departure. No, no. Leanne pushed the thought into the darkest corner of her mind. She would allow herself this one perfect night, when the fire cracked merrily, the children were content to sit and stare at their father, and even the sheeting rain seemed to have lightened to a gentle, happy tapping against the window panes.

‘What have you brought us this time Father?’

‘What was Vincidane like? Did you see any snow? Magic? Dragons?’

‘Were there really flowers everywhere? Even in the winter snow?

‘Were there knights there? Ones with white horses? And shining shields?’

Adam laughed easily at their eagerness, and drew them closer to him. This was his favoured part of his travels, watching their eyes light up as he recalled what was to them, the wondrous and infinite world beyond their little village. He drew from his satchel a package carefully wrapped in oil cloth and bound with strong hemp chords while the children danced excitedly around him. The chord snapped with an expectant twang under the sharp of the knife; the children leaned in. the oil cloth fell away to reveal an old wooden chest studded with metal bolts, clasped shut with leather buckles. It had the musty smell of dust and mothballs.

Pandemonium - Homecoming

In some ways, Leanne supposed, she would have had a childhood that was better than the ones her children would ever have. They would never have want for food and shelter, betterment of the mind, or the balanced sensibility that came with careful culture. They had the luxuries they needed, and whatever ones her husband could provide for them beside. Indeed, their gowns, and toys and books were gifts given only in stories in her childhood. All the same, she could not wonder, but for all the hunger, and cold winters, and thirsting summers, if it was worth giving up all the little wonders too. One of her favourite memories, often visited in times of grief or homesickness, was of the county fair that once had run late, into the wet month of August. The ground had been a squelchy sop of brown leaf litter, manure and mud instead of its usual sawdust. The sky had been a steely grey, pregnant with storm clouds. The usually bright cobblestones of the town square had been washed to a dull brown. But even so, the rain was not like the rain they had now, sheeting waves of it flattening grass and tree, washing clear the fields and drowning out the landscape.

After the rains, grasses that had dried in the summer heat and withered with the first frosts of autumn had once again peaked green shoots through the cracks of the stones underfoot. It was like spring come again, and even in the rain, the village had danced in the square, splashing in time to the tinkering of bells and toot of trumpets. The air had smelt earthy, the rain refreshing, and the hot bowls of soup around the bonfire at the end of the night so much warmer than the brightest blazing ingle. When the sun finally cracked through the clouds on the last day, the evening light slanting through the western woods had set the glimmering, quivering dew that showered the fair on fire.  It was decades since Leanne had last seen a fair, and she wondered if she would ever see one again. Everyone had told her that her children would be much happier now in this new world of theirs, strangers to poverty, strangers to envy, enemies of exuberant excess. However, a part of her mourned for the fact that her girls would never know to clasp that first jewelled brooch from a lover just above the heart or that her boys would never know the nervousness of that first gift giving. They had told her it was better this way, but she had never been convinced. The orderly parade of small children clad in grey woollen stockings trudging wetly through the streets only added to her doubts. Leanne bustled towards the linen cupboards- time to lay down some pre-emptive towels before childish boot-prints covered her newly varnished floors.

The children came in dripping and muddy from ankle down, and one by one were ushered directly to baths. Despites their best efforts, no amount of oilskin cloaks could keep out the rain, and so, many people had abandoned the effort entirely. Everywhere, the smell of wet wool. Leanne had tried everything from scented sandalwood to orange flower, with no luck, and in the end, had simply resorted to confining wool to the back of the house, a little more firewood, and layers of linen and furs inside the house instead. God, she really hoped Adam could bring back some soft leather, or cotton this time. The smell of sheep had begun to ingrain itself into her skin, until even veal had begun to taste like mutton. When each child had been rinsed, scrubbed, dried and dressed, she had set the table with Harriet, the cook, who loaded a huge steaming bowl of beef stew into the centre. No one took note of the empty chair at the head of the table, and the symphonic clatter of cutlery against tableware began. Even now, Leanne marvelled at the ability of such a simple affair as supper to descend into an utter cacophony in a matter of moments, should her attention ever lapse. The children were so engrossed in attacking the stew, that at first, not one noticed that someone new was muddying the rug in front of their door. 

‘Father!’

