Wartime

His soul is a bootprint.

He feels the tug of war like it’s mating season. Gunfire is applause. To him, jeans and a t-shirt are camouflage. Bullets undo the stitches on the scarecrow people that don’t frighten him as they come apart. The crows come. Bullets that whiz close to him are laughed at. The ones that nick his flesh are admonished like they’re naughty pets that he can’t help but love despite their precocious ways. His cologne is gun oil.

It isn’t sport or glory. It isn’t a bad childhood. It isn’t the dehumanizing process of the training barracks. It isn’t the need to belong. It isn’t the lost soul diving into the order of the command process because water makes more sense to a fish than suffocating air.

Eyes are dinner plates and he’s angry. Children’s heads line up like pool balls and it’s his turn to break. Towns become Ikea furniture disassembled by gods of fire.

The time machine in his fist shudders villages back to the stone age and makes grown-ups into babies before shoving them back to that place were they existed before they were born.

Time is a clock attached to a bomb. Mine. Keys belong in grenades. He triggers memories, knife and easy. He has a barrel of fun. He has a full clip of retorts. Bullet-point proposals echo forth. His responses are automatic. He sees the future through a sight. Darkness falls before his night vision. He’s a gas.

His 20 is the LZ. He looks at his 12 and stays aware of his 6, throwing flame in a game of catch. It’s a barbeque and the main course is Enemy.

There’s a foot locker of never-opened medals at the bottom edge of the bed hasn’t slept in for years. It’s full. The brass doesn’t even bother sending out the hardcopies anymore.

He’s a rumour the size of Belgrade making homes in towns that become famous shortly before they become craters.

There is no fear in his laugh. Perhaps the scariest thing about him is his rationality.

C’est le Vietnam. C’est l’armour. Que cera serrated.
Soldier of Scorchin’. Mercy Nary. Assassinner.

He has a deck of cards rolled up under one tight shoulder sleeve and a pack of cigarettes under the other. Both have skulls and crossbones on them. He has time for neither.

This is not a book. He is real.




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Angels and Demons

Angels and demons are nothing but carrion birds.

They fight over our loose souls like seagulls and crows fighting over sandy French fries on the beach.

They do not ferry us from here to one place or another. Our souls are merely food for them and they are hungry.

The only difference between them is the colour of their wings. The angels are white-winged and strong, a little bit bigger that the demons. The demons have black wings that glint red highlights in the sun. They are slightly smaller than the angels but they’re quicker and there a few more of them.

They circle above us, unseen, waiting, diving at every death in a flocked race with a gluttonous finish line. Disasters with high body counts thicken the air with their screeching cries and flapping wings.

We are a school of fish. They circle, gliding in lazy circles above the shifting, scalloped-glass meniscus of the ocean’s surface. They drift in an energy-conserving spiral, heads twitching for signs of death, flecks of struggling fins breaking the surface. Then they dive.

The sun glinting on the waves, shimmering down into the depths, is the light we see near the end.

There is no afterlife. Nothing is wasted, not even the soul. It is a closed system.




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Stuff that's cool

Lovely.

This is a beautiful video and song.

Watch on YouTube

and jeez, what is wrong with me? This ad almost had me in tears.

Watch on YouTube

This is kind of a cool ad for the good samaritans hotline. I think it kind of loses it about halfway through but hey, judge for yourself. Most of it is awesome.

Watch on YouTube

And this is nice. They used the music from the first one for a nice little advertisment here. I think it's for a bank or something?

Watch on YouTube

So there you. Hope you're all doing well.


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Jackdaw's Speech

Once upon a time, there was a small crow named Jackdaw.

It was his parent's idea to give him a name of a bird that was smaller and weaker than he was. Jackdaw had a hard time. His parents were killed by a cat when he was young. He lived at the school after that.

The flocks at school were cruel to Jackdaw until he got so used to it that he didn't even feel pain anymore. In a way, he acheived a certain freedom. Knowing that he would be pecked by bigger birds whether or not he tried to please them or do his own thing let him be himself. He suffered the abuse and expressed himself as he pleased, knowing that the beatings would come regardless.

In the final stretch before graduation, the birds started to notice his independence and become envious of it. He seemed to have no need of flocks. The impending end of school was scaring the youths who didn’t feel prepared for the real world of nest eggs and migration payments.

They named him valibeaktorian for the graduation ceremonies speech.

Of course, Jackdaw was shocked. He accepted the honour humbly.

On the night of the graduation ceremonies, in the giant hollowed-out oak stump where the ceremony took place, all of the birds huddled together. The pigeons were crammed in with the hawks, the owls were pressed together with the robins. The faculty were pressed wing to wing with the parents. The older birds twittered and held cameras awkwardly with their forefeathers, ready to take pictures of their children as they bobbed across the stage.

Jackdaw’s speech was at the beginning, an inspiration to kick things off. The room fell silent as Jackdaw strutted to the podium. He stood, head cocked, eyes blinking, wings preened, and staring at the wild variety of bird's eyes that stared back at him.

"My name is Jackdaw. The shortest sentence that can be typed in the English language is not 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog' but rather 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.' I read this in a human book. I have never seen a sphinx. I have never seen quartz. I am going to correct that.

I also have never been accepted by you and my life has been a hardship. I forgive you and what's more, I thank you. Because of the challenges you have put in front of me, I feel I achieved a level of personality that most of you won't achieve for years to come. Some of you may never understand this speech."

"Birds of a feather flock together, it is said, although that has never been true in my case. What few friends I've managed to find have not been part of any flock in the room. None of them are crows, for instance, yet they are my friends. Some of them are lamed or flightless. Some of them took too long to learn basic lessons. All of them know a permanent lifestyle of scorn. They are snubbed, shunned, ignored, and abused. And not just by the students."

"There is a flaw in the system. You teachers know it, you parents know it, and even I can see it. There is a safety in tucking one's head underneath one's wing. Even the biggest amongst us tuck their heads into the sand. There is a leaning towards flock-thinking that keeps us grounded."

"Why must we? We make beautiful music to attract mates. We build feats of architecture to house our young. We are attentive parents. We do all of this without a written language or opposable thumbs. And we can fly. I say this again. We can fly."

"I will fly from here when this speech is over. I will not come back. In the next few years that I have to experience life, I am going to explore. Those that are like-minded are more than welcome to come with me, throwing caution to the wind as well as their wings, embracing the jetstream. I am about to go on as much of a world tour as whoever's in charge of this place will let me take."

"I feel, at this moment, the exact same feeling I felt as my parents threw me out of the nest that first time. The blind panic I felt and the lack of pride when I successfully survived. I felt betrayed and exhilirated. The world of flight that was about to open up to me seemed filled with possibility. Do you remember?"

"I bid you all farewell. You are the broken wind beneath my wings. Your ignorance spurred me forward. Good bye."

Jackdaw stepped away from the podium, bowed, and exploded into the sky.

Sixteen birds followed him.

In the stunned silence that followed. The choir started up at the conductor's insistence and the ceremony continued in the way that it was supposed to. The march across the stage went off smoothly and the parents got good pictures of their children.

Jackdaw's speech was never spoken of again.




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