It was Mia, as always, who spotted him first, dripping in an oiled overcoat, face wound in a scarf and shaded by a broad hat. But there was no mistaking the hunch of the broad shoulders, the set of the deep blue eyes or the wild wave of blue-black hair of Leanne’s husband. In a few frenzied seconds, the table had been abandoned and the family clamoured around him. Only Jun hovered at a respectable distance, regarding his father with keen observation. The two twins, Polly and Cass, had attached themselves, with their white smocks, to their father’s knees. Mia was dragging him by the arm to the table, while helping him pull off the hat and cloak. Cook Harriet had pulled off his boots and set them by the fire to dry while old grandmother Kat tottered towards her usual place by the fire to folder her son into her frail arms.

For Leanne, she was content just to watch their table be completed for the first time in months. 

Pandemonium - Prologue

‘Sad is the man who would fall, with none to mourn him’

It had not stopped raining for twenty days. Big fat drops pelted from the sky and carved through the soft earth, carrying away the topsoil until swollen rivers had run yellow and brown. Others swelled their banks, washing away entire villages in the night, taking houses, people and livestock indiscriminately. Adam had watched helplessly as a herd of sheep were pressed ever tighter on a shrinking island surrounded by the muddy currents, until one by one they had been picked off, swept away and drowned. If he ventured from the inn now, he would no doubt share the same fate. Even as he stood well sheltered under the eaves, he could feel the cold damp spray on his face with each breath of wind. He was late.

                At first he had even welcomed the damned weather, thinking it would be a brief relief from the sweltering summer. But then the hard dirt beneath his feet had begun to ooze and stick, leaving sharp imprints of his every step. The incessant pattering of droplets on the leaf litter had sounded to him like the pitter-patter of a thousand following feet. Every shadow in the hazy distance hid an enemy. At night he shivered in the cold. In the day he trudged unseeing through the damp. A typhoon is no friend to a traveler, just his luck.

                Adam knew he couldn’t stay long in this inn, a tempting prospect as it was. In the short week that he rain had started, even straw mattresses, wooden crate tables and musty sawdust floors had become a small luxury. Plus, there was fire, and hot food. Any traveller who left now would draw the surprise, and the remembrance, of the entire inn. Best to lay low. But he could not help but dream of walking through the door of his own house, to the warmth of his wife’s arms, his children’s laughter and the huge fireplace crackling away. It was only a day’s walk to the border, and then only a night’s travel back to all that he held dear. He could make it, he’s walked the same paths a thousand times. Each step replayed in his mind, each turn, each fording, he knew them all. And yet, every day, he still stood on the same spot on the veranda, looking out into the sheeting rain. Soon. Soon.

***

Mia watched the rain fall outside of her window and pressed her nose to the rivulets running down the glass. If she squinted, the warped windows transformed into landscapes of mountains and the streams running through them into the familiar rivers of their delta home. She could picture her father slowly picking his way through the distant Alps at the top of the window, before being swept up by the rain, down, down and back to her. She rubbed the mist of her breath off the panes. She did not want to miss that first glimpse of him through the trees.

                Leanne watched her eldest daughter tuck her slender legs underneath her skirts and rest her head back against the frame in the alcove. She had always been the one who watched with the most vigilance, while the rest of the family had accepted it for a fact that her husband would walk through that door when he is well and ready, and not a second before. But it was Mia who watched day after day staring off into the encroaching trees when the letters came telling them he was heading home. Leanne feared the encroaching trees would simply swallow her slender little daughter up someday, just as it did her father. Still, the latest letter had only come a week before, and it would be moons until they set his place at the table for supper. Until then, lamps still need to be lit, children washed and supper still needs to be served.

                While her husband had managed to command silence and order at the table, meals had always been a pandemonium without him. Leanne, red faced and puffing was trying to feed baby Zach in one hand whilst untangling the twins with the other. Mia was trying to sneak tid bits to Teddy the puppy, while he whined and licked her fingers with a coarse tongue, before nuzzling his snout between her feet. So much for no animals at the table, but at this moment the twins had started flinging broiled cabbage between them. Their laughter punctuated with squeals of disgust as the green globs settled in two mops of golden hair and stained their satin smocks. Her eldest boy, Junius, sat straight backed in the great oak chair between them and ate with a solemn dignity unbefitting his thirteen years. Even as she wrestled the twins apart and back into their chairs, Leanne found herself wishing her husband would reappear in her arms so that she might watch his eyes bulge as she strangled him. Just as quickly, the wave of anger passed into longing. She gathered up her skirts and stepped over the dog, taking her place at the head of the table. Quietly, she began to eat amidst the din.

***

‘You know that your father is a criminal right?’

‘What do you know?’

‘My mum said she saw your dad sneaking around in the middle of the night, and had a great big rucksack over his shoulder bulging with bad things! He’s going to get a-arr-arrested’

‘Well your mum’s a liar, my dad is a trader! He goes to other countries and brings back food for us’

‘Ha, a smuggler more like. You’re a thief too!... Ah!’

Mia looked at the thin boy splattered in the mud, his plain cotton overalls stained gravy brown. Bits of twigs stuck in his hair, and a leaf was caught between his lips. He blew it out, and proceeded to smudge much over his eyes as he cried. Mia felt oddly ashamed of herself, standing over the boy like that. Though he was a year older, she felt like it was her baby brother she had pushed into the puddle. She watched him sob for a while, but his shrill cries and hiccoughing began to grow tedious very quickly. She turned from the half muttered insults and headed up her veranda. Mia could never understand why her mother wanted her to play with the neighbour’s son so much, she much rather enjoyed her books and the company of her siblings. At least she didn’t have to put up with the insults of her father, whom she adored.

                It was the same at school. When the schoolmaster would deliver his daily speech about the evils of excess, the devils within all humans that make us all greedy, wanting more, more, more by taking from those who do not have, those who drink the blood of their peers and line their pockets with the skin of others, there would be the odd snigger and nudge directed her way. Her teacher didn’t like her much either. She’d always be picked as an example, paraded in front of her school if her hair ties were too colourful, her faux leather shoes too real, her jacket too new or her bag too big. She’ll grow up to be a consumerist, they had said, a vane, shallow and selfish person who gives in to their own hedonistic desires at the sacrifice of all else. It was such a waste in a girl so young they said, it wasn’t wholesome. Finding no fault in Mia herself, a cloud of speculation and rumour had surrounded her family ever since. But Mia had never quite enjoyed talking to the people around her anyway, so it was no great loss for her that they kept their distance from then on.

***

                Junius, or Jun, as everyone called him, believed himself to be a sensible child. From his earliest youth, his father had been absent, often for months at a time, and had only spent short weeks before leaving again. While he loved his father very much, and he truly did, he grew up knowing that he would have to fill the chink where his father should have been. His place was in the home, with his mother and his siblings. His duty was to help his mother tend the field; adhere to his studies, and to join a guild when he became of age in order to pursue a life skill. And yet, deep down, he was a romantic too. A question that had plagued him since he knew how to question that never left his mind. What kind of occupation had so enraptured his father that overwhelmed even the desire for the warmth of home? Though he was told that his father was a merchant he was too old to be fooled by that. The big families that had come discreetly through their doors in coaches, clinking with gold and left with heavy trunks and a lighter purse had informed him otherwise. His father was no ordinary trader.

His home was different too. While on the surface, it was modelled after the bare hovel standard of sawdust floors, rough wooden furniture and stuffed straw, little forbidden luxuries were tucked away in spring cupboards built into the warm brick walls. Pop-up mirrors and small glass trinkets were released from the top of drawers through a simple crank lever. They had down quilts for freezing winter nights. There was even a miniature crystal vase tucked inside a small wooden box for snowdrops in spring. Seven feet under the floor, there was even supposed to be a secret buried cellar. Of course, no one had ever bothered to dig it up. While Jun appreciated these creature comforts and how happy they had made the womenfolk, he could not help but wondering if this was corrupting the principles that had been drummed into their brains since birth. Excess is evil. Squander is sin. Repeat…

A Lament

I give to whom that take away

A scarlet rose, a golden ring,

And though the rose requited be red

The circlet shatters on returning. 

I chase my love through wood and field, 

She beckons with a lulling call 

And while her shape through fingers slip

Her cries echo a darker soul. 

Awake, I find no rest till dawning

Lit as waxen as star or moon

Gazing on the golden circlet

With cracks spilling like veins through stone 

As sunlight hits the western shore 

The candle sighs a wisp of grey

I rise, but wearied from my chase

Drift ghostly through the morrow's day

[Iambic tetrameter except break in S1L4, 4/4, abcb - half rhyme S3